The GEC gig 2

I've talked to Demetria about the GECs They aren't demons. I'm pretty sure the humans made them, and they got out of that laboratory that we raided earlier.

( I hadn't realised they were causing so much trouble. )

Demetria thought that the GECs might start the humans off witch-hunting anyway.

Once humans get to the mobs with burning torches stage you can't get staff and there's nowhere to go in the evenings. When I thought about it, she was probably right. I'd got much more to worry about than that, anyway.

There are bunch of soul-stealing demons in town - and they'd got Erynne. It's been sending me twitchy. I'd kind of got used to being with her.

They were holed up in a Haunted House that they'd used as a base, and it looked as though they could use some real powerful mojos against anything that tried to get at them. After I'd talked with Demetria I kept getting that feeling that I'd forgotten something, and worrying at it. Last thing I'd said to her was

I can bring whole cities to ruin
but pest control ain't usually my doing...

( But later, I remembered how that's done. and many a spell is better when it's sung. )

That was when I realised I could think of a use for the GECs, and a way to get rid of some of them. It was risky, of course.

The GEC gig 3

Some of the humans enjoyed the ride up to the Haunted House, following the GECs in to fight the soul-stealing Anasazi demons. The English Watcher was getting some kind of a nostalgia kick out of it and wishing they could “give tongue.”

(That’s English for the baying of a pack of foxhounds, by the way. Apparently they chase foxes with a pack of dogs in a place called Leicestershire. He might have enjoyed it less from where I was – I had to keep close to cast the illusion that was baiting the beasts in.)

The GEC-pack ran, chasing an illusionary scent of strange meat and stranger quarry. I’d checked out the Haunted House earlier. All the doors and windows – what the Anasazi must have thought of as the exits and entrances - were warded except the front door, where their customers had to go in.

It’d been a real, inhabited house once. The door had a cat flap. That was enough. Once the GECs were in I smoked as far out of harm’s way as I could – and waited. The demons had mojo-charms, all right, but whether they’d hyped them up to lethal or just used them at full blast – they ran out of power fast.

By the time the Anasazi were trying to get out of the house the human part of the hunt had arrived. I used the Hamelin thrall to keep the GECs inside – the vampires were going to clear the soul-stealers from the area around the house. They wouldn’t need the extra hassle.

I used illusion to enthrall the GECs into a room on the first floor and closed the door on them. I hoped to get them down a portal but I hadn’t worked where to send them. They weren’t that biddable and anyway they’d wait.

I’d come to get back something else that isn’t too biddable. Both the basement and the attic were strongly warded, so the odd were that they had Erynnes soul behind those wards. I couldn’t get through them physically and my mojo isn’t the kind that’d smash a cage long-distance. I was going to need the humans for that.