“You’re not on the list.” They waited at the front of the line, amongst the shaking heads and folded arms of a disgruntled group of guests. Apollo, waiting for the many to deny him entrance. Apollo, sweating, as he swore the walls were melting. Another hallucination.

Dion put a hand on his shoulder. The scenery reforged itself to normalcy.

“What do you mean I’m not on the list?” Apollo asked, wiping sweat.

“I don’t see your name. He’s fine though,” He pointed to Dion.

“Of course they wouldn’t let me in. Do you know who we are? We’re detectives, sort of. We’re important to the Wolfe’s.”

“I’m sorry sir, I don’t see you on the list. If you were important, you’d be on the list.”

The page stared back, with scratchings that annoyed him just to stare at.

“It was Salome, wasn’t it?” Apollo asked.

“It was your attitude, is what it was. You’re not good party company.” Dion said, almost joyous. “You should be nicer. I keep telling you, smile.”

“Fuck off.” Apollo looked back to the name-keeper, the guard, the giant wall in between him and truth (at least, as Apollo saw it).

Apollo stood next to the line, getting told by the man with the strange mask (a bunny, why?) with the bowtie and the nametag that made him some such officiary that could do some such thing. And the man with the bow tie, with authority (as given to by Salome) said this: “Sorry, sir, we can’t let anyone in who’s not on the list.”

Dion was in the clear, for he had no coat or guns or really any desire for violence. Apollo, however, was not. And by reputation, the name-keeper knew it too, that Apollo was dangerous. So there he was forced to be, standing, with a short man keepin him in between him, and the party (his prey). It made him think, as the walls continued to melt and his anger and hallucinations grew off each other. He rubbed his chin, I'd hope I would not care anymore. I could give Aenea any name than go through this trouble. But instead, I'm here. Why? I need a doctor, I need a therapist, I need a priest. But I refuse that help, I refuse that easy life. Why? Why not just give her a name? Why suffer this stupid man and his stupid list and this stupid brain? He took a deep breath. Some of the hallucinations cleared. Because I need to be right. Because I want the answer. Because I want to catch my suspect. Mine, and mine alone. I need something to make this suffering valid, I need it, like a damn martyr for all my lifes worth. I need to catch this prick to pay my debt.

“Alright then,” Apollo said. “I’m still allowed in the halls, correct?”

“Absolutely sir, anywhere but the party.” The man with the bunny-mask smiled, buck teethed. “If that’s mighty fine with you, of course.”

Apollo turned Dion away from the crowd and the guard.

“You heard him, you’re on your own. I don’t expect much to happen in there, too many witnesses if something were to go wrong, which means the Wolfe’s are going to come in and out often,” He said. “You’re going to have to keep an eye on them.”

“I don’t think I have enough eyes for all of them.”

“What - Uh - It’s an expression. Just watch them. That’s all, as many of them as you can. Watch them. Aenea too.”

“You think she’s a murderer?” Dion asked.

“I don’t know who is or is not, but we can’t be too sure. After that demon attack, I’m beginning to think these people are more capable than they let themselves onto.”

“Black magic? I thought most of them weren’t even aware they were witches…”

“Fuck man, don’t be so stupid.” Apollo said. “That’s what they told us. But it’s not what’s true. I figure most of them probably have something up their sleeves, dark arcana or otherwise.”

That was the end of conversation before they split, with nothing but an earpiece and a microphone sleeve to keep them tangled like an invisible umbilical cord. Apollo, who mothered Dion through the steps of spying.

It wasn’t so bad though, all the arguing and the watching and the walking. It was not so bad, until midnight.

♣

Maybe it didn’t matter much, being in the party, keeping tabs on everything and everyone. He already knew who had come to the party. All the Forbe’s people, those ‘top most important’ such and such people, as it was.

There were a little over two hundred guests invited, of various trades, though all of which regarding those most affluent in society. Artists, CEOs, an actor here and there. The kind of titles and grand-standing thing that excited Dion. He was not excited to be at the party, or to meet anyone from the party. What amused Apollo (strange? The feeling of amusement), was the prospect of witches. And one such of these witches that he found, early on, was Richter. Wandering the halls. Ritcher.

Richter who he kept at a fair distance, watching in the corner of his eyes. Following.

He roamed the halls, stalking them like Dracula. A hunter, searching for his prey. He saw the people with their masks and jewels and watches, like expensive mannequins. Absolutely hollow, nothing but show. One such lobby was delegated for the drunks. Here, people sat on bean bag chairs, sharing a small metal box filled with cocaine. They gave one look at Apollo and laughed, before taking turns sniffing. Another group, further from this one, was composed of people smoking laced cannabis. All of them were drunk, and all of them devolved.

The women were competing with each other, showing off which kind of men they could enrapture with their wiles.

It all seemed a game, a game that disgusted Apollo.

If they even knew that this was all a Satanic rite, would they care? I don't think so. Are they even sentient? I wonder.

People danced and laughed from within their bedrooms (there were bedrooms scattered about for the guests to have sex in…or worse). Apollo saw from the cracks of doors, the people in their primitive state. He approached one such door. It was the loudest in the hall, by far.

His eye, peaking inside. He saw them, dressed up, laughing in hysterics.

And dressed they were. Some, in mocking get-ups. Some, with masks of politicians old and new in the middle of absurdities. Others were dressed as animals; horned goats, horses, elk with their antlers poking at women.

He felt disgusted for some reason. He could taste something sour, metallic. Like rancid blood. He removed his head from the door and closed it. The laughing stopped. Around him, around the lights and furniture of the halls, he could see swarms of flies. Dancing, playing with each other, buzzing and humming.

Here we go.

The hallucination had stopped, but only as a taunt. Because they continued again, all of a sudden, faster and more intense. He could feel his heart in his throat, beating, beating, beating. His eyes looked left and right, the people morphed into trees. The walls, bled. The floors looked like swamp and beyond, to the end of the hall, he could see two snakes running through. Pythons, swimming across the shallow pools of imaginary blood.

He rubbed his eyes.

Things returned to normal.

His imaginations had gotten worse. Ever since he had been attacked (his leg still wasn’t fully healed yet), ever since he had come out of his sleep, he had hallucinated. Mostly of Astyanax, sometimes of animals and of strange occurrences, like the walls bleeding or the floors turning to swamps. But he was thankful at least, he could tell them apart. For now, at least.

“I need to get my head checked.” He said. Though he knew what it was, instinctively at least. He knew it was the price paid for helping Bartholomew in Hell, for killing and eating Astyanax. And it was a realization that kept him up, sleepless. That thought, and the nightmares. Both of them.

For he had thought that maybe all good men and all evil men have a price to pay for their lives, no matter how good or horrific they were. And the only difference between good men and bad men was that the bad men don’t pay their toll. Sometimes, the good men have to pay for it. Both shares.

So here he was, paying his toll. He rubbed his eyes to get the images of bloody walls off his mind. He felt his foot drag and thought it caught in imaginary quick-sand. It was just a drunk woman, laying on the floor, holding onto his foot. He wiggled her away and turned the corner.

He was following the snakes. What appeared as giant pythons, green and black, swimming across the shallow pools of filth and grime.

He chased after them and every so often, he could see them in their human form.

Ritcher. He was chasing Richter, maybe he didn’t even realize it.

A butler passed him with a platter of shrimp and button mushrooms and glasses of champagne. He swiped one, to chew. He grabbed a drink, to forget. They tasted like unripened grapes and puckered his mouth. Sour. Sour. Sour

“Are you alright, sir?” The butler asked. He turned to face him, he swore he saw the eyes of the man asking him the question pop out of his skull. He swore he could see them dangle and fall like two deflated balloons. Apollo rubbed his eyes. The man was normal.

“I’m okay.” He lied.

Apollo finished another mushroom. The same taste, sour and unripe and puckering. My head isn’t right. He walked towards the hall where the tail of the snake dragged and the room in between. People sat with, high from opiates laying on the glass table. Their heads were stuck at an angle, looking at the floor. Their eyes were glossed, with an unholy sheen as they mumbled inanities.

He realized at once where he was. In some far off corner of the casino, the music, though loud, was strangely downplayed here. There was a fire exit and an emergency staircase.

Richter turned behind himself before he went through, into the corner. Apollo made himself flat and parallel to the wall, hidden behind a fern.

He wore no mask. Needed no mask.

A light above looked like a spider, a tarantula with a giant black skull for a design upon its bulb-abdomen. He ignored it. It was not real, none of it was. And his eyes flashed red. Crimson, bloodshot, as he turned the corner and limped with his dragging right foot.

He dragged his body across the hall, the music in the background adding a tempo to his deliberate steps. He foot dragged along, taking a carpet with it. He did not care to be stealthy anymore. He needed to catch him, catch him before the world burst and burned and bled itself into oblivion in his twisted hallucinations. Apollo needed to find Richter before he was possessed again by another vision.

His hand touched the walls. It sunk through. Not again.

His throat went dry.

“Who’s there?” Apollo made his way around the corner. He could hear two people.

The lights went out. Apollo held his breath. Between the sudden drop of ambiance and the fact that he was now seeing the chandeliers as spiders, descending from the ceiling, he was feeling confused and dreadful,

“Where are you?” Apollo asked. “Richter, where are you?”

A door opened. People went down the steps. And they slipped out.

He would have followed, could he have heard. But there was loud shuffling, as there tended to be around strange occurrences and unplanned dramas.

And he had to rub his temples to relax, as the hallucinations and the sounds of blood squirting out of the ceilings, and the people rushing and screaming, and the spiders. Crawling. Crawling all over him, were becoming overwhelming.

He slammed his head against the wall.

“Ah, fuck.” He said. The lights turned on. A drugged man was staring up at him, smiling.

“What are you looking at?”

The bruise on his forehead healed.

“Where’d he go?” Apollo asked the opiate, who smiled and drooled.

He looked at the emergency exit. There were too many people in it now, all rushing down.

The lights were turning and off, repeatedly, into a strobing effect.

Now it didn’t matter where he wandered. Apollo only followed where the crowd was leaving from. So while they all went down, he went up.

And the higher he went up the crowded emergency steps, the closer he got to the screaming. It was like he was following a trail of fear, looking for the women with their hands up and the fainted bodies.

There aren’t many people who chase after fires and floods and destruction, but Apollo was one of them.

He followed the steps, and the people routed away, all the way up to the principal hall. The VIP rooms of the Wolfe family. He went all the way in, to where a group of people were hyperventilating. All of them, surrounding two wide, open doors.

He stepped up to them, to these group of horrified guests and workers.

He took one look inside. Just one. And what he saw made him wish it was a hallucination. What he saw was so horrific, he pinched himself in the hopes that it was another false visage.

“Get away.” He told one of the weeping, crying, screaming workers on the floor. She clutched her gray uniform and suffocated her noises in it.

Apollo closed the doors and took out his sword.

A scene as bloody as this, after all, could not have been done by someone sane.