Hi all, next chapter of Dead and Horny is officially live!
This chapter contains some seriously large revelations pertaining to this story and the HFHM universe. If you're a new reader, I wouldn't jump in here, because you will be so confused!
I don't have much else to say, other than check my bio for the release schedule of the next chapter, and please don't forget to leave me some stars, reviews, or send me some feedback. I am so glad that so many of you are enjoying this expansion of HFHM, and I can't wait to share even more of it with you!
Meeting the Order
The ride out of the canyon was uneventful, and Lily held herself tightly against Dana's body as the zombie took them down the canyon. Whenever they rode together, Lily would reduce her weight to next to nothing to give Dana far more control over the bike, but that also meant having a good grip.
Not that she minded holding on so tightly. Dana's body was particularly warm right now, and she was exuding an energy that reminded the succubus of Mike.
"So are you going to tell me about what happened yet?" Dana asked through Lily's headset.
The succubus had formed a helmet around her skull that was decorated with vintage flames that stretched back along the sides. With her entire imagination as a palette for whatever she wore, it seemed like a shame to cop out and be boring without a reason.
Besides that, flaming helmets looked cool. She wondered if Dana would get mad if she added actual flames.
"Now that we're actually out of the woods, I will. They call themselves the Order." She frowned at the word. She hadn't thought about the Order in decades, but was hardly surprised they were still kicking around. The bastards had been roaming the world for centuries now and there was no reason to believe that it would ever be different.
"The Order of what?"
"Does it matter? The Order of Zeus, Merlin, Oprah, it's just a name at this point. The important thing to know is that we do not fuck around with the Order. In fact, if we ever encounter them again, we will do our best to run as far and as fast as we can."
"We did pretty good for ourselves back there," Dana replied.
"No, we didn't." Lily let out a sigh that became a growl. "They had no idea we were there and were totally unprepared. Even you could see how young and inexperienced they were. Don't clap yourself on the back for getting one over on a pair of rookie monster hunters who were expecting a fight with a drunk. I can guarantee that both of them are just fine right now, and already looking to track us down."
"Oh." They rode another mile in silence before Dana's voice came back through the earpiece. "Is that all?"
"Hardly. What do you want to know?"
"You saw something in Scotes' mind. Care to share?"
Lily scowled. When she had opened up Ray's head to take a look around, she had seen what amounted to an entire lifetime of being a low-grade piece of shit. The man had stumbled into Unearthly Delights after bar hopping and had spotted the flask under the glass of the front counter. His shit behavior had been one of the only reasons he had been trackable by sifting through the clerk's memories, and he had loudly tried to barter the poor guy down until eventually buying the flask for the fifty dollars it had been marked.
The sequence of events that had interested her had begun with Ray's initial excitement that the flask was still full. He had savored the whiskey over a couple of days and been puzzled when the flask never seemed to run out. Disbelief had turned into more excitement, and the biker had to wait until he sobered up to ride his bike into town. If Ray hadn't believed in magic before, he certainly did now, and his mind had stuck to a single memory from his conversation with the clerk.
"C'mon, I can do thirty," he had whined, though he was carrying almost five hundred in his pockets. He always carried enough cash to get him home, just in case, and most of it was stashed in his left boot.
The clerk had rolled his eyes. Though the guy was young, he clearly wasn't going to be intimidated by the tough biker act, and he definitely wasn't buying the obnoxious drunk act either. "Look, all of this stuff got appraised when we got it from the auction, and my boss never marks the good stuff any lower than he is willing to sell it."
"Wait, are there other flasks that came with this one?" Ray didn't care about how the flask looked, he just needed something that would fit inconspicuously in his vest pocket, and he had lost his last one somewhere. If there was a cheaper flask, he would buy it instead.
"Nah, the flask was in one of those unseen box auctions. Like, from a storage unit. All kinds of odds and ends, the whole store is full of them."
"Bah." Ray pulled out his money. He would just pay fifty for the flask, it looked like it was made of silver, he could always sell it later if he needed to.
"Ray was on his way back to Unearthly Delights to buy more magic. He had become hooked on what the flask could do. Borderline obsessed, really. If a flask could keep him drunk for free, what else was there? Magic does that to most people. It shows them a crack in the universe that they become hungry to explore."
"So, what happened?" Dana asked.
"He ran across the Order." Scotes had been surprised that the store was closed early, and decided to hang around until later. A little breaking and entering wasn't that big of a deal, and he had parked his bike some distance away, camping out behind some bushes by the railroad tracks. It was in the middle of the night that he realized that Unearthly Delights was being raided by a group of people that he initially thought was the feds, but the feds didn't burn places down when they were done. "They looted the place and burned it down, and Ray was convinced they would track him down and kill him."
"And would they have?"
"Honestly? Don't know. It kind of depends on the situation. If Scotes had put up a fight, then maybe. More likely that they would have offered him a sum of cash for the flask and tell him to shut the fuck up about it, or even wipe his memory after, make him think he sold something worthless for a profit." She furrowed her brow. "I'm not a hundred percent on that last one, actually, but if anyone could do it, it would be them."
"Wait, so why do they even want the flask in the first place?" Dana asked.
"The Order has one really big rule, and it hearkens back to the day when magic was sealed away by Merlin."
"Merlin, like from King Arthur?"
"Yep. Merlin got tired of mankind fighting with and over magic, so he did the impossible. He found a way to pull down the veil on mankind. If you ever look at magic over the ages, it's always shit like speaking with spirits, deities, whatever. He cut the cord on communication, and the world of magic and science have kind of coasted side-by-side since then. Over the years, magical creatures died off and mankind flourished, so what was already rare became rarer still."
"So they want the flask because it's magic?"
"Not specifically. They want the flask because it could upset the balance of things. Their task is to make sure that magic doesn't make a comeback, that the magical world stays in the shadows. It's not even because they're trying to keep it for themselves. The world was nearly destroyed on numerous occasions because magic and humans simply don't mix, or at least not without repercussions. Obviously, there are exceptions, but the motivation is in the name itself. The Order exists to maintain order, to prevent the mistakes of the past from happening again."
They were now halfway through Laporte, which wasn't saying much. It was a small town that had been gobbled up by the nearby college town. The bike rumbled beneath them when they stopped at a red light, and Lily closed her eyes and listened to the soothing vibrations.
"So, they're the good guys?" Dana asked, her voice incredulous.
"Good is a matter of perspective and always will be." The succubus scowled at the memory of escaping the cabin. "However, in general... yes. They're the kind of people who are raised on the notion that they need to protect mankind by preventing outside influences from disrupting it. They don't interfere in human or monster affairs, but will if the two become mixed and it risks exposing the world to the truth. That's the best way I can describe it."
"What does that make us, then?"
"Truthfully? We're just like every other miserable bastard out here, just trying to make ends meet. If we hadn't just jacked this from under their noses and attacked a couple of their men, they wouldn't even care. But now? I'm thinking we should cut this trip short and pursue other leads."
Dana tensed beneath Lily's hands. "But what if... what if they got the other things on the list? There were five things that Ratu said were sold to the shop that she thought would help me. This flask is one of them, but what if they have the other four?"
"Then they have the other four. Think of those things as gone forever, and spend the next few centuries trying to find another way."
The silence in Lily's earpiece was deafening, so she pulled off her helmet and allowed it to become smoke in her hands as they rounded a corner. Just because Dana was pissy about the whole thing didn't mean that Lily shouldn't enjoy simple things like the wind in her hair. She had been stuffed inside her gemstone prison for so long that she had learned not to take the little things for granted, and she truthfully hoped Dana would learn the same lesson long before suffering a similar fate.
It was midday, and downtown Fort Collins was already bustling with activity. They took a couple side roads to avoid the worst of it, and were soon on the main road that took them to their hotel by the highway. Dana parked the bike in a spot by the front door and the two of them rode up the elevator together. Once in their room, Dana tossed her helmet onto the bed and then sat down and pulled out her laptop.
