Rotten To The Core

"Oh boy," Doug muttered, clobbering one of his attackers with the pommel of his sword. The roach thrall, now without its human sheath, stumbled back a step, its cranial dome cracked and oozing yellow. But still it hissed and shrieked, flailing with its four clawed arms. Doug toppled it with a quick back hand of his shield and followed up with a brutal stab through the thing's maw. The move cost him though -- two more roach thralls jumped onto his back and tore at the overlapping plates covering his neck and shoulders. One punched straight through the chain mesh protecting Doug's arm and yanked, opening a fiercely bleeding gash.

Laura rushed to Doug's side, sheathing her blade as she ran. Grabbing one of the thralls by the back of his rotting parka, she tried to tear him off Doug. To her absolute horror, the parka was much tougher than the thing's skin! The thrall's sheath parted with a disgusting wet tear. Laura stumbled away with what amounted to a fully grown man's skin dangling from her hand. Suppressing the urge to vomit, she tossed the decaying skin-sheath aside and grabbed again, this time catching the thrall by a flailing arm. She brutally twisted the limb, breaking chitin and tearing tendons in the process. The thrall fell off Doug's back. Laura dragged him to the ground and finished him off with a bullet to the head.

The half-orc rolled forwards, shoulder-tossing the second thrall off him. Before the creature could get to its feet, he smashed the pointed lower edge of his shield down, almost decapitating the insectoid horror, leaving it writhing and clawing at its shattered throat. He picked up the improvised sledgehammer the dead brute had dropped. The lump of concrete shone with heavenly light in his hands. Roaring, Doug advanced into the midst of the pack and lashed out, dropping two roach thralls with a wide swing.

Laura felled another one with a carefully aimed shot, sending the six-limbed terror sprawling.

The mob retreated deeper into the alley.

"Now what?" Doug wondered, inspecting his torn-open arm. He touched his chest with his right hand and an aura of light washed over him, closing his wounds.

The roach thralls were backing away, inching backwards at first, then turning on their heels and fleeing as fast as they could. Some lost their sheaths as they stumbled and ran, skittering up the sides of buildings on all six limbs, others shambled into the back alleys still looking more or less human.

In the sudden silence, Laura heard the wail of sirens coming closer.

"Now that's going to be a fun discussion," she muttered, poking one of the discarded sheaths with her foot.

* * * *

Detective Goldbaum sank into the floor-mounted chair opposite Laura's in the interrogation room. Since she had seen her only a few hours earlier, the young woman seemed to have aged about ten years. Her partner, Detective Lee, leaned against the tiled wall, his muscular black arms crossed over his chest. He looked like a veteran pro wrestler, with shoulders almost as wide as Doug's. His temples grayed and his eyes, though friendly, belied a bone-deep weariness.

"Fancy seeing you again so soon," Detective Goldbaum sighed. "Remember what I told you before?"

"The bit about you bringing the hammer down if you should catch me with the blood of Greenbury's citizen on my weapon? Clear as mud," Laura said. "Look, Detective-"

Another sigh. "The corpses we found make no sense!" She spread a handful of pictures across the table showing the greenish-brown cadavers of the dead roach thralls.

"They don't? I don't know but I tend to trust my eyes. What do yours tell you?" Laura asked politely.

Goldbaum struggled to keep her voice calm. "We... we have a heap of what looks like human-sized cockroaches down in the morgue and what appear to be..." Her voice trailed off.

Laura saw a host of emotions on Goldbaum's face -- weariness, confusion, disbelief, then righteous anger.

"If you wanted to play a prank, that's a fuckton of effort you've put into it." Goldbaum barked. "I hope you're still laughing when you're behind bars." She looked up at her partner. "Did the coroner find out what the... skin sacks are made out of?"

"Like I said, trust your own senses. They usually don't lie," Laura gently said. "The... sheaths are what remains of a roach thrall's human host."

Detective Goldbaum consulted her clipboard. "Tox says you're sober. You don't strike me as insane either. What the fuck is a roach thrall?" Another look at her partner who simply shrugged. His face said 'I've seen enough shit I can't explain but I'm this close to retirement and will not rock the boat if I don't have to.'

"First, I'm not making this up. Roach thralls have been documented since at least the Middle Ages."

"Where?" Detective Goldbaum snapped. She yanked her phone from a pocket and tapped the screen before sliding it across the table. Google came up empty.

"In the Order's Monster Manual, for example. You have my phone, look it up. Or do you want me to tell you?" Laura asked. The next few minutes might decide if and how we work with them. She took a deep breath. "The adult form is a six-limbed, carapace-clad insectoid of five to six feet in height and around a hundred fifty pounds in weight. Your eyes didn't deceive you. What's on your slabs in the morgue are, in fact, giant cockroaches."

"That's impo-" Kelly began. When she met Laura's steady, unflinching gaze, she bit her tongue. "It should be impossible. No cockroaches grow that big!"

"The evidence is right in front of your eyes. Or rather in a chilled room in your morgue. The parasite is usually spread through ingestion of contaminated food or impure drinking water. It settles in the host's stomach and grows, eating its way through the host body until it reaches and devours the brain."

"That sounds... disgusting," Detective Lee muttered, crossing himself. "Doesn't it hurt?"

"According to witness accounts, not one bit. The parasite secretes biochemical compounds which play havoc with the host's nervous system. Instead of unbearable agony, they're stoned out of their mind most of the time, until it's too late."

"And then?" Kelly asked in horrified fascination, like someone listening to a particularly ghastly horror story.

"The parasite tries its best to keep the 'sheath' intact for as long as possible since they have no way of regenerating it by themselves. Eventually, the skin-sheath will decay or tear up from mounting injuries. Once that happens, the parasite will try and find a mate and spread its seed far and wide, usually contaminating known fresh water sources or likely gathering spots for the desperate."

"Okay, okay-" Kelly raised a warding hand. "Let's for one minute assume you're not telling me a dumpster load of bullshit. How do I recognize a... roach thrall in its human form?"

"There are certain indicators," Laura said. "I hate to propagate stereotypes but the most likely hosts for them are the poor and the homeless, people who can't choose what they eat or drink. There was one especially dire outbreak in a Paraguay prison a few years ago. They had to basically burn it down to the ground and rebuild it. It was covered up as a prison riot, but-"

"The indicators?" Kelly pressed on.

"Oh, right. Sadly, a bad stench isn't a sure-fire sign you're dealing with a roach thrall. The easiest non-magical way to check is trying to get a blood sample."

"Oh?"

"Did you check the fight scene pictures?" Laura asked. "Despite the carnage, there was no blood. No human blood at any rate. We did spill a lot of ichor though. The simple prick will prove several things. First, it won't heal easily, if at all. Like I said, once the roach thrall has matured, it is basically wearing dead skin with a minimal layer of flesh underneath. Second, no blood. Third, if you're feeling particularly sadistic and jab the needle in deep, you should feel the carapace underneath. It's hard enough to withstand even most sword blows. If you're dealing with a roach thrall, they won't notice the pain of the poke. And finally, the least appetizing way -- have the person in question give a fecal sample. Even an immature roach thrall will have infertile eggs galore in their stool, giving it a rice-like, sprinkled with white look and texture."

Detective Lee cleared his throat. "Either that was the best theatrical performance I've ever been to..."

"I don't like this one bit," the blonde detective said. "You're not making this up?"

"By my honor as a member of the Order, no. This is far too serious to joke about. You should order a double helping of Hazmat suits and flame throwers before checking on this town's homeless population. If they become desperate enough -- and today they were pretty close -- they have no qualms about attacking people to supplement their diet."

"You have to be shitting me," Goldbaum moaned. "First the... mummies and now this? Zion, do me a favor and slap me."

"No can do, Kelly." The towering man behind her placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed instead. Goldbaum groaned.

"Mummies?" Laura asked. "Listen, since we technically didn't break any laws, there is no reason for you to keep us in custody."

"Didn't break any laws my ass," Lee growled. "We have a pile of corpses and at least six pieces of what looks like human skin-"

Goldbaum raised her hand. "Why did you fight them?"

"Kelly-" Lee began.

"Shush. Let her talk."

"The GobCo store manager felt threatened by the dozen or so homeless people hanging out in his back alley. If you review the camera footage, you will agree they didn't exactly behave like nice neighbors. So, initially we wanted to ask what they were doing there but when they began to attack us, we acted in self-defense." Laura exhaled slowly. "I hope the store's cameras caught us trying to be diplomatic. Doug nearly took a rock to his eye for his trouble. And when we found out that our swords did fuck all to their armor, I decided to escalate." She offered a thin-lipped smile. "I'm no expert on Massachusetts self-defense laws but I posit the following question: Are roach thralls human beings?"

Goldbaum and Lee exchanged looks. "They look like giant cockroaches to me," Lee said. "And I'm not nearly drunk enough to say otherwise."

"This whole day makes me itch for something mind-numbing as well," Goldbaum muttered. "Fine. I'll file the papers and have them go up the chain. Don't leave town until we say so, okay?"

"I just got here," Laura said cheerfully. "So, what's this about 'mummies?' Did someone raid a museum?"

"Should we really involve-" Lee asked.

Goldbaum stood up. "Keep her company for a moment, I need to get the file." In the doorway, she turned around, offering a dreadful smile. "Worst case scenario? We get another earful of bull. Unless you have an idea what happened to two of Greenbury's richest assholes, I'm willing to listen to our new friends here."

She closed the door behind her.

"Listen," Laura said urgently. "I am not bullshitting you."

Lee sighed. "That's the thing, girl. Before we pulled you from your cell, we had a long talk with that biker friend of yours."

"You're probably not supposed to tell me what he told you."

"See me care," Lee grumbled. "Thing is, he said many of the same things. You didn't rehearse that?"

"When? I've been here all of-" Laura checked her watch, "less than twenty-four hours. My girlfriend told me I'm not good enough of an actress to even fake an orgasm. How do you think we rehearsed that whole act in less than a day?" A fleeting smile crossed her face as Lee averted his gaze. The old man actually blushed!

The door opened and Detective Goldbaum returned with a new folder. "Here, have a look," she said, offering it to Laura. "And tell me what you think is in the pictures."

Laura flipped open the folder. The photographs inside showed a corpse spread out on what looked like a very upmarket leather couch, the suit wrinkled and torn in places. The skin was a thin, parchment-like screen, pulled dangerously taut over the skull. Wisps of icy white hair framed it like a broken halo.

"He looks a couple of centuries old," Laura observed. "May I ask who the gentleman is -- or was?"

"I wouldn't call him a 'gentleman,'" Goldbaum snarled. "That is Waylan Tucker, one of the few businessmen stubborn enough to make Greenbury his home. His chief of security found him like this in the morning when they cracked open the panic room."

Laura paged through the folder and read the preliminary findings. "'No visible trauma, no discernible fluids left in the body, victim seems to be mummified.'" She exhaled slowly. "Any idea how long he's been dead?"

"According to his PA, he was fit as a fiddle by the time she left him yesterday at five p.m.," Goldbaum said.

"According to the security chief on duty at that time, he was fit enough to entertain a known hooker," Lee growled.

"And before you ask, yes, prostitution is illegal in Massachusetts," Goldbaum added. "But if you happen to donate copiously to the police's retirement funds, people tend to look the other way." She gnashed her teeth as if the simple fact Tucker had been able to get away with it was a personal affront. "He's not the only mummy we found."

Laura paged further through the folder, finding another mummified body, this time in a bathtub. Without clothes, the corpse looked even more gruesome, the body a parchment-wrapped skeleton with barely any distinguishing features. From the strange angle the corpse's neck sat, she assumed that the impact of the raised lip of the bathtub had -- if not outright killed him -- contributed significantly to his death.

"And who's this?" Laura asked.

"Stephen Whitting, another one of Greenbury's esteemed upper crust." Goldbaum's face distorted into a grimace. "He was in the midst of a messy divorce along with a couple of lawsuits for everything from embezzlement to insurance fraud."

"He died when?"

"Four days ago. His lover found him like that. The guy was barely coherent when he called us."

"Can't blame him. Finding a dead loved one is never a good time, especially not if the poor soul had to go like this," Laura said, tapping the photo.

"Any idea who did it? And how?" Lee asked.

"Do you still believe I'm kidding about the roach thralls?" Laura asked. "Because the possible culprits are even more... interesting."

* * * *

Later that evening, the whole Order cell sat around the dinner table. The plates had been polished off and copies of the 'mummy case,' as Detective Goldbaum had called it, were on the table.

"This leaves basically only two possible solutions," Laura said, tapping her phone. "Either we're dealing with some kind of vengeful undead -- specters, wraiths or maybe some other unquiet spirit out for vengeance -- or your common succubus with a grudge to settle." She indicated the files. "According to Kelly... I mean Detective Goldbaum, both men knew each other. In fact, they were dorm mates in Harvard, along with a third guy named Jacob Sullivan. She said she'd call once she gets her hands on him."

"Unless the life leech got to him first," Eric muttered darkly. "How are we going to tackle this? It's my first rodeo."

"Easy," Maria said, rubbing her hands. "We only need to narrow down the list of possible suspects. That means digging through the victim's dirty laundry until we find what we're looking for."

"Does that mean you're volunteering for library duty?" Doug asked. "Because I won't."

"Sure. With my spells, I should be able to make quick work of the Examiner's archives and while I'm away, Chelsea will comb the internet for any kind of dirt these guys may have left online."

"Who's Chelsea?" Jenna asked, her voice seemingly coming from far off.

"A custom-coded AI prototype I'm testing. Like I said, Alexa is giving me nothing but headaches so I wrote my own this morning. And since I like the whole 'nonthreatening girly AI' schtick, I called her Chelsea. Maybe I'll whip up a cute 3D model of her too, to run our house systems..."

"Thanks but no thanks," Jenna grumbled. "No tinkering with the smart home. While you deal with the drained ones, I'll see if I can assist with the cleansing of the roach thralls. There has to be a less invasive way to deal with them than simply burning everything to the ground."

"A friend of mine had good results with curative magic," Doug said. "The disease-negating kind."

"Which makes you a prime candidate to help me with this," Jenna said. "Which leaves Eric and Laura for a... peculiar task."

"What are you hinting at?" Laura asked. "Looking around the local graveyards, finding any disturbed grave sites?"

"No, I'll have a few feathery friends do that." Jenna took a deep breath. "Don't get me wrong please. I want the two of you to investigate The House Of Unearthly Delights."

"Huh?" Eric asked. "What's that?"

"My question exactly," Laura added.

"It's an extradimensional brothel run by succubi. It so happens to have an entrance right here in town. And from what I've heard, a lot of local dignitaries go there to get their rocks off."

"Aren't we a bit young to frequent such an establishment?" Eric asked, his face somewhere between incredulity and a huge grin. His scars didn't make it a pleasant expression.

"Since the premises are not on US soil, no one can slap the lust demons with any lawsuits and those in the know treasure their services too much to rat them out," Maria explained. "It only makes sense to ask Mama Lydia if one of her girls has gone rogue."

"Besides," Laura added, "We're not visiting to avail us of their services." She locked gazes with Jenna. "I'm in. Where do I have to go?"

"Hold your horses," Jenna said, smiling. "I admire your enthusiasm but you've had enough action for one day. I'll tell you after breakfast."

* * * *

Laura sighed, withdrawing her dildo. "Sorry. This doesn't work for me. One hand on the phone and the other wrangling the toy... It's not the same."

"Aww, just as it got good," Vicky panted, her face radiant in the light shed by her screen. "I never had phone sex before."

Laura chuckled. "I know, I know. You can get off on basically anything. Didn't you get detention-"

"When Madame Robert caught me with my hand inside my panties during class? Cut me some slack already -- it was sex ed after all and she's a god-damn succubus!" Vicky sighed. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like... you're looking now, all serious and not horny any more. I feel even more like a slut than usual." Vicky produced her glistening dildo and licked it. "Not even a little?"

Laura fished for her t-shirt. "Like I said... not doing it for me. I miss your hands, fuck, your whole body intertwined with mine."

"Aww, that's sweet. But don't tell me you don't watch porn when alone and on holidays."

Laura grinned. "Actually... no. I tend to keep my hands off myself. Save it all for you." She giggled. "Besides, I hate doing myself with my phone in my hand. The last thing I need are my juices on the screen."

"Aaaah, that explains your ferocity between the sheets. A rare insight into Laura Stürmer's innermost feelings!" A heartfelt laugh. "Ever heard of Cleansing magic?"

Laura scoffed. "Of course, you lovable numbnut. Blessed are those with magic to spend so frivolously, like a certain dark elf." She stifled a laugh. "Would it kill you to stop playing with yourself for at least five minutes? I didn't cast any horniness magic on you."

"No, that comes with my heritage."

"How does your dad deal with two horny exhibitionists under his roof?"

"Well, he doesn't see me that often. Ela-... Mother Elaine runs me ragged. Between shopping for the soup kitchen and helping in said kitchen, I haven't cast a single spell today -- or hit anything with my sword." Vicky offered Laura a scorching glare then sighed theatrically. "Okay, you win. I'll finish myself once you're off the air, okay?"