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AN: This is a sequel to Perfect Mind. Remember I'm using the anime time line, so the events of PM took place from Fall and Winter 1929, to Mid-summer of 1930. You'll probably need to skim through PM to figure out wtf I'm talking about.
The Op: Marching Orders
"Daddy!"
Alarmed feminine shrieks from the kitchen propelled me from my nice warm cave into the glare of midday sunlight. It would have been nice to say that I represented the the very model of the pater familias off to defend home and family from whatever had caused their distress. Unfortunately, I probably more closely resembled a hungover revenant. "What's going on, Beth?" I asked my wife, trying to look alert and protective.
"There was a huge bird in the window, Sam, an eagle!"
I immediately looked to my wife's cuckoo clock. The big and little hands on the infernal device informed me that I was two hours past my usual check in. "It's just The Kid sending me a wake up call," I said. "Nothing to worry about."
The curve of Beth's mouth went flat as she gave me a glare. To say she didn't approve of The Kid, or my working for him went without saying. On the other hand, it paid the bills, and my girl knew the value of a dime. "Nothing to worry about? What if Junie had been outside? What if it had attacked her?"
"Wakinyan wouldn't attack Junie," I said. Beth looked less than convinced. "Where is he now?" I edged past wife and daughter, and headed toward the icebox.
"In the tree by the picnic table," Beth Junior said helpfully.
I dug around in the icebox and came up with a pot roast. I took it out, grabbed a couple bowls, a knife, and a cutting board, and over my wife's strenuous objections, started reducing it to chunks. "Sam, that roast was for dinner!"
"We can have stew instead," I pointed out as I divided the chunks into two piles. "Most of the same ingredients, but stew stretches more." I put the piles into bowls, and handed one of them to Junior. "Go put this on the picnic table, and say 'Sam's awake,' just that, okay?"
"Okay!" Beth Junior took the bowl and went outside, over Beth's "Junie!" I covered the second bowl, and put it back in the icebox. Beth sputtered, face reddening with anger.
"Wakinyan won't hurt Junie," I repeated, hoping to head her off. Beth wasn't having any of it though.
"That thing is a sorcerer's familiar, it's a demon! It's bad enough you're up to your ears in-in diabolical business, but I won't have you risking Junie's life or soul!" She started for the door after Junie, but I caught her by the arm and reeled her in, and faced her toward the kitchen window. Beth struggled and swore, but didn't try to hit me, she wasn't mad enough for that.
"The Kid isn't a sorcerer, and Wakinyan isn't a demon." Half-demonic, if that, but I wasn't going to try explaining all that to Beth. "Just pipe down, and watch." Outside Beth Junior was setting the bowl down, and delivering the message. The eagle tilted his head at her, then glided over to the table, and started gobbling down the chunks of meat. When he was done, he nudged the bowl, then took off. "There, see? He ate pot roast instead of little girl." I let Beth loose, and stepped back.
"This time, but you don't know about next time," Beth said angrily.
"This time, next time, the time after that," I said. "I won't say Wakinyan's harmless, but he's not gonna attack Junior, okay?"
"Go call your boss," Beth said, and stalked off.
I sighed, went to the phone, and dialed the Embassy. After getting redirected three times I finally got The Kid. "You missed your check-in, Sam," The Kid said in a cheerful voice. The one that made him sound like a villain in a adventure serial. "Fortunately for you, something's come up and I'm reassigning the Dautry case to Theo."
"What! Kid, I just came across a new lead. You can't just pull me off the trail like this!"
"And I wouldn't, if it weren't important Sam," The Kid said.
"Yeah? How important is important?"
"Life and someone else's death important. I can't talk about it on the phone. Come to the Embassy as quickly as possible."
"Am I going to need an overnight bag?" I asked, the usual not quite code phrase for finding out how long the job was going to take.
"We'll provide one," The Kid said dryly. "See you later, Sam." There was a click as the phone disconnected.
"Well hell," I said to the phone, and put the receiver back in its cradle. I turned, and there Junie was, giving me a big eyed look.
"Are you going on a trip, Daddy?" Beth Junior asked.
"Looks like, sweetheart. Did the eagle fly away?"
Junior nodded, and put the bowl on the counter. "Are you going to stay for dinner?"
"If I didn't, your Mom would kill me," I said, and went to confront the lioness in her den.
So one day (it was 1927, in September) I was walking home from a business school where I'd been taking classes, and while I'm getting a hotdog from a vendor, this kid came up. He was thin and blonde and washed out looking, and had an a ugly rattle when he breathed. I didn't pay the kid any mind as he ordered himself a hot dog and cherry soda, and he didn't seem to pay me any mind, until one of my coughing fits started up, and drop my hot dog. Or at least, I thought I'd dropped my hotdog--because suddenly I was sitting on a park bench that I could have sworn was twenty feet away and hacking up a lung. The kid meanwhile, had both hot dogs, and was watching me with a concerned frown. "What the--?" I wheezed.
"I moved you," the kid said, as if being suddenly transported twenty feet instantaneously was perfectly normal. (I would later learn that for him, it pretty much was.) "I probably shouldn't have, but you looked like you were going to fall over."
I was about to ask some combination of who the hell are you and what the hell just happened, when a guy all in white, with long white hair and glasses showed up. How he showed up I can't quite describe, because it was like there was this blur, and then he was standing there.
He had a sort of light coppery skin tone, like he would have been darker, but didn't get enough sun, and his eyes were an odd color. A sort of pale lavender. He had long white hair, which he had held back in a tail. The skin, hair and cheek bones made me think "Indian" but he spoke very precise and proper English with a slight accent that didn't sound like any Indian I'd ever heard. He scolded the kid like I wasn't there at all, warning him about public displays, while the kid smiled like he'd heard it all before, and wasn't going to pay attention any more than he had the last time. "They didn't see anything, Ian," The kid said, and the Indian guy tilted an eyebrow at the kid. "Master, do they seem like they've seen anything?" The kid said, and this time he sounded almost irritated. I blinked at the Master bit, but I don't get a chance to say anything, because I started coughing again.
"Well, I can see why he drew your attention, Joshua," Ian said. "What are you going to do with him?" The way the Indian guys said it gave me the creeps, like I was a stray dog or cat the kid had found. I didn't like it, but I didn't say anything, because the world had gone sideways, and every hair on my body was trying to stand up on end.
"He might be useful, Master. He's a detective. I can heal him," the kid--Joshua--said in a wheedling voice that made Ian smile fondly at the kid. The kid's return smile was absolutely blinding, and somehow even creepier than Ian's whole attitude. Joshua handed off the hotdogs to Ian, who gave him a startled, exasperated look, but went along with it, like he was humoring the kid. "It's all right, Sam," the kid said, and his tone might have been reassuring, except for the tiny detail that we hadn't actually been formally introduced, and he puts his hands on my chest. When he touched me, there was this light that appeared, that went right into me. For a second, I could see wings, glowing white wings coming out of the kid's back, and horns coming out of the kid's head.
For some reason, the only thing I could think to say was, "holy shit."
And that was how I met Joshua Christopher, twelve years ago.
By the time I'd gotten to the Lemurian Embassy it was evening, and the protestors that always seemed to be camping out by the front gates had all gone home. In its previous life, the embassy building had been a hotel, according to popular legend, the hotel had been rendered uninhabitable by The Kid's big sister, then a member of the Magdalen Order, during a routine exorcism. Big sister is also allegedly guilty of destroying an entire city block, and crashing no less than fifteen cars, two trains and an ocean liner. To hear some of my coworkers tell it, the girl was a one-woman wrecking crew, even before she became some kind of Demon Queen. Given how much stories grow in the telling, I'm not sure how much, or what to believe.
The wrought iron gates open up, and I drove inside. There were only four other cars in the parking lot, which meant most of the human staff had gone home. Well, three of the cars belonged to human staff, the fourth car belonged to Mike Willis, FBI agent and permanent pain in my ass. "Sonuvabitch!"
I parked my car and exited, slamming the door and stomping up the stairs to the front door. I keyed the door plate, and the door clicked, and silently swung open. The lobby lights went from a sort of brownish half-light to bright in a few seconds, and the door shut behind as I entered. No one was at the front desk, which didn't mean anything. I took the elevator to the twelfth floor where The Kid's office was located. The only person I encountered was one of the Nameless Interchangeable Soldier Demons who never talked to anyone except each other. He was leaning against the wall, dressed in a black suit and a fedora. The demon nodded to me, and the door opened.
The Kid's office is pretty big, with a glass fronted book case that takes up most of one wall. The books are everything from law and history to demonology and alchemy texts, most of the latter confiscated from sorcerers by operatives like me. The Kid's desk is in the corner opposite the wall with the book case, out of line with the window which had shatterproof, bullet proof something-that-was-clear-but-not-glass. The Kid was at his desk, and Mike was perched on one of the two chairs in front of it, his hat hanging from his fingers.
On the desk were the usual stacks of paper, the typewriter, and photos in little gilt frames. One of them was of three girls and a boy wearing a long coat about a century or two out of fashion. Another was of a pretty blonde girl leaning against a tall Indian-looking man who had his arms around her waist. Behind The Kid was a oil painting of a woman with dark hair. She wore a maid uniform, and the saddest expression I've ever seen. To the left of the desk was a wrought iron parrot perch where Wakinyan was currently sitting. "The feather duster beat me here?" I asked. The eagle gave me a paint-peeling glare and hissed like an angry goose, which made the FBI agent jump, like he'd thought the eagle was a taxidermy project until that moment.
"So it appears," The Kid said, amused. "Have a seat, Sam. You've already met Mr. Willis."
"Yeah. In my back pocket, half the time." We exchanged glares. I couldn't stand the guy, and I knew the guy didn't like me, mostly because of my politics. "Why's he here, anyway?"
"Mr. Willis has some interesting information for us," The Kid said. "Or, more precisely, he has interesting eyes-only information for the Queen and Master." The Kid indicated the metal cuff locked around one of Mike's wrists that I frankly felt really embarrassed for not noticing earlier. I blame being hungover. Attached to the cuff was a brief case. Also for the first time, I noticed the look in the guy's face. The expression was a combination of fear, and that particular brand of gutted that happens when you realize your life as you knew it effectively over. The instant Mike set foot on Lemurian soil, Mike would no longer be an FBI agent, and he probably wouldn't ever be able to go home, unless government policy about Lemuria changed. He'd been assigned to the American Embassy in Lemuria.
"Holy shit," I said, then said it again, because I realized what The Kid wanted. "I'm going to the Deep Freeze, aren't I?"
AN: There is a very very obscure joke behind naming the new demon country/colony Lemuria. And at least one pun.