***A sequel to Fright Fest 2016 Gold Winner RED RAIN***
"For every person you save, there is going to have to be somebody you can't."
-Joe West, "The Flash"
Red Rain was just the beginning. Blue Monday made everything worse. White Shadows star...
Following the course charted on that map we found in Sedona has led us on a pretty merry little scavenger hunt through the West.
My personal favorite stop was Telluride, Colorado. There, according to a note on the map (which only Russell seemed to be privy to; the rest of us never got much of a glimpse), a piece of black glass lay in a metal box under the grass at the end of the airport runway.
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While the rest of us dug, Russell successfully distracted the security guards with a ploy he said he'd been wanting to bust out for ages - impersonating Andrew Garfield and pretending he was in town for the upcoming film festival. It took the rent-a-cops at least twenty minutes - more than enough time for us to locate and recover the buried booty - to remember that A) the Second 'Verse Telluride Film Festival, unlike its Prime 'Verse equivalents, is held on Memorial Day weekend instead of Labor Day; B) both Garfield's human and his demon are alive and well in Prime; and C) Russell's Adam's apple is nowhere near as prominent as Garfield's.
I'm surprised he didn't go to the bathroom on them when they finally called his bluff. Though I have to say, his phony British accent was extremely convincing. "Being on-again, off-again together with Jasmine helps," he said as we rode off to the north, away from town. "Although she's still no good at playing American."
Basin, Montana had another piece hidden in a mine full of radon-laced air and water.
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None of us were particularly keen on finding that one, but Gabe, the self-proclaimed "one least likely to reproduce among us," led the charge. Good thing too, because it turned out the next box was sitting on the bottom of a pond, and as the best swimmer among us, it fell upon him to strip down to his underwear and take the plunge. Afterwards, I was quick to jump to his side, warming him up by holding flaming hands next to him.
Then Harris joined in, his own hands flaming too. I gaped at him, so surprised I almost let my fire go out. "How are you doing that?" I asked.
"Yeah," Kensi chimed in. "You're a scriv! Unless...oh. Oh, are you-"
"Some of us humans have powers too," Harris said with a grin. "Me, I happen to have two - I was a Dark Fire warlock in my previous life." He shut off the fire on one hand and unleashed a brief jet of black energy - a sticky substance unlike the dusty dark power Russell and his siblings all have. "You know," he muttered to himself, bringing the flames back on, "it just occurred to me - my Dark power, capital D, I've used it to block out unwanted shit from my body before. Why not-"
