Chapter 1: The Week That Wouldn't Die!

January, 1994

Splat! “Eeewww! You have got to be shitting me!”

This was the capper on the week from hell! Literally! As I stood there spitting brains and skull and what passed for blood in Gorgons, I was trying to remember the last time I killed something this messy. I was literally scraping the insides of the Gorgon’s skull off my face after a twenty minute fight during which the damned thing managed to slash open my torso and cut the tendon connecting my right thumb to my wrist, making that hand almost useless for the foreseeable future. I was once again going to have to go begging to the Order to get myself patched up because there was no damned way anyone else in my life was going to understand six parallel claw cuts running diagonally across my midriff.

And what the hell was a Gorgon doing in England in the middle of winter anyway?!

Gorgons live in the Med region, and for a reason. Snakes and cold don’t go well together. What was this one doing lurking about London, sending out its minions to kidnap pretty young boys from old blue blood families? About the only thing that worked this week was me finding them alive and releasing them into the caring arms of a monk who would see that they got back home with a minimum of questions about me. Then came the hunt for the leader of this little circus and damned if I wasn’t shocked all to hell when I spotted the scale in an alley not far from this reeking cesspit of a warehouse. A quick stop to a pay phone for some advice and then a detour to a place that sold high-end sunglasses.

The nicely heated warehouse was in a lovely little spot in London my foster father Eoin, Baron of Spencer, his chief of security Ambrose Devlin, and even Eoin’s son William had always warned me not to go into without Eoin-level security or Eoin would be trying to explain all of the dead thugs that would come out of the woodwork to try to grab me. Most of these warehouses were nothing more than huge shells that filled and emptied of cargoes of various legitimacies on a regular basis. The criminals decided what got stored there and the unions decided who worked there and since both intermarried with one another, they were pretty much the same thing. I tracked the scale’s owner to one of the more rundown warehouses and quickly disabled the four humans guarding the outside, swiftly opening the side door (in an attempt to keep the chill, foggy, and misting outside evening air where it belonged). I lurked around, taking out two more human guards until I located the Gorgon. There was very little cargo in the warehouse and the lighting was dim, so I could make out very little about her. I donned the new glasses and I was ready.

Until the war hammer I was using splatted her skull like an overripe melon. I was literally covered in the slimy ooze that seemed to serve as her blood. It was an almost rosy syrup consistency and the only consolation was that the damn stuff didn’t get in my eyes thanks to the 300£ (pound sterling), high mirror finish, high UV protection shades I picked up before hunting her down.

Looking down at her still twitching body, I could see where the myths and legends about Gorgons came from. If you ignored the scaly skin, fangs, claws, snakes for hair, and no legs, she had a curvy, sexy bod that would make Hugh Hefner stand to attention. Right before he turned to stone, of course. I put the glasses back on and turned over what remained of her head, squatting gingerly to close her eye lids. This was not Medusa, nor was it Stheno, and I was pretty sure it was not Euryale. Word was that they rarely left the Greek isles. This left me wondering which underling this was and why she was sent here to collect kids.

I was just about to contemplate calling the monks to clean this shit up when my hand and stomach began feeling a hundred times better. Looking at my right hand, I could see the skin knitting and feel the tendon healing. Likewise, when I lifted my shirt the claw marks looked a week old.

“Gorgon blood will do that for you,” an amused, rebuking voice said from behind me, tinged slightly with a German accent, the main warehouse door opening wide. The misty, roiling night began spilling into the cavernous space, bringing a chillness to the already warmly damp air that pervaded the musty edifice. “And you would not be so surprised if you studied your work as much as you did your hobbies. Were this an Emberá Chocó tribesman using the secretions of a poison dart frog, you would know what you were dealing with, despite the fact that it is unlikely you will ever need to know that.”

I sighed and wondered if this was God’s way of tormenting me until I accepted the Fate He had planned for me. “Hello, Karl. What brings you to sunny London?” I inquired with a voice accented upper class Londoner spiced with a remaining hint of Australian as I rose, still looking at my hand in wonder. It was completely healed. I ran the hand over my stomach and smiled up at his long frame. “Vacation?” No Order doctors for me. Yippee!

This time.

“Smile all you like, Mädchen. Had she not damaged your right hand, you probably would be either very dead or very sick right now,” he informed me direly. He walked over to the corpse and nudged the snake-like tail. “There is a reason we try to teach you what weapon to use fighting various different monsters. Gorgon blood can be either universally curative or highly poisonous. All depends on how and where it is gotten. Had that killing blow come from your right hand, it would have been searing and highly poisonous. As much as you disdain when someone compliments your waifish beauty, I doubt you would care to go through the rest of what little life you would have had from that point looking as if someone had dumped a vat of acid on your face.”

I took off the sunglasses and it was then that I notice he was not wearing his usual monk’s habit but was instead dressed in faded jeans and a black pullover under a black trench coat. “Are we undercover?” I inquired lightly, with a hint of irritation underneath. He knew I hated it when he (or anyone else, for that matter) scolded me.

That got a genuine smile and a headshake. “No, Liebchen, I was called when you found the boys and left them with Brother Andrew. They were worried you might find yourself wounded and be reluctant to call upon them after you dispatched the Gorgon. So they called me in hopes that a friendly face would make you see reason,” he replied sweetly, sparkling gray eyes looking into mine. “They recall you almost lost a hand the last time because you dislike going to them for medical aid following these forays into the Darkness.”

I grumbled and kicked the Gorgon irritably, bitterly thanking her dead ass under my breath. “Yeah, well ... if the idiots didn’t treat caring for my wounds like a religious experience, maybe I wouldn’t get so damn freaked by it! And while you are dispensing with the advice, why don’t you tell me what the hell I am going to do with this rotting piece of shit?”

He turned back to the warehouse door he had entered and whistled. Six strapping men with the looks of an Order clean-up crew about them entered. I say the looks because all of them were dressed like Karl. Two of them carried a roll of heavy tarp between them, which they quickly rolled out on the floor of the warehouse. Another held a thick leather bag with heavy buckles which was eased over the remains of the Gorgon’s head and securely fastened. They then rolled her body onto the tarp and quickly wrapped up her twelve-foot-long corpse. Unseen from one of the other men appeared canisters of some kind of chemical that they sprayed over every place where they could find blood, mine or hers.

They, of course, were all members of the Order. Or maybe it should be The Order! Whatever. They were kind of like the Roman Catholic Church’s version of some of those bastard cousins of the CIA that nobody knows the name of but who do a lot of the intelligence work for which the CIA gets credit (or blame). Most of the people I dealt with were monks, Karl included. As a matter of fact, I was only alive this long because Karl killed the monsters that tried to kill me when I was five, succeeding only in killing my mother before Karl killed them. I forgot all of that until Karl came back into my life when I was thirteen, thanks to a little memory block he put on me at the time. Now, I seem to see him every few months or so, when I find myself in a jam. I think the higher ups in the Order figure that, since I owed him from when I was younger, I would tolerate him easier than some of the local people.

And they were not wrong! At least Karl seemed to be able to forget why it was me killing Gorgons in dingy warehouses in neighborhoods tough guys stay out of instead of some other lucky soul.

“Dame Alice, will you accompany us back to the abbey?” one of them asked politely, his accent a fine upper-class English, eyeing the bloody clothes and still dripping war hammer. “Your clothes need to be burned and the weapon cleaned most thoroughly. And you were wounded.”

“Gorgon blood from the right side, Piers,” Karl muttered obscurely. Then he nodded to the war hammer hanging limply from my left hand. “You could douse that and her shoes, though. It looks enough like a sledge that she can carry it about, despite it looking odd that someone so scrawny waves it about like a broomstick. And I am sure her foster father would not appreciate what old Gorgon blood would do to the carpets when she gets home.”

The disguised monk snorted even as he held out a meaty hand for my hammer. “He won’t like what this crap will do much either! Make sure you swish through a puddle or three on your way home, Miss, or you will bleach footprints on Lord Spencer’s very nice carpeting!” he warned as he sprayed the entire length of the weapon with the chemical, making me frown at him direly. “Not to worry, Miss, it doesn’t have nearly the effect on leather as it does on cloth. Just make sure to clean and oil it well when you get home and then wipe it down and it should be fine.” With that, he handed me back the hammer and then motioned for me to lift my feet. He sprayed my leather boots down just as well as he had the hammer and then nodded to me again before rejoining the crew by the wrapped Gorgon corpse. They each grabbed a handhold and heaved, lifting the body up to their shoulders and began marching out of the warehouse.

Karl eyed me as if inspecting me and then looked over at the departing monks. My warm red jacket and the cream silk blouse beneath it were slashed across the midriff, bloody and exposing a lot of blood-smeared skin. The black jeans I was wearing, however, hid the blood that had run down my abdomen very nicely. The jacket and blouse both had blood at the right cuff, where the blood from my once-wounded hand had bled rather profusely. “Brother Jaime, your coat if you would, before you leave?” he called just as they were about to exit the warehouse.

We watched as he kept one hand on the corpse and slithered out of his coat with the other and then repeated with the other hand, dropping it on the ground behind him as they left. “Just make sure I get it back, Karl! The abbot is getting tired of replacing my clothes for being ruined in the line of duty.”