Hey all, I'm posting a new addition to the Paranormal S.W.A.T. series in honor of the month of October and the festive season ahead. Tonight, a simple request from a friend of the team leads Griffin on a merry adventure. If you'd like to see the team from the beginning head on over to Cul-de-Sac to Hell for their first adventure.
Paranormal S.W.A.T.
Supernatural Weapons & Arcane Tactics
Falling
Down the Murder Hole
Lieutenant Sarah Parker of the Chicago PD stood a block from Chicago’s hottest new night club, Wonderland. Cold wind whipped up and blew against her back causing her to push up against the wall. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her felt coat with white fur collar once again wishing she had paid more attention to the weather report that evening.
She wondered how all the women standing in line were able to tolerate the cold; most of them weren’t wearing very much. In fact it was an impressive number of short skirts and loose tops for a Chicago autumn. She wanted to reach down and rub her own exposed legs under the ankle length black cocktail dress with the embroidered silver swirl at the hem she had worn. Either that or go buy a cup of coffee and pour it down her front.
“Hey Sarah.” Dr. Griffin Wells of the Paranormal SWAT team that had set up shop in Chicago a few months ago approached her waving his hand in a friendly manner. He served as the teams scout and forensics expert, Sarah had done some checking the first time she’d worked with them and discovered precious little about most of the team, but Griffin had been the exception.
He’d worked as a cop, a forensic technician, for nearly eight years out in Miami; which was probably why she got along with him better than the rest of the team. In addition to his service behind the badge he’d published several articles on forensic science, chemistry, and even a couple of papers on biochemistry. He also had a couple of minor marksmanship awards, which would normally have made her a little nervous. Most techs who get certified with firearms are doing it so they can think of themselves as butch adventure TV cops. She’d have thought the same of Griffin if she hadn’t already seen him in action a couple of times and was aware of how capable he was.
She smiled at him while brushing her blond hair out of her face. She moved towards him a little too quickly saying, “You made it,” she hugged him and stood up on her toes to whisper in his ear, “thanks for coming, the bouncer was beginning to watch me a little too closely.” She pulled away and spoke again a little louder this time, “Well I hope we can get inside.” She clung to his arm and began walking towards the club.
Griffin started walking with her and let her guide the way. “Well, I’m certain it won’t be to much a problem.” He pulled his arm out of hers and lowered it down on her shoulders then lowered his head on top of hers. “You ask me for a quick favor and take me to a night club,” he whispered, “is there a reason for this?”
“Once were inside I can tell you more. What’s with the Lamont Cranston? I said dress nice.” She was referring to his outfit, a long tan trench coat that brushed the tops of his feet as he walked matching that with a dark fedora and red scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face and tucked into the front of his coat. The entire outfit was completed with a set of thick mirrored wrap around sunglasses that ended up covering his entire face. Dressed as he was she couldn’t see any piece of his face. She was a little disappointed at that. Ever since she had discovered he’d been scarred in an accident and had a prosthetic hand, she had wondered about the extent of the damage to his person.
“Are you even listening,” Griffin’s voice broke her out of her internal musings.
“Sorry, I was looking for a way in that might get us around standing in line.”
“I asked about bribing the bouncer?”
They were only a few feet from the end of the line and she was beginning to worry they wouldn’t find what they needed tonight. “No, he’s running a pretty tight ship, he’s got a list and had let people on it cut in, but has turned down at least three bribes I’ve seen.”
Griffin let out a long slow sigh, “well that’s interesting.”
“What?”
Griffin started leading them towards the front of the line. “When I closed my eyes just then I could see what the bouncer really is.”
As they approached the bouncer, a rather intimidating wall of muscle nearly seven feet tall in an Armani suit, he stepped in front of the red velvet rope that blocked entrance to the club, clipboard in hand.
“You on the list?” His voice was hard and filled with gravel. Sarah couldn’t help the sudden thought of rotten meat that wafted through her mind and couldn’t figure out why.
Griffin untangled himself from Sarah and stepped in-between her and the bouncer, “I don’t know, let’s find out.”
The bouncer spoke with the cadence of the extremely bored or extremely stupid, “Name?”
“Doctor Griffin Wells,” Griffin stepped close to the ropes and angled his body away from the crowd. In a smooth motion he slid up his glasses and tilted his head back to fix on a place about three feet above the bouncers head. “Tell me Grog, am I on the list?”
The bouncer touched his finger to his ear and spoke quietly for a minute, as he did Griffin fixed his glasses back in place and turned to motion to Sarah to come closer. The bouncer finally having finished his conversation moved to unhook the rope, “welcome back Doctor Wells. Your usual table is set up in the back corner of the restaurant. A hostess will show you the way.”
As he let them in Sarah started to pull some money out of her clutch in order to pay the tip when the bouncer raised a hand to stop her. “No tips ma’am. It’s not allowed.”
They were shown inside and a beautiful woman in a forest green dress led them through the club. The room was done up in a mix of old fashioned tavern and acid trip sixties club. The room was filled with heavy oak tables and tall pillars carved with reliefs of the various characters from the Alice and Wonderland stories. The floor was covered in a black and white checkerboard tile. Bright splashes of vibrant colors covered the walls, paintings were hung in expensive frames on the walls and a neon lit bar filled one entire wall. Long mirrors filled a hallway leading to the back of the club and were hung in a way to make the hall look like it went on forever. As her eyes wandered up she saw the roof was covered in a maze of copper framed skylights revealing a starry sky.
The hostess showed them to a private booth near the back of the club. It had plush black velvet cushions that perfectly matched her dress all the way down to the silver swirl at the bottom. The booth would have easily seated half a dozen people comfortably. An old style oak table sat in the middle carved with leaf and vine patterns around the rim. In the middle a raised platform shaped like an open flower holding a lit violet candle was also carved from the wood. As Sarah examined it, she was hard pressed to see where the table ended and the flower began.
Sarah tuned out the conversation between Griffin and the waitress as she scanned the club checking the crowd for anything suspicious. They seemed like your typical club crowd made of that Chicago mix of too young care and too rich to know any better; all dancing to some bizarre band named the Card Soldiers. She spotted a couple of celebrities, the kind that were famous for being famous, two politicians, and several members from local mob families. The mob were the most interesting to her, it was typical to find a family presence in a hot club, they always found a way to muscle into the profits. What made this situation unusual was the four groups of men from different families. A situation like this only ever happened on neutral ground, and hot clubs were rarely the chosen venue.
After a few moments the waitress thanked Griffin and said she’d be right back with their drinks. As she turned she closed a shear silk curtain and left them alone. Sarah turned to Griffin and said, “What in the sweet hoary hell was that. You never told me you’d been here before.”
“Never have.”
“Really, cause when they welcomed you back, in my line of work that’s a called a clue.”
“They probably thought you were my date and I was trying to impress you. So they threw me a nod as part of the price.”
“What price?”
“They don’t care about money, they only want knowledge because that’s power. When I showed him my face, and gave them my name that was information they didn’t have so they owed me a favor.”
“They didn’t ask for anything you just gave it to them.”
“Not really, he asked if I was on the list. Which I didn’t answer, which meant to keep up appearances he had to ask me my name. Since he had to ask he opened a contract, a small social contract, but a contract none the less. I took advantage of this to show him my face and give him my name. Which put him in my debt as I gave more than was required. At that point they owed me, so they let me into the club. They hate owing people, it’s why they don’t except tips.
“Because then they owe you.” Sarah said. “Okay, but who didn’t want to owe you and why did you know this would work.”
“I’m going to have to explain this and I’m not entirely certain I can. If Albert were here he could give you a better answer, I just don’t know all the technical or mystical reasons for it.
“When I close my eyes, I can see what’s really around us.” Sarah stared at him waiting for more. “This is a fairy club.”
“That’s not the most PC statement ever, plus it’s basically wrong.”
Sarah was pretty sure he was smirking at her through the scarf. “No, that’s not what I meant. This club is run by member of the fae, or fairies. You know, like Tinkerbelle.”
“You mean six inches tall and with wings?”
“Some of them.” Griffin took a deep breath, “I’m going to give you a crash course on fairies. There’s another world next to this one ruled by two courts of fairies, doesn’t matter who. It’s called the fairy realm, It’s populated with all things fairy: pixies, nixies, leprechauns, gnomes, elves, ogres, the list goes on for quite a while. Occasionally they manage to cross the divide between this world, the mortal world, and their own.”
“Why bother?”
The curtain parted and the waitress placed their drinks before them and left one straw on the table for Griffin. Griffin thanked her and she departed. Griffin took the straw and placed it in his glass of amber liquid, that looked to Sarah like a cider of some sort. Her own glass was filled with the same liquid. She tentatively took a drink and found it to hold several spices that reminded her of trick-or-treating as a child and warm fall nights gathered around a fire. It made her feel warm and tingle all over and she looked at the glass for a moment trying to figure out exactly what it was.
Griffin answered her unasked question while sipping his through the straw tucked up under his scarf. “It’s the in-house special for October called Autumn Harvest.”
“Lovely, still doesn’t answer my other question.”
“They come here because we fascinate them. The reason this is the mortal realm is because we can die, easily, and we don’t seem to care.”
“I’m pretty sure most people are afraid to die.”
“True, but not on the same level as a fae is. Most fae have an average life span measured in hundreds of years; a few can get to four digits. They can be killed, not harmed, not injured, not wounded, but killed in three maybe four ways depending on the type. They go out of their way to find those things that can kill them and destroy them.
“Mortals on the other hand, live maybe eighty years, can be killed by thousands of different things, and we actively surround ourselves with them.”
“No we don’t.”
“You’re carrying a gun. We’re in a wood booth with a lit candle and silk curtains. We run electricity into our homes. We regularly play with fireworks and explosives. Cars are deathtraps, and we get pissed if we don’t have one.
“Hell, you can beat a human to death. On your best day with a baseball bat, you can’t kill an elf. Sure, you can ruin his next sixty years, but you won’t kill him.”
Sarah stared at Griffin for a long moment. “I never thought about it like that.”
“Few people do.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes until their Griffin asked, “you okay?”
“Yeah. It’s a lot to take in.”
“I know.” He paused to sip at his drink. “When your ready, could you let me know why were here?”
“I’m not sure anymore.”
“What was the initial idea?”
“Two weeks a go a friend of mine, a narcotics officer named Danny Jones died. They found him in a gutter with traces of a new drug called Fairy Dust in his system.”
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
“Thanks. Anyway, Danny wouldn’t touch drugs. There are a lot of things he would do, including gamble, drink, and anything in a skirt, but he wouldn’t do drugs.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Danny’s dad used to hit the pipe pretty hard. He never said but I’m pretty sure he blamed it for his moms death. His whole childhood was ruined, he’d never use.”
“Fair enough.” Griffin leaned back and picked up his drink and sipped through the straw. “So how is this place connected?”
“Two days ago I got an envelope from Danny; it had all of his notes from his latest case. He was looking into the supplier of Fairy Dust and had followed a few leads to this club. The last entry in his notes was to say that he was coming here to do some looking around. It was dated the day before he died.”
Griffin reached across the table and took Sarah’s hand. “You figure if we came here tonight we might find a reason he died. Maybe even exonerate Danny?”
Sarah reached across the table and gripped his hand. “Yeah.”
Griffin looked around the room. His head slowly pivoting from one side to the other and then back again. After he did this a few times he finally stopped and said, “I don’t know if this will answer your questions but there’s an extra hallway over by the bar down at the end of that mirrored hallway. I can only see it with my eyes closed.”
“How do we get through it?”
“Traditionally, you would ask me.” Sarah wasn’t sure where the man in the immaculate white suit had come from but he now sat in the booth with them. If Griffin hadn’t been holding her hand she’d have gone for her sidearm. “After all, I am the clubs owner.” He sat there calmly twisting a glass of what might have been scotch, he seemed to be waiting for something.
end pt. 1
click here for pt. 2
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