Dogs of War - "Infants quarter'd with the hands of war"

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Wanda, Amanda, Mark, Doug, Marie-Ange, and Sarah convene at Denny's this evening to discuss their progress thus far. Plans are schemed and gravy is consumed.


"So," Amanda said, sliding into the booth and grinning at Mark. "How was your first day of school, dear?"

The Denny's in Gatlinburg was busy, but not so busy the wait staff were trying to hurry them out. The Junior Trenchcoats, as Amanda insisted on calling the group, had filled out a booth in the rear of the restaurant, away from too many prying ears.

"For the love of all things that are holy, kill me now." Mark dropped his entirely too heavy calculus text on the table, shaking a little at the loud thud it made. "Homework was not part of the deal. I demand overtime for this."

Marie-Ange set her menu down carefully. "Not up to playing the role of the disinterested slacker musician who avoids all his homework, makes clever comments on the matching band and hijacks the school radio station for his own ends?" She asked, with a laugh. "We should make you watch more bad movies with Kevin Bacon in them." She picked up the menu again, frowning. "Is there a reason all the food on this is fried? Even the salads are fried..."

"As long as it is not served still alive," Wanda responded, finishing off her cup of tea, "then I think we can suffer through. Trust me, I have had worse, much worse. I think it actually was still alive." She thought about it for a second and then shrugged. "At least the tea is decent. We should order first and then really get down to business."

Doug looked up from Mark's calculus homework, which had somehow magically migrated to his side of the table. "Oh, someone order me a chicken fried steak, please. Extra gravy on the mashed potatoes." With that, he buried his nose back in the textbook, taken away to Happy Nerd Land by the equations and numbers. Slowly, he became conscious of everyone looking at him and conversation slowing around him. "What?" he asked somewhat sheepishly, looking up from where he had the assignment half completed already.

Sarah shook her head slowly, laughing. "Whatever makes you happy." Returning her attention to the menu, she added, "You think I could get them to spike my milkshake? God knows after talking to eight million crazy old ladies, I need something stronger."

"Right there with you," Amanda replied, looking at the menu with something akin to vague horror. "After dealing with rednecks all day, fuck know I need it. And nothing more than some rumours about some kind of big dog terrorising the local livestock. One of them said he thought it was aliens. I hope one of you lot got something a bit more concrete, otherwise Remy's going to have a grand old time telling us he told us so." She blinked. "I swear, there's gravy on everything here. Even the salad. And when a Brit says there's too much gravy, you know there's something wrong here."

"Some kids disappeared at school," mentioned Mark, peering over Doug's shoulder to see what he was doing. "Oh, so that's how . . . fucking integrals." Settling back into his seat, and turned his attention back to Amanda and the others. "One is missing and the other five 'transferred.' Five of the popular clique, to be specific. And the other kid was in the, well, the unpopular clique."

Sarah snorted, busy picking the wrappers off of the straws in the middle of the table. "I had a lady tell me about someone seeing 'silver dogs the size of small ponies' in the woods, like it happened all the time. Oh no. Nothing weird going on in this town. Really."

"Doug would not let me use Donna Sculder as my alias. I am still cross with him." Marie-Ange said, once the waitress had taken their orders. "We spoke to a Dr. Kruzberg, he is the medical examiner, and most of everyone in this town's doctor also." She pushed a slender notebook across the table, so that everyone could see. "Everything about this incident is weird. All of it. Every little bit."

Amanda glanced at the sketchpad from around the menu, blinked and then laid the menu down to pull it closer. "Where'd you get this?" she asked, pointing at a sketch of some kind of symbol.

"It was on the skin that the doctor had, and then got stolen. And can I just say, um, ew?" Doug asked with a horrified look on his face. "A complete skin, and then it got -stolen-? Ugh."

The skin mention got a raised eyebrow, but not much more. "I know this..." she murmured, knitting her brow, trying to remember. She looked up at Wanda. "Do you remember what I was saying in Russia, about possession and marks?"

Wanda tilted her head and thought back. "Yes, actually. You said something about demon possessions leaving behind a type of 'magical fingerprint', yes? So if it is a possession then there will be some type of magical residue left, enough perhaps to use to track?"

The witch shook her head. "Out here, in the middle of the boondocks? Not a chance. There's not enough power here I can use, and my mutation doesn't work that way any more."

"Would it help to know that the rune means 'door'?" Doug asked distractedly from where he was still doing Mark's homework. Feeling Amanda's exasperated stare on him, he looked up. "What?"

"You could have said earlier, Math Boy." Amanda frowned again. "I really don't like the sound of that. 'Door' is never a good thing when it's tied up with magic." Tapping on the table with her fork, she bit her lip. "So, possible demon. Who'd want to sic a demon onto a bunch of school kids?"

"Besides one of their classmates?" Sarah watched hungrily as a plate of french fries were taken to a table not too far from theirs, then back at the rest of the group who stared at her in confusion. "Seriously. Look for whoever these missing kids had it in for, and you'll find your wannabe wizard."

"Misfit's name is Josh Chambers," said Mark, reaching into his bookbag to give another textbook and assignment to Doug. "The kids who went poof? Bullied him like crazy. Now no one knows where he is, either. Won't be easy to find him. He has a total of, like, one friend and she's quite frankly a bitch and a half. Much like calculus."

"Too much of a bitch to talk to?" Marie-Ange asked, eyeing her iced tea suspiciously. "Why is there so much sugar in this? This is tea flavored syrup.." She pushed the glass away with a frown. "Maybe she could tell you where this Josh is? Or if she has talked to him?"

"Iced tea confuses me." Wanda took a sip from her water. "Every Ice Queen has their soft points, remember that. Unless you're talking to Emma and then my advice is to just run away. But I had an interesting morning. An accident happened, a truck driver hit something and managed to nearly wrap his truck around a tree. Whatever he hit, however, managed to stay on its feet and walk away. The police officer and I tracked it into the woods and then the tracks simply...vanished. On top of that, it was not walking like a wounded animal. Nothing should have survived being hit like that."

"Nothing human, at least." Amanda put the fork down with a sigh. "Looks like it's me for the dusty old books again. Mark, you up for seeing if you can talk to this friend?"

Mark nodded. "I'll have to spray an extra dab of charm to get through to her, but I'll do it. It'll totally destroy my reputation as the hottest-slash-most awesome new kid ever. But I suppose it's a necessary sacrifice."

"Poor baby", Sarah snorted, rolling her eyes. "Of course, the sooner we figure this out, the sooner we leave Hicksville, USA and go back to civilization. And then you can stop pawning off your calculus homework on Doug."

"I think Doug and I can stand another day of Cub Reporter and his lovely and well dressed photographer." Marie-Ange said, idly stacking fried onion rings into a tower. She prodded the tower and it wobbled, but did not fall. "And the sooner we leave, the sooner we can have food that is not made of bread and beef fat."

Snorting softly as Wanda dug out the company credit card, she nodded at Amanda. "Back to putting our heads together," she said, curious to see what kind of creature they were dealing with. "And we'll poke around at some of those new PDF's, shall we?"

"Sounds like we've got a plan, then," Amanda said as the waitress returned, with more plates. "Now, let's see if we can survive dinner."