All Dressed Up and No Place to Go

Police initially arrived to the scene well before O'Zalia even showed up- however, due to the visceral nature of the crime scene, they more or less had it partitioned off and set up coverings so that no weather could disrupt the crime scene. We had no business there, but we did see a number of police cars heading towards the scene. O'Zalia still had blood from close contact with the barely-living victim of the Daemon's twisted party games on his hand, and concealed it with his illusion powers until the police cars passed by, but after they passed O'Zalia spent the next block and a half looking at his bloodstained hand, taking no other notice but to conceal it from any outsiders. I think what he saw was getting to him. I definitely know it was getting to me as well. It was, after all, a children's birthday party. However, at the time I was past nausea and revulsion and into the phase where I was itching to tear the responsible party apart.

The news of the grotesque massacre stretched at least halfway across the state, if not state- and nation-wide at this point, and so on top of the four or five shadowy figures that we only barely eluded, a plethora of news vans, political talking heads, agency bureaucrats, and I'd be willing to bet a handful of Fear-connected individuals like O'Zalia and yours truly, though we haven't seen any just yet. And of course they would appear. This was a particularly vicious crime. Only roughly one tenth of the backyard wasn't covered in someone's body parts or fluids, and the way in which they died and then their body parts used to add "decorations"... those who didn't know about Fears and Daemons would be morbidly repulsed and wondering what could have caused such a thing, and those who did know about Fears and Daemons would already have at least an inkling.

I ended up having to lead O'Zalia back to the motel I've been staying at for the past couple days. Well, I say leading him to it, but it's quite clear that he took the effort of reading my mind to get the location, because he was already going off in the right direction before I had time to get my bearings.

Well, the location was actually simple to get if you had even tried to keep points of reference and landmarks in mind.

That's what O'Zalia said, transcribed in nice, italicized letters for you, the reading audience.

It better not be an audience that you've attracted with this blog, Romeni.

Hey. Nobody calls me by the name. In any case- hang on, I just have to send out a nice good old fashioned STATIC SCREECH aaand I think O'Zalia's gotten the message- we haven't seen hide nor hair of the spies since reaching the motel, but O'Zalia remembered exactly where we lost them and where they were likely to lie in wait. O'Zalia sent up another illusion, one that changed our outward appearances and added a handful of nonexistent unrecognizable faces, blending us into the crowd. Between this, the concealment of the blood-stained hand, and his original illusions to ward off the unknown pursuers, O'Zalia was becoming particularly strained. In fact, he was becoming so strained that that static screech I sent out not even thirty seconds ago actually seemed to really affect him. Actually hang on I need to check this out.

Okay so apparently either I've gotten really good at my abilities or O'Zalia is really worn down from all the illusions but apparently I gave him a headache. Not a blistering or splitting one, but a relentless percussive throb. This is a bit of a shock, because in all the days I've known him back when we were hunting his freaky power vampire cousin and her cronies, O'Zalia never was incapacitated by a headache. In fact, I think I never saw him get a headache at all. He said something about the psychological imbalance that the nature of the massacre caused him combined with persistent use of his ability, so I'm going to take his word for it. But still.

Please don't tell them about the headache.

Don't worry, I'm not.

You liar.

Okay, Isaac's laying on the death glare now. I'm still not removing it though.

Essentially, what we have now are basic details. We know that the culprit is a Daemon. We know that the Daemon likes parties, celebrations, revelry, just a little too much. We know that this Daemon absolutely can and will hurt a child, and that this Daemon doesn't have enough vitamin fist-in-the-face in his diet. Other than that, we don't really have a veritable compendium on Daemon information. Daemon's are originated from Bloody Hell, and, up until the previously-mentioned asshat known as the Bloody Biker took over, Daemons were their own thing, completely separate from Fears, Demi-Gods, and any other unnatural creature out there. As such, we knew they existed, but we didn't ever really take the time to learn about them, because they were always just there, in Bloody Hell, literally attacking no one. Now the game has changed and we have only a meager amount of information on the group entirely, let alone any particular Daemon in general.

We're dealing with something that, even if it's not beyond our pay grade, is at least outside of our usual repertoire of huntable things. We're dealing with something that can assume a human form and then tear things apart in a body so disgusting and nightmarish that it would make the Fears blush. And we don't know the first thing about it. We don't know its powers, we don't know what its strengths are, what its weaknesses are, what it does other than massacre people on a whim. We don't even know its name. We're running in blind trying to fight something that we never usually fight, and that's bad. So, for the moment, we're going to try to seek out information. Isaac said that he has a number of contacts that he can get in touch with, so long as he's given enough time to recuperate. I suggested that I could get in touch with one of the people from the Archive who actually care to speak to me from time to time, although I admitted it was a risky gamble. Isaac wasn't completely opposed to the option, but he was opposed enough to tell me to save it as a last resort. Apparently he believes that one of his contacts has the information we need. But for now, he needs rest, and I'll be honest I do, too. It's been a long couple of days, and I've had very little sleep due to the events that went down.

So, basically, to-do list is as follows:

1.) Let Isaac recuperate from the last day or so. Same goes for me, I'm beat.

2.) Scrounge up any information on this Daemon that we can find, and, additionally, try to find out more about these sneaky little spies that think they can emulate my mental barrier to any degree of success.

3.) See if anybody else is willing to join in on the Daemon-hunting goodness.

4.) Find this Daemon and get some justice for the dozens that it massacred.

Aren't you forgetting something, Kord?

O'Zalia is standing right behind me right now, with something in his hand. He's motioning for me to take it and he's getting really annoyed that I'm turned away from the laptop right now and still typing and not even taking his okay okay fine sheesh I'm taking it now

oh.

Oh.

This is a flyer for a candlelight vigil for the deceased and the family and friends that outlived them. I see. It's set for a week from now.  So... do you want to pay your respects, Isaac?

Yes.

All right. A week from now.