Joules and Lorelei sat in silence as they drove away in M. Davis’ car. Lorelei had asked him where he wanted to go, as if she were some kind of chauffeur. Truth be told, Joules had no idea where he wanted to, or even where he was supposed to be. He imagined his dorm room as he’d left it, messy, small. He wasn’t the same man who’d left the dorm. It might as well not have been his at all.

The sun was cresting over the horizon as they pulled onto the highway. Davis had taken him much farther away than he’d expected. No one came out to where the maniac’s dungeon was located, and for good reason. The city of China Grove wasn’t a particularly large city, and most anything worth doing was a short walk away from the college. The farther you went out from the center, the worse it got, and by Joule’s total inability to recognize where they were, he guessed they must have been very, very far gone.

“We’ll have to ditch the car,” Lorelei said, breaking their silence. “Who knows who’ll be looking for this thing.”

Lorelei never broke character. Even when Joules had found the key to the holding room, she had a determined face, as if she’d planned the night’s events to the minute. Both of them knew just how perilously close they’d come to a grisly end.

Joules cracked first, vomiting in M. Davis’ living room after freeing Lorelei. The stench of the killer’s rotting flesh burned at his nostrils, but Lorelei took it in stride. Though Joules was slightly placated in that she refused to look at their kidnapper’s remains. Maybe he just had a weaker stomach than she did, or perhaps she was used to that kind of encounter. She’d played it cool even when they’d both been chained to the wall. Joules, on the other hand, had needed to summon every ounce of grit in his body to even look M. Davis in the eyes.

Who is this chick?

Now that the imminent prospect of untimely dismemberment was gone from his mind, Joules had a thousand questions all vying to be asked.

Stands are the manifestation of a person’s psyche, their fighting spirit.

This seemed self-evident, assuming you bought into it in the first place, which Joules now had no choice but to. He himself could be crazy, imagining a ghost haunting only him, but with there being others like him, he knew the world had just gotten that much bigger.

Yet at the same time, it had gotten smaller. Stand users attracted other Stand users. This, too, had been proven to Joules. Within hours after first encountering [Do Dope Fuck Hope], two more Stand users had come into his life, and the deep foreboding in his gut told him that they wouldn’t be the last Stand users to cross his path.

Was that his life now? Davis had called their power a curse. Was he doomed to live a life in fear, trapped in endless combat, pitting forces beyond any normal comprehension against each other until he eventually slipped up? Thankfully, his stomach was already empty; that train of thought made him nauseous.

They pulled into a small diner on the outskirts of town. Nobody cared that two twenty-somethings, one without a shirt, stepped out of what was clearly not a real cop car in the morning light.

“So, we’re just gonna leave it here?” Joules asked.

“You got a better idea?”

They stepped inside the diner. The only person besides them stood behind the counter. She was old - older than Joules’ mother, but not quite grandmotherly. Her short blonde hair was thinning and graying in patches, and blotchy patches covered her face and the exposed parts of her neck. She peered at them over her thin glasses, clearly displeased.

“No shirt, no shoes - no service,” she rasped.

Joules grabbed a shirt with the diner’s logo, bright pink, and placed it on the counter. He went for his wallet, but froze when he found it missing from his pocket.

“Let me guess,” the woman said, “no money?”

Lorelei rolled her eyes and pulled a card out her pocket. Why did she get to keep her things? It wasn’t worth going all the way back for his wallet.

“I got this,” she said, handing the woman her card.

“How progressive,” the waitress said, sarcasm dripping from each smokey word. “Your girlfriend must really love you. If my man came in looking like you and didn’t have no money, I’d kick him to the curb.”

Lorelei gave a deferential smile to the older woman. “I just might do that. Do you have a phone? Our car broke down and I need to call my dad to pick us up.”

The woman pointed a boney finger to a payphone at the other end of the diner. Lorelei said thanks and left Joules alone.

“You look like hell, kid,” the woman said.

Joules ordered two coffees, putting it on Lorelei’s tab and brought them to a booth. The faded red leather of the seats smelled like a children’s ball pit at a fast food restaurant, and everything from the table to the floor seemed to be coated in something sticky.

It could be a lot worse.

He blew over his coffee and watched Lorelei on the phone from afar. She spoke just quietly enough so that she wouldn’t be overheard by Joules or the waitress, but not so quiet that it looked suspicious. However, they were already the strangest thing to happen to this greasy spoon since Reagan was president.

Without the threat of a deranged murderer, Joules had a chance to look at Lorelei with fresh eyes. She was a beautiful woman, though he couldn’t be sure how much of that was his own feelings and how much of that was her Stand, [Gold Digger]’s doing. Although Lorelei had said her stand would have been useless against M. Davis and [Yellowcard], it was only with her help that Joules had been able to buy enough time to awaken his own Stand.

With a clearer head, Joules was beginning to put together just exactly what had happened in the dungeon. Lorelei said that [Gold Digger] only worked on those who found her attractive. He’d fallen under her spell from the first moment she’d revealed her Stand to him. Somehow, she must have transferred [Gold Digger] to him when her unconscious body landed on him.

But she’d moved while out cold. His memory was still hazy, but he could have sworn she leaned in to kiss him. That must have been when she put [Gold Digger] on him. Fortunately, or unfortunately - it changed each time Joules thought back on it - Lorelei had been correct about M. Davis’ proclivities. That was the only way she could get her Stand onto Davis. Davis must have found Joules attractive, which meant [Gold Digger] could get the killer all hot and bothered over him.

If she’d been wrong, well, they probably wouldn’t have made it out alive.

Lorelei hung up the phone and thanked the woman behind the counter again. She slid into the booth across from Joules, grabbing the second cup of coffee from him.

“I didn’t know how you take it,” Joules said, doing his best to look anywhere but directly at Lorelei.

“Don’t worry. This is fine,” she said. Though the coffee was still too hot for Joules, she put her mug to her lips and drained nearly half of it before coming up for air. She took a measured breath, then finished the rest of her drink before setting it off to the side. She folded her arms on the table, unconcerned by the unknown stickiness.

“So, how are you doing?” She asked. “You good? That was a lot back there.”

Joules thumbed the rim of his mug. “Yeah, I’m good. No problem. You?”

If she suspected that he was lying, she didn’t show it. Maybe a little bit of bravado had been earned. She probably had guys acting tough for her all the time.

“Yeah, I’m good,” she echoed. “Tired and sore all over, and my wrists are killing me, but other than that, I’m all good.”

“That’s good.”

“So I bet you have a lot of questions,” she said. It wasn’t a challenge or even a real guess. Who wouldn’t be filled with questions after what had happened. A thousand thoughts sprung to the forefront of his mind. Where could he even begin?

Sometimes the simplest question was the most important.

“Who are you?” he asked, and he meant it. Joules was just a nobody caught up in a game of somebodies. Twenty-four hours ago he was the poster child for wasted potential. Lorelei, on the other hand, looked, walked, talked like a superhero or a secret agent.

She smiled. In Joules’ experience, some women liked to be asked about themselves. Thankfully, he’d chosen correctly. It wasn’t all small talk, in his defense; he really did want to know more about her.

“I’m Lorelei Bishop, and I’m an agent of the Speedwagon Foundation,” she answered, as if that made anything any clearer. She caught on to his immediate confusion and switched tactics. She would have to explain things to him. “The Speedwagon Foundation scouts, recruits, protects, and tracks Stand users all over the world. You’ve seen first hand what some sick freak with a Stand is capable of. The Foundation is the first line of defense of the people against monsters like that.”

“So you’re like a spy or something,” Joules offered.

“Well, I guess I’m technically still in training,” she said. “Though, hopefully they’ll give me some credit for what all went down last night.”

“You from here?” Joules asked.

She shook her head. “There’s been an unusual amount of awakenings in China Grove over the past few weeks, way more than normal. It’s not too surprising, however. Where there’s one Stand user, a dozen more will usually pop up. We still have to check it out. My partner and I came out the day before yesterday. He’s on his way now to pick us up.”

“You partner?”

She smiled at the question, as if he’d walked into a trap. “He’s not my type, if that’s what you were wondering.”

Her ability to embarrass him continued to surprise him. He wasn’t hopeless around women, but something about Lorelei made him fuzzy.

“So, do you hunt assholes with Stands like Davis all the time?” Joules asked, changing the subject.

“Well, I don’t,” she clarified. “The Foundation has loads of people better trained than me. Call it a weird accident that Davis and I crossed paths.”

“It’s certainly weird,” he agreed.

“They’re gonna want to know about this, for sure,” she said. “Did you get any other information out of him before you, you know, liquified him?”

“He wasn’t working alone, I know that much,” Joules said, remembering listening to Davis prattle on about the nature of his important work. “He didn’t say for whom. He was fascinated by the ‘stones’.

Lorelei’s face grew more serious. “That’s not surprising. We all are. Those ‘stones’ are basically the Holy Grail of Stand research.”

“So you don’t know what it does?”

She rubbed the spot on her shoulder where her own stone was embedded in her skin. “We know the ‘stones’ react when in the presence of other Stand users, and sometimes you can use it to identify people with potential to develop a Stand. Other than that, we don’t know much more. But I’ll bet if a bottomfeeder like Davis was interested in them, whoever he was working for is probably interested in them, too.”

“So what now?”

“We’ve got some time before my partner gets here,” she said. “I know you’ve got a ton more questions. Lay ‘em on me! I’ll do my best, and I promise I won’t make fun of you too much.”

The waitress refilled their cups twice more that morning as Joules listened to Lorelei answer each of his questions. What she knew for certain she answered with supreme confidence, and what she didn’t Joules couldn’t tell either way. He kept quiet when she spoke, absorbing everything that came out of her mouth until he was sure he could write an entire research paper on Stands, yet by the way she kept on talking and talking, there might be more to it all than he was capable of understanding. He would manage. He had time, and he was eager to learn.

Two men stepped out from the back of the large SUV. Dawn broke on the horizon. The first man, who was called No. 5, took a slip of paper from his pocket, checking some number to the number bolted to the mailbox in the driveway. He furrowed his thick brown. He was completely hairless on his head - no eyebrows, beard or a wisp of a moustache. His unnaturally round head gave the appearance of an enormous baby stapled to the thick body of a powerlifter.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” he asked his companion.

The second man, who was called No. 4, stepped around the back of the SUV to stand beside his partner. In stark contrast to No. 5, No. 4 had wild hair, spiked and jetting out in all directions. His entire face was covered in tattoos until his skin was more ink than anything else. He licked his forked tongue over his lips, revealing rows of teeth filed to wicked points.

“I’m sure,” he said.

No. 5 frowned. “His car’s gone.”

“Stolen, most likely.”

“I guess the bastard really is dead,” No. 5 said without a hint of remorse. “I always knew he’d get careless one of these days.”

“As abominable as he may have been, he proved extremely effective. His death is an unfortunate setback. However, a rabid dog is good only as long as it is useful.”

“So, who do you think managed to finish the job?” No. 5 asked as they walked towards the front door, “Anyone we know?”

“I don’t believe so, no,” was the answer. “Perhaps we will learn more inside.”

Immediately after opening the door and crossing the threshold, No. 5 choked on the stench as it hit his nose like a skunk boiling on the highway. “What the hell is that?” he asked.

“I’m afraid that’s Davis.”

They found his remains easily enough; only the dead could be spared from the loathsome odor. The man’s body lay in a wet pile. All the skin had been peeled from the body, revealing the dark muscles still attached to his outfit. Blood pooled underneath like the site of some ancient ritual sacrifice.

“Yep, he’s dead all right,” No. 5 said with a low whistle. “Jesus Christ, whoever he tangled with really did a number on him.”

No. 4 dropped to his knees beside the pile of gore and viscera. He began rooting around the bloody carcass with his bare hand, unfazed at all by the smell. No. 5 gagged.

“These violent delights have violent ends,” No. 4 said.

By the look on his partner’s face, No. 5 knew that his partner had found what they’d come here for. No. 4 held a small, red, star-shaped jewel up to the light, he rubbed it against his shirt, wiping away the blood. It glowed with a faint inner fire. “Even in death, however, the rabid dog may still be of use.”

The two men returned to the SUV without looking back at the house as it erupted in flames. By the time it was fully consumed, it was only a small point of light, quickly disappearing in the rear-view mirror.

To be continued...