Outsiders Pt. 03

Ben, being male, noticed all of their curves and none of their quiet contest for his affections. He sat cross-legged to hide his erection and contemplated ordering Krista to the nearest bathroom so he could fuck the stuffing out of her tight, teasing behind. Or maybe inviting Raven to follow him into a stall so he could make her kneel in front of him...

Ben snapped out of his reverie and frowned. "Raven almost got killed last night and I want to drag her to a bathroom and violate her," he asked himself. "What is wrong with me?" He felt ashamed for his thoughts and concentrated on making his hard-on go away. It was an impossible task and he sat there, watching the girls model lingerie for another half hour, until they ran out of ideas.

He sighed in relief when the girls finally exited the stalls clothed and brought their selections to the cash register. His erection subsided and he was able to walk around without being painfully obvious. He was shocked at the almost-four-digit price the cashier stated after ringing up their stuff, but he paid it all the same.

They split up after that. The girls did some window shopping and Ben took the bulky bags out to the car. They met up at the food court, where they indulged in some chocolate éclairs. The girls talked fashion and were developing a friendly rapport that was a bit weird for Ben to see. Sure, he had ordered Krista to be friendly with Raven, but he hadn't expected the blonde to respond in kind.

"Maybe she's just glad to have someone to talk to," he thought. "A friendly face. She'd need one after last night." Ben realized that Raven hadn't made a single attempt to contact anyone for any comfort. He, himself had been on the verge of calling his parents after seeing Simon get wasted and she had settled on just the two of them. "Either she literally doesn't have anyone in the whole, wide world, or we're just that good at comforting distraught people."

As Ben recalled the fake smiles the girls had been exchanging earlier this morning, he decided the latter simply couldn't be true. "Maybe she's afraid of calling anyone and letting them know where she is," he thought. "Maybe she's scared of the trio coming back to kill her?"

Ben's face took on an unhappy expression. It was long past time for him to pay the murderers a visit. He was going to find them and interrogate them. He took a long look at Raven. She acted calm and happy, but he thought he could see fear in her eyes. A well hidden, yet burning fear of being found and murdered by the three madmen. The more he watched her, the more he saw that he was right. Her eyes were darting to all the people coming into the food court. It was discrete, but he could see that she was making an effort to spot any would-be assailants first.

The girl was counting on him to protect her. He wasn't going to fail her in that regard. "You girls are going to go ahead with your shopping trip without me," he said. Raven's eyes nearly jumped out of her face at that. He could now plainly see that she was scared beyond belief to be out in public without him and he felt stupid for not noticing it earlier.

"No, no," she said, "you're right. We've done enough shopping for one day. It's best if we all go home and-"

"Raven," Ben said, cutting her off, "Krista will look out for you. You're under my protection. Don't worry, I'm only a thought away at all times. Besides, I won't be long and I'm going to end this threat to you."

"What do you mean," Raven asked.

"I'm off to find the three men that killed Simon," he said. "And I'm going to stop them, once and for all."

Raven didn't look to be very comforted by his words. "No, I've had enough shopping for one day," she said. "I'd like to go home, now. Your home!"

Ben put a hand on her shoulder and softly said, "It's okay, Raven. You'll be safe with Krista and, by the time I return, you'll be safe from those men forever. Trust me!" Raven looked decidedly nervous. "Don't you trust me?" Raven swallowed nervously and reluctantly nodded yes.

Ben leaned down and planted a soft kiss on her forehead. He gave Krista the car keys and his debit card and sent her an order to not spend more than two thousand dollars on clothes and everything else the two of them would need. She nodded, stood up and kissed him on the lips. It was a gentle, but passionate kiss, the kind that Ben had always imagined women gave their men before they went off to war to inspire them and give them comfort during their fight.

He turned around to leave and Krista grabbed his ass and gave his buttock a good, long squeeze. He jumped in surprise and spun around to see her wicked smile. She sat back down to finish her sweet and he looked at Raven. She still looked scared to him, so he composed himself and gave her a self-assured nod before walking to the nearest men's room.

He checked that he was all alone before envisioning his den and speaking the word of the Greater Teleport spell.

He sat down at his table and started to cast the spell of Discern Location. He held the image of the baseball bat wielding Piotr in his mind. His arms made the gestures which drew the knowledge of the location into him as his chant prepared him to receive it. Ten minutes later, he drew a complete blank.

He quickly recovered from his shock and checked what he knew of his spell. It couldn't have gone awry, he had cast it perfectly. He consulted his Player's Handbook and verified that he should have been able to learn Piotr's location, no matter where in the world he was. He thought about things for a moment and then decided to cast Discern Location again, only this time, he focused on the big Irishman's face.

Ten minutes of chanting and gesticulation later, he drew another blank. He started to fear that his magic was failing him. He drank a glass of water and calmed down. The spells were still flowing through his body, like they have been since Sunday morning. He read the spell description in the manual again. It distinctly read that the spell was the most powerful means of locating creatures or objects. It could only be thwarted by a spell of Mind Blank, or the direct intervention of a deity. The three killers had been christian zealots and Ben wondered if he was defying God by searching for them. He wondered if he had stumbled across definitive proof that there really was a God and that it was the particular one that the christians worshipped.

He sat down and managed to remain surprisingly calm in the wake of such a thought. He resolved to critically evaluate the matter. As he thought about it and examined his suppositions for falsifiability, he spotted the spell description's distinction of creature versus object. He could discern the location of each and every person he has seen, but he needed to have touched an object he wanted to find. He had touched Piotr's body when he had knocked him down to stop him from executing Raven.

Ben cracked his knuckles and cast the Discern Location spell to find out where Piotr's body was. Ten minutes of chanting and gesturing drew the spell out of him and he suddenly learned that Piotr's body was in drawer sixteen of the city morgue's cold storage unit. He also learned the exact address of the city morgue.

As shocked as Ben was to find out that the man was dead, he was more relieved at finding out that no deity was impeding his efforts. He would have hated to be burdened with the factual knowledge that a religion, any religion, was true. If he had proof that there really was a God, he would have felt obligated to spread that knowledge to the rest of humanity, even going so far as to explicitly demonstrate his magic to the public. Fortunately for him, he had merely been stymied by the fact that Piotr and his Irish comrade were deceased.

He had hoped to get some answers from the Pole, but if he was really lying dead in that drawer, then there could only be more questions for him to tackle. He used his laptop to look up what the city morgue looked like on the inside and made a mental map of it. Ben pulled out his eyelash in gum arabic and cast the Invisibility spell on himself. He then spoke the word of the spell of Greater Teleport and found himself in the cold storage unit of the city morgue.

He looked around and saw that he was all alone. He crept over to the wall of drawers and pulled open the one that had the number sixteen on it. He reached in and undid the zipper on the plastic body bag. He lifted the flap and looked in. His angle was all wrong, so he took another look around before pulling the heavy drawer partly out of its compartment. Now he saw that Piotr really was dead. He had already been autopsied, his forehead was stitched back together and Ben could see the top of the Y-shaped cut on his chest, also stitched closed. He noticed a gunshot wound on Piotr's chest and realized the man had been killed.

He grimaced unhappily. "First Simon," he mumbled to himself, "now his killer, too." Everyone that could give him answers about the mess that was brewing around him was dying. He focused on what Krista was doing. She and Raven were in a shoe store, trying on shoes. He needed Raven to stay alive and tell him all she knew about Simon's rituals. He recognized the fact that he should have asked her more questions this morning.

He heard a noise and startled. He quickly zipped up the body bag and closed the drawer as quietly as he could. There were voices in the hallway outside. Ben looked around for a hiding place, before reminding himself that he was invisible for eighteen more minutes. He rolled his eyes at his own stupidity and calmly walked over to the door. He stood to the side of it as two men in scrubs opened it and walked through. He stepped out as soon as they passed and looked around for an office. He needed to find out exactly how Piotr had met his fate.

He searched the morgue until he found the autopsy report. Piotr had been listed as John Doe #2 on it. Ben frowned and found two more John Doe files, with the numbers one and three next to their names. He immediately recognized the Irish and Italian assailants from Simon and Raven's place. The three of them had been found dead at that very same address. All of their bodies were here, in the cold storage unit. Ben read the conclusions of the medical examiner and was just as baffled as the pathologist. Each man had been shot, but died before they could bleed out because of heart failure due to idiopathic cardiac tamponade, whatever that meant. Each man's airway had been torn inside their own chests, right over their hearts, by an unknown method.

Ben took out his phone and took photos of the relevant pieces of the reports. He rifled through the rest of the paperwork and found documents that said that tomorrow the bodies would be released to the local catholic church for burial. He squinted in remembrance. Piotr had been giving Simon what was probably last rites, and Italy, Ireland and Poland were the most catholic countries in Europe, from what he knew of such matters. He read that they had each worn a rosary, a cross and a medallion. Each had also carried a gun and no identification.

He pulled out his phone and went online, looking for pictures of the police station which housed the robbery/homicide division. He teleported there and snuck into the evidence locker using a spell of Ethereal Jaunt. He checked the logs and found that the guns were in the ballistics lab, but the rest of their possessions were there.

He went to the evidence drawers and looked through a bunch of clear, plastic bags until he found the ones containing the belongings of the three deceased he was investigating. He looked at their medallions. Each was round and an inch across. They looked to be gold, but Ben's jewelry skill told him they were probably only gold-plated. Each medallion bore an identical engraving of Jesus on the cross, flanked by two massive, upright hammers. Ben took a photo of the medallions before replacing everything.

He spoke the word of the spell of Greater Teleport and found himself at his house. He sat down at his laptop and went online to research the pathology reports. As near as he could figure it out, something had been shoved down their airways and then used to squeeze their hearts until they couldn't beat any more. Just like the pathologist and Ben, the internet at large had no clue as to what it could have been.

An image search identified the medallions quite quickly. According to more than one site he found online, they were carried by the members of The Order of the Hammer, a long forbidden and almost forgotten order of the Catholic Church. Each site Ben found claimed The Order did something different. One site claimed they persecuted witches, another claimed they were the Inquisition's modern day equivalent, others mentioned the Illuminati. Some claimed it was all just a legend and that the Order had never actually existed. Ben knew this Order was real, at least in the heads of the three dead men.

He searched for images of the local catholic church and found some galleries online. He cast the Invisibility spell on himself again and then spoke the word of the Greater Teleport spell. He searched the whole church, looking for any clue to the identity of the three assailants, but all he found was a young priest in an office, writing up a sermon and eulogy for their funeral.

Ben leaned over the priest's shoulder to read his writing. It read as fairly generic. He found no clues in it, but he did manage to give the priest the willies. The priest felt a slight, periodic breeze upon his skin and looked up to search the air Ben occupied. Ben stopped breathing down the man's neck and the priest shook his head before reaching for a bottle of whiskey in his desk. He poured himself a few shots and knocked them back before resuming his writing.

Ben grimaced in frustration. The priest looked like a dead end that would yield no info on the dead threesome. He decided he'd visit the funeral of the three dead men, eavesdrop and photograph everyone who attended. Maybe that would lead to a clue. He felt suddenly annoyed by a distraction. He explored the minds linked to his. Felicia was out of range for him to sense her mood, so she wasn't the source of the distraction. Susan was throwing hints about the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence at a business lunch and Krista was annoyed by a bunch of guys at the mall.

Ben crept out of the priest's office as he concentrated on his link with Krista. She was annoyed by the four idiots accosting her and Raven, right inside the mall. Each of the white gangsta hip-hoppers was wearing a wifebeater, baseball cap turned backwards and sweatpants with waistbands around their thighs, exposing their name brand boxer shorts.

Ben checked his distance from the priest, lest he overhear him speak the word of the Greater Teleport spell and then envisioned the mall toilet he had been in, earlier. Ben cast the spell, appeared there and used his link with Krista to know where to go find the girls. He dropped his invisibility and jogged off towards them. He felt through the link with Krista's mind that the youngsters were trying to get them to come with them and "have some fun", while completely ignoring the blatant fact that neither of the girls wanted anything to do with them. Krista was all but enjoying herself putting them down verbally, though most of her clever retorts and biting remarks went well above the guys' heads.

Ben would have smiled at Krista's spirit and sharp wit, but he could feel that Krista saw that the boys were making Raven profoundly uncomfortable, especially as they were caressing her hair, despite her repeatedly asking them to stop. Ben's brow drew down as one of the boys responded to Raven's request by yanking her by the hair and telling her that she is to play nice and not be a cock tease. Ben could plainly see in Krista's mind that neither girl did a single thing to provoke such a reaction from the boys, beyond walking while female.

He became enraged in an instant and broke into a sprint across the mall. His heart beat as fast as a hummingbird's wings. These four neanderthals obviously subscribed to the belief that beautiful women weren't worthy of the kind of basic politeness and consideration one would extend to a stranger in the street, particularly if they grew big breasts. They might try to drag the girls away and force themselves upon them. He couldn't allow that. Even if he hadn't promised Raven to protect her and if Krista hadn't been the first and only girl he had ever been with, he would have been pissed off at the behavior of these ruffians.

Since he had promised Raven his protection and Krista was his, after a fashion, he was utterly consumed by fury. The people seemed to part before him of their own accord and he spotted the six of them huddled in a corner in the distance. He felt Krista was just about to run out of patience when she saw him approaching like a blur of rage and fury. He felt her excitement and delight.

Despite the heady rush of violent urges threatening to consume his awareness, the main, rational part of his mind remained in control of things. He reminded himself not to knock the white hip-hoppers over as that could lead to them cracking their skulls on the floor and dying. He also reminded himself not to go socking them in the mouth with a closed fist, lest he skin his knuckles to no effect. He ignored the memories of his first attempt to help a girl put upon by an almost violent male. He felt confident that such a failure wasn't going to happen again, though he couldn't tell himself why, exactly.

Krista raised her hand, waved it and cheerfully exclaimed, "Yoo-hoo, Ben! We're over here!"

Raven and the boys looked his way and simultaneously reacted at his rapid approach. She reacted with delight and relief, while the idiots reacted with alarm. The idiot nearest to him pivoted towards him, assumed a standard hip-hop video bravado stance, complete with jutting chin and index fingers pointing at his crotch, and said, "Yo!"

Ben ignored the challenging posture of the asshole, cocked his arm back while still on the run and let it loose with the full weight and momentum of his body behind it. The heel of his hand impacted with the side of the asshole's jaw and sent him tumbling into his friend behind him. That asshole fell over as well and nearly toppled the third asshole that barely managed to stay upright as he reflexively caught his falling friend.

Ben felt Krista become instantly wet and aroused at seeing his punch. It all but stopped him on a dime and he had to remind himself to face the remaining asshole, the one that had tugged at Raven's hair. "Hey," the asshole exclaimed as he raised his arms to fight. Running on pure instinct, Ben stepped towards him and sent out a quick jab to the base of his throat. It connected and the would-be assailant's eyes went as wide as silver dollars. He bent over and wheezed for breath, looking like he might vomit at any moment, as well.

Ban faced the fourth asshole, that had managed to extricate himself from his fallen comrades, and drew a deep breath. Now that it had come to violence, he was wrath personified. His blood was throbbing in his temples with a seductive rhythm that urged him to fight on. He glared at the standing asshole and, despite the rage he was feeling at the moment, he could plainly see that the guy was scared shitless. This cooled him down a little and allowed his rational side to regain full control, but he was still pissed off at the behavior of the four miscreants.

He put all of his wrath into his voice as he bellowed, "Get lost!"

The mall itself reverberated with the sound of his fury and all fell silent in the wake of his shout. The standing asshole broke and ran instantly. The wheezing asshole started to shuffle after him, as well. As he passed by the fallen assholes, he helped asshole number two to get their almost insensate comrade in assholishness on his feet and the three of them scurried off as best they could.