Chapter Text
The sound of a cartoon cat hissing immediately set Nora on edge. She looked at her phone on the edge of the bathroom sink and looked back longingly at the bottle of prosecco and stack of novels she had just sat on the stool next to the bathtub. She sighed, turned off the water, and picked up the little square of plastic, already guessing what it said.
Six words. Six words was all it took for her relaxing weekend to come apart. Six words to throw her life into chaos. Again.
“Crash went on walkabout, Tuesday night.”
Give it to Dan to be the most terse motherfucker she knows when sending out an SOS. She could follow up, ask a question, try to make a plan, but he’d just respond as he always did when Crash needed her, telling her to show up for the briefing. After all, they all knew the truth, no matter what she said. She would come. No matter the cost. She’d already given him everything, anyway. What was one more night?
Her reality shifted, her life of quiet domesticity dissolving as she returned to the training ingrained into her for life—training that came at the cost of blood, sweat, and the loss of dear friends and bodily organs. Her mind pushed away how tired her feet were from standing all day, how much she was looking forward to maybe getting laid on her Tinder hookup tomorrow, the lesson plans she had due on Monday, even the anger and frustration over the whole situation. Her focus was entirely on deployment. Pack her gear, check her weapon, suit up, and go save the only person who ever really loved her.
Crash was missing.
Again.
And it was her problem.
Again.
Her trusty camping backpack, currently packed for a rock-climbing trip next weekend, was already on the bed, her hands having removed the items by rote as her thoughts recalibrated. She looked at the piles and immediately assessed she needed more clothes, at least a week’s worth: sturdy flannels, layering tees, and tanks, Carhartt work pants, wool socks, and underwear. Sometimes it snows in Chicago in March, and she’d need to keep warm and blend in while searching the streets.
She slid open her nightstand and grabbed her gun, automatically checking that it was oiled, cleaned, and the safety was on, even though she knew she never left it in any other condition. She choked back a brief sob, remembering Crash yelling at her the only time her weapon ever choked. “Your weapon is your life, soldier. Best you remember that!” She could hear his anger in her mind, as clear as his Cajun drawl.
She inhaled deeply because there’s no time for that shit right now. Right now, she needed to trust experience and training and get it done. She grabbed the special lock box for her gun, stuffed with her concealed carry licenses and perc cards. She checked that she had Indiana and Illinois, and paused before grabbing Wisconsin, too. Just in case he left the underground and got on a bus or hitched a ride.
With practiced ease, she safely ensconced her Beretta and slid the case in the hidden pocket in her bag, followed by a few clips of ammo. She added a utility knife, concealing it in her inner coat pocket. Plausibly deniable backup, like the bat, ball, and glove she kept in her car. It was probably overkill, but life had a funny way of teaching her lessons about survival. Nora no longer tempted fate.
The survival gear was repacked. She took a breath and grabbed a few of the paper maps of Chicago, a box at the ready at this point. A pile of small bills, about $100, all her emergency cash, got pulled from the pages of her tattered copy of The Hobbit. She dropped the book in the bag after. She grabbed her small first aid kit from the cabinet in the bathroom, adding clean needles, Narcan, and extra gauze from the survival kit she kept in the linen closet. A box of protein bars got emptied into the bag as well. She already had her water bottle with the filtration straw packed. You couldn’t be too careful when someone dropped off the map in a big city; last time she had to wander through three days of underground tunnels to find him.
She changed into travel clothes: soft black leggings with pockets, a fitted tank, a mesh workout tee, wool socks, combat boots, and a dark grey hoodie. Comfortable, layered for the cold, but generic enough to blend in with a crowd. Into her winter coat pockets went her ID, more cash and change, phone, chargers, a couple of face masks, lip balm, and earphones.
People underestimate the importance of lip balm. Splits get infected. Plus, it can grease rusty locks and hinges in a pinch.
She performed one last check, then grabbed her albatross—the never-ending folder of student work that needed to be graded. Better to not waste the train ride, she’s gonna get enough shit for calling out. Her job will wait, but mostly because absolutely no other qualified math teacher wanted to teach eighth graders at the worst-performing, most crime-ridden public school in Cleveland. Also, her admin is ex-military, too. But still, there was going to be a meeting.
She was not looking forward to the behavioral disaster her hormonal little monsters were going to be when she got back. But que sera, sera. She'd get them back under control. She always did.
By the time she was packed and suited up, nine minutes had elapsed. She noted the time on her stove clock as she unlocked the bolts on the door to leave, and realized she needed to practice more. Back in the day, she’d have been out the door in four... Crash would’ve been furious with her had he been here. And he'd have been right.
He could bitch at her once she found him.
Again.
Another night began that would ultimately blur into a thousand other nights of being cold, hungry, and desperate. But cold, hungry, and desperate was the best possible state Astarion was allowed to exist in. Perhaps a hundred years ago, he might have felt a glimmer of gratitude that his skin and teeth were present, but twee things like that had been carefully carved out of him. Godey, the skeleton responsible for carrying out most of that carving, had come into the spawn room before sundown, announcing they would all be hunting tonight.
Astarion didn’t care why he was being sent out, as he had no choice about it anyway. But he’d felt a tiny bit lighter as he got the assignment. He’d gone into his trance, anticipating that Godey would come and drag him to the kennel for a correction. After all, Master hadn’t been pleased with the offering he had brought him last night.
Astarion was hungry. Starving, in actuality. Twenty-two days had passed since even a drop of blood, aside from his own stolen ichor, had graced his lips. His skin was beginning to shrink on his hands and over his sharp cheekbones. Luckily for him, some mortals liked the fragility it gave his appearance. Otherwise, he might just starve into nothing as his body refused to die while his mind faded into a feral creature.
He’d begun to believe this was his inevitable fate. To go from mind-addled slave to mindless slave.
He should be angry about it. For decades after the others had given in, he'd still raged against what he had become. Finding ways to resist, small expressions of his personality to cling to. But his rage had been all sound and no fury, impotent in the face of his Master’s compulsions.
Even his constant prattle and sharp remarks, less a rebellion and more the leftover quirks of whoever had been buried in the coffin he’d burst out of, had faded as of late. The realization that his time with his Master was approaching two centuries. Two centuries of thralldom, two centuries of half-awareness and pain, an eternal night of pure shit.
He managed to find it within him to be afraid enough of what would come tomorrow if he failed, afraid enough to go through the motions one more time. It was all he had left to muster.
He washed his cursed body in the ice-cold water he shared with five others. Removing what portion such water could of the filth and decay of this place. By feel alone, he carefully twisted, formed, and tousled his curls with his hands, using a little pomade he’d stolen to set them. Petras, his least favorite of the other prisoners in this place, tried to borrow it, but he’d summoned more emotion than he’d been able to for a tenday to fight him off. Baring his fangs, the same teeth his “brother” was also cursed with, he’d hissed at the twee little idiot until he’d given up.
As Astarion dressed in the only clothes that were assigned to him, he suddenly realized that the anger had dissipated before his doublet was buttoned fully. Nothing here was worth fighting for, least of all him. A worried scowl on a tragically pretty face interrupted his musing. “Brother, you must succeed tonight. I fear you may be too far gone if you fail to please our Master tonight.”
Dalyria took his hands, with a roughness that passed for gentle in this place, and pulled him in front of the vanity whose mirror was present seemingly only to taunt them all. She cupped his chin softly with one hand, angling his face carefully as she applied a light bit of rouge. Just enough to grant the appearance of the flush of life to his corpse-pale face. Well, enough of one when viewed in the dim rushlights of a lower city establishment such as they hunted in. He didn’t speak but returned the favor when she was done. Their quiet trades and unspoken understanding had to sit side-by-side with the horrifying things their Master forced them to do to each other. Such was life in the Crimson Palace.
He tucked his rouge and cologne into his doublet, in case he needed to retouch, and approached the door to be checked. Godey stood, bones clacking in the darkness, eyes burning with necrotic energy. The skeleton was satisfied and handed him two daggers, worn and less sharp than he’d like, and four coppers. Enough to buy a single, shitty pint of ale at the worst tavern. It was fine. He’d learned how to get whatever he needed so very long ago.
He’d become so many things under his Master’s tutelage. A thief. A murderer. A whore.
Lately, he’d been able to add kidnapper to his resume. Why that bothered him more than the others, he had no idea. He couldn’t stand children. Why should he feel that pit in his stomach, the one that had nothing to do with his desperate hunger, when he thought of what their end must have entailed? They were nothing to him. It wasn’t personal. He, after all, was nothing, too.
At some point, recently, he’d simply… given up. An ocean of numbness had crashed over the wall that protected his remaining spark of rebellion. And yet…
As he stepped out the door into the evening, early enough that a few streaks of visible light remained in the sky, he felt the urge to breathe in the air. It might not be free air, but it was uncaged air for an evening. He’d pay the inevitable price for it, but damned if he wasn’t going to find pleasure where he could.
He giggled at the thought. He was damned no matter what.
He weaved through the twisty, narrow streets of the lower city, where starving children begged and whores in worse states than his own offered desperate fumbles in dark, piss-stained alleys. And stalking them all were the predators: cut-throats, muggers, and other assorted agents of darkness ready to take anything and everything. He stuck to the light. When his dark passenger warned him of danger, through the scent of adrenaline or the beating of a too-excited heart, he brandished his dagger in a practiced hand.
It was enough to get them to seek easier prey tonight. He wouldn’t have been able to fight off most in his current state, but Astarion had long ago learned how powerful a performance could be.
The sturdy copper drain pipe that led to his favorite spot beckoned. He ducked into the alley to approach it from the darkness, keeping the single mortal in view from catching the fact that he scampered up the drain pipe easier than he should have been able to. From that point on, he used the roofs of the lower city like a street, easily leaping the tiny distances between them, until he got to his favorite perch.
On the roof, he sat down and began watching the crowd below. He let his mind wander, cracking through the numbness a tiny bit, enough to imagine. He dreamed up a friend. An amorphous shape, similar to how he imagined himself, with an unimportant name, but one who’d be here. They had a bottle of wine. Cheap but not vinegar. They’d pass it back and forth, get piss-drunk, and read the denizens of the lower city for the filth they were. He had foggy memories that he liked doing that sort of thing. Although he would have had better wine, he thinks.
As true darkness set in, the crowds on the streets thinned, the taphouses of the Gate filled to bursting with desperate fools of every kind. His prey. He couldn’t hide any longer. Couldn’t keep playing pretend, well, not in the way he’d have preferred.
Instead, he pulled on the persona he wore so often that even the other spawn sometimes thought it was real.
This Astarion was confident. His posture straightened with an easy languidness. So confident he didn’t care to project it. Every inch of him adjusted to ooze sex. His hips rolled and undulated, his lips were always just slightly parted, his eyes so slightly surprised. Why wouldn’t he be confident? What fool could resist the perfect bait that he had been made to be?
He strutted into a crowded tap room, his rich perfume wafting through the smell of stale ale, sweat, and meat pies, drawing the eyes of several individuals. Astarion’s practiced eye evaluated each, quickly assessing their qualities and weaknesses. His eyes landed on a man in the corner who was checking him out—he had wine rather than ale, was the next cleanest person in the place after himself, had a pleasant face, and, most importantly, his clothes tagged him as being from Amn. A perfect mark.
Astarion met the man’s eyes with a sultry gaze. The man’s eyes widened, and then, a flicker of decision as he signed his death warrant. Astarion bit his lower lip coquettishly as he approached his beckoning prey. Sliding into the small gap across the tiny table, he immediately turned on his charm. A few soft words and a few more risque ones quickly bridged the space between his prey and himself.
The target was lonely, far from home, and had an upcoming marriage of convenience. Alas, women weren’t what he preferred to indulge in. Perfect. This was going to be too easy. It had only taken an hour when the man followed Astarion out the door and into the nearby alley, crashing into a desperate kiss against the filthy wall, while Astarion pondered how long it would take him to scrub the dirt out of his doublet.
It was precisely this moment when a ship appeared over the sky of Baldur’s gate.
As the warning bells rang out and the crashing sounds of breaking buildings came closer, Astarion’s only panicked response was to grab his mark by the hand and run home. This might have worked if it hadn’t put him directly in the line of a tentacle that teleported him out of one nightmare and into another.
The walk from her little apartment to the Amtrak station wasn’t an arduous one for Nora. Only a few miles. The constant vigilance required to stay safe on that walk, on the other hand, left her in a state primed for a panic attack. It helped that she’d built a certain reputation in her little neighborhood. Partly for being extremely proficient in a street fight, and partly for being a pillar of the community. But she didn’t trust it was enough to keep her safe. She trusted almost nothing to keep her safe.
She could have driven to the station, but that meant trusting Bubba, her beloved 1972 station wagon, in a parking lot where catalytic converters got stolen daily. That car was paid off, and she knew how to maintain and repair it herself. A huge boon for a poorly paid teacher struggling to stay afloat. He was practically irreplaceable, and she refused to risk him for convenience.
Of course, driving to Chicago directly was also right out. Bubba was many things, but fuel-efficient he wasn’t. Twelve miles to the gallon don’t matter much at twenty or so miles a week, but it adds up real quick-like on long road trips. Nora would love to get something more efficient, but one of the best parts of Bubba was that everything in him was analog.
Electronics of any kind constantly broke down around her. The more she used them, the stranger the malfunctions became.
This was the reason that the only new electronic equipment she had was an Iphone. Always the latest model. Apple’s warranty had covered her since she bought her first one, because their techs could never pinpoint why her devices did what they did. The one that caught on fire spontaneously at the “genius bar” was especially hilarious.
She glanced at that phone, pulling up the train ticket on the app, seeing that the screen was already glitching. She’d only had this one for a month. Sighing, she looked around and found her “gate.” The stupidity of train stations pretending to be airports, as though one needed to be aspirational when your stations were the semi-permanent homes for drunks, meth addicts, and raccoons, never failed to amuse her. She headed for her train, still lost in thought.
In basic, Nora's tech issues almost got her kicked out for disorderly conduct. Every bunk they put her in, within days, the fire alarms would start tripping for no reason, everyone’s alarm clocks failed, and the announcement systems would constantly develop harmonic feedback that made no sense. Dan had been convinced by the end of two weeks that she was some kind of genius prankster. Even though he’d made her life hell for it, it still made her smile. He’d at least tormented her over what he saw as a skill set. She’d been used to torment for far worse reasons before she’d joined the military.
But Crash had intervened on her behalf. Dan only barely outranked him, and he’d learned to trust the blue-eyed man with the thick Cajun accent when it came to people. Crash was practically a human lie-detector, seemingly always able to spot a bad actor immediately.
So when Dan started ranting about her “prank war” on base, Crash had sought her out. They’d ended up spending a night on guard duty together, chatting about growing up. They had so much in common. Being from poor, isolated communities, and their experiences being marked as outsiders even in the town where they lived.
They’d also bonded over their more… outlandish beliefs. Nora wasn’t sure she entirely believed all the superstitions Meemaw had taught her, but she’d learned there was real magic in the world. She’d learned how to find it. Gather it. Harness it. After all, it’s pretty fuckin’ hard to disbelieve the metaphysical when you can make yourself invisible.
Crash had grown up in a tight-knit enclave of Cajun families who lived the old way on the bayou. And he’d absorbed the spiritual beliefs of that culture right alongside the hoodoo practices of some of his neighbors and the general spookiness that is southern Louisiana. So he believed in bad spirits, haints, ghosts, zombies, and witchcraft right alongside his deep and abiding belief in Catholicism.
After that chat, she’d felt comfortable to answer honestly when he’d asked about her dad. No, she didn’t know him at all. Just that he was pretty, really into nature, and, according to her Meemaw, a haint. Crash’d immediately understood what Nora hadn’t. He’d told her, spirits and electronics don’t mix. The energies mess with each other. He said she must have some powerful magic in her to cause all the ruckus that was happening.
Dan thought they were both full of shit, and he still did, but he also knew that trying to convince Crash that his superstitions were anything but God’s-honest truth was not a winning strategy. Plus, Crash was never wrong about people. So if Crash said Nora wasn’t doing anything on purpose, Dan believed him. Instead, he’d dealt with it, biting his tongue but knowing she’d only be there for a limited time.
She’d found her train, but the doors were still shut. She was a bit early, and the platform was cold and loud. She headed back inside to try to find a corner to wait in.
All her brothers-in-arms learned how real superstition could be after they were deployed. She could no longer remember what she had imagined Iraq was going to be like when Dan first told them about the deployment. She did remember the absolute hellscape she’d encountered almost every day. Even on the good days—and that’s if the scorching heat of the day or the bitter cold of the night didn’t destroy you, and no one was dying, and no civilians turned out to be armed with fucking machine guns aimed right at you, and the road didn’t randomly blow up under you—shit constantly went wrong in every little way.
Equipment broke down for no reason, storms happened that couldn’t be predicted, and people died when they shouldn’t have. And Crash knew why—it was ‘cause their haints were angry. He said this whole place was a place between. A place where spirits were extra powerful, and the history of this place was angry and full of death, so there were a lot of angry, powerful spirits fucking with everything and especially them for invading.
Nora was no stranger to the power of angry spirits and places betwixt and between. Her Meemaw taught her all the rules: never stand in doorways, always keep a mirror facing the doors, close the curtains at night, make sure there’s an iron nail in every opening to the house, never follow the sound of crying into the woods, keep salt on your thresholds, etc.
Nora had thought Meemaw was eccentric, a product of her time and place. After all, she wasn’t the only old lady who believed in spirits in her little town, even if she seemed to have a special mission to teach her about it. When she was twelve and Meemaw’s lung cancer got serious, she sat her down and told her that she needed to know that her dad was dangerous, because he was a haint, a capricious spirit.
She hadn’t taken her all that serious at the time. Meemaw was sick, like hallucinating levels of sick, hyped up on morphine and all. Nora did know a few things about her dad and they didn’t exactly scream evil spirit. He’d met her mom at a Pink Floyd Concert near Richmond, Virginia. They’d dated all summer. He’d even been at the little house she’d grown up in, living there for weeks at a time during the months her mother had been pregnant with her.
She’d seen the marks he’d left behind. Mostly outdoors, up the mountain, where he and her mom used to go. Her favorite was a rock with the strangest little carvings on it, squiggles like strange letters. Her momma told her when she was little it was her name in the language of the fey, that her dad had carved it when he’d told her momma about it. How he’d dreamed that their little girl would bring sunlight to those who didn’t dare dream of it.
Nora snorted, startling a drunk man who was weaving along the dimly lit corridor next to the train platforms. She’d certainly brought something to some people, but sunlight it sure weren’t. Much like her father’s presence and his promises to her mother of his return, his premonitions were also lies. Or failures. She wasn’t sure which she hated him more for.
She’d thought he was dead for years, since every time she asked about him, all she got were tears. That and her Momma and Meemaw always talked about him in the past tense for as long as she could remember. He might even be dead. How would she ever know?
He wasn’t even on her birth certificate. Her Momma hadn’t known his last name, so she couldn’t add him. And his first name sounded made-up as hell. Corellon. What the fuck kind of name was that?
The announcement warbled overhead, barely intelligible yet so loud she instinctively clamped her hands over her ears to protect them.
As Nora stood up to head back out to the platform, the ringing in her ears reminded her of a rocket attack one night in Kabul. The insurgents had gotten a lucky hit, and a dozen or so people were injured. Her unit had been dispatched to try and patch them up enough to get them to the hospital, only on the other side of the base.
But some of them weren’t going to make it. She could tell as soon as she saw them. She'd develop a sense for it from treating those kinds of injuries often enough.
She’d held a lot of hands that night. It weren't her job. Once they got them to the infirmary, she could've left. But she’d stayed, held their hands so they weren’t so wretchedly alone in that godforsaken night.Their faces reminded her of how Meemaw’s face had been when she’d told her that her father was a haint. That night was when she’d started to believe the old woman, at least a little.
The train was nearly empty, smelling of disinfectant and Axe body spray. She searched for a seat. It needed to be near the doors so she’d be able to get off quickly, not have to fight through anyone to get out of the station. She’d have limited time to get to the elevated train before it stopped running for the night. But she also needed space for the hiking backpack she’d brought.
She settled into the seat she’d picked, keeping the bag strapped on as it acted as back support. The last thing Nora Feyre did on Earth was to set an alarm on her phone, so she’d wake up at least fifteen minutes before the train was due to arrive, and then she tucked it into her jacket chest pocket, the volume loud enough she’d hear it.
She’d been so very focused on being prepared to save Crash that she’d forgotten Meemaw’s most stringent rule. It had been expressed as rules like: don’t stand in doorways, don’t stay in bed if you’re awake, don’t stand in a shadow, always be careful at midnight, stay inside safe on New Year’s Eve.
Nora had been so caught up in her thoughts that she’d missed that the seat she’d picked was directly on the line between section E and section F.
She’d closed her eyes and sank down into rest, preparing for the grueling day to come, with no idea of what was about to befall her.