Penny

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

Those first days with Hadrian were pretty unpleasant. By the end of the second day the worst of the obscura withdrawals had passed. I suppose I should be grateful because the experience cured me of any desire to every try the drug again. It induces itching, sleeplessness and a number of other unpleasant side effects including paranoia. A little paranoia is a healthy thing, but when every time you turn around you find a two meter tall giant in blood red armor glaring at you, it gets to be a bit much. The astartes never deigned to speak to me, but it was clear he was suspicious of me. I took refuge as much as I could in Hadrian’s library, which although stacked with dreary instructional tombs about the virtues of blah blah by Saint Whatever, was at least free of murderous super humans. The psy blockers took longer than I expected to metabolize away which turned out to be an unexpected bonus. If you are at all familiar with me it won’t shock you to learn that my first impulse is rarely to be completely truthful. There are those who will insist that honesty is the best policy but I can tell you from a position of some authority that those people are morons. While I did my best to learn Hadrian’s lessons about protecting myself from daemons, I deliberately underperformed on his picting exercise, pretending to struggled to render the apple each time I attempted it. The blockers were somewhat helpful in this regard as they made the deception somewhat more believable than it might have been.



Access to the ship was a pleasure. After being locked up for so long it was nice to be able to walk. The crew, irritatingly in some cases, seemed to be somewhat afraid of me, though whether this was due to the fact the knew I was a psyker or the fact I was travelling with an Inquisitor I wasn’t sure. Again, the fact that the astartes giant would seemingly appear behind me at random intervals did did not help my cause. I was able to make friends with the ships astropath, a lank haired young man named Caiphon. As astropaths go Caiphon was ok. We spent time drawing the Tarot and playing regicide on his ancient board as well as in other less cerebral pursuits. His amasec was terrible and I took the liberty of absconding with several bottles from the officers stores to improve his lot. Best of all not even an astartes would barge into an astropath’s sanctuary without cause and so I found some relief from his constant glowering.



My own quarters were in one of the passenger state rooms a few doors down from Hadrian’s office. It was furnished but very bleak as I had no possession of my own to fill the space. It did have a large marble bathtub though and I spent an hour or so everyday just soaking. My hair was a problem as we lacked any shampoo on board until, one day when I visited him, Caiphon produced a small bottle of scented soap and a turtle shell comb that must have been worth a small fortune. I suspect he stole them from the Navigator and if that was the case I was equally impressed by his thoughtfulness and his stupidity. In any case it gave me the tools to properly clean and brush my hair for the first time in I don’t know how long.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

There are layers to how the galaxy works. In the view of the simple devout citizen of the Imperium there is an immutable order. The psyker is abhorred, the Inquisition sees all, the Xenos is evil, the Emperor protects. For many people, most people, these core truths need not be interrogated. Scratch the surface even a little though and you find that the psyker and the mutant are vital to the operation of the Imperium. How would we function without astropaths or navigators? But those psykers hold an Imperial Sanction right? Sure some of them do, but not all of them. There are psykers, even some pretty terrifying ones, who operate more or less openly in the Imperium without formal Imperial approval. Almost invariably these individuals are supported by the Ecclesiarchy, the noble families, or the Ordos. They are in effect, unsanctioned psykers. In effect this is what I had been doing to this point, though the sources of my support varied. If you ever find yourself on Carleot with enough muscle or powerful friends, you can go and see the Sacristy of Sacred Pleasures which I psi-picked for the Hierophant Zerby IX. Bring some absorbent towels and you are welcome. That was unsanctioned work, and though a few rabid monodomiants might take issue with it, it isn’t that uncommon. The key point to keep in mind is that there is a world of difference between the unsanctioned psyker, and the rogue psyker. A rogue psyker is declared extremius diabolis by either the Ecclesiarchy or the Ordos and usually both. Such an individual faces death or damnation regardless of the actual state of their soul as they will be forced, in order to hide, to consort with heretical elements who are the only ones who can provide them succor. I was considering this when Hadrian made his offer because if he packed me off to the astropathicus, there was always the chance I could make a run for it and hide out in Lucky Space or out in the Halo Stars. Many have thought that though and I can tell you that depressingly few ever manage it. And even if you make it, running from the Inquisition is a nervous business I can tell you. The Ecclesiarchy might have been an option, but if you abscond from their service they send the Witchfinders after you, which is almost as bad as the Ordos and usually considerably showier. Am I digressing? Maybe, but no one is forcing you to read this are they?



Returning to the point. I wish I could say that I went through some deep process of soul searching, found my duty to the Emperor and accepted the calling he was presenting to me with a joyful soul. I can’t even say that I accepted out of a desire to learn what he could teach me. I had been practicing since my sixteenth year and having not yet been possessed or corrupted, reckoned I was fairly safe. I also suspected, rightly, that much of what he thought might be important would be boring and arduous. The simple truth was, I was just so frakking relived I wasn’t going to be shot out of hand I would have agreed to walk upside down on my hands naked through the Palace of the Conqueror on Return Day.



“I would be honored to serve the Holy Inquisition,” I said, “on the proviso I can do it in something that fits a little better.” As witty rejoinders go it lacked something, but in my defense I was just SUPER glad not to be shot.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

Have you ever been through obscura withdrawals while on psy blockers. It's pretty unlikely if you have the clearance to be reading this. By the time we reached the Caledonia the shakes were passing to be replaced by the deep to your bones prickling burn. It feels like someone is scrubbing your body with sand with every tenth grain actually a stinging nettle. I do remember my first sight of the ship though, a great phallus of rusting steel and gleaming ceramite well over a kilometer long. She was fat at the base, crusted with great crenelated towers from which hung the sensorium and the four great lance batteries that protected her from pirates and xenos alike. Forward she tapered to a great adamantine prow, curved and painted with green and gold squares in a curious checkerboard, each square thirty meters in diameter. She buldged slightly in the middle, to perhaps half the width of her aft nacelle, with two great bays for taking on the cargo that was her purpose for existing. I have seen bigger ships since, but at the time, even as strung out as I was, it made an impression. In some ways it was lucky I was still coming down. Although I hadn’t seen a rosette it was clear I was in the custody of the Inquisition. I had convinced myself, partially as a coping mechanism, that if they wanted me dead I would already be dead. I tried not to dwell on the fact that they might simply want to torture me for any information I had before they rectified that mistake.



I must have cut a fine figure. Hair disheveled, clad only in a set of fatigues for which my hips were too wide and my legs too short. The shirt similarly strained across my chest, held in place by two buttons which valiantly preserved what passed for my decency. There were no shoes. A fact I was reminded of when the dropship docked in one of the cavernous hangers and I was escorted, none to gently, down onto a deck which had so recently been exposed to the void of space. It burned my feet and I kicked out the folds I had added to the pants so i could walk on the fabric. In short order I was frog marched out of the vaulted ceramite hanger with its smell of burning prometheum and questionable void shields into a rusted corridor with a smell of old soup and partially functional air recyclers. It was there I first saw the servitors. The Imperium is, of course, awash with servitors of all kinds but I do not believe that I have ever seen the likes of these. They were humanoid in form but their necks and backs were augmented with great plumes of feathers, each spun in brilliant patterns from some kind of ceramic glass to give them the appearance of fearsome predators from some forgotten barbaric world. Some of them raised and lowered these faux crests in imitation of threat postures as we passed, or perhaps that was a reaction to the space marine escorting us. They showed little original organic material and what skin remained had been fastidiously painted with some kind of shiny black lacquer, the joins between flesh and machine often accentuated with gold rings or brass rivets. I supposed there might be an argument to make against practicality, but they certainly were impressive even in my dazed condition.



The astartes shoved me into a cell without deining to speak to me. The cell had begun life as a cargo vault. A void shielded chamber meant to preserve the most valuable cargos against the perils of star travel. The hissing milky field of the void shield was equally effective at containing psychic phenomenon of all kinds which was why the Inquistor picked it for my stay. To my surprise it was furnished, if one can apply the word, with a pallet, a blanket and two buckets for ablutions. A meal of processed protein cubes and steamed root vegetables had been laid out on a tray that sat upon a battered looking rug. To my surprise I found that I was famished. I literally couldn’t recall the last time I had eaten. I demolished the food in a few minutes and washed it down with a canteen of water which had also been set down for me.



I will admit that my fear caught up to me then. I knew that I was unsanctioned. Probably the best I could hope for was to be sent via the Black Ships to Terra where the Emperor alone knew what fate might await me. More likely I would find myself floating out of an airlock after some period of extreme unpleasantness. Luckily the withdrawals were enough to keep me from completely devolving into a blubbering mess, though I admit there was a deal of blubbering involved. Eventually though I managed to pull myself together and thought I couldn’t quite sleep, I wrapped myself in the blanket and laid down to wait for whatever was to come.

Maverick Malediction

“Would you try to relax,” Calliope hissed as they neared the gate.



“Contrary to popular belief I haven’t exactly been laying back and drinking rum on the beach for the last couple of days,” he rejoined.



There was a shout from a sentry and then a brass bell began to ring. Within moments the gates of the place, stout wooden gates mounted in a palisade of pine trunks swung shut on their stone posts. Head began to appear on the parapet, marked out by red caps or long feathers that bobbed above the sharp points of the stakes. An arrow arced from a platform above the gate, wobbled slightly in the air and then plunged into the snow crusted ground a few feet from them.



“Come no clozer,” a voice boomed from the gate. Neil obediently stopped and then sank to his knees.



“Help! We need help!” he called out in a credible distress. There was a long pause from the gate and Calliope could almost make out a conversation in half whispers.

“Who are you?” a gruff voice called.

“I’m Pete Galloway, please, we were attacked we need help!” Another long conversation of whispers occurred before the gate finally opened and five men, each carrying swords long enough to serve as polearms emerged, fanning out into a semi circle. Their leader, identifiable by a crested helm stepped forward.

“It is a strange name Sveet Kalloway,” the helmeted man declared, “does this one have a name?”

“I am called Dragoslava Grigoriev,” Calliope said in a theatrically weak voice. The leader cocked his head and his men shifted uneasily.

“You are from Sebrovna?” he asked in surprise, “how did you get passed the undead?” Calliope had no idea where Sebrovna might be or why this man thought she might hail from there, but this was more than enough information for her to work with.

“We thought we might slip passed them in the mountains, my gresni and I barely survived, the rest of our caravan were not so lucky,” she told him. Gresni was a word that combined some of the characteristics of both lover and bodyguard in this culture, but without mapping completely to either term. The leader nodded his head taking in her battered condition and the burns and other damage to her clothing.



“Kalishni, bring them in,” he ordered, carefully lifting the massive weapon over his shoulder and slipping it down into a leather thong that was slung over her breastplate. The hilt projected above his shoulder like a cross. The men formed up and escorted them in.

“Where were you attacked Boyina?” the leader asked. Calliope mumbled something about hills and lolled in apparent exhaustion. It was an easy role given how completely rung out she was.

“The Gilded Bear has room, you have gold?” the leader asked. There was a slight jingle from Calliope’s belt.

“Ylga will take good care of you. Tell her that Gregor says to summon the witch woman to see to your wounds. When you are recovered we will talk.” They had reached the gate by now and pushed through, stepping into the muddy streets.

“Welcome to Jaliningrad,” he declared grandly.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

992.M42

Inquisitorial Palace Thracian Primaris

Accession 132663

Convened under authority of Grand Inquisitor Mordecai Hyrim Ignatio Boch

Attendance: High Ecclesiarch Santus Vobosum, Eudoxia Pratteri Adeptus - Astro-Telepathicus, Caracticus Desprau - Ordo Malleus, Jascinto Rafe - Ordo Malleus, Kindren Tomasi - Ordo Hereticus Phlebias Cowl - Pardoner.

Subject: Emmaline Grimelhausen Teobaldina von Morganstern - Adept Delta, Accession above.



Transcript begins.



Phlebias Cowl - If it please the court….



Caracticus Desprau - In the interest of time please assume that everything you say will please the court.



Eudoxia Pratteri - Muffled laughter.



Phlebias Cowl - Uh… yes your lordship… I um… enter the following into evidence.



Transcription of vid footage begins.



Shaky camera running down a steel passageway. Possibly a ship passage. Muzzle flashes center right. Camera pauses presumable for wearer to return fire. One casualty. Male of medium build. Tallarn guard uniform defaced with &#&&&&&&&&& symbols. Camera turns right, looking out over ship enginarium. Possibly Mobius Class Trader based on AM analysis. Spider like creatures made of glowing silver crawling down engine reclaim coil one and three at approximately three meters per second. Gunfire from camera. Two spiders destroyed one maimed. Camera retreats. Grenade thrown into enginarium. Comms log call for 1.5 seconds to Accession. Accession responds 31 seconds. Comms log call for 1 second to Accession. Accession does not respond. Camera moving rapidly up central hallway towards bridge level. Camera knocked over by blow from off screen. Scrabbling appendages consistent with silvery spiders. Knife appears in screen covered in silvery liquid. Camera righted. Three figures in heretical armor run from right of screen, all burning. Gunfire from camera. Comms log call for 1.5 seconds to Accession. Accession responds 1 second. Bulkheads appear to be melting rapidly from unknown source. Camera turns right. Explosion tosses four bodies across field of vision. Significant hoarfrost coating bodies. Camera advances at a run and enters salvation pod Alpha-Alpha-Seven. Blonde female in golden body glove with blue eyes speaks 2 seconds. Camera closes the salvation pod. End transcription of vid.

Santus Vobosum - Accession can you confirm your use of unhallowed powers?



Eudoxia Pratteri - One would hope so, unless you mean to suggest those heretics blew themselves up.



Caracticus Desprau - With respect Ecclesiarch its hardly helpful to chracterise all psychic phenomena as….



Santus Vobosum - Why is it when you people say with respect what it really means is kiss my…



*Generalized uproar*



Jascinto Rafe - If we can return to the matter at hand…



Phlebias Cowl - If it please the court….



Several voices speaking at once - Shut up!



Eudoxia Pratteri - Adept do you recall what you said when Inquisitor Drakos entered the salvation pod?



Emmaline Grimelhausen Teobaldina von Morganstern - *muffled response*



Jascinto Rafe -Louder Adept, for the picter please.

Emmaline Grimelhausen Teobaldina von Morganstern - *Clears throat* I believe it was something to the effect of : ‘how cool was that’



Generalized sighs from several sources.



Fragment ends.



989.M41

Planet Tallarn

To: Eudoxia Pratteri



Dear Doxy. I do not imagine that any of this will be of any use to anyone. Given the nature of the Glorious Inquisition it seems highly unlikely that anyone with the clearance to read these journals will give the proverbial guardsman’s damn about them. Even so I find transits through the empyrean to be tedious and see no harm in writing the account as you have requested. I hope you at least find my accounts amusing if not instructive.



EGTVM

I do not remember being brought to Tallarn. Certainly it isn’t a place I would ever have chosen to go of my own volition. Tallarn’s have a long standing tradition of burning the witch first and asking questions never. As you know I had been working, or more accurately forced to work, as an enchantress. While it is bandied about alot in common terms, the technical role of an enchantress is to create sophisticated illusions for others. Most astropaths have the ability, it forms the basis of the performative part of an auto-seance, but they rarely have the kind of flair for detail to do more than convey impressions. A really good enchantress, and I flatter myself to claim that distinction, can make you see anything. Not just see, but feel, taste, and smell. There are a number of obvious problems with this ability, the first is that if you can make people experience anything, people will want you to. Grieving parents wanting to see dead children, old men wanting to be young again, sexual deviants who want to experience things that aren’t quite possible in the real world. As you can imagine it is a slippery slope.



I woke from the obscura haze the way I always do, languorous, sticky in my skin. I hated, and still hate obscura. They must have forgotten to give me the full dose. Maybe some of the goons had been cutting what they gave me. The advantages of big boobs and pouty lips are not to be underestimated, no doubt they thought that I wasn’t dangerous other than to their already tarnished virtue. I could taste the lilac taste of psi-blockers at the back of my throat. They might be lax but apparently not stupid the Emperor curse them. I didn’t know how long I had been here but I remember some very odd enchantments. Not the usual orgies with anatomically improbable Aldarei or power fantasies of ruling the universe, it was almost as if they were planning something, something monstrous, and they wanted to use me to practice it in advance. It made my head hurt worse than the obscura hang over. They hadn’t locked my cell so I went out into what looked to be a rock hewn corridor. It must have been deep. The walls were sweating water and was crusted with old salt. The stink was terrible and I wrinkled my nose. At least it made the choice of which way to go easy enough: up, up, up. I wished I had better shoes, although I suppose if the Emperor of Mankind appeared and granted wishes I’d have aimed higher than a nice set of stylish hiking boots.



I don’t know how long I climbed. The shakes and DTs were on me and I felt like spiders were crawling over my skin. It wasn’t just the obscura, its fair to say that given my choice I prefer my exercise horizontal, climbing these endless stone cut stairs was making me sweat. That was unpleasant enough, but the exertion was working the psi blockers out of my system. I could pick up a background sense of things already and the feeling left me shivering despite my raised body temperature. This place felt filthy. I didn’t know what had been done here but I knew I wanted to be out of whatever it was. I considered that I was on Tallarn and I might just be about to get out into a radioactive hell desert where I would infallible starve, die of thirst, or be burned as a witch by some cloth swathed savage. That still seemed preferable to remaining here with the Chaos taint in the air. Worse it seemed to be getting more intense as I got higher, as though the layer of filthy oil was laying across the surface of a pond. A man with the severe face of a Tallarn stepped into the hallway. He was naked from the waist up, there was a soft shine to his eyes and an aura of menace. His eyes widened when he saw her and he opened his mouth.



You do not see me. Psy force whispered out of my mind. I felt like I was trying to push water up a hill with my tongue. The taste of lilac amost made me vomit and I swear my sweat turned slightly purple. It almost wasn’t enough. There was too much psi blocker still in my system but I managed to plant the suggestion long enough that he turned and started walking. I ducked into a side passage and heard him turn around with a confused sound and then head on his way. I kept climbing and the feeling of dread grew greater and greater until I could hardly stand to put one foot in front of the other. Then I saw something in one of the alcoves, it was vast and horrible and so wrong that my mind recoiled. I screamed and I ran, upwards and upwards. Suddenly there were crashes and screams and howls ahead of me. I tried not to cry, I felt like I was running from the fire into a raging sea, but the sea still seemed preferable. Suddenly I broke into a large room of a type I was familiar with. Plush cushions and and secluded alcoves. Men grabbing for weapons and the women were wailing. Several of the men turned to look at me and several shouted in surprise. The door exploded and I saw an Astartes for the first time in my life. Emperor help me I had never imagined such a thing existed. I had seen statues and illuminated manuscripts but it didn’t prepare me for the awful majesty of five hundred pounds of ceramite wrapped killer shattering a door into a million pieces. Half a dozen men went down, impaled by pieces of door. Two more exploded, their guts sprayed across the room by bolter rounds. Another man, unluckily close to the giant, was smashed flat by a massive fist that seemed to drive his spine down through his body. Gunfire flashed in all directions. I did the only thing I could think of. I dived under a pillow and hid. Emmaline Von Morganstern - Ace Operative.



So it was that when I finally met Hadrian Drakos, my first actions were to hold up both hands and say.

“Thank the Emperor you are here officer, there are about twenty of them.”

Regarding Halflings and their Status in Star Wars Canon

@BangoSkank There is a legends reference to an Ewok flying with prostetics to boost him up.

The Sunday Group

@Atalanta Constantly calling people in the middle of the night because she is bored.

Omg... ghost busters but performed by traditional Romani folk musicians

The Sunday Group

@Atalanta clearly Ghostbusters ;)

The Sunday Group

This raises the question what songs does Eleanor use for your characters ring tone....

The Sunday Group

Eleanor cursed fluidly in several languages, one of which would have caused milk to curdle had there been any nearby. Her phone was buzzing angrily in its cradle but she didn’t dare pick it up. There was no telling who was entangled with Mal at the moment, and the horns that blared as she wove through traffic encouraged her to keep her attention where it belonged. Fortunately she passed no lurking police cars, perhaps a lingering effect of the luck altering spell she had used, as she raced towards the gas station leaving behind the freeway and busy roads. At first she harbored the pitiful delusion that Mal was handling things in a professional manner, but the subtle pricking in her thumbs, and the decidedly less subtle flash of gunfire from within the dirty glass windows, assured her otherwise. She disengaged her steering assist and hauled on the wheel, sliding into the parking lot with a screech of tires, bumping over the covers to the subterranean tanks. A crown vic, identical almost exactly to the one that had been tailing her, was parked infront of the gas station, doors still open. She could see figures inside, two big men with their backs to her in the front of the store. One of them was picking himself up from an avalanche of candy bars and beef jerky. They didn’t appear to have noticed her yet, and she sprang from the car and ran towards the front of the store. She was a half dozen steps from the door and reaching for her pistol when a white light flared from inside.

“Shit,” she breathed and threw herself sideways. The white light lit up like the igniter for Satan’s propane burner. There was an audible wuuuump as air rushed in, rattling the glass, and then a thunderous detonation. Glass fragment blasted out on the shockwave like a million glittering knives, sleeting against the fuel bowsers like angry hail. Eleanor hit the ground hard and rolled, protected from the worst of the blast by the sturdy cinderblock walls of the gas station. Her ears rang and it took a moment of conscious effort to force her stunned diaphragm to resume drawing breath. Debris rained down around her. Burning bags of gummy bears and catchphrase flavored potato chips. A half case of miller lite hissed and spat where it had been blown from a cardboard carton. A can of pringles rolled by forlorn. The ringing in her ears was unbelievable. She drew her weapon, seized with the entirely justifiable urge to shoot Mal in the face. It struck her as somewhat ironic if the danger Emmaline had foreseen was that she would put a bullet into him. A giggle escaped her lips, though she suspected that if she could hear anything it would sound somewhat crazed. Then two figures walked from the inferno. Just walked out as though they were heading back to their car after buying snacks. Both were male and both were naked, the blast having stripped their clothes from their bodies in the same instant it had hurled half the contents of the store into the parking lot. Their hair, eyelashes and eyebrows, had been burned away and their fingernails were smoldering but if they were concerned by this in anyway they didn’t show it.

“Shit,” she repeated as one of the pair turned to regard her. One of its eyes had been transfixed by what looked to be a piece of modular shelving. The heat had cauterized blackened optical tissue around it in a weeping mess. He/it regarded her for a moment and then intoned in a clear pleasant voice which reminded her uncannily of Mr Rogers: “Suffer not the Witch to live.”

“Ohhhkay,” Eleanor wheezed, skootching back a foot or so and pulling her pistol from its holster. It was a custom desert eagle with a pearl and ivory inlaid grip. The words: Ergo augue conjectus, were picked out in simple engraving along the barrel. She fired. Fifty miles away in Eleanor’s basement the massive truck suspension spring which hung from a rafter leaped into the air as it compressed from no visible source, back at the gas station the gun roared but recoiled no more than a child’s bb gun as it thaumaturgically dissipated the massive force of its discharge. The heavy, thumb thick, shell, engraved with the seven orders of banishment with a microlathe, punched through the neck of Evil Mr Rogers. The upward slant of the shot blew the back of the things head to pulp, all but decapitating it. The body pitched sideways and struck one of the bowsers with a dull clang dishing in the Shell Oil logo. Eleanor had a weird moment of clarity in which she was thankful that the fuel pumps themselves hadn’t gone up along with the late and unlamented miller lite. Evil Mr Rogers shifted and tried to lift himself up, the minor inconvenience of having only a few strips of flesh for a head apparently not insurmountable. Then the body slumped and was still, save for an odd undulation at the top of the neck. With a spray of blood and gristle something silvery and cruciform burst free and launched itself at Eleanor, too fast to see. She shouted a macro and flung her hand upward in warding. Whatever it was sailed through the spell without so much as slowing but the barrel of the pistol hit it and knocked it up and over her, sending it sailing away into a pile of empty milk crates. Lurching to her feet, Eleanor dodged the second creature and dived into her lexus. The car alarm was wailing and her phone was still ringing, and while she could probably do to speak with someone about her extended warranty, that would have to wait. The second corpse thing, a beefy looking man with half his fingers blown off was staggering towards her, the explosion having shattered a kneecap. She slammed the accelerator and the powerful vehicle leaped forward and sent him sprawling with an audible crack. The passenger side airbag deployed with a screech and the reek of burning superglue. Feeling the ‘thunk thunk’ as she drove over what she hoped but doubted was a body, she hauled on the wheel, squealing out onto the road. She fired once out the window and was audible reminded of why firing a hand gun in car was a bad idea. The muzzle blast crazed the windshield and shattered one window into neat squares that rained down like a waterfall, and she swerved and nearly lost control. The wheel of the crown vic exploded with a jet of air and a thump throwing pieces of rubber in all directions. Monsters or not they wouldn’t be driving it anywhere. Eleanor got the fishtail under control and accelerated down the road, sticking her head out the window to see past her ruined wind shield. Blood or some other fluid dripped into her eyes and she wiped irritably at her face, her hand coming away red. In the rear view she saw what might or might not have been a man stumbling towards the road but she didn’t slow down.