------------ ----------------------- Twenty minutes later . . . ------------ ----------------------- In all their history, the Strays had never been so chaotic. People were running all over the Den looking for Jane, while Arthur tried putting Red and the other victims of the swarm back together again. There were four more dead and a dozen wounded. Between the Swarm's attack and that of the Hellspawn, the ranks of the Strays had been decimated. There war leader was down, Jane was missing, and there were a lot of people feeling helpless. Arthur was sweating like a racehorse after its second Kentucky Derby. He had stabilized the other wounded, but Red had been hit hard. He had worked insect corpses out of her body and closed up all the wounds, but she had lost a great deal of blood and he didn't have the energy to accelerate her replenishing. He wasn't going to ask for an energy boost from anyone, because no one had anything to . . . "Arthur," Natasha started. She was sitting acro

------------- ------------------------ In the Shoggoth's layer . . . ------------- ------------------------ Jane was curled up in a ball somewhere in the darkness. She had run out of tears, breath and prayers many minutes earlier. She no longer believed that Red was going to tear through the surrounding blackness on a magnificent steed adorned with shining armor and rescue Jane. There was no light . . . only the Dark One. The Dark One was almost intoxicated. The girl was on the edge and beginning to fall slowly into the abyss. It had been whispering into her mind . . . telling her stories of agony and ecstasy intertwined. It teased her with false hopes, then slammed her with fear. It promised her relief, then delivered a mental image of Red's corpse rotting on the subway platform. It knew that Jane could no longer tell the truth from the lies, and in fact no longer cared. A problem with immortality is the belief that one is untouchable . . . that one is more powerful and wiser

------------ ----------------- Several days later . . . ------------ ----------------- Jane was lying in Red's bed, as she had been for days. She hadn't spoken to anyone, and barely even seemed to notice when Arthur came in to work his healing on her. She felt a shame so deep it could swallow the world, for the things she had almost done. Red had requisitioned a cot and had taken to recuperating there, not wanting to disturb Jane but refusing to leave her side. Out around the broken council table, there were only a dozen Strays left. The rest had died in recent conflicts or had left, their hearts heavy with remorse but their souls filled with doubt. They had signed on to help take on gangs and drug traffickers and even demonic crime in the streets. They hadn't planned on tangling with the servant of an Elder God. Tarloh, Talia, Arthur, Michael, Matthew, Mindy, Shield, Nathaniel, Anya, Robbie, Chris and Johan were trying to decide what they should do next. Natasha had postponed h

Hi guys, I would first like to apologize to all of you for disappearing for so long, thank you to all of you who were patient with me. I will try to do better and keep posting. Anyway enjoy ☺️-------- -----------------------A few minutes later . . .-------- -----------------------Tarloh's hand was over his mouth, trying to conceal his grin as Talia looked in a slightly-cracked mirror, checking on the status of her nose. Arthur had given it a once over and determined it wasn't broken, but it looked like hell."I can't believe she hit me," Talia said for the millionth time."She's Red!" Tarloh chuckled. "You went in planning on pushing her buttons, yet you're surprised at what happened when your plan worked?""But did she have to hit me so hard? Why not just a friendly punch in the arm? Isn't that what schoolyard chums do?"Her friend and lover laughed a full-throated laugh. "Hey, think of it this way. If I'd said that stuff to her, she would've hit me a lot harder!""Small comfort,"

Red was a lycanthrope . . . a powerful creature whose physical existence shifted between her human form and a half-human, half puma entity. She wasn't meant for or fond of enclosed spaces. The inside of a passenger train definitely counted as "enclosed." But nevertheless, she found herself sandwiched between an elderly gentleman who smelled faintly of mothballs and a pretty young woman with her arm in a sling. It was this latter creature . . . Jane . . . who had brought Red to this place.A few months earlier, Red had simply been worried about hellspawn activity in the underworld of Springfield, California. Since then, Jane had showed up, helped save Red's brother (another lycanthrope), manifested a powerful magical Talent, been almost killed twice and had fought an ancient and evil creature, almost losing her life and sanity in the process. Jane had come to the Strays a fragile and breakable creature, and the Shoggoth had preyed upon that and fed upon her growing mental instability