The delivery room was cold. It shouldn't have been, there were so many people in it that the room should have been stifling hot. Should have been too crowded to move. I pushed through the crowd, and it was both easy and slow, as if the room just kept getting bigger, stretching out so I couldn't get to the table.
Over the low murmur of voices I could hear the heavy, labored breathing of the woman on the table, her pants and the muffled grunts and groans. She wasn't screaming, like the women did in movies, just working through the pain.
I pushed through, stumbled out into a little clear space around the table and nearly tripped into it.
My mother was tired, sweaty and flushed. The doctor said something and it sounded like the adults in Peanuts. She rolled her eyes at him, a flash of teeth and then she was pushing. I felt the curse coming, that dark, evil mass of energy that I had touched before. I could see it in her face when she felt it too. No fear, but pain and anger. Regret.
Her eyes flashed, she screamed at the doctor, but there was suddenly no sound. He blanched, but there was a flurry of movement and a tiny, wrinkled shrimp of a baby was there, held in the doctors' hands, carried away from the table to be measured and weighed. Her- my little mouth was open, screaming, but I couldn't hear any of it. I didn't bother to watch the doctor and nurses taking care of me. I knew how that part of it ended. I watched my mother. Watched her lips move, felt the spark of the spell she sent out, attaching itself to me to mirror one she'd laid on Thomas years before. She propped herself up, the closest thing to standing she could manage, and gathered her will and her magic, digging deep.
The entropy curse hit her, and everything went wrong. Monitors went haywire, electronics sparked and exploded and the lights went out, leaving us in darkness. But I felt her death curse rush past me.
I gasped, choked, and kicked as I woke up. Mister gave a rough, unhappy mrrowl from the floor, where I'd kicked him off the bed, and I heard Mouses' soft, steady steps come into the room. My heart was going a mile a minute and I was shaking just a little.
"Fuck." I shoved at the pillows behind me and slowly rolled onto my back, waiting a few seconds before I tried to sit up. "Damn dreams." Mouse set his chin on the edge of the bed, giving me a sad, sympathetic look. I swung my legs over the side, bare feet cold on the floor and pulled his head into my lap, nose brushing the ever growing swell of my stomach. "Just a dream, buddy. It doesn't mean anything." I took a deep breath, taking the cold air of my apartment in and a little fluttering movement started up in my stomach. Mouse nosed me, making an inquisitive sound.
"Yeah. I guess I'm hungry too." I whispered the candles to life and looked at my Mickey Mouse clock. Five thirty. "Well, might as well get all the way up."
I puttered around in my kitchen for a few minutes, heating up one of the breakfast burritos I'd found in the ice box. They weren't store bought, and when I'd peeled it open it had been full of egg whites and meat and veggies. So the Toot-Hendricks connection was still working. Some of it went into Mister's bowl, and Mouse got a bite too, just for equality.
Then I headed down into the lab. Murphy had finally dropped off a copy of Mr. Wadsworth's schedule at my office the night before and I wanted to map it out on Little Chicago. I already had Josh's movements traced with a piece of blue yarn, and I was hopeful that there'd be an overlap of the two, giving me an area to concentrate on that was smaller than the entire damned city.
"Bob?" His skull rattled in a yawn, eyes popping to life.
"Hiya boss. Looking good there." I flipped my assistant off and tugged my flannel robe a little bit tighter. Bob had developed an unhealthy appreciation for my chest the past week or so. He insisted it was the best part of pregnancy - bigger breasts. Which really shouldn't have been a surprise, given his track record. But he usually knew enough to keep his mouth shut about me. Usually.
"Have you had any luck finding me my ghost? Any waves in the spirit world?"
"Not yet. None of the usual suspects have been active, it's past Halloween and I'm not hearing anything." Bob somehow managed to look sly. "Maybe if you let me ride around with you..."
"No. Never. No ridealongs, Bob. Not happening."
"You're no fun."
"I'm plenty of fun." I pulled the sheet off of Little Chicago, pulled out a skein of black yarn and got to work. It didn't take long, Mr. Wadsworth had not been a party animal.
"Hallelujah." I muttered it under my breath, smiling. There was a point of convergence. They'd both been down near the university the day before they came down with symptoms. Chance were good that's where they'd met their spook.
"Find something?"
"Yeah. Josh and Mr. Wadsworth were both down at the university." I tapped a nubby pencil against the pewter building. "There aren't any ghosts of significant strength over there, are there?"
"Not the last time I checked."
"And I didn't get anything when I went there right after Josh's attack." I shook my head. "I'll give Billy a call in a few hours, see if the Alpha's have noticed anything hinky."
~
I climbed out of the Beetle at Billy's apartment and heard my name being called. I glanced up to see Billy waving at me from their balcony. I waved back, my coat sliding open and watched his face freeze, go blank and then slide into open mouthed shock. He and Georgia had been on a really belated honeymoon and I hadn't had a chance to see them since they got back. I laughed as he nearly tripped over his own feet turning around to go back into the apartment.
He met me in the hall, right in front of the elevator. His eyes were still a little wide, but lit with what I recognized as good humor.
"Go ahead. Get it out."
"Did you see a bright white light? Hear voices telling you that future generations will call you blessed?" I shoved his shoulder, good naturedly. He didn't budge. Billy was a solid, muscular guy. "Alien abduction!"
"None of the above, and thanks for the vote of confidence in my dating skills." We got back into the elevator, headed down and for Billy's car to go check out the most likely spots.
"Dating? How do you even know that word?" He leaned over, putting his nose near my neck and inhaling.
"It's Mr. Mysterious, right?" I shot him a dirty look.
"Of course it is." You can't fool a werewolf's nose, even when they were in human form. Billy and the gang had known I was seeing someone since I took up with Marcone, I just hadn't told them who he was. And they'd respected my need to keep him private.
"Sooo...will we be getting to meet him? We need to vet him, you know. Make sure he's on the up and up. Give him the shovel talk."
"Oh, that's been handled. By someone much, much scarier than a pack of werewolves. And yeah. Eventually." I leaned against the back wall of the elevator, rocking back on my heels. "Not that I need to say it, but keep this in house?" He nodded. "It's John Marcone."
His smile would have terrified Little Red Riding Hood.
"What?"
"Georgia owes me fifty bucks."
"You guys had bets on who I was dating?"
"Of course. We have long running bets on a ton of things about you. There's the bet on when the Beetle will finally explode, the one over whether or not you're actually going to turn someone into a toad one day, oh! my favorite is the one where we've got odds on how you manage to set the entire city on fire." I held up my hands, laughing.
"Enough! Bunch of degenerates."
~
It was a long road near the dorms.
We walked along, slowly with Billy sniffing as surreptitiously as he could and I kept my senses out, searching. The area looked kind of familiar, but I couldn't quite place it yet. I kicked at a can, sending it skittering down an alley and as I watched it go, my memories clicked into place.
I grabbed Billy's shoulder and stopped him, hauling us back a few steps.
"What? What is it?"
"Shit. I recognize this place. I've been here before and I think I know who the ghost is. Fuck." I turned around and started walking the opposite direction. I could feel the dark energy again, just in my mind. There was no trace of it in the air around us now. It had been too many years ago for there to be a real taste of blood and death in my mouth.
"Harry, care to fill the rest of the class in?"
"Remember back a few years, when we had the zombie uprising on Halloween? All the dark wizards trying to make themselves gods?"
"The thing with the dinosaur. Yeah."
"Yeah. I killed one of them right over there." I nodded my head back toward the alley. "Called himself the Corpsetaker." If I thought about it, I could still see Anastasia Luccio's body collapsing, her head split open and the gun hot in my hand. "Damn. That's got to be it."
"Great. So let's go get rid of his ghost. That's easy enough, you said."
"Normally, sure. But the Corpsetaker was a necromancer. Very bad ass. I only killed him because I sucker punched him. I need a plan." And maybe some reinforcements.
I really think that, in canon, all his friends have different, weird bets about things regarding Harry. He's such a magnet for weirdness, they'd be fools not to! :D
I think it's a tribute to just how much crazy Harry's dragged into Billy's life that That Halloween has been reduced to 'the thing with the dinosaur.' And Corpsetaker returns! *excited*
But Harry's whole interaction with Billy was just excellent in a hilarious way. Love it!
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timeasmymeasure
Fill: Fortuitus Familia 12/?
Date: 2011-03-29 06:37 pm (UTC)The delivery room was cold. It shouldn't have been, there were so many people in it that the room should have been stifling hot. Should have been too crowded to move. I pushed through the crowd, and it was both easy and slow, as if the room just kept getting bigger, stretching out so I couldn't get to the table.
Over the low murmur of voices I could hear the heavy, labored breathing of the woman on the table, her pants and the muffled grunts and groans. She wasn't screaming, like the women did in movies, just working through the pain.
I pushed through, stumbled out into a little clear space around the table and nearly tripped into it.
My mother was tired, sweaty and flushed. The doctor said something and it sounded like the adults in Peanuts. She rolled her eyes at him, a flash of teeth and then she was pushing. I felt the curse coming, that dark, evil mass of energy that I had touched before. I could see it in her face when she felt it too. No fear, but pain and anger. Regret.
Her eyes flashed, she screamed at the doctor, but there was suddenly no sound. He blanched, but there was a flurry of movement and a tiny, wrinkled shrimp of a baby was there, held in the doctors' hands, carried away from the table to be measured and weighed. Her- my little mouth was open, screaming, but I couldn't hear any of it. I didn't bother to watch the doctor and nurses taking care of me. I knew how that part of it ended. I watched my mother. Watched her lips move, felt the spark of the spell she sent out, attaching itself to me to mirror one she'd laid on Thomas years before. She propped herself up, the closest thing to standing she could manage, and gathered her will and her magic, digging deep.
The entropy curse hit her, and everything went wrong. Monitors went haywire, electronics sparked and exploded and the lights went out, leaving us in darkness. But I felt her death curse rush past me.
I gasped, choked, and kicked as I woke up. Mister gave a rough, unhappy mrrowl from the floor, where I'd kicked him off the bed, and I heard Mouses' soft, steady steps come into the room. My heart was going a mile a minute and I was shaking just a little.
"Fuck." I shoved at the pillows behind me and slowly rolled onto my back, waiting a few seconds before I tried to sit up. "Damn dreams." Mouse set his chin on the edge of the bed, giving me a sad, sympathetic look. I swung my legs over the side, bare feet cold on the floor and pulled his head into my lap, nose brushing the ever growing swell of my stomach. "Just a dream, buddy. It doesn't mean anything." I took a deep breath, taking the cold air of my apartment in and a little fluttering movement started up in my stomach. Mouse nosed me, making an inquisitive sound.
"Yeah. I guess I'm hungry too." I whispered the candles to life and looked at my Mickey Mouse clock. Five thirty. "Well, might as well get all the way up."
I puttered around in my kitchen for a few minutes, heating up one of the breakfast burritos I'd found in the ice box. They weren't store bought, and when I'd peeled it open it had been full of egg whites and meat and veggies. So the Toot-Hendricks connection was still working. Some of it went into Mister's bowl, and Mouse got a bite too, just for equality.
Then I headed down into the lab. Murphy had finally dropped off a copy of Mr. Wadsworth's schedule at my office the night before and I wanted to map it out on Little Chicago. I already had Josh's movements traced with a piece of blue yarn, and I was hopeful that there'd be an overlap of the two, giving me an area to concentrate on that was smaller than the entire damned city.
"Bob?" His skull rattled in a yawn, eyes popping to life.
"Hiya boss. Looking good there." I flipped my assistant off and tugged my flannel robe a little bit tighter. Bob had developed an unhealthy appreciation for my chest the past week or so. He insisted it was the best part of pregnancy - bigger breasts. Which really shouldn't have been a surprise, given his track record. But he usually knew enough to keep his mouth shut about me. Usually.
"Have you had any luck finding me my ghost? Any waves in the spirit world?"
"Not yet. None of the usual suspects have been active, it's past Halloween and I'm not hearing anything." Bob somehow managed to look sly. "Maybe if you let me ride around with you..."
"No. Never. No ridealongs, Bob. Not happening."
"You're no fun."
"I'm plenty of fun." I pulled the sheet off of Little Chicago, pulled out a skein of black yarn and got to work. It didn't take long, Mr. Wadsworth had not been a party animal.
"Hallelujah." I muttered it under my breath, smiling. There was a point of convergence. They'd both been down near the university the day before they came down with symptoms. Chance were good that's where they'd met their spook.
"Find something?"
"Yeah. Josh and Mr. Wadsworth were both down at the university." I tapped a nubby pencil against the pewter building. "There aren't any ghosts of significant strength over there, are there?"
"Not the last time I checked."
"And I didn't get anything when I went there right after Josh's attack." I shook my head. "I'll give Billy a call in a few hours, see if the Alpha's have noticed anything hinky."
~
I climbed out of the Beetle at Billy's apartment and heard my name being called. I glanced up to see Billy waving at me from their balcony. I waved back, my coat sliding open and watched his face freeze, go blank and then slide into open mouthed shock. He and Georgia had been on a really belated honeymoon and I hadn't had a chance to see them since they got back. I laughed as he nearly tripped over his own feet turning around to go back into the apartment.
He met me in the hall, right in front of the elevator. His eyes were still a little wide, but lit with what I recognized as good humor.
"Go ahead. Get it out."
"Did you see a bright white light? Hear voices telling you that future generations will call you blessed?" I shoved his shoulder, good naturedly. He didn't budge. Billy was a solid, muscular guy. "Alien abduction!"
"None of the above, and thanks for the vote of confidence in my dating skills." We got back into the elevator, headed down and for Billy's car to go check out the most likely spots.
"Dating? How do you even know that word?" He leaned over, putting his nose near my neck and inhaling.
"It's Mr. Mysterious, right?" I shot him a dirty look.
"Of course it is." You can't fool a werewolf's nose, even when they were in human form. Billy and the gang had known I was seeing someone since I took up with Marcone, I just hadn't told them who he was. And they'd respected my need to keep him private.
"Sooo...will we be getting to meet him? We need to vet him, you know. Make sure he's on the up and up. Give him the shovel talk."
"Oh, that's been handled. By someone much, much scarier than a pack of werewolves. And yeah. Eventually." I leaned against the back wall of the elevator, rocking back on my heels. "Not that I need to say it, but keep this in house?" He nodded. "It's John Marcone."
His smile would have terrified Little Red Riding Hood.
"What?"
"Georgia owes me fifty bucks."
"You guys had bets on who I was dating?"
"Of course. We have long running bets on a ton of things about you. There's the bet on when the Beetle will finally explode, the one over whether or not you're actually going to turn someone into a toad one day, oh! my favorite is the one where we've got odds on how you manage to set the entire city on fire." I held up my hands, laughing.
"Enough! Bunch of degenerates."
~
It was a long road near the dorms.
We walked along, slowly with Billy sniffing as surreptitiously as he could and I kept my senses out, searching. The area looked kind of familiar, but I couldn't quite place it yet. I kicked at a can, sending it skittering down an alley and as I watched it go, my memories clicked into place.
I grabbed Billy's shoulder and stopped him, hauling us back a few steps.
"What? What is it?"
"Shit. I recognize this place. I've been here before and I think I know who the ghost is. Fuck." I turned around and started walking the opposite direction. I could feel the dark energy again, just in my mind. There was no trace of it in the air around us now. It had been too many years ago for there to be a real taste of blood and death in my mouth.
"Harry, care to fill the rest of the class in?"
"Remember back a few years, when we had the zombie uprising on Halloween? All the dark wizards trying to make themselves gods?"
"The thing with the dinosaur. Yeah."
"Yeah. I killed one of them right over there." I nodded my head back toward the alley. "Called himself the Corpsetaker." If I thought about it, I could still see Anastasia Luccio's body collapsing, her head split open and the gun hot in my hand. "Damn. That's got to be it."
"Great. So let's go get rid of his ghost. That's easy enough, you said."
"Normally, sure. But the Corpsetaker was a necromancer. Very bad ass. I only killed him because I sucker punched him. I need a plan." And maybe some reinforcements.
OP Re: Fill: Fortuitus Familia 12/?
Date: 2011-03-29 08:13 pm (UTC)Billy and Georgia should get together with Hendricks and Gard about that betting thing. Because Hendricks and Gard totally does this too.
Re: OP Re: Fill: Fortuitus Familia 12/?
Date: 2011-03-30 07:38 pm (UTC)Now that they know, maybe they will!
Re: Fill: Fortuitus Familia 12/?
Date: 2011-03-29 10:32 pm (UTC)Re: Fill: Fortuitus Familia 12/?
Date: 2011-03-30 07:39 pm (UTC)Re: Fill: Fortuitus Familia 12/?
Date: 2011-03-30 02:28 am (UTC)But Harry's whole interaction with Billy was just excellent in a hilarious way. Love it!
Re: Fill: Fortuitus Familia 12/?
Date: 2011-03-30 07:41 pm (UTC):D
Re: Fill: Fortuitus Familia 12/?
Date: 2011-03-30 02:49 am (UTC)Re: Fill: Fortuitus Familia 12/?
Date: 2011-03-30 07:45 pm (UTC)Re: Fill: Fortuitus Familia 12/?
Date: 2011-03-30 07:46 pm (UTC)