Scryer's Gulch

Episode 2: Red Eye Gravy and Fellow Travelers

He took a bigger lungful of the morning air. So many interesting smells: juniper and pinyon pine burning in the charcoal kilns down the road; dead dogs; dead men; live, extremely unwashed men; gallons, oceans of booze; the sour smell of Hoffman's brewery; freshly butchered pigs--perhaps he might lap up the leftover blood if he finished his rounds for Annabelle quick enough. Ink from the newspaper offices; sex; money; and hermetauxite. The place stank, reeked of hermetauxite; it was almost more than he could bear. It made his whiskers quiver, and crackled through his fur.

It's not that hermetauxite was unpleasant to a demon. Quite the opposite. Take catnip, thought Misi absently as he made his way unnoticed along the rooftops. When he was a cat, he found catnip nigh-on irresistible. He'd roll around, ecstatic and humiliated, in the little piles Annabelle would offer him. Hermetauxite was a thousand times more so; it took great force of will to resist it. All that kept demons from digging it out themselves and rolling around in it, so to speak, was that it made them vulnerable. If you were in a hermetauxite frenzy, and a nearby human had strong enough magic, boom, there you were, captured and enslaved. His mind went back, as it always did, to the trap Annabelle had set for him, how he'd howled and threatened as he tried to escape from her bonds until she'd said, "Be quiet!" and he found himself unable to utter a sound. Eight years of it. I'll get free some day, and then I'll kill her, he thought as he did every time he remembered that moment. Then a whiff of Annabelle's scent came to him across the breeze, and he softened, as he always did. <I>Maybe I'll hold her captive for a while, roll around in her for a bit, and then I'll kill her.</I>

Normally, demons never came near this much hermetauxite; it was impossible to resist, and lying there soaking the metal's power in blissful lethargy led to capture. Better to avoid it in large amounts. Among Annabelle's standing orders, apart from the whole dismaying cat thing, was that he could not let himself get all worked up in a hermetauxite fit. It strained every nerve in his body, what with all this ore just lying around; it made him antsy, as he liked to say, but the order held. When he was good, she gave him both permission and pebbles of hermetauxite to consume, until its shine disappeared and it faded into just another dull rock.

And catnip. She gave him catnip.

As he stepped onto the roof of Mamzelle's Palace, the smells of sex, booze and money intensified. Not surprising. He came upon a small hermetauxite shield, and pissed on it in contempt; far inferior to Annabelle's little spiders, the particular magic animating this shield was weak enough for humans, but not for demons. Badly cast, too. From a distance, Misi couldn't see all the way through it, but at this range it was as if the building were made of glass. He stretched out his senses, listening for anything unusual, feeling for any trace of strange magic, and froze. Shivers washed over him.

There was a demon in the building below him.

Demons never came near this much hermetauxite on their own. It was too dangerous. Someone had to have compelled it. The unexpected truth came crashing down on him: <I>There's another captive demon here.</I>

Meanwhile in the Hopewell Hotel's restaurant, Annabelle was sitting down to Ralph's ham steak and redeye gravy, while Mr Hopewell hovered in the doorway. She saw him, nodded and smiled, then tucked into her breakfast with an obvious appetite. "She likes your cooking! You done good, Ralph!" he tried to whisper behind him.

Ralph nodded. "I gave her the last of the good butter, boss, just like you said!" he wheezed back.

Annabelle pretended not to hear and kept on eating. It really was an excellent breakfast; the redeye gravy was some of the best she'd ever had, but if what she was spreading on her biscuit was the "good butter," she pitied the rest of the guests.