Victory !

Thursday Morning, Early, June 19

Ebony was hidden in the morgue of the Eastern Regional Medical Center, North Philadelphia. She was watching the skeletal creature tear into one of the corpses there. It didn't stay for long, and turned into a mist, and seeped away.

Abu had given the group a Detect Risen Magic figurine a few days ago; it would vibrate when near anything with Risen magic. Luckily, Ebony was carrying this, and she used its vibrations to follow the mist. The mist seeped down a drain, and under the road. This allowed Ebony to track the thing from above ground, up on the road.

She texted the party, and they all soon arrived on the spot, and they all followed Ebony and her figurine.

After a few hours, at 6 am, it stopped, under a large intersection, the junction of North Fifth Street and Fairmount Avenue.

"Now we wait," Ebony said.

Thursday Sunrise 5:32 am, June 19

Sledge phoned STRIKE FORCE and updated Lieutenant Prospero. He arranged for the Police to cordon off the intersection. Detective Noble arrived to join them as well. According to her City Hall blue-prints, there was a large sewerage pumping station here; it was the confluence of several of the cities major sewer lines. The tunnels would be tall and walkable,

Thursday Morning, Late, June 19

They all went down a manhole down the street from the centre of the street to the south, armed with one air compressor, their firearms and several flashlights.

Down the tunnel, they came across a coffin, then another. Sledge couldn't help himself, and opened them both. One had a wispy haired old man, the other a healthy man in a suit.

Sledge searched them both and found wallets full of cash.

"Best let sleeping dogs lie," whispered Detective Noble.

He left the money.

They moved a bit closer to the pumping station, and came across more coffins. Some old wood, some stone, but most were normal coffins. There were 28 in all: three were stone, and seven were locked (from the inside, Ebony checked).

"But why are there no ghouls?" said Detective Noble. "Vamps never leave their coffins unprotected during the day. It doesn't make sense."

Abu's Detect Risen Magic figurine was now held by Jacob, who was upon the road standing in the middle of the intersection.

They guessed that the creature was hiding in one of the coffins, so did some triangulation, with the figurine, to try to narrow down which one.

They got it down to four coffins, so carefully opened each one: a nine year old boy, a woman, an old man, and a street thug in a hoody.

They narrowed this down further by lifting each coffin, in turn, and taking the coffin down the passage, to see if the figurine would stop vibrating. (It only had two modes: vibrating and not; at ten paces, it stopped dead.)

The lady vampire's coffin seems to be the likely candidate. They opened the lid again, and stepped back. Suddenly, she sat up ... well, she was shoved up. The creature was lying under her, and it sprang up.

Battle was met!

Everyone opened up with what they had: Sledge's twin .357 magnums, Detective Noble's police special, Mort's Glock 17, Ebony's oil. The enraged creature launched into Sledge as he blasted away, and it bashed and clawed him. Then it had a go at Ebony. It was so fast and quick, and it had to be hit in its head, that only Sledge could inflict reasonable damage on it. Noble got in a few desultory hits. Mort didn't even try. Ebony's oil was also very effective, and the creature roared and screamed, as it burned. And burned. And burned.

Finally, the creature collapsed, burning, and the group then carefully pounded the charred skeleton into powder. And then pounded the powder some more. And kept pounding it until there was no piece larger than soot.

Detective Noble had a specimen plastic bag and she swept all the dust into this. Then rinsed the sooty stain with water (from the open sewer) and kept that too.

"Now, I'll get some stakes," said Mort. "And kill all these vamps."

"No you won't," said Detective Noble. "Not all vampires are evil by definition. And we have no evidence than any of these ones are."

Mort fumed.

"And furthermore," she continued. "I think this is Oberon's claimed area. And if not, it is Defacto's area. We don't want either of them riled. So, we will put everything back to exactly how we found them."

So they carefully tidied the coffins up, and put them back to how they were.

Thursday Afternoon, June 19

They gave the ashes, and the sticky sooty paste to Abu. He put them into a canopic jar, and sealed it with a ritual and a hieroglyph.

"Safer to destroy this before nightfall," he mused.

Then, with police escort, they took the jar to the Sandmeyer Steel Company. There was an industrial iron furnace here. Abu tossed the canopic jar into the mix, and the party gleefully watched the jar, soot and ash be vapourized.

"Now we can say it is gone," said Abu.

Thursday Sunset 8:32 pm, June 19

Mina arrived to the apartment.

"I hear you finally did it," she said.

Nods all around.

Mina handed Sledge a briefcase.

"A token of my appreciation," she said.

Sledge opened it. It was $150,000 in small bills.

Thursday Midnight, June 19

Ebony then offered to perform with Mina in one of her nightly rituals.

Mina smiled enigmatically and nodded: "But, of course."

So Ebony undressed, and knelt with two other girls and Mina. Mina opened Ebony's neck and used her blood to paint around the circle and on the walls of the sarcophagus. Part-way through the ritual, Mina bit into her own wrist; black blood welled-up, and Mina fed it to Ebony.

Friday Sunrise 5:32 am, June 20

Mort snuck out alone, just after sunrise. He went to the intersection where they fought the mummy yesterday, and quietly slipped into the sewers. He was carrying a large bundle of stakes.

The coffins were all there, in the same positions. Mort then went methodically through each one, staking them all. He didn't open (or even touch) the seven locked coffins, but that still left twenty-one vampires destroyed. Two turned into aged partial skeletons, most into dried skeletons, and some into fresher corpses.
[ Unlike Buffy vampires, Twilight vampires and True Blood vampires, WoD vampires, when "killed", turn into the age the corpse would be, had it not become a vampire. So old ones turn into dust, and young ones into fresh corpses. ]

The Hunt Continues

Monday Morning, Early, June 16

Mina arrived at 4 am, with another young lady.

Jacob asked her "Is there any effect that Sledge will suffer for giving Oberon a feed."

"Oh yes," said Mina tactlessly. "It will shadow his soul."

But STRIKE FORCE had more pragmatic views.

"The taint of your souls," said Lieutenant Prospero. "Is a small price to pay for the power of the Nexus. This thing ought to be able to help us all."

Mina opened the neck of her lady companion, and used her blood to draw some more symbols on the walls of the tomb, in the sarcophagus itself, and inside the shroud circle on the floor.

Jacob asked what they were for, but she just mentioned "shroud augmentation".

Monday Morning, June 16

Mort researched all the places in town he could think of that might have reason to hold bodies or body parts. Then spent the morning phoning every one to see if anything mysterious had happened last night.

Sledge, Ebony and Jacob were already members of STRIKE FORCE, but Lieutenant Prospero wanted the entire group to join. Mort refused, despite the substantial benefits one accrues for belonging.

Monday Afternoon, June 16

Sledge's mum

Sledge's mum was a Dooley, and she wanted a "good catholic wedding" for Sledge's marriage to
Safiya. So, Sledge and Safiya went to Sledge's mum's local church. The priest, Father Patrick Maynard, was very happy to marry the two, provided that Safiya become a fully-fledged catholic, of course. Safiya agreed, so the priest enrolled her in a Wednesday night Catholic Christian Doctrine course.

"'Indoctrination', more like," muttered Jacob.

The last session of CCD would be on July 23, and Safiya would be confirmed on the following Sunday (July 27) . The marriage could take place after that.

"When the paint has dried" quipped the priest.

Sledge booked him for Tuesday July 29.

Monday Night, June 16

A formal agreement was reached with Mina.

Each day, Abu would have access to the tomb, to spend as much time as he likes documenting and studying the contents.

Each night, Mina would have it for her rituals.

Tuesday Morning, June 17

Mort got a call from the Eastern Regional Medical Center. One of the corpses down in the cancer morgue had been disturbed.

Wednesday Morning, June 18

Lieutenant Prospero told the party that the police had been contacted by the Blue Pine Clinic. One of its patients had died last night, and had been stored on premises for the undertaker to collect next day. In the morning, it was discovered that the body had been ripped apart, and the stomach was missing.

The Blue Pine Clinic was about one kilometre from the Eastern Regional Medical Center.

Wednesday Afternoon, June 18

Safiya had her first CCD lesson. She began to ask Sledge all kinds of questions, none of which he knew the answer to:

• "Catholics regularly bow to, pray to, and kiss the feet of statues of Mary, yet the second commandment says not to bow to idols"
• "Matthew 6:7 says 'And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do', yet doing penance with the rosary is what else but meaningless repetition?"
• "Timothy 3:2 says 'A priest or bishop, then, must be above reproach, be the husband of one wife, be temperate, be prudent, be respectable...' yet the Pope says Catholic priests must be celibate. Who is right?"

Wednesday Sunset 8:32 pm, June 18

Mort had the original electric air compressor that they were hiring from the dive shop. They hired three more compressors, one each for Sledge, Ebony and Jacob. This would allow them to stake out four places at once.

After last night's clinic raid, they had four likely places where the mummy could strike, all within two to three kilometres of the Blue Pine clinic:

1. Penn State Organ bank
2. Eastern Regional Medical Center
3. Blue Pine Clinic
4. Eastern River Hospice

STRIKE FORCE arranged the necessary warrants, permissions and paperwork so that the party could camp the night in each place: Mort went to the organ bank, Ebony the medical centre, Jacob the clinic and Sledge the hospice.

Thursday Morning, Early, June 19

At 3am, Ebony was crouched in a small cupboard in the morgue of the Eastern Regional Medical Center. She heard a loud bang. So, she stealthy crept out to see. Across the room, was a charred skeleton with glowing eyes, and with fresh organs peeping between its ribs. It was tearing into one of the corpses from the body drawers, with loud meaty rips, and wet slopping noises.

She silently texted the others in the group, then sat back and watched.

The Nexus

Sunday Evening, June 15

"We need to get Abu down here," said Mort. "To identify all these magical hieroglyphs."

Abu was promptly phoned, and said he would be there within an hour.

Detective Noble started the grisly task of sealing the crime scene. Now that supernatural activity had ceased, she phoned in the mundane CSI guys.

Outside, the sun set.

Almost immediately, the charred pieces of the mummy skeleton melted into mist and floated up the stairs and through the ruined door. The party frantically followed it. The air compressor pump set was still sitting in Mort's hearse, so they couldn't try the mist-sucking trick. The mist got into the bathroom, and went down the bath drain.

"Damn damn damn," they swore.

Suddenly Mina was there, arriving in her usual enigmatic vampire fashion. She wandered around the basement looking at things.

"This is fascinating," she said. "These hieroglyphs and the Risen magic has made this area into a Nexus. A source of great power. It would take me almost a year to make something like this. I should like to use it."

"What about Oberon?" asked Ebony. "Doesn't he 'own' this part of the city?"

Mina looked at her.

"Yes. 'What about Oberon?' indeed. He would dearly love this. So would all other creatures of the Veil: the werewolves, sidhe, mages, demons, ghosts, sin-eaters, even the Promethean." She paused for thought. "I shall shroud it. Then they will not be able to find it."

Before the party or Detective Noble could reply, Mina was gone.

Abu bin Laden then arrived. His jaw dropped as he surveyed the place.

"This is a tomb!" he cried. "A fully-configured tomb. Look! See the shabtis, the scarabs; those bodies are lain out in the five symmetries. The canopic jars will contain their organs."

Abu was in happy-land as he started taking pictures of the tomb and making extensive notes. Mort followed his progress. Abu explained that the magical hieroglyphs (the ones that could not be photographed) can be copied, but that the copies must be kept 'a hand-span' apart, else they fade. He also pointed out that if you have one tattooed or drawn upon you, as the party had done with the cold hieroglyph, then you age one year per day. Mort pointed out that the Khalfanis, and Safiya and Osiris had the hieroglyphs on their bodies 'for ages', yet they hadn't aged. Abu could not explain why.

Sunday Night, June 15

Mina arrived, an hour later, with four girls in their early twenties. She barged in past Abu and started to set things up on the floor surrounding the sarcophagus. Abu protested, and she fixed him a feral gaze, and he withdrew silently. Then the four girls undressed, and knelt at the four corners. Mina bit each one in the neck, and didn't seal the wounds. The blood ran copiously down their fair bodies, and Mina used it to draw an unbroken circle around the sarcophagus. Mina then drew symbols in blood on her own naked body, and writhed in the centre (in the casket itself). After some minutes of orgasmic throes (the boys in the party watched in rapt lustful fascination), she stood up, and sealed the girls' wounds (with a lick).

"The Shroud is done," Mina said, as she dressed again. "This place is now protected from magical scrying. If that circle is broken, the Shroud will cease, and I will know, and I will kill whoever broke it. "

Mina collected her girls: "I strongly suspect that Oberon does not know of this Nexus. See that he does not. He now can not scry past the Shroud, and he will not want to send his ghouls* to cross the police lines. So you have some time before he will dare send anyone. I want you lot to take on the rent of this apartment. Keep it as your nexus. As your group Strike Force's nexus. As this Egyptologist's nexus. As my nexus." She tossed them a bundle of money ($1500).

"Oberon owns this region of the city," Mina went on. "This means any Veil activity here needs his approval. You are all Veil-aware, so that means if you take this as your apartment, as you are about to do, then you will need to contact him and get clearance. Again, I stress, he must not be told of the Nexus, the Shroud, nor my interest. I'll be back at 4 [ am ]." Mina then left.

The CSI guys arrived. Detective Noble set them to work and they tidied the place up, and hauled off all the body pieces.

"We can maintain the crime scene status for tonight, and tomorrow night, before it appears suspicious," said Noble.

"I guess I better go see Oberon," said Sledge.

Oberon was in the Khyber Pass Bar & Grill, in his offices upstairs. Sledge went up and spoke to him. Oberon was all smiles and teeth, and seemed genuinely touched that the party (the "cell" as he kept calling them) was seeking his permission.

"Yes, you can have that apartment," Oberon said. "The 'rent' is one drink a week. I will not kill the volunteer, just a single drink. Paid in advance"

Sledge said he needed to speak with the group as to whether this price was okay. And would return at midnight with an answer.

Sledge, Ebony and Jacob were happy with this 'rent'.
The vampire haters in the party: Mort and Juan, were not. Neither was Theo.
STRIKE FORCE sided with the ayes.

They argued long into the evening.

PRO: The ends justify the means. The powers of the Nexus help us immensely.

CON: Don't deal with vampires (Oberon). Don't let vampires use the Nexus (Mina).

Sunday Midnight, June 15

It was decided: Detective Noble brought in a "willing volunteer" from the police station, a young black girl Tyra, and gave her to Sledge. Tyra was on a charge for possession, and was happy to volunteer because all charges would be dropped. Sledge took her to Oberon, and he had his drink; he took a litre of her blood and sealed the wound. His glamour ensured that she didn't remember the ordeal at all.


* = A WoD ghoul is not the corpse-eating creature of lore, but is the term for vampire slaves. The vampire feeds his ghoul some blood, and then has a psychic connection.
Vampires have ghouls. Werewolves have "nonces". Sidhe have "fae bitches". Geists and Demons have "the possessed". Promethean have "Igors". Mages have "slaves". Risen have "the loyal".

Dave Dobbyn's song "Loyal" is about a Risen slave.

The End?

Saturday Afternoon June 14

Sledge and Safiya were kept unconscious with chloroform ("not chlorophyll" quipped Jacob wryly) while Mort attempted some skin excoriation to remove the playing-card-sized "loyalty" hieroglyph tattoos, (the top tattoo, a permanent version of the one Mort had drawn on Sledge).

Mort cut down to the fascia, with the scalpel from his med bag, in a neat square, and peeled the sheets of skin off. Then he tried the awkward task of stretching the surrounding skin back over the wound, and suturing it closed.

Ebony stayed and guarded the unconscious Sledge and Safiya, while Mort and Jacob took hand-sketched drawings of the four hieroglyph tats, and the fifth one of Safiya's, to Abu. He identified the hieroglyphs as Loyalty, Commune with the Dead, Speak Egyptian and Sixth Sense. The extra one was Cold.

Saturday Night June 14

Poor Sledge and Safiya were kept locked up in Mort's safe-house all night. They were in utter agony from the cuts, and were kept heavily sedated.

By the morning, the magical hold that the creature had over Sledge had waned, and he was back to his old self again. Safiya too. She turned out to be a Cairo student. Her and her brother, Osiris, had been kidnapped and bewitched months ago.

Sunday Morning June 15

As soon as it was light, Ebony checked out the Elfrith Alley mummy apartment. It appeared normal, however the solicitation of prostitutes (that Ebony was with two days before) was no longer there; not one. Ebony inquired around the local shops. The hos had been seen only last night.

Ebony quickly checked the parking garage and, sure enough, the Chevy Caprice was there. She contacted the party and they decided to call the Prospero and STRIKE FORCE.

Detective Noble arrived with some extra cops, and they checked out the site of the hos. The area had recently been sluiced down. Noble brought in the forensic boys. They found a severed finger up on one of the internal walls. It had a finger-print and was identified as one of the call-girls.

They updated Noble on everything else, including the magical tattoos and the mummy apartment, and asked for heavy help (like a swat team or a Special Patrol Group). Noble and Prospero were loathe to do this.

"When you have large police action against the Supernatural," Detective Noble said. "You get big breaking of the Veil problems. The officers that survive end up with mental scars which haunt them for the rest of their lives. Or else they go insane."

"But," she added. "We can help you in other ways."

Noble gave Sledge and Safiya some healing salves (which all but cured the frightful dermatological mess that Mort had inflicted on their backs), and she gave Ebony an Incendiary Stick. This looked like a common-or-garden wooden police baton, but if you twisted the handle a certain way, it would burst open and burn with the intense heat of white phosphorus.

"But don't let a vampire catch you with this," she warned. "Else they will kill you - utterly."

Sunday Afternoon June 15

Mort experimented with the Cold hieroglyph. He copied it onto Ebony's back using a permanent marker pen. And then poured some Nile water onto it, as suggested by Abu. Ebony found that if she concentrated on the drawing, then she could stick her hand into the freezer and the cold didn't affect her.

So Mort drew Cold tats on everyone with the marker pen. They worked on everyone except Juan.

Sunday Late Afternoon June 15

Wanting to do it before dark, they decided to go in to the apartment.

The apartment door was cold to the touch. Everyone activated their Cold hieroglyphs, and then Ebony picked the lock.

The entire room was cold. There were two skeletal dogs there. They attacked, but Theo made short work of them with his katana. No sign of any people, so they approached the basement door. It turned out to be solid iron and had been bolted and reinforced. They couldn't make any progress.

Lieutenant Prospero was phoned. He sent a squad car to secure the area, and sent Detective Noble with a police-issue hydraulic battering ram.

It was now 90 minutes before sunset.

A few solid bashes smashed the door frame, and the solid iron door tumbled down the stairs into the basement. In went some molotovs, which made fire and choking smoke.

Gun shots came from within.

Sledge came to the fore, and he shot at the shadowy figure down there. Sledge took some wounds, but the shooter was dropped. It was Dr Khalfani ("Mr Fez"). He was hiding behind a huge stone sarcophagus. Mrs Khalfani was cowering in the corner.

The room was bedecked like an Egyptian tomb: the huge stone sarcophagus centre stage, with hieroglyphs all over the walls, complete with canopic jars, shabtis, scarabs, and other funerary items ... and the pieces of twelve prostitutes scattered about. The place was also freezing cold, with ice on the floor.

Jacob, Juan, Mort and Theo lifted the lid of the sarcophagus together; it was very heavy. Ebony hurled in some litre containers of oil, and then her incendiary stick.

There was a roar and a scream. The lid shot up, out of their hands, as the thing within stood up violently. It leaped out of the sarcophagus and raked Theo. Then it bellowed, on fire, burning fiercely, and it ran from the room. Sledge opened up with his .357 magnums, called-shots to its head. He got in some good hits because it stumbled and fell on the stairs.

With the white phosphorus burning hot and fierce, it didn't take long for the creature to burn into a charred skeleton. There were about 40 minutes to sunset.

Dr Khalfani was still alive, barely, so they patched his wounds. Mrs Khalfani was none the worse for wear; a bit of smoke inhalation. Safiya's brother Osiris wasn't so lucky. His body, well, pieces of his body, were scattered with the prostitutes'. The intense cold had started to wane, so Detective Noble and Juan could come down.

Mort wondered if any of the hieroglyphs on the walls of the tomb were the magical type. Since they could not be photographed, he took some photos with his phone-camera of each wall, and sure enough, there were holes in the picture where the magical ones were. Maybe one in twenty.

Ebony gestured to the hieroglyph-encrusted sarcophagus: "At least, now we can replace the museum's one," she mused.