Those on Crooked Paths
10th of November 2006 A.D.
There has to be a better way to doing this, you think as you manhandle the older of the men into the backseat of Black Rider. Liz had chosen to take her own car not that you can blame her. "Status report," you say in vague direction of Clippy, trying not to sound waspish. It's not her fault these idiots are abroad in the world.
"No matches, broadening search field. Estimated time to completion twenty hours."
"Of course you wouldn't find stupid ant warriors online," you mutter under your breath, earning a sympathetic look from Thomas and an unreadable one from Harry
That reminds you. "I'm not actually bound by the First Law, you
know that right? You were there when we talked about it."
He just kind of grunts at you and turns away. What are you supposed to do now, find a bear-to-English dictionary?
Thomas had been fiddling with his phone all the while, though you now find he's not looking at his Myspace profile. Will relays:
"Message from Thomas CEO: He's probably concerned about you killing on accident in general, not knowing your own strength. I'm not an expert on wizards, but I do know a bit about Harry. He does not do well with surprises, at least when they are not the kinds that put his life in danger, those he seems to have a knack for."
To be honest you are not sure what to do about that, if there is even anything that needs doing as opposed to letting Harry get used to the new you, the kinds of things you do. Rather than dwelling on it you decide to phone home and see if dad has any idea how to deal with these 'Ants'. For the first time in... well you are not sure how long your dad is not where you expected him to be, "
Called away," your mother says, the emphasis making it clear that it is not by any earthly power.
Now, with all this craziness going on, a small ungrateful part of you huffs. But if not now than when, the work of the knights cannot stop just because Chicago turned into a magnet for wicked stupid
stuff.
One other place to check. Recalling that the Library has his number and even Daedalus knows he is involved with Harry you decide to be a bit more circumstance about the people you are carrying around "Hello Father Forthil, I have a bit of a problem you might be able to help me with. Some people have taken to volunteering like you did when you were younger, but they are doing it all wrong, approaching the wrong people. It thought maybe you could help talk some sense into them."
The other end goes quiet for a long moment. "Where do you want to meet."
***
That is how you end up in the sterile interrogation room, a vampire on one side, a priest on the other. The immaculate tile is somehow more frightening than its previous state of post-modern tomb facing a man tied to a chair, though he isn't facing you exactly. The good father had brought masks, just cheep plastic masks that had probably seen use last Halloween. He had also brought gloves and what looks like an entire crime-scene clean up kid in a black leather bag, like an old-time-y doctor's bag. He had
not been expecting to be lead into undertown by Sarah and two other Jade Dogs. The smelling salts are useful though.
The moment he wakes up the prisoner starts pulling at his bindings and when that does not work singing, praying in song to be exact. He's not very musical also utterly irrationally terrified to the point where you do not even think words would register no matter how finely they are polished As you consider the virtues of whacking a helpless prisoner to get him to shup up in front of a priest Father Forthil himself speaks.
"My son if we were all that you fear than in closing your ears to us you do not prove the strength of your faith, but its weakness, be still and listen and if you still count us foes at the end of this than you will at least have learned something of us."
"Apostate! Devil's Catamite!"
He sounds almost fevered, trying to break out in spite of how hopeless this is and yet he's not surprised. You recall what Thomas said about both these men having been fed on before.
Is that what set him off...?
"I will not falter before the Devil's brood! My way is open! Open to the trumpets of angels that are the Lord's Wrath!" Prayer mingles with nonsense syllables, spittle flying. Almost in spite of yourself you pity the man, but as you consider the words something clicks, the older man with the camera watching the other attempt a snipper kill on what must have seemed an easy target. Liz not you had must have been the plan
This was supposed to be an initiation, the recording a kind of trophy of his first kill... and you suspect also blackmail should be choose to renounce his new 'calling'. Of course he is expecting trial and tribulation. "I don't think he knows anything useful."
That does not stop Father Forthil from trying to get him to see sense, but it is clearly going to be a hard-fought battle.
Instead of lingering you move on to the adjacent room where the elder of the two sits slumped in his chair, absent the bruises around his neck, though even more drained. "So kill me witch, I won't talk! You and your devil lover will both burn in hell, in the lake of fire." He sounds almost frighteningly calm, if his fingernails weren't digging into the sides of the chair he might have been discussing the weather.
"Kill you?" you sigh and shake your head, knowing that his pride, his sense of his own righteousness would cause him to continue listening if you seem to be mocking him. "Why would I ever bother to kill you, like crushing a spent shell casing in my fist. You are being used... and you have already been
used up."
The man, you learn his name if Jasper Cage, is as resolved in his awful beliefs as any you might meet and those are not wholly the result of white court manipulations, Three years ago he had lost his wife and daughter to what sounds like a vampire attack, Red Court or Black and he had seen
enough to break the comforting lie most of mankind now lives in. Ridiculed by his friends, pitied then shunned by his family he has sunk deeper and deeper into a morass of half-truth and pure fabrication until he had met 'Reverend Miles' at a big tent revival out west. From what you can coax out of him the man is clearly a vampire of the white court and a strong one at that, able to induce feelings of ecstasy and revelation.
By the time you had pointed that out to him and proven it, using his own words he just crying, ugly tearing sounds that seem to rise from his chest as though he's going to shake apart.
Excuse me waiter, someone appears to have gotten some humanity in the murderous fanatic I ordered, you think, a tinge of bitter humour to it.
What do you do next?
[] Use the information Jasper gave you as well as what you got from Demetrius to track down the vampire controlling the Ants
[] Wait for the festival, you do not want to jog Lara's hand
[] Write in
OOC: Both these people are thralls, with the mental damage that implies. 
