Monday mornings almost never saw Dean in a good mood. They signaled a return to the drudgery of the work week, not to mention a return to the ignorance of the people he had to deal with day in and day out. And all this after the relative freedom of the weekend, which only made the return to work that much worse.
And this particular Monday looked to be even worse for Dean than most. Even though he had promptly collapsed and slept through the afternoon the day before, he was still feeling exhausted when his alarm went off the next morning, after his second long sleep in about sixteen hours. But it wasn't just that. He had been sure that the events of the day before would get fuzzier after sleep, that they would eventually go up in a puff of smoke, proving once and for all that they were just a dream. But they hadn't, and he was left facing Monday morning with the feeling that his world was just a little out of sync with reality. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, and it made Monday morning that much more difficult to deal with.
So it only seemed fitting that he heard the sound of his phone ringing while he was in the middle of his shower. Never mind it wasn't even 6:30 a.m. yet, and that no one he knew was rude enough to try and call him at such an obscenely early hour. Never mind that most of the people who usually called him knew that he was getting ready for work and didn't have time to chat. Even so, it seemed like just the right annoyance to go with how this particular Monday was starting off.
That said, he really didn't feel like making the effort to answer it when he heard it start ringing. Sure, it could be an emergency, but at that point, and especially at that time of day, he didn't really care. If it was important, the person calling him would leave a message, and he could get it as soon as he was out of the shower and dressed. And if it wasn't important... Well, in that case the person was probably lucky that he didn't feel like answering.
About five minutes later he emerged from the bathroom, and about five minutes after that he was dressed and ready to think about the phone. He wandered into the kitchen, where he had the phone charging next to the toaster, and picked it up to see who it was who had called and whether they had left a message.
"Fuck!"
They had left a message, and when he checked his missed calls, the phone cheerfully informed him that the caller was Kelli. Kelli, who knew very well that he didn't like to think in the morning, let alone deal with family. Kelli, who knew better than to try and call him first thing in the morning, especially before he had had his coffee for the day. Kelli, who had been in the middle of yesterday's... happenings.
He very briefly considered ignoring the message, or even deleting it without listening to it and then claiming that he had never gotten it. But he realized right away that she would see through that with no problem. Besides, it wasn't like whatever she wanted him for was about to go away just because he pretended he hadn't gotten the message. Better to listen and then decide what the hell to do. With that in mind, he started playing the message back.
"Hey, it's me. I need you to call me back as soon as you get this message. Before you go to work for sure. We've got a bit of a situation."
That was it. No explanation as to what sort of "situation" she was talking about. Not that he needed elaboration on that part. He already had the sinking feeling that this had everything to do with Eris, despite the fact that she was supposed to be out of his life now that she had sent Xerrit off.
He swore loudly, even though the walls of his apartment were paper thin and his neighbors could most likely hear every last dirty syllable that came out of his mouth. Then he looked down at the phone, staring at it as if it would provide him a way out of whatever it was Kelli wanted for him. He almost turned the phone off, knowing that the only way Kelli would have of getting a hold of him then would be to physically track him down. Unfortunately, he just couldn't bring himself to turn the phone off. That just wasn't something he did, ever.
Of course, that didn't mean that he was about to call her back. Whatever this situation was, he was sure it involved Eris. And that meant he wanted nothing to do with it. No, it was in his best interest to just pretend he never heard that message and proceed to work as usual. Work was better than what they had in mind for him.
With that in mind, he fixed himself some breakfast and continued with his daily morning routine. In less than fifteen minutes he had eaten and finished his preparations and was on his way to his car to head for work. Oddly enough, he was running ahead of schedule, possibly because the desire not to be involved in whatever Kelli wanted him for had driven him to get ready faster than usual.
It was as he was sliding into the driver's seat that his phone rang again. When he glanced down at the display, it informed him that the caller was a number he had never seen before. So not Kelli. Curious, he picked up the call, since he had a little extra time before he had to get going.
"Hello?"
"Is there a reason you decided to ignore your sister's call?" It was Eris.
"The fuck!?" He almost threw the phone away from his ear with a violent jerk. It was only the fact that he couldn't afford to replace his phone anytime soon that stopped him, and even then it was difficult.
"Is that any way to greet a lady in the morning?"
"I thought you said you were gonna be out of my life as of yesterday!"
"Would it help if I told you I intended to do just that?"
"Hell no."
"Well, just to make it clear, I did intend that. Unfortunately, the situation has changed. I need you to come over here as soon as possible."
"No."
"Excuse me?" Even from the other side of the phone conversation, Dean could feel the air around him grow colder just from the tone of her voice. He wasn't quite sure he wanted to know what it was like in the room with her at the moment. Still...
"I said no! I don't know if anyone told you, but I have a fucking job! I was just about to head out for work. I don't have time to play demon hunter with you."
"Call in sick."
"No way!" In his anger, he pounded his fist on the nearest surface, which just happened to be the steering wheel in front of him. As he did so, he hit the horn, and he proceeded to jump almost out of his seat at the sound of the horn blaring around him. Guiltily, he opened the car door and leaned out to peer around and see if there was anyone else in the parking garage who had heard the horn. Luckily, there wasn't anyone that he could see.
"What was that?"
"Nothing! Anyway, no way in hell am I gonna skip work just because you say so! Do you have no concept of the real world?"
"This is more important than your job."
"Suuuure."
Her reply didn't come right away. Instead, Dean could hear another voice in the background, muffled and unintelligible because of its distance from the phone. And when the voices stopped, it wasn't Eris on the other end anymore.
"Dean, just do what she says." This time it was Kelli.
"Now you're trying to make me skip out on work too? Has Hell frozen over or something?"
"I'm serious. This is important. People could die because of this, and if they do, it'll be all your fault. Do you really want that to happen because of you? Besides, it's not like it'd kill you to call in sick. Or are you doing that badly at work right now?"
"I'm doing just fine at work! And what the hell do you mean, people might die!?"
"Exactly what I said. It's too complicated to talk about over the phone. Just get your ass over here, and Eris can explain everything to you."
"And if I decided to ignore you and go to work anyway?"
"I know where you work. Would you like me to show up at your office and drag you out with me? Or better yet, would you like Eris to come to drag you away? I'm sure she could be convinced to do just that."
As much as the mere idea disturbed him, Dean couldn't help but imagine the scene. Him, sitting in his cube, possibly even on the phone with someone and trying to work through their problem. And then Eris would storm into the building, probably blowing through security so fast they would barely know what had happened. She'd most likely have some way of tracking him down within the building, so she would make it to him before anyone could get at her.
The result would be her dragging him out of the building, kicking and screaming, for all of his coworkers, not to mention his boss, to see. And that would most likely be the end of his employment there. No way would they let him come back to work after some strange woman burst into the office, disrupting everything, and dragged him out.
Calling in sick would definitely be preferable to that. Anything would be preferable to that, even if it meant getting more involved in the insanity that Eris had brought with her. Even if it involved making his Monday even worse than it had started.
"Fine," he muttered. "I'll be there in a bit."
Angrily, he hung up the phone. For a few moments, he just sat there, staring at the screen of his phone. He couldn't quite get any thoughts to go through his head, not through the anger he felt, directed both at Eris, but at himself as well. At least it meant that his brain wasn't trying to convince him to ignore Kelli and Eris and go to work instead. But it also meant that he couldn't quite get his brain going enough to get started toward Kelli's house.
Finally, after those moments of inactivity, he shook his head and actually looked at his phone. Then, he pushed a few buttons, dialing a number that came to mind far too easily, and waited for the other end to pick up. It didn't take long, proving once again that his boss apparently did not have anything even resembling a life outside of work. At least, it was hard to believe that he did when he came to work long before any of the others in the department did, and he left work long after everyone else.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Jim. It's me, Dean." He paused to cough, trying to make it sound as realistic, but also as horrendous as possible. "I think I caught that cold that's been going around. I'm really not feeling well right now, so I don't think I'll be able to make it in today."
"Is that so?" Jim's voice had gone cold, and it was clear without even seeing him that he didn't believe a word that Dean was saying.
"Look, I'm really sorry, but I really don't feel well. I'm gonna go back to bed for now, and I'll see how I'm feeling around lunch time. If I'm feeling any better, I'll come in for a half day."
"Don't bother."
Dean coughed again. "If you say so... I'll try to make it in tomorrow, though."
"You do that."
Jim hung up the phone before Dean could say goodbye, a move that would have infuriated Dean... had it been anyone else. With Jim, that was better than the alternative, which would be him expounding on the many reasons why he thought Dean was lying through his teeth. And all this considering the fact that Dean almost never took a sick day, if only because it was too much of a hassle to deal with Jim afterward.
"Yeah, bye to you too, asshole," he muttered as he hung up his end and stuffed the phone in his pocket. Then he jammed his key in the ignition, started the car, and tore out of his parking spot, headed toward Kelli's house. They wanted him there, so they would get him, but that didn't mean that he would like it... or that he would be pleasant about it.
As soon as he had pulled into the driveway and brought the car to a stop, he flung himself toward the house with a resolve that would be commendable in any other situation. He threw open the front door to find everyone sitting in the living room, waiting for him. Still, he didn't let that faze him, and he glared long and hard at all three of them before opening his mouth.
"Whatever the hell it is you want with me now, it had better be pretty damned important."
"Wow, someone's cranky this morning."
Dean glared at his sister once again before throwing himself down into the lone easy chair, rather than sitting on the couch next to Eris. "I wonder what might be the reason behind that. You think it might have something to do with the fact that you people just made me call in sick to work? You know how much of a dick my boss is!"
"Do you people have no sense of priorities on this world? This is far more important than whatever it is you do for a living."
"Tell that to my boss, the man who practically lives in his cubicle and takes it as a personal insult whenever one of the people working under him so much as sneezes. Do you even know what it's like to have a real job?"
Eris's eyes narrowed. She had been tense before, but now she tightened up another four or five notches. "Of course I do. Were you under the impression that I do this for a living? My apologies for robbing you of your misconceptions, but I most certainly do have a "real job," as you so eloquently put it."
"Oh?"
"She's a high school English teacher," Tim said, and Dean felt as if his jaw had come unhinged.
"You're not the only one here with a full time job, Dean. We're all working adults, and we're all putting aside our jobs for the greater good. So would you just drop it already so we can get on with the important stuff?"
Still shocked at the idea that Eris was a teacher - he just couldn't see it, no matter how hard he tried - Dean nodded. This brought a smile to Kelli's face, and she nodded as well, looking quite satisfied. Then she turned to Eris, who pulled out a phone, though not the same one she had been carrying the day before.
"Kelli and Tim were with me last night when I found out and already know, so this is all for your sake. Feel free to ask questions if you don't understand anything, but please try to keep the useless comments to a minimum. This is serious, and we don't have time for fooling around."
She fiddled around with the phone a bit, but didn't make any move to show it to Dean. Instead, she started talking again.
"Let us for the moment pretend that you aren't in denial of everything that happened yesterday, all right? I know you would rather believe that it was all a dream, but that just won't work for what I need to tell you now. So if you could at least try to suspend your disbelief for a while, that would be most appreciated.
"Anyway, yesterday Tim told you about the holes in the barrier between our two worlds. What he didn't tell you about was how some of the holes are "connected" to each other, so that opening one hole will cause other ones connected to it to open as well. This can overcome the locking that you Guardians do, to the point where it can even open up holes that have otherwise been long closed off."
"...Lemme guess. The hole opening up yesterday opened up another one as well, so you have more people to chase down."
"Yes, actually, but it's not quite that simple. See, we Hunters keep track of which holes are connected to which other ones, and I believe you Guardians do as well. But we were unaware of this particular connection. And, unfortunately, the connected hole in this case happens to be located in the middle of a prison in my world. So not only do we have "some more people" to chase down, but a handful of hardened criminals."
Dean almost fell off his chair, even though he hadn't moved and was quite firmly seated. A thrill of fright ran through him, and for a moment he thought he must be dreaming... again. Even though he was starting to almost believe this stuff, he just couldn't handle something like this. Not being told that not only was Eris not going back because she had more people to chase around (and she would surely drag him along with her), but she wanted to go chasing after a bunch of criminals. She had to be going crazy. Either that, or he was.
"Wait a minute. Lemme get one thing straight here. I got the impression yesterday that people from "your world" actually know about and believe in the holes and all that crap. Right?"
Eris nodded. "Correct. It makes life much easier for us."
"So if that's the case, then why the hell did you people build a fucking prison on top of one of these holes? Or was the prison there before the hole was? And if that's the case, then why didn't you shut it down when the hole opened up?"
Eris frowned, and then sighed. "Actually, I believe the prison was deliberately built on top of a hole. However, at the time the prison was built, the hole was long inactive, and all of the other holes connected to it were as well. We had no idea until yesterday that this hole had connected itself to the one in the prison."
"...You built a prison on top of one of these holes that you seem to hate so much on purpose? Why would anyone want to do that?"
"Inactive holes, in small numbers, can have some benefits, especially when you need to control a large number of criminals with particularly strong magic or particularly dangerous criminals with even limited magic. The presence of a hole tends to drain the magical force from the area around it in my world, and that leaves people there with no source of new energy to fuel their magics. Prisons built on top of well controlled inactive holes are fairly common, since they give us a way to incarcerate the more difficult prisoners without having to build prisons that are prohibitively expensive and/or complicated and without having to employ almost as guards as there are prisoners just to counteract the magic. Basically, it was done out of practicality."
"Oh..." Dean found himself at a loss for words. He just didn't know what to say in response to that, since, in the context of all of this magic stuff, it actually made sense. That, of course, didn't make him feel any better about it.
"And now we have four of these prisoners to Hunt. One serial killer, two bank robbers, and a rapist. In order to lessen the damages here as much as possible, I suggest we go after the killer first. The others are not known to be dangerous, per se, especially since I hear the rapist spent a lot of time with the robbers back in the prison, and that seems to have calmed him down quite a bit. At least, that's what our contacts from the prison say."
Dean swallowed nervously and fidgeted in his seat. Bard, who had been lying just in front of Kelli, seemed to notice his discomfort and walked over to his side, pushing his head up under Dean's hand. Dean started to scratch the puppy's head, but it didn't do much to calm his nerves.
"You want me to help you chase down a killer? No fucking way."
"You don't have a choice in the matter. If it helps, she isn't likely to kill you. She doesn't kill Guardians, or humans, or even other demons for that matter. She might be tempted to go after me, but you should be relatively safe."
"Your killer's a girl? And does that mean she kills Hunters?"
"More like a woman. A very, very large woman who likes to rip apart her prey, according to her file. And no, her victims are not typically Hunters, but fey."
"Fey?" The same one word question came out of the mouths of Dean, Kelli, and Tim at exactly the same time. At that, Eris chuckled a little.
"You don't have fey here, much like we don't have full humans where I come from. They're a people, just like the Hunters, or the Guardians, or the demons, or the humans. I suppose you could think of them as humans, but with magic. We Hunters have a bit of fey blood, which is what gives us our magic. Unfortunately, if our killer happens to know that bit of information, she might choose to use it as a reason to try and kill me rather than just hurt me in an attempt to stay free."
"You're saying you're not human? You don't have orange eyes like that Xerrit guy." Dean stared at her for a few moments, trying to see if there was anything about her he had missed before. But, just as she had been when he first saw her, she just looked like a normal Asian woman with yellow-toned skin, black hair, and brown eyes.
"Not quite. I'm a Hunter. We Hunters are mostly human, with a bit of fey. Very few people are fully human in my world, since there are issues that most full humans have in my world. Besides, humans don't have magic."
The way she said those last words made it seem like she was stating a known truth, and that anyone who didn't know that what she said was right was completely and utterly insane. That said, Dean had no clue what she was talking about, and when he looked over to Kelli and Tim, they looked just as surprised and confused as he felt. For once, he wasn't the only one in the room who had no clue what was going on anymore. Unfortunately, that fact didn't make him feel any better.
Dean shrugged, not wanting to get into a discussion on the matter. "If you say so. So how exactly do you know all of this - about the prisoners getting through the hole, that is - in the first place?"