The Journeyman diaries, Sunday afternoon..........Into the vipers nest.
Later Sunday.
We were sat around a small plastic table, it had three uneven legs, not bad for a tripod table.
I could hear the familiar sounds of an orchestra's brass section because of Xanthic's aura singing at the back of my mind; but this was enhanced by a deeper beat coming off Ludo like a heat haze every time we made contact - this was difficult to avoid due to our uncomfortably close proximity to each other in the cramped café.
With a personal soundtrack in the background I began to think I was more concussed by my injuries than I first thought as I was sitting on a wonky wire seat at a table with a self confessed demon and something that looks like a rotting corpse (and smelled like one too) every time the shadow passed away from him and he was left in the light.
"Please explain to me what's going on." I asked. "Five minutes ago I was being held hostage by that thing there and almost murdered I might add, and now I'm having a cup of tea with him!"
"Captive." Said Ludo
"What?" I spluttered.
"Captive, not hostage." Said Ludo. "You're only a hostage if someone has requested a ransom. And I never did......"
Xanthic waved us to silence and lent forward gripping his small plastic cup filled with brown lukewarm water masquerading as tea.
"You were in no danger." He said.
"What do you mean no danger? " I erupted. "HE" I pointed at the thing introduced to me as Ludo who just leaned back in his chair with a sheepish grin and playing with his beard.
"He drugged me, took me from my bed, laid me out in God knows where, talking in some goth tongue and was going to eat my brain or something. "
What I wanted to do was run out of this noisy cramped café at the entrance of the hospital. The harsh electric lighting reflecting badly off all the white plastic tables hurting my eyes and forcing me to look upon the two figures in front of me and not try to look elsewhere and detach myself from the situation. One my saviour, the other my attacker but both my only oasis of colour in a sea of artificial light.
"Please Sit down my dear. I want to explain things to you and that is hard when you are drawing attention to yourself." Xanthic Sat looking at me and realised I had risen from my chair. I sat down, folded my arms tight across my chest and sliding as far away from Ludo as I could. O.K I was being a little childish but hey, I am the injured party around here.
''Long story short as we haven't much time here and I am needed elsewhere; so shut up, stop pouting like a fish and listen.''
Xanthic began one of his monologues, you can feel the weight of centuries within his wisdom but I always thought of lectures from my Dad when I screwed up as a kid.
"Ludo here is one of Us here on Earth and I trust him as far as I trust anyone born of Otherwhere, which usually isn't that far but Ludo is a Poenavore, an Under Fae. They are related to the other Extraxi in some mix or other that I and others are at a loss to understand, but it works for them."
"What the Hell is a fairy Deadmother doing in a bloody children's ward anyway; I thought the master plan was to hunt out these freaks and kick them back down the hole they crawled through." I hissed through my teeth as I tried to keep a smile aimed at Ludo.
"Not exactly and you know it, we encourage the alternation of plans not suited to my Lords and Masters wishes and if they do not agree then we kick them back down the hole, or the bits of them we can find if the Lords and Masters catch up with them first."
Xanthic shuffled in his seat and pulled at his lapels on his jacket and then settled into his seat to continue his input. He was centre of attention, a place he frequently aimed to be.
"We all have to eat you know." Said Ludo under his breath
I almost stood and punched him in the face (I'm sure the half rotten maggot filled flesh would have splattered under my blow and his brain would have fallen onto the plastic fake wood floor.) But I could hear the tempo of the musical aura of Xanthic start to pick up (usually a sign of imminent danger or He's getting annoyed - or both).
"Ludo is a Poenavore, they eat pain, feast on the suffering of agony. Many of their kind cause a lot of pain to people, animals or whatever they can get their claws into. The smaller ones, young ones are very fierce and rip into flesh and extract pain by the handful, but some grow old and cunning and have learnt the bitter sweet pain in mental suffering and cruelty of the mind. They whisper in the night that your wife has been unfaithful or your Boss will give your promised promotion to that Bitch in accounts. They start off small but by the time they finish with you there is nothing left, well sometimes a bloody heap under a bush, but mostly just a shell of a man too paranoid and stressed to function; And that's why I have to hunt them, not because of what they do but because they do not leave the soul of the man in a state it can be corrupted or coerced to discolour though acts and deeds suggested by other Others."
A spotted teenager pushed a brush along the floor leaving a wake of crumbs and napkins behind him, the general cleanliness improved by virtue of hiding the rubbish under the tables. As he came closer Xanthic eased sideways over the arm of his chair and whispered words never heard but felt deep and clear. The youth stopped, dropped the broom to the floor, stormed towards the teenage looking manager trying desperately to look middle aged, shoved him two handed against the counter, turned and thundered out of the café ripping his sweat stained uniform polo shirt and discarding it in the self service waste disposal stand alone point by the door.
"What was that all about?" Ludo asked. "I thought you had given up on playing with the mortals."
"Got to keep my hand in."
"That poor boy, what did you do to him? You haven't damned him by inciting violence have you?" I asked unbelieving my own eyes even though (like the majority of the clientele of the café) I had followed the whole performance from start to finish with my mouth open.
"The boy is an innocent, or as innocent as a teenager can be with that level of hormones coursing through his system. No, he wasn't my target, just had to light the blue touch paper, sit back and enjoy the show."
The manager-ette had lost his footing, grabbed the glass counter front and got one foot under him before slipping on a napkin dropped by a customer in a hurry to grad a coffee and doughnut and run, and then hit his forehead against the glass; A greasy mark now adorned the fresh cake sign. A laugh was quickly issued by the customers all around and then just as quickly muted when the red faced young man turned to face us all. He busied himself trying to get to his feet, pull himself together and look non-fussed over it. A young waitress rushed over and tried to assist get him upright and kissed him on the cheek; suddenly the mood changed, What started in shock and them humour turned into a group embarrassment. Another girl, this one from the back of the place ran over after hearing the commotion, took one look at the waitress who had just pulled away from the kiss and slapped her hard around the face. She then recoiled her hand and thumped who we soon found out to be her even sooner to be ex-boyfriend.
"Bastard!" Was the only clear word I could make out, but the additional slaps from both girls around the guys head rang out loud enough to carry the full meaning of the conversation.
Xanthic had started talking again and I reluctantly turned my attention away from the three way personal Armageddon.
Ludo saw me looking blank and pitched in. "I got to the point where I had lived amongst Humans for a century or two and made a few friends and........." He paused and looked up; behind him the fight was getting more intense and the heavily sweated shirt and tie wearing teen found that as the two girls were now focusing on each other he could pull back and crack open a bottle of cola displayed on the countertop. He looked at his watch and then walked away.
Ludo continued. "One of my friends had a child, I was asked to be a Godparent, I was shocked as you can imagine but I couldn't attend the Christening. Nothing to do with the church you understand as that doesn't work on our level but I had a holiday booked to go back home. When I got back all the celebration had turned sour, the little darling had been ill, meningitis, it hit hard and fast and every time I saw the baby after that it was drugged and in a troubled sleep or crying in the arms of its parents who were crying just as hard. There was no time and after that my friends were never the same." Ludo shuffled in his seat and gazed over each shoulder and lent in further. "I then thought I would help. I fed from them and eased their pain; taking enough to help but forcing myself not to take it all and break them. After that, I could never go back to my old diet of hunting the streets at night and influencing drunks to argue or fight, so I took a job as night porter here and sit with the children and make their time easier by removing their pain. I'm not expecting a medal but if I can help a child sleep at night then that's enough for me."
The story continued and it was explained by my two companions that Ludo was now rejected by the bigger two sides of the eternal light/dark, heaven/hell, yin/yang or them and us disagreement. The other Poenavore see him as a traitor to the old ways and the good Fae,angels and Angels see his actions as preying on the weak and innocent. Xanthic says he supports him because some of the innocents recover and grow up to be brought unto the dark where they would have been retired pure; but I like to think its because although he is a.........creature of the dark, he has a soft spot for us all really really deep down.
"So why the fuck did he have me in fucking place with all the voodoo crap?" I politely enquired of my employer. "That sure as hell didn't feel like he was working for the Angels in any way shape or hairy arsed form!"
"You were attacked...."Started Xanthic.
"I know, by him." I was struggling to keep my temper here, can you tell?
"No, " started Ludo louder than he meant, but with a force of nature under it that I slipped back in my chair chastised and shamed by the work (and magic behind it) like the time my Dad caught me sat on the kitchen worktop with my hand in the biscuit jar at midnight when I was seven - I thought I was being clever and sneaky but apparently I had turned on every light and bounced down the stairs loud enough to wake everyone up.
"There was another, I can feel them here, somewhere. They are taking too much, feeding off the vulnerable. I think they have been hurt, and hunting easier prey. It is dangerous, injured and willing to fight for survival It went for you and poisoned you. I was pulling its contamination from you or you would have died and it would have fed from your remaining time."
"And that's why we are here." Said Xanthic, elbows on the table now with hand under his chin. "That's why you have the blade. Its blessed and cursed and almost unique in this part of the world. It will prove invaluable in what we need to do, and soon."
I went cold, ice flowed through my spine. I had the knife, it was.......somewhere, so why didn't I take it with me when I went off on my solo adventure, I had looked though my stuff and........
The look on my face obviously alerted my companions as they both lent in and asked my almost simultaneously if I had the blade.
I had to confess that I did not, not on my person, and I couldn't remember where I had put it. Then it came to me, it was under my pillow, my pillow that was NHS issue and they had a tendency to change anything that had trails of dried blood running across them. I orated my concerns over the whereabouts of the knife thing Xanthic had given me. Xanthic jumped out of his seat, which fell backwards and bounced of a couple on the next table who looked over in surprise and disgust. Xanthic was already striding to the exit.
"We have to find the blade and retrieve it NOW." He said; Ludo and I were quickly gathering things from the table and leaving behind him.
As we left, the trails of brass and strings building tempo with Xanthic's mood falling away in our wake, the manager of the hospital café was on his mobile, presumably to head office or a more senior manager demanding the sacking of two of his staff fighting during a shift and in this action making his soul and the world a little bit of a darker place.
We were sat around a small plastic table, it had three uneven legs, not bad for a tripod table.
I could hear the familiar sounds of an orchestra's brass section because of Xanthic's aura singing at the back of my mind; but this was enhanced by a deeper beat coming off Ludo like a heat haze every time we made contact - this was difficult to avoid due to our uncomfortably close proximity to each other in the cramped café.
With a personal soundtrack in the background I began to think I was more concussed by my injuries than I first thought as I was sitting on a wonky wire seat at a table with a self confessed demon and something that looks like a rotting corpse (and smelled like one too) every time the shadow passed away from him and he was left in the light.
"Please explain to me what's going on." I asked. "Five minutes ago I was being held hostage by that thing there and almost murdered I might add, and now I'm having a cup of tea with him!"
"Captive." Said Ludo
"What?" I spluttered.
"Captive, not hostage." Said Ludo. "You're only a hostage if someone has requested a ransom. And I never did......"
Xanthic waved us to silence and lent forward gripping his small plastic cup filled with brown lukewarm water masquerading as tea.
"You were in no danger." He said.
"What do you mean no danger? " I erupted. "HE" I pointed at the thing introduced to me as Ludo who just leaned back in his chair with a sheepish grin and playing with his beard.
"He drugged me, took me from my bed, laid me out in God knows where, talking in some goth tongue and was going to eat my brain or something. "
What I wanted to do was run out of this noisy cramped café at the entrance of the hospital. The harsh electric lighting reflecting badly off all the white plastic tables hurting my eyes and forcing me to look upon the two figures in front of me and not try to look elsewhere and detach myself from the situation. One my saviour, the other my attacker but both my only oasis of colour in a sea of artificial light.
"Please Sit down my dear. I want to explain things to you and that is hard when you are drawing attention to yourself." Xanthic Sat looking at me and realised I had risen from my chair. I sat down, folded my arms tight across my chest and sliding as far away from Ludo as I could. O.K I was being a little childish but hey, I am the injured party around here.
''Long story short as we haven't much time here and I am needed elsewhere; so shut up, stop pouting like a fish and listen.''
Xanthic began one of his monologues, you can feel the weight of centuries within his wisdom but I always thought of lectures from my Dad when I screwed up as a kid.
"Ludo here is one of Us here on Earth and I trust him as far as I trust anyone born of Otherwhere, which usually isn't that far but Ludo is a Poenavore, an Under Fae. They are related to the other Extraxi in some mix or other that I and others are at a loss to understand, but it works for them."
"What the Hell is a fairy Deadmother doing in a bloody children's ward anyway; I thought the master plan was to hunt out these freaks and kick them back down the hole they crawled through." I hissed through my teeth as I tried to keep a smile aimed at Ludo.
"Not exactly and you know it, we encourage the alternation of plans not suited to my Lords and Masters wishes and if they do not agree then we kick them back down the hole, or the bits of them we can find if the Lords and Masters catch up with them first."
Xanthic shuffled in his seat and pulled at his lapels on his jacket and then settled into his seat to continue his input. He was centre of attention, a place he frequently aimed to be.
"We all have to eat you know." Said Ludo under his breath
I almost stood and punched him in the face (I'm sure the half rotten maggot filled flesh would have splattered under my blow and his brain would have fallen onto the plastic fake wood floor.) But I could hear the tempo of the musical aura of Xanthic start to pick up (usually a sign of imminent danger or He's getting annoyed - or both).
"Ludo is a Poenavore, they eat pain, feast on the suffering of agony. Many of their kind cause a lot of pain to people, animals or whatever they can get their claws into. The smaller ones, young ones are very fierce and rip into flesh and extract pain by the handful, but some grow old and cunning and have learnt the bitter sweet pain in mental suffering and cruelty of the mind. They whisper in the night that your wife has been unfaithful or your Boss will give your promised promotion to that Bitch in accounts. They start off small but by the time they finish with you there is nothing left, well sometimes a bloody heap under a bush, but mostly just a shell of a man too paranoid and stressed to function; And that's why I have to hunt them, not because of what they do but because they do not leave the soul of the man in a state it can be corrupted or coerced to discolour though acts and deeds suggested by other Others."
A spotted teenager pushed a brush along the floor leaving a wake of crumbs and napkins behind him, the general cleanliness improved by virtue of hiding the rubbish under the tables. As he came closer Xanthic eased sideways over the arm of his chair and whispered words never heard but felt deep and clear. The youth stopped, dropped the broom to the floor, stormed towards the teenage looking manager trying desperately to look middle aged, shoved him two handed against the counter, turned and thundered out of the café ripping his sweat stained uniform polo shirt and discarding it in the self service waste disposal stand alone point by the door.
"What was that all about?" Ludo asked. "I thought you had given up on playing with the mortals."
"Got to keep my hand in."
"That poor boy, what did you do to him? You haven't damned him by inciting violence have you?" I asked unbelieving my own eyes even though (like the majority of the clientele of the café) I had followed the whole performance from start to finish with my mouth open.
"The boy is an innocent, or as innocent as a teenager can be with that level of hormones coursing through his system. No, he wasn't my target, just had to light the blue touch paper, sit back and enjoy the show."
The manager-ette had lost his footing, grabbed the glass counter front and got one foot under him before slipping on a napkin dropped by a customer in a hurry to grad a coffee and doughnut and run, and then hit his forehead against the glass; A greasy mark now adorned the fresh cake sign. A laugh was quickly issued by the customers all around and then just as quickly muted when the red faced young man turned to face us all. He busied himself trying to get to his feet, pull himself together and look non-fussed over it. A young waitress rushed over and tried to assist get him upright and kissed him on the cheek; suddenly the mood changed, What started in shock and them humour turned into a group embarrassment. Another girl, this one from the back of the place ran over after hearing the commotion, took one look at the waitress who had just pulled away from the kiss and slapped her hard around the face. She then recoiled her hand and thumped who we soon found out to be her even sooner to be ex-boyfriend.
"Bastard!" Was the only clear word I could make out, but the additional slaps from both girls around the guys head rang out loud enough to carry the full meaning of the conversation.
Xanthic had started talking again and I reluctantly turned my attention away from the three way personal Armageddon.
Ludo saw me looking blank and pitched in. "I got to the point where I had lived amongst Humans for a century or two and made a few friends and........." He paused and looked up; behind him the fight was getting more intense and the heavily sweated shirt and tie wearing teen found that as the two girls were now focusing on each other he could pull back and crack open a bottle of cola displayed on the countertop. He looked at his watch and then walked away.
Ludo continued. "One of my friends had a child, I was asked to be a Godparent, I was shocked as you can imagine but I couldn't attend the Christening. Nothing to do with the church you understand as that doesn't work on our level but I had a holiday booked to go back home. When I got back all the celebration had turned sour, the little darling had been ill, meningitis, it hit hard and fast and every time I saw the baby after that it was drugged and in a troubled sleep or crying in the arms of its parents who were crying just as hard. There was no time and after that my friends were never the same." Ludo shuffled in his seat and gazed over each shoulder and lent in further. "I then thought I would help. I fed from them and eased their pain; taking enough to help but forcing myself not to take it all and break them. After that, I could never go back to my old diet of hunting the streets at night and influencing drunks to argue or fight, so I took a job as night porter here and sit with the children and make their time easier by removing their pain. I'm not expecting a medal but if I can help a child sleep at night then that's enough for me."
The story continued and it was explained by my two companions that Ludo was now rejected by the bigger two sides of the eternal light/dark, heaven/hell, yin/yang or them and us disagreement. The other Poenavore see him as a traitor to the old ways and the good Fae,angels and Angels see his actions as preying on the weak and innocent. Xanthic says he supports him because some of the innocents recover and grow up to be brought unto the dark where they would have been retired pure; but I like to think its because although he is a.........creature of the dark, he has a soft spot for us all really really deep down.
"So why the fuck did he have me in fucking place with all the voodoo crap?" I politely enquired of my employer. "That sure as hell didn't feel like he was working for the Angels in any way shape or hairy arsed form!"
"You were attacked...."Started Xanthic.
"I know, by him." I was struggling to keep my temper here, can you tell?
"No, " started Ludo louder than he meant, but with a force of nature under it that I slipped back in my chair chastised and shamed by the work (and magic behind it) like the time my Dad caught me sat on the kitchen worktop with my hand in the biscuit jar at midnight when I was seven - I thought I was being clever and sneaky but apparently I had turned on every light and bounced down the stairs loud enough to wake everyone up.
"There was another, I can feel them here, somewhere. They are taking too much, feeding off the vulnerable. I think they have been hurt, and hunting easier prey. It is dangerous, injured and willing to fight for survival It went for you and poisoned you. I was pulling its contamination from you or you would have died and it would have fed from your remaining time."
"And that's why we are here." Said Xanthic, elbows on the table now with hand under his chin. "That's why you have the blade. Its blessed and cursed and almost unique in this part of the world. It will prove invaluable in what we need to do, and soon."
I went cold, ice flowed through my spine. I had the knife, it was.......somewhere, so why didn't I take it with me when I went off on my solo adventure, I had looked though my stuff and........
The look on my face obviously alerted my companions as they both lent in and asked my almost simultaneously if I had the blade.
I had to confess that I did not, not on my person, and I couldn't remember where I had put it. Then it came to me, it was under my pillow, my pillow that was NHS issue and they had a tendency to change anything that had trails of dried blood running across them. I orated my concerns over the whereabouts of the knife thing Xanthic had given me. Xanthic jumped out of his seat, which fell backwards and bounced of a couple on the next table who looked over in surprise and disgust. Xanthic was already striding to the exit.
"We have to find the blade and retrieve it NOW." He said; Ludo and I were quickly gathering things from the table and leaving behind him.
As we left, the trails of brass and strings building tempo with Xanthic's mood falling away in our wake, the manager of the hospital café was on his mobile, presumably to head office or a more senior manager demanding the sacking of two of his staff fighting during a shift and in this action making his soul and the world a little bit of a darker place.
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