Page 20 of Dark Stars

"Fine, fine, we'll do it your way,"

Alejo said.

"Stealth missions were never my favorite, though."

"You're a hunter: stealth is what you do."

"Catching the monster of the week is what I do. How that gets done doesn't matter."

Heaving a melodramatic sigh purely for the grin it got him, Bobby climbed off his four wheeler.

"Stay here, keep eyes and ears alert for me. If I say run, do it."

"I'm not the one who needed rescuing earlier, just saying."

"Fair enough."

Bobby slunk away, the darkness folding in around him without asking, like an old friend with a cozy blanket. At the very edge of the circle he was meant to rush into and be promptly trapped within, he knelt and rested a splayed hand down on it, sank into it, and slowly unwound the spell bit by bit, pulling one thread at a time, until the whole thing unraveled and collapsed back into the nothing.

By then, it was too late for the acolytes to do anything but attack him. These ones had guns, which was hilarious, because guns weren't going to hurt him, not without meeting very specific requirements that were impossible to meet without a thousand years of work at least.

They were all dead just minutes later, and he returned to Alejo, who had settled his praying mantis on a nice-looking bush and seemed to be chatting with a couple of spiders.

"Going to leave your new friend?"

"She wouldn't be happy living her short life in a terrarium, and this is a nice new stretch of forest she'd never have been able to see on her own. So yeah, here is where we part. I'm guessing all was well, despite the gunshots? One flew this way, but nowhere near hitting me, thankfully."

"I'm glad. That was an oversight on my part, I'm sorry."

Alejo scoffed.

"I know how to hit the ground when bullets fly. Dumbasses shouldn't be using guns out here when so many of their own are running around too."

They rode the four wheelers closer to the site, and then it was simply a matter of breaking the altar like he had with all the rest. Thankfully, hopped up on the energy of his fallen siblings, the potent blood they had consumed before facing him, this breaking was as easy as the previous two.

"I need to cannibalize my relatives more often."

"What a statement,"

Alejo said dryly.

"I feel that was a joke, but I can't quite tell."

Bobby laughed.

"Definitely a joke. Without you here to bring me back from the ledge, it would be far too easy to get drunk on the power, just like I did before surrendering all my own tribute to my mother. That's how you turn into my relatives, who see all of existence, all of time and space through to the end of eternity itself, as ants. I never want to turn into that, though forever is a long time, and anything is possible."

"Well, not on my watch,"

Alejo said, throwing arms around his neck and kissing him thoroughly before they parted to get back on their four wheelers.

"So next up is one and two. Almost done."

"Almost done,"

Bobby echoed. What waited for them at thirteen, he didn't know, but he did know he wasn't going to like it.

Entirely too many of his relatives were mixed up in this, and it was never a good thing when one was involved, nevermind the what, three?

Azathoth, Primordial Demiurge and Lord of All.

The Unnamed Darkness, offspring of Azathoth

Shub-Niggurath, the Goat with a Thousand Young, offspring of the Unnamed Darkness.

Father, son, daughter, more or less.

And of course Shub-Niggurath's Dark Young doing all the go-between and grunt work for them, managing the humans and maintaining the altars. Their awful, tar-and-nightmares flavor still lingered, not in his mouth but in his mind, real enough it may as well still be coating his tongue. For all his jokes, he never wanted to eat the vile things ever again.

"We should do smores when this is over."

"Sounds delicious. With Mexican style cocoa, because it's the best."

"Perfect. Maybe we'll just turn it into a whole thing, invite Harold and Jones, whoever all else."

Bobby frowned.

"That reminds me: We still need to deal with your ex."

Alejo scoffed.

"Just take all his belongings away and drop him in a random country. Without his wallet, phone, and passport, he won't be troubling anyone for a long fucking time."

"Hmmm… that idea has merit. I will ponder."

He fired up his four wheeler.

"For now, let's get this done. Three more and then we face high noon."

"Ugh, not looking forward to high noon. Maybe we should call in backup for the final boss."

"Just might."

When they reached two o'clock, though, it was to find it completely abandoned. Though he pushed hard to search every nook and cranny of the site and the shadows, there was nothing but the altar in want of breaking.

The same proved to be true at the next two sites, leaving just one.

"They gave up and withdrew,"

Bobby said, munching down a couple of protein bars.

"Only thing that makes sense. They hadn't stopped any of the previous ones with even their best efforts, so why keep wasting resources instead of concentrating them for a final showdown?"

"So they recalled all remaining forces and are gathering at the final site. Gonna kill us there, once and for all, and then start fresh elsewhere or after the dust settles. It's what I'd do in their place,"

Alejo said.

Bobby grunted and pulled out his phone. When Jones answered, he said, "Come to our location."

Minutes later Jones and Harold were there, one of them with notable, still-healing bitemarks on his throat.

"Are we interrupting something?"

Bobby asked with a smirk.

"I will hex you,"

Harold retorted.

"Do you want our help or not? What's going on?"

He sat down on a fallen tree that had wound up propped against something else on the way down and now lay at the perfect height for jumping up slightly to sit. Jones stood nearby, leaning against the same tree. He could only be described as looking well-fed at the moment, so yeah, they'd interrupted something.

Boy he couldn't wait for this to be over. After years of watching them dance around each other, he was going to harass them for days and enjoy every second.

He sat eating more protein bars as Alejo laid out the past many hours of work and the unknown but undoubtedly ugly showdown that was awaiting them.

"Let me go scout it out,"

Jones said. He wasn't wearing his usual sheriff uniform, only jeans, a black tanktop, and an unbuttoned blue and green plaid flannel over it. So he'd been at home, off duty. He still had a gun, and probably his badge somewhere, but otherwise he looked like he'd been drinking a beer and grilling steaks. Though he liked his steak rare and named Harold.

"Is that safe?"

Alejo asked.

"They'll be on alert, and at a wider range than we've dealt with so far."

Jones scoffed.

"They're expecting primordial dark and/or witches. They are not expecting plain old boring monsters like me. I'm one of the most well-known monsters in human history, but on the grand stage of all things scary, I'm usually lost in the cracks. Be back in a little while."

"I'm gonna go call my mom, much as I don't want to, and let her know at least some of what is going on. A heavily abbreviated version. Otherwise she'll call me from a car rental place at the damned airport."

Heaving a sigh, he pulled out his phone and wandered off.

Bobby grinned.

"Shut your fucking face."

"Not a chance. How is life as a bloodmate? How did you two even figure that out?"

Harold groaned.

"Can't you just let this go?"

"Of course I can. If you want me to mind my own business, I will. I am happy for you both, though. I always knew there was something there. Why do you think I was forever teasing you both about flirting?"

"It's fine. I'm just still kind of discombobulated about it. Of course I wanted to fuck him, and maybe even go on a date, but…"

He sighed.

"Things got dicey when we were out taking care of our side of things. He was depleted by the time were done, and neither of us had the strength to just take us home. So I let him feed on me, figuring that would be enough, so we could get out of there and recharge properly. I wasn't expecting to wind up basically vampire married."

He stroked his fingers gently over the now mostly-healed holes in his neck.

"It's been a lot, and he's not exactly thrilled."

"After being alone and independent for somewhere around seven hundred years, I'd imagine a lot doesn't begin to cover it. He found the needle in a haystack, and he wasn't even looking. And it lived just five miles down the road. Crazy times."

"Says the entity thousands of years old who found basically the same thing in a twenty-something hunter with the strangest combination of arcana I've ever seen."

"All that matters is that he's mine."

Harold cast him an amused look, voice wry as he replied, "Funny, I'm starting to hear that exact tone from Ko—Jones."

"I know his real name."

"Of course you do,"

Harold muttered.

"My age is four digits long, and he isn't even a thousand yet. It has nothing to do with trusting me with it and everything to do with the primordial dark gossiping. Don't get jealous, young human."

Harold gave a wispy, barely there smile.

"Fair enough."

"It is promising, though, that he told you his real name. That he feeds from you."

"Near as I can tell, he doesn't have a choice in getting overly attached to me, and he's not happy about it,"

Harold said bitterly, gentle happiness from a moment ago vanishing.

"Pretty sure he was happier before he bit me, but nothing for it now, so it'll work out or it won't. Ain't like I'm a stranger to being dumped."

A few yards to the east, just out of human earshot, Alejo was bickering cheerfully with his mother. A number of yards southwest of them, though, a vampire had gone too still as he eavesdropped.

"Bloodmate bonds aren't a love spell; they can't force anything, only say pay attention dumbass. He told you his real name. The rest is a creature of habit being thrown forcefully out of his comfort zone. But if you ever need me to put him in timeout, just say so."

That brought out a laugh as he'd hoped.

"I might say so just to see the look on his face. Thanks, Lord of the Flickering Lights."

"Ugh."

Jones took the opportunity to emerge from the woods.

"Got the intel. Where's Alejandro?"

"Here,"

Alejo said, emerging from the other side shoving his phone into his pocket.

"Hope you guys like overbearing mothers who expect everyone to eat twice their weight in food, 'cause I only managed to delay her by like a week, and it took bringing in my dad to help."

"Problem for later,"

Jones said dryly.

"The site is indeed ready for war. All kinds of wards, at least three layers, the largest the size of a damned house. I could only sense two layers beyond that, anything else is too hidden by the previous wards. Some creepy little black things with tentacles and hooves."

Bobby's head dropped back as he groaned.

"Not more Dark Young. I've already killed like ten of them! And ate four of them! Can they just fuck off already?"

"That's disgusting, and I once drained a Pope dry."

"Holy shit doesn't actually affect vampires,"

Alejo said with a laugh.

"What the hell difference did it make he was a Pope?"

"They're decrepit, rancid, and drink concerning amounts of wine."

Harold looked impressed and horrified.

"Why in the hell were you drinking that?"

"It was that or starve to death. Not the best decade of my life, believe me. Worse by far was that my only way out of that hellhole was hiding in a coffin. My dignity has not recovered to this day."

Harold laughed.

"You're kidding me."

"I wish I was."

"At least you didn't have to pretend to be the pope,"

Bobby said.

"Small favors. Anyway, Dark Young, wards, and also something lurking in the middle by the altar that I could not read at all. In fact it only looked like a whole lot of particularly dark mist, so likely an obfuscating spell of some sort, or it was beyond my comprehension, and that's what my brain went with."

"Hmm…"

Bobby said thoughtfully.

"None of the relatives involved would come here themselves, not the way I do. Azathoth wouldn't even know how. He's so old that the last time he lowered himself to walking the mortal plane, let alone amongst humans, this version of the universe didn't exist."

"I can't even comprehend that,"

Alejo said.

"Will you get that old?"

Bobby shrugged.

"Don't know, don't care. I try to live in the present as much as I can. The fact remains, Azathoth would not come deal with this personally. I don't think the Unnamed Darkness would either. But Shub-Niggurath might, at least in some way, like sending down a piece of her shadow given human-ish form to deal with the mess that has made her father and grandfather angry. How many humans?"

"Thirty, give or take. I can handle the humans easily enough. Even hopped on primordial blood, they're still just part of the food chain."

Jones's eyes glowed softly, his fangs flashing ever so briefly.

"They'll come when called."

"But thirty or more?"

"My limit is forty-five, give or take. I was never in a position to exactly count them, but that was the best rough estimate I ever got. So I can deal with the humans, which is the first problem resolved. The second will be the wards."

"Leave those to me,"

Harold said.

"If the first three rows are visible, then I can take them down at once. If they have more past that, I'll figure it out then. You siren-calling away the humans will cause enough of a distraction for me to do that."

"That's two down, two to go,"

Alejo said.

"The Dark Young and the hidden big bad. I can handle the Dark Young, at least long enough for the others to finish their part, and then they can come help me."

Harold's brows rose in silent question.

Alejo smirked.

"Do you know how many ants there are on this planet? Twenty quadrillion. At least. Two and a half million ants per person. Do you know how many of those ants are right here in this forest?"

Jones matched his smirk.

"More than enough?"

"Precisely,"

Alejo said with fierce delight.

"Nevermind all the other bugs that will help me if asked. They don't like these interlopers any more than we do. Leave the Dark Young to me, at least until you can help. That leaves you the big bad, Flick."

"Indeed,"

Bobby said.

"If at any point I say run, do it. Understood?"

"Understood,"

the others said in unison.

"You have your necklaces?"

Some of his tension uncoiled as they pulled them out to prove they were indeed wearing them. It wasn't in doubt, he could always feel the talismans to some degree, but he felt better all the same for asking and seeing.

"Good. We leave the four-wheelers here. I'll come back for them at some point to take home."

Harold made a vague gesture in the air.

"We have about two hours until dark."

"It will take about that long to get there if we walk, as I assume we don't want to use any magic on the chance it will tip them off,"

Jones said.

"So either we attack tonight, or we wait until sunlight. Dark gives all of us an advantage, but it gives them an advantage too. Daylight puts everyone at a disadvantage, but them more than us. But the longer we wait, the higher the chance of getting caught before we can pop them first. So which is it, oh primordial overlord?"

"Tonight,"

Bobby said.

"I want all the advantage I can get, and as you say, the sooner we strike, the better for us. Jones and Harold will start us off. Alejo will then deal with the Dark Young. I'll help as able, but I prefer to hold back until the big bad is revealed, so I'm not trapped in some other fight when they enter the battle."

"You got it,"

Harold said, eyes glowing a faint but brilliant magenta as he called up all of his magic, something he so rarely did because there simply wasn't need in the day to day, even with his trickier cases.

"Let's get to it,"

Jones said, and led the way through the woods. When they were several yards back, he threw out an arm to stop them, though they could all feel the presence of the wards, which were nothing to scoff at. No, this was high level work. Far better than anything Bobby had dealt with thus far.

"Here goes nothing,"

Harold murmured, and crept forward, keeping low, until he was at the edge of the very first ward.

"Anyone nearby?"

Jones's eyes glowed red, like fresh blood in sunlight. "Not now."

Harold smiled briefly in thanks, then returned to his magic, which spread out like tiny tributaries along the wards, working from the outside and then steadily inward, spreading along each ring. As the magic reached the third ring, the first ring faded away where the magic had touched it, leaving a gap as wide as three people. From there, it would degrade like being steadily eaten away by acid.

"My turn,"

Jones said, stepping past the rings. From the shadows came figures that were indistinct at first but quickly became human, a steady trickle that headed straight for Jones as he slowly backed away, a pied piper leading rats to their doom.

As they passed by, Harold rose and put many of them to sleep with a simple touch and softly whispered spell.

"They're coming,"

Bobby murmured.

Alejo moved forward, past the wave of humans, and all through the woods, Bobby could hear the delicate scrape and skittering of countless bugs, the numbers and sound growing in volume at a steady rate.

The insects swarmed, ants and roaches and worms and so much more, poured through the broken wards and over the Dark Young as they screeched and lunged to fight. Though Bobby itched to deal with the little bastards himself, terrified of what could happen if they got their nasty little feelers on Alejo, Bobby trusted him. No more throwing boyfriends in the river for their own good.

He couldn't anyway, because somebody had to deal with the mystery problem that was still shrouded.

"I see a fourth ward,"

Harold said.

"Going in."

"I'll go with you, but I want to remain undercover still."

"Yeah, I like that shrouded area less and less."

They slipped past a couple of thoroughly pre-occupied Dark Young, who might be great and terrible and conniving little bastards, but even they struggled against being covered by hundreds of thousands of ants.

"This should be the last one. I see nothing past this one, unless it's also shrouded, but that's unlikely, given how much magic was already required to build four concentric wards,"

Harold said, looking briefly over his shoulder where Jones and Alejo were battling the Dark Young together, all the humans littering the ground, out cold. Man, humans sure were easier to deal with when you had a vampire around.

Bobby laughed briefly.

"You know, I should have realized sooner just how deep your bond with him is, given that you've never listened to him or done what he's said a single day of your life, and I know he occasionally uses his mind control to stop humans from doing something stupid."

"He's something stupid if he thinks he'd ever get away with that shit with me,"

Harold said.

"I've punched him in the face for trying before, and I'll do it again."

"Shut up!"

Jones bellowed from across the clearing.

Grinning, Harold bent to his work, eyes glowing softly again as he set to breaking the fourth and hopefully final ward.

As it broke, a roar filled the clearing, causing everyone and everything to freeze, even the insects.

In the center they'd worked so hard to reach.

Bobby hissed and gave up hiding himself as the obscuring mist faded away as though never there, revealing exactly the problem he had hoped not to see: a piece of Shub-Niggurath's shadow given a form that poorly imitated the mortal things around them, crudely human in form, but with limbs too long, fingers too great in number and in the wrong places along their hands and feet, skin a weird, patchy gray-green, and hair that twisted and twined and writhed on its own and was hard to look at if you weren't primordial.

Ctheldush… his great-grandmother hissed, sibilant and mean.

Bobby reached into his pocket and withdrew the talisman of R'lyeh given to him by Cthulhu in thanks for the Mother's Milk.

"Thank you, Grandfather,"

he murmured, before snapping the talisman in half and absorbing the power stowed within it. It was hot, tingling, filled him a thousand times more than eating even hundreds of his stupid niblings ever could.

Ready as he would ever be, Bobby slipped into the primordial dark, human form melting away to tentacles and mottled skin and firefly-yellow eyes. Leave the humans alone. You've gotten more than you'll ever need from them now. Stop being greedy.

The shadow ignored him, beyond caring about such trivial things as need and greed. Shub-Niggurath wanted until she didn't want anymore, and it was as simple and complicated as that.

Their anger was very real though, hot and stinging, for all the ways he'd taken from her and given to other relatives.

They lashed out, razor sharp, thorny tentacles flying, infinitely more dangerous than what Bobby possessed, his nature influenced by his father.

Didn't mean he was weak and helpless though.

And he'd come prepared with something even this shadow could not best.

First, though, he had to get in close, because careless or sloppy behavior would kill innocents.

So he fought, not to win, but to gain ground, enduring the thorns that ripped him apart, the sharp edges that hacked off pieces of him, his own hot blood making everything slippery and more treacherous, the stabbing blows that took out so many of his eyes.

Though he fought only a shadow, still it dwarfed him, because though he was old, Shub-Niggurath was infinitely older, older than universes that had risen and fallen and turned to dust that formed the next universe.

Someone, somewhere, was calling his name. Screaming it, maybe. Would have to wait.

You won't last much longer, little abomination.

I'll last…long…enough…

You can't stop me. I'll eat your friends, then everyone else, then your little toy last. Then maybe I'll go eat your seed-giver.

His relatives threatened to eat his father at least once a century. It was barely worth noting anymore.

Ignoring the pain, the blood, the dizziness and how he maybe had three of his eyes left, he made a last great lunge for the gaping maw of the shadow—and lobbed in the vial gifted to him by his mother. The shadow's tongue snatched reflexively and wrapped around it, shattering it to nothing in a moment.

Flooding its own mouth with the Venom of the Secret Daughter.

Bobby withdrew, moving as quickly as he possibly could with a battered, broken, rapidly bleeding out body, dragging himself out of the primordial dark as much as he could before passing out entirely.