The Night Beat

Gretel chimed in. “It could be seven, it could be thirty-three, hundreds, one. It’s the fact that we can easily slot to that number that indicates the problem.”
    “But we got to eighteen because there were five trails that led off from the alley,” Jack said. “Maybe we’re just reaching.”
    “But we’re not,” Hansel said. “If we were reaching, we couldn’t have matched that number so well and so often.”
    “Eighteen minus five is thirteen,” Ralph added. “Easy to match to the Prince’s favorite ‘bad’ number, too.”
    “So, no matter what, we have a big problem and a lot of people involved in it, right?” Jack asked. There was unanimous agreement from the rest of us. “So, what’s up with Abaddon and Apollyon? Who are they?”
    “Angels who went to the Prince. Any turned undead is powerful, but angels, by their nature, are worse.”
    Jack nodded. “I can see that. I don’t want to be around Black Angel Two right now. I don’t want to try to imagine what they’d be like completely evil.”
    “They’d be like Abaddon and Apollyon,” Gretel said, softly.
    “God deliver me,” Jack said only half-jokingly.
    “Gods help. When they can.” I thought about what Miriam had said to me. “But, when it comes down to it, it’s you and your soul against the Prince.”
    We drove the rest of the way in silence. Well, other than the panting and other animal-related noises our backseat passengers were indulging in. I chose not to look.
    I spent the time instead running through the three options we’d identified. They all led back to the idea that we had, if not the Prince, then some of his strongest minions running around free on the human plane.
    We didn’t have enough data yet to be certain of what the play might be, though. And there was always the possibility that we didn’t have three plans, we had one big, nasty one. Eighteen doppelgängers was still a strong possibility -- once the pattern was imprinted, you could make as many as you wanted to, within reason, that reason being there had to be the right number of corresponding souls to connect with.
    Eighteen fake Tomios wandering around was a bad enough idea. The essence of evil put into eighteen separate beings, myself and Jack included, was also not anybody’s idea of good. Eighteen souls connected to the infected souls -- also badness. But if what Jerry had insinuated was accurate, it wasn’t Tomio who’d been in the alley last night.
    We poured out of the car and met the others at the end of the alleyway, at the dead-end. Examination of the physical revealed nothing new.
    I knew what was on the right -- a small grocer who closed before dusk every night. There was a bridal shop on the left, also closed at night. Even the Prosaic City poor liked to look nice when they got married, after all. “What’s in the building that makes up the back side here?” I asked our newest recruits.
    Freddy and Sexy Cindy both shrugged. “Didn’t get to that side much,” Freddy said.
    I gave Sexy Cindy a look that said I wasn’t going to buy that from her. “We’re talking the fate of the known planes of existence here. What’s on the other side?”
    “I’ll go look,” Ralph offered eagerly.
    “Sit, stay, good boy. I asked Cindy a question and I want an answer.”
    She made a face. “I didn’t go there, not my kind of place.”
    Jack nudged me. “The Pleasure Palace, it’s a skin club.”
    I chose not to ask how he knew. “You’re telling me you didn’t cruise outside a skin club, looking for business? Seriously, we’re on the same side now, and just how naïve do you think any of us are?”
    She shrugged and looked down. “Didn’t like the clientele, okay?”
    The base of my tail did its thing. Sexy Cindy had known instinctively that the incantation Tomio handed out was evil. “What about them made you uncomfortable?” I used my “questioning a frightened witness voice”. It was normally considered soothing.
    Her head shot up and she glared at me. “I ain’t a baby.”
    I gave up. “No. You’re an undead, a succubus, to be exact. One of exactly two who were swallowed by Slimy, Creature from the Hell Lagoon, who survived relatively unscathed.”
    “We died,” Freddy said dryly.
    “Cry me a river. You’re standing there, unliving. You just talked to seven of your brethren who aren’t going to open eyes or mouths again until the Prince can arrange his Final Solution Attack and then they’ll be raised up for