She blinked at him, cocking her head.

“It appears the breeding stock has manifested a bloodline. But which one, and will it stop this?” She held up a single talon and placed it against his throat.

Aw, shit. He’d put Carol on guard, and she was gonna kill him slow this time. The only thing he could do now was try to pump her for more information.

“What do you mean by ‘breeding stock’? What are you gonna do to my daughter? Who was Lily, rea—”

She silenced him with a claw through the vocal cords. A flare of pain went through his throat as harsh air whistled through the wound in time to his ragged breathing. He clamped his hands over it, but it barely helped.

“There’s a playbook for dealing with an En’hol,” she said as he clutched his bleeding throat. “And I’m about to run you through it, step by ste—”

Carol was interrupted by a crowbar to the back of the head.

Jacob, the short, wiry man was outside of his truck wielding a crowbar. His face was covered in white powder and his eyes were bloodshot and bulging.

“AAAAH!” Jacob gave a berserker scream and lunged forward, raining blows down on the staggering demon. She weathered them for a moment before slashing her razor-sharp talons at the cokehead, forcing him back.

I gotta get out of here, Tom thought, staggering to his feet. He wasn’t stupid enough to think he could win, or run away; he just needed to end the dream before he spent the next sixteen hours getting tortured until he was braindead.

Note to self, find a better way to wake up, Tom thought, putting every last fiber of his being into running away from the brawl and into oncoming traffic.

***AWAKE***

Tom lunged out of the sheets, gasping for breath and massaging his throat where Carol had put a hole through it.

“Hiii,” Carol said, a couple feet away from his bed. “Breakfast is ready.” Her eyes landed on the book on the nightstand above his mattress.

Tom bit his lip and choked back a yelp, nodding silently.

Tom went through the motions of breakfast, did the dishes while Carol bounced Ellie on her lap, then drove over to Badger Self-storage with a crowbar and a mission: find the materials he would need to make a soul engine and place a call to some demons so they could give him advice on how to deal with another demon.

So this is my life now? Tom thought, shaking his head and looking at the crowbar in his hand. It’s entirely possible that my brain finally fixed itself, and now I’m dreaming those wild crazy dreams that normal people have when they sleep.

When a cured umbilical cord spilled out of the back of Lily’s couch, Tom realized that his life was what was crazy, not his dreams. Or maybe it was my girlfriend who was crazy, he thought, inspecting the package with Ellie’s name and birthday on it, and trying not to puke.

Tom set it aside and began carefully searching his way through the rest of the storage unit. He found a box of carefully-preserved butterfly wings, separated by color, along with the bile of different kinds of animals.

A preservative, maybe? I don’t fucking know.

Tom was beginning to gather a little pile of weird and creepy shit in the middle of the storage unit.

Tom was absolutely sure that the Ziploc with his daughter’s umbilical cord in it was the weirdest thing, bar none, until he found the brain in a jar.

An actual fucking brain in a jar.

The glass was wobbly and bubbled, like it’d been made in the 17th century, and the bottom of the jar was a thick layer of gold, streaked with odd impurities that were too regular to be an accident. There was a round hollow in the gold that looked like it was meant to receive something, about twice the size of the gold coins.

On the front was a plaque that read simply, ‘Uncle Tabbeth’.

Well, Tom thought, hefting the jar thoughtfully. I guess this is just par for the course.

Tom put the jar with the rest of the pile and kept searching, eventually finding a rather large pile of bizarre paraphernalia of every shape and size, including the ink he needed to give the Outsiders a call...but something didn’t sit right with him.

It felt incomplete.

Where were the finished products? The half-finished projects? The walking skeletons? That was apparently one of the easiest things to do as a soulmonger, as soul pulses were ideal for reanimating dead flesh. The life-energy required no phase-shifting.

Many of the ingredients showed signs of being used heavily, too. The nacre dust only had a quarter of the pale, pearlescent powder left, but the sides were caked with it, the interior covered in scratches and wear.

And yet, Tom didn’t see any sign of what it’d been used to create.

Was Lily selling it, trading it? Storing it elsewhere? Was trafficking with demons how she’d gotten so much gold, or was she already rich? Carol had called him ‘breeding stock’, which asked some very serious questions.

Mysteries for another time, Tom thought, grabbing the ingredients and carefully stacking them inside a box while mentally checking off his list of things he’d need to perform the ritual.

Crap. There’s no frog slime.

Frogs weren’t hard to come by. They were in season right about now, too.

Tom pulled out his phone and called Jacob.

“Yeah?” Jacob said, his voice sounding like he’d been woken from a dead sleep.

“Hey, it’s Tom. You wanna go to the lake and catch some frogs?”

“I’m in.” Jacob hung up.

Tom rolled his eyes and texted the cokehead the details before loading up the Subaru with occult supplies. As he closed the door, he checked his phone.

Only a few hours until he had to go to work.

After work, Tom added the jar of slime to the ingredients and got to work making a soul engine. He was absolutely exhausted, but a soul engine was going to be a multi-day process, which meant that at the very least, he would have to make it and fill it with soul-pulses in the real world so it would be ready to use when he slept the next day.

He went shopping at a few local hardware stores, dipping into his ‘college education’ to pick up some smelting equipment that he hadn’t found in Lily’s stuff.

He was hiding in the basement with a crucible of molten gold held over a carved-out cast when Carol poked her head in, and spotted what he was doing.

Tom just about jumped out of his skin, spilling droplets of molten gold everywhere as he picked up the blazing torch and held it out in front of him, trying to ward off the creature with fire.

The skeletal woman scanned the scene in front of her. She cocked a brow at the soul engine ingredients laid out on the table, then peered at him a moment longer.

Any second now, she’s going to change, turn into a demon and fucking gut me, Tom thought, his arm shaking, heart hammering in his chest. It was beyond obvious what he was doing, for anyone who knew what was in the book, or had spent time with Lily. Carol was likely both.

And I’m not sleeping right now! he thought, adrenaline making his limbs shaky.

“En’hols,” Carol muttered, shaking her head at him before flicking on the air vent above his head. “Ellie’s passed out. If you were planning on getting any sleep today, now would be the time, your grandmother says.”

And just like that, she left him alone. Caught red-handed, and she didn’t care.

Tom frowned, slowly lowering the torch. Is it just the book, then? Was she bound by some kind of hyper-specific instructions to kill whoever opened the book?

I wonder what would happen If Ellie opened the book? He had the fleeting idea of having the baby fumble the book open to see what would happen before he violently shook it out of his head.

Tom wouldn’t tolerate that line of inquiry. Even if it would work, even if it was in a dream…he wouldn’t bet Ellie’s life on anything.

There were certain lines people couldn’t cross before they slowly stopped being people. The consequence-free environment of his dreams had given Tom ideas to do some bad things to people, but he realized that since nothing in his dream-reality changed anything in the real world, the only thing that changed if he hurt people, would be himself.

And there was no way Tom could see himself becoming a better person if he indulged every whim and petty grudge as he slept.

Speaking of sleep, Tom thought to himself, noticing his half-cooled crucible of gold, and the nagging sensation of his eyes slowly closing on their own.

We’ll pick this up tomorrow.

Hopefully, Carol wasn’t just waiting to kill him in his sleep, but Tom was relatively sure by this point that if one of her kill-conditions were tripped, she would throw all subterfuge aside and just rip him to shreds.

That, and Tom was very tired. He’d spent hours catching frogs, then loaded freight, then assembled a miniature smelting setup.

I should take the day off tonight, he thought, suppressing a yawn.

It was time for bed.

Tom went upstairs and stumbled into his room, collapsing into bed. The last thing he saw was Carol holding his sleeping daughter, standing in the doorway, watching him with an unblinking stare.

Whatever, he thought, closing his eyes.

***Kenneth Peterson***

Going around back was the most dangerous part of a bust. A lot of people thought it was going in the front, but that wasn’t so.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, perps rabbit out the back, and when you’re the guy standing there between them and escape, they can get a little…agitated.

Not to mention greater distance to the cruiser, and therefore from backup, a spare firearm, the med kit, etc.

Which is why Ken preferred to let kids who didn’t know any better go around back, basking in the lingering shine of perceived indestructibility from their days in the academy using airsoft guns on each other.

When Ken’s internal count got to twenty, he smashed the rickety door open, bits of paint flaking off on the bottom of his size eleven boot.

“Chicago police department!” Ken shouted, announcing his presence.

The bowl of amphetamines in the center of the living room was rocking cartoonishly in place as the perp had already made it halfway to the back door.

Keeping his head on a swivel for the dreaded wildcard that would get him killed, Ken launched himself after the guy. Brian would cause the perp to skid on his heels, and Ken would blindside him from behind and subdue him.

Speed was the name of the game. The faster they got the perp under control, the safer everyone would be.

Ken made it to the back door in three huge steps, where the perp on the patio was lurching to the right on account of Brian stumbling over some kid’s toys to the left.

Twenty seconds wasn’t enough time to get through the back yard? Are you kidding me!? Ken thought, lunging to the right to follow the perp while Brian shook the playset off his foot.

Now it’s gonna be a fucking foot chase.

Ken did not like foot chases. Cops were carrying an extra fifteen pounds in the form of body armor and gear, while perps were often skinny as shit, and extra motivated.

Fat criminals tended to get weeded out by strong competition.

Just as he expected, the perp sailed over the fence with the grace of a goddamn athlete. Were rabbiting an official Olympic sport, Ken was fairly sure this guy would take home the gold.

Ken followed after at full speed, arm up, hoping to catch the perp’s ankle and drag him down, or at least pin him long enough for Brian to go around the other side.

Ken fully expected to whiff, slamming into the fence and watching in frustration as the perp made a beeline for safety.

Ken did whiff, missing the perp’s ankle by a couple inches, causing him to growl in frustration. A strange feeling assaulted Ken’s senses. He felt unnaturally cold, like he’d been dunked in mint extract for an instant.

Ken sailed through the fence, colliding with the fence-jumper mid-landing. The two tumbled to the ground, but Ken recovered first, twisting the perp’s arms behind him and cuffing them together.

Ken started the body search and reciting the Miranda rights, but his attention was on the fence he’d just slipped through. There was no comical Ken-sized hole in the fence; it was completely whole.

How in God’s name?

Brian made it around the side of the dilapidated house, and promptly started to try and climb the fence.

“Go around!” Ken gritted out as the dumbass started bending the metal poles with his sheer weight.

“But you—”

“Does it look like he’s still running?” Ken asked.

Brian sighed and dropped off the fence with an audible twang. The kid probably just wanted an excuse to jump a fence.

“C’mon,” Ken muttered, dragging the perp to the cruiser and shoving him in the back.

“Alright Brian, you missed the layup, you do the paperwork,” he said, handing Brian the chunky pad. Ken was originally planning on using seniority to foist the paperwork off, but Brian’s error made things easier.

“Fine.” Brian snatched it from him and started filling out the Who What When and Wheres.

Ken confirmed that Brian’s attention was elsewhere, then turned his back on him and glanced inside his vest pocket.

The golden doodad was faintly glowing and sizzling with some kind of force that he could barely feel in the back of his mouth, like there were some Pop Rocks in there or something.

Did this thing let me slip through solid steel? Ken thought, frowning.

He’d held onto it this entire time, as a kind of macabre souvenir. Somehow every time he thought of pawning it, he remembered the dead girl. At the same time, he hadn’t gone out of his way to tell her boyfriend about it either. The kid would probably blow all the cash before any of it made it to the daughter.

So it sat there in his pocket for the last two weeks, silently urging him to pick a side.

Last month…

Ken was taught that adrenaline makes your memory wacky, so he’d assumed he’d actually dodged the car or jumped over the hood on reflex. That’s actually what he’d written in the report, too, because when you start claiming that a Tesla went through you, they start warming up the section eight papers.

He’d maintained it so steadfastly that he’d even convinced himself.

But just now? That wasn’t adrenaline messing with his head. The perp was already ahead of him, there was no way he was going to catch up without a lengthy chase. The next second he was underneath the perp, tangled up in his legs and collapsing to the ground.

The only way that could happen is if he went through the fence.

Kenneth glanced back at Brian, who was still doing paperwork, scowling at the pad in his lap.

He took a step up to the mailbox in front of the flophouse, and focused on that feeling from earlier. A chill swept through him as he reached through the metal paneling of the mailbox and withdrew a letter.