Super dead Sorceresses in the South

A voicemail reached Clay, from one mister John Calvin Grangerford. His southern drawl seeped into the message, a reminder of the good old times in the South with the southern and cajun food, whiskey, music, gypsies, assassins, jealous sorceresses, jealous boyfriends with shotguns and escaping shotgun marriages.

"Hey Clay. It's ol' J.C. Remember that time when you got that special book to add to my collection? Well, Some folks be stirrin' up trouble here in New Orleans, saying they want it back. You know how family loyalties run deep here. If you're interested, I'd like you to come by and demonstrate the legitimacy of our 'acquisition'. If you know what I mean, and I trust you do. I'll meet you at that old Cajun restaurant in the uh, District, where our first business was done. Same time. My treat. See ya Clay."

The District as it was simply called, was the shady parts of New Orleans where all kinds of deals were made. It was here an unspecified number of years ago that the business of the book was concluded and everyone went home happy- except the previous owner of the book of course, who didn't quite agree to part with it.

The restaurant was typically southern, the air filled with the smell of buttery, deep fried Southern cuisine. Despite it being early January it was already starting to get warm. Still, Grangerford sat in their usual booth waiting for Clay, the table having drinks, fried chicken, shrimp gumbo and calamari waiting for him.

Clayton's head throbbed more than usual when the sudden, harsh vibration of his phone pulled him from peaceful unconsciousness and shoved him face first into the harsh, upsettingly bright room that made up his current reality. It wasn't just a hangover that was tightening it's grip on his head; he reached his hand to his forehead and felt the yellowing bruise that painted his most recent failure on his face.

All the way to the heart of New Orleans just to get double crossed by that bitch and their mutual big, dumb shark friend. Of course, he thought, maybe Carl wasn't so dumb after all. He did seem to have an uncanny ability to smell money in the air the way real sharks detected blood in the water. Clayton just had the misfortune of being between the shark, the girl, and their money this time. Atleast they left him alive.

Whatever. The dagger ended up being just a dagger anyway. Nothing of any real value...

Aside from money, of course, but he assured himself that he would be just fine without his cut of the ludicrously high sum of money the eccentric old man was going to pay them to bring him back a worthless hunk of metal.
The rumbling in his stomach assured him otherwise. No dagger meant no money, which meant no food, and coincidentally meant stuck in the swamp of sweat that existed even in January and called itself the District.

Remembering to check his phone and find out just who had the audacity to ask him for anything at this hour shook him from his pity party, he wanted to know who to punch.

---

Sunset. Grangerford always insisted meeting at sunset. Clayton has a theory about why that was; he figured Grangerford felt like it made him seem mysterious, maybe even mystical. Hell, it might have even worked on some common idiot, but Clay was a special idiot, he knew JC well enough to know the guy didn't actually give a damn about 'the occult', magic, terror, whatever you wanted to call it. JC Grangerford was in it for the paycheck, plain and simple.

Clayton liked working with men like Grangerford. If they didn't know what they had, they were less likely to actually try and use it. He'd seen what happened when he handed artifacts over to people who thought they knew. It never ended well.

Without even so much as a greeting he slipped into the Southerners usual booth and attacked the food laid out for them on the table. He could probably think of a dozen times he'd been hungrier, but if you looked at him there you would never know it.

"So, what's this about that book?" he managed to ask between mouthfuls, "and did you really have to call at noo n? Decent, hardworking people were trying to catch a good days sleep, you know. "

The food tasted exquisite as ever, in a way something seasoned with herbs, battered up and deep fried could be. Everything had a delicious excess of salt, sugar, fat and oil. JC simply watched as Clay ate, preferring to let him eat while he spoke about... something. Something. He was moving his lips, but it was like no words came out. There was only the taste of the food. The food...

...Why was there ketchup all over the fried chicken? no matter. JC watched as Clay had his fill, and mute spoke about something about the book and some relatives of the deceased owner.

"Why, it's nice to see you still have quite the appetite, Clay... Though your friend didn't quite appreciate it." JC's voice changed from a southern gentleman's drawl to that of a sweet southern Belle. It was a voice Clay would probably recognize, though it implied something horrifying and wrong.

The table before him changed. The delicious southern food before him changed. The bowl of fried chicken and shrimps and calamari Clay was eating from turned into the severed, bloody head of ol' John Calvin Grangerford, a permanent expression of terror on his dead face. Strips of his flesh had been taken from his face. The other bowls contained assortments of his still warm body parts and internal organs, which Clay had spent the last few minutes or so eating heartily. The tall glass of sweet beverage contained his warm blood and bits of his entrails. Of course, all of it was poisoned, designed to weaken Clay, perhaps make him susceptible to the undead all around.

The illusion too was slowly lifted, and the restaurant changed. The people there were dining on similar fare, though eating with their hands and eating with abandon. The people were not very alive at all, but pale faced and emaciated, ghouls in tattered clothes, dead for weeks, dining on freshly killed victims. Most were henchmen Clay had put in the ground.

The JC sitting in front of Clay laughed and laughed, peeling off the disguise of a southern gentleman, revealing a red haired, red dressed Southern Belle sorceress, her beautiful features preserved despite the pale dead skin and the manic, bloodthirsty laughter. Scarlet Sinclaire was back from the dead.

"Hello Clay. It's so nice to see you again. Come with me, and let's finish the wedding." She said, offering her gloved hand to him, still wearing the ring. All the ghouls in the restaurant turned their gaze to Clay. Looks like it was going to be a very long night.

Food! Deep fried, fattening, and now oddly unsettling. His associate's lips were moving but no sound was coming from them. In fact, there was no sound coming from anything at all. He suddenly became very aware of his own beating heart as a metallic taste filled his mouth. No longer chicken, whatever filled his mouth was something closer to pork, only tougher, luke warm, and very wet.

Suddenly, he could hear again-- No! He could always hear, only now he was able to pay attention to the sounds. It wasn't just his own heart beat that Clayton heard; there was a frantic, quicker beating coming outside of him. It was coming from the calamari. As the feeling of fear jolted it's way though each of his nerve endings, the heart beat outside him picked up speed at the same pace as his.

the voice that voice HER VOICE!

It exploded through his head, forcing his eyes wide to catch every bit of the maddening display that surrounded him. The smell of cemetery flowers and rotting flesh filled his nostrils. Every word that fell from the dead woman's mouth put a new bullet hole in his brain the same as he'd done to her years ago. Each hole made him more aware of the bits of JC that still filled his mouth, and in turn that awareness increased the bubbling feeling in his stomach. His stomach was twisting in its attempt to force out the horror that filled it.

The sorceress reached one of her gloved talons toward him, the wedding ring looked as prestine as it did the day she died, and stood in stark contrast to the rest of her as she began to decay along with the rest of the ghosts that never really stopped haunting him. The corpses of each of his mistakes watched him as they rotted away with her.

The witch began to laugh at the miserable quaking shamble she'd reduced him to, and a strong wind whirled around the table, rapidly picking up speed the way the heart beats had before until finally it cut through him. His eyes squeezed shut for seconds that could have been hours.

When he opened them, he was greeted by the welcome sight of Grangerford and the diner that he walked into. A bead of sweat fell from Clayton's brow onto the table. He looked down to discover that he'd sweat through his collar. Yves Saint Laurant, ruined. Grangerford was looking at him with a concerned curiosity, "Clay, boy, y'alright?"

It was good ol' JC all right. Alive and well and not the contents of Clayton's stomach. He breathed a sigh of relief, "It's nothing, I just--" He looked down at the calamari. There it was again; the twisting he felt in the pit of his stomach during his graveyard hallucination was back, and wrenched tougher than before. He jumped to his feet with one hand covering his mouth and pushed his way out the door.

The contents of his stomach emptied immediately upon his exit to the sidewalk. Only what came out was thick and dark, only slightly thinned by the bile that came up with it, it was blood he vomited onto the city street. Blood, bile, and something else. A wedding ring. The wedding ring.

As Clayton knelt down to examine it, two shadows cast themselves over him; one before the other.

"Jesus, Clayton..." He heard JC mutter.

The ghouls came out of the restaurant in single file deathly eyes and hungry, bloody jaws affixed on Clay. The dead would have their revenge, especially the witch that blew out the windows and flew above all the ghouls. Her long dress billowed around her. Her grimoire, the book JC paid for, hovered beside the undead sorceress, and mystical cards orbited around her too.

"Flense the skin from his flesh! But bring his heart to me...!" Scarlet wailed, despite her lack of lips and her decayed vocal cords, commanding the ghouls to attack. They let out frightful moans and began charging towards him. Their dirty nails had lengthened and blackened into dark claws, while their blood soaked mouths hungered for his flesh.  They moved with an inhuman speed and gait.

The District's dirty streets were narrow and cars were parked, making the roads even narrower. This didn't stop the hungry crowd- they clambered over vehicles and some even jumped off walls, all in an effort to sink their teeth into Clay. All the buildings were shuttered and locked, and none who wished to live dared to interfere in the vengeance of a dead sorceress come back to life. Scarlet Sinclaire launched her own attacks, launching those sharp cards at Clay, trying to cut at his feet to slow him down.

Meanwhile, in the distance, the sound of a roaring engine was making its way quickly to where Clay was. As darkness fell on the blood soaked District, a different kind of monster- one of science, wheels and sleek black contours barreled into view. The Car drove straight down the road where Clay was, and performed an extremely tight turn to avoid the poisoned meta and smashed into the crowd of undead, giving them some breathing room. It launched a barrage of foam-crete bombs, instantly making an eight foot high wall that encased most of the ghouls.

"INTERLOPERS!" Sinclaire screamed, attacking The Car with more of her evil magic cards, but a zero point-energy barrier had different things to say. The Car's top mounted minigun slowly began its rotations, and began to fill the sky with hundreds of rounds, its distinct VRRRRRRRR drowning out the crowd, and forced Sinclair to temporarily retreat, her cards moving to intercept the bullets coming towards her. The Car's side opened to reveal a small brightly lit interior with three seats and all sorts of wonderfully organized and stowed away equipment, a OCD sufferer's dream.

"Come with me if you want to live!" a female voice, crisp and clear said through a speaker.

6 years ago

It was dark; the thick, heavy kind of darkness that you can practically feel pushing down on you, and your eyes never adjust to. If his count was anywhere near accurate he'd been chained to this chair for three days. He used the meals they force fed him and the regular visits they paid in between to count the hours.

If only he'd been paying more attention days ago. That damn necklace should have been his first warning sign, he certainly recognized the symbol on her pendant now. It was a symbol of status among practitioners of darker magics. Sorceresses of her kind were rare, even among others like her, but still he should have known. At the time it looked like nothing but cheap jewelry.

Of course, he'd been distracted both by the whiskey, and by her body the night she brought him home from bourbon street. So distracted, infact, that he hadn't noticed the other, more distressing signs. The symbol painted in red on the floor around her bed or any of the other sigils that covered the walls around them. It was almost as if he were under some kind of spell. He probably was.

Things got a bit blurry for him after the act, but he could clearly recall her smearing something across his chest while she lay next to him, "There. Now that the first part is over, we can get to the real heart of things..." she said with a voice bright enough to mask her real intentions, "Oh, Clay, I think he's just gonna love being you." She giggled.

Everything went black and the next thing he knew he was in the darkened cell.

The thudding of heavy fists sounded against the steal door, "Wakey wakey, hands off snakey." A gruff voice called out from the other side with a deep chuckle that Clayton didn't share with him. The man's sense of humor was clearly so highly refined that only his intellectual equals could possibly understand him. Clearly Clayton was not one of them, but he would be soon. The smile in his unkempt beard widened at the thought.

The eye slot on the door slid open. The small amount of dim light that slid through was enough to bother Clayton's eyes. He turned his head away from it.

"You ready to make your noble sacrifice, boy? Patriarch says everything will be ready soon. I just wanted to thank you for this, boy. You know, I didn't think he was going to make it, but you fell into our lap at just the right time. The planets are going to be right in just a few days, and then, what? What the fuck are you snickering at? Boy, if I could have my way, I'd come in there and bash your fucking face in, but the patriarch has to look good for his wedding day."

Clayton's only response was to spit through the eye slot. The big man snarled and slammed it shut.

***********
6 days ago
***********

The first thing Scarlett did upon reawakening there on the altar was shiver. She took a moment to take in her surroundings. It felt somehow comforting that here, the place she took her last breath as a mortal would be the place she took her first breaths of immortality. But who? Who had such power as to bring her back from death, and why?

"You're awake. Good." a voice spoke to her from the darkness beyond the glow of the candles that surrounded her. Now, let's talk about that friend of yours. Clayton, was it?"

The bits of Scarlett's lips that had begun to regrow formed something like a smile.

***********
Today
***********

Reality flickered around Clayton again when touched the ring. Suddenly everything felt still, like time stopped moving around him. He spun quickly to his feet to face the voice.

He found himself face to neck with the reanimated corpse of Grangerford, who held his own head in his hands. His internal organs had become external and dragged behind him. "I thought we were pals, Clay. Last I heard eating each other wasn't the friendliest thing to do. But tell, me, did I at least taste good?" The corpse's mouth wasn't moving but his laughter filled Clayton's head.

His limbs were shaking as he backed away from what was Good Ol' Grangerford. More vomit forced it's way up and out. More voices broke out in hideous laughter. Quick glances around him confirmed he was surrounded by the corpses from the restaurant. He struggled to steady his gun hand. He was set to shoot JC when the witch made her presence known, "Listen, Scarlett, it's been fun but I think you should see other people. I mean, I'm already married."

The joking was involuntary. It was an automatic response to the stress of his situation. Still, it helped pull his head together. He pulled the trigger on JC, and it knocked the ghoul on its back.
Clayton's legs still shook as they pushed him backward safely out of the way of the cards Scarlett launched at him. "Big ancient tome of cosmic evil and all you've got for me is zombies and card tricks? I told you it was bullshit last time I killed you."

He took aim at her only to get distracted by the arrival of his savoir. He managed to pop two shots off at the sorceress before jumping into the car and slamming the door as they sped off.

"Thanks for the save, Schwarzenegger, but you know I coulda taken her. he reloaded his pistol whils he spoke, "Who are you, anyway?"

The gaggle of ghouls gunned down by gratituous gunfire from the gatling gun did not graciously stay as greasy smears of guts on the ground. Scarlet flipped the pages of her grimoire, then eldritch energies slowly came over the ghouls- they were rapidly put together, their bodies made whole. They moved with renewed unholy vigor, the seams at which they were ripped apart dripping with necrotic energy. They clamber over the foam-crete wall, only to looked around in confusion in the smoke.

"Accursed technology." Scarlet waved her hand and a gust of wind blew the smoke away. Then she made an incantation that infused the pavement with dark energies, calling forth the form of a large demonic hound made of dirt, rocks and concrete, the size of a small building. Its eyes glowed with the fires of hell. It growled deeply at the witch, though the demon was beholden to her will, shackled by unholy rites.

"Find them, track them down!" Scarlet said, and the infernal hound was off, taking long, lumbering strides, followed by the ghouls.

The Car drove away at high speed in the direction away from the encounter, the road blocked off by foam-crete formations, then a helping of smoke cover.
Unless he could get himself a seat and strap in, the passenger compartment of the Prowler tactical vehicle juggled Clay around like a shaker. The drive wouldn't be long though, as it made one final, sharp turn into a dead end alley and what seemed like the wall of a building- that opened at the last second, then closed again.

From the sound of it, the Prowler was powered by a jet engine and it made an appropriate sound as it powered down. The passenger compartment opened up to an underground safe house, with walls of reinforced steel and a ceiling of hastily assembled lighting and utilities. A computer station was set up with several CPU's and three wide screen monitors, processing all manner of data, mostly pertaining to police files and fragmented history of persons of occult nature in the area.

One part of the wall had a steel cabinet containing several military grade long arms and side arms; assault rifles, automatic shotguns, SMG's. There was tactical armor, grenades and other mundane goodies as well. The crowning weapon inside was a scoped Barrett M82 .50 cal sniper rifle.

The  cockpit opened and out came a small person, 5'3" at most, wearing a coat and fedora outfit with a uniform gray mask, hood and glowing yellow eye slits. hat and hood? interesting fashion choice. Her voice was electronically masked, and sounded gender indistinct. "Help yourself to some weapons. I'm X." The introduction was succinct, the alias very mundane.

"I've been tracking movements across the country for a while now related to the return of personalities of powerful dispositions from the dead. I anticipated perhaps that the Southern Sorceress Scarlet Sinclaire would be one of them, but I didn't anticipate the power she'd gain from reanimation. I would appreciate any information you can shed on her, mister Wray. We shouldn't stay too long though." She asked, directly to the point. It took her this long to observe Cutie's less than stellar disposition.

"...What happened in that restaurant by the way? You don't look so good. I've got some medical supplies as well if you need them." She added. She pointed to a second metal cabinet with medical supplies.

"Bad calamari." Clayton responded wrly. He turned around and shuddered at himself. What happened in that restaurant was going to stick with him. Probably forever. But she didn't need to know what took place there; no one did.

He stepped over to medical cabinet which was practically a pharmacy. It had a bottle of pills he recognized from a long time ago, when recovering from similar symptoms after his first meeting with the Sinclair family years ago. He swallowed one down and turned back to face this 'X'.

"So you know all about me, huh?"

She wasn't the first person to pull some information out of some classified documents government creeps seemed to keep on everybody, but he figured he'd bite this time.

"But all I get is that your name is a letter, and that whatever government group sent you down here didn't have the decency to tell you that get up you threw together is as big a disaster as whatever's going on out there." He said things that were probably crueler than his savior expected, all while holding one of her own assault rifles, "Thanks for the save, and for this here, but if your bosses knew anything about me, they'd know I can handle this on my own. It only took one bullet last time, won't take more than two this time around."

Of course he could've been more grateful, and he would've if X weren't so obviously government. They'd tried recruiting him to do their work for them almost yearly, and were always told he wouldn't be their lapdog. Why would this time be any different? He half expected that they might have set this whole thing up to finally pull him over to their side.

"Now how do I get out of here?"

***********
6 Years Ago
***********

It was finally time. Time for everything to come together.

Scarlet stroked the hair of the Patriarch. Once, he had been a great man, her mentor, her leader, and her father, among other things.

The light of the candles which lined the wall flickered in the reflection of the medical machinery necessary to keep the man alive. For even the mortal bodies closest to the, as the Patriarch surely was, were not above the course of nature. Spirits were a different matter. In only a few hours that truth would be proven once again in what was said to be the 13th time in her father's existence.

She learned forward to kiss the Patriarch's face. For him to continue living, certain specifications had to be met, as the deities which spoke through the man demanded precision if they were to grant their gifts to the living. Not just any body, or blood line would do.

But it couldn't have been coincidence that the planetary bodies lead her to the perfect host just as they reached proper alignment. No, this was destiny. Reality itself bending to her father's will, as it always had.

"Soon." she whispered into his ear.

Scarlet walked up the stairs of the macabre wedding altar built well over one hundred years ago specifically for this purpose to await her "husband" to be. The small crowd of hooded followers stood in silence while she began to read from the cults ancient tome. The ritual was coming together.

"Oh. I'm not with the government, though that doesn't really matter. It's my business to know things. And fix problems." Ellie explained, though like she said, it wasn't really that important. What was important right now was the prevalence of superdead everywhere.

Clayton insisted on dealing with his personal issues on his own, and Ellie was in no mood for uncooperative individuals. "If you insist. You might want to take a phosphor grenade, too. I'm here for intel, and to minimize collateral damage, not exactly to help." said X, going back to the computer to watch the activities going on outside.

"There's a lift at the corner, it will take you back to street level. I'll be here if you need extra bullets. Good luck." She said, pointing to the aforementioned lift.
Of course, on the street there was a giant hell hound prowling around made of concrete and glowing bits, sniffing for Clay's scent. It was a huge thing, and it was followed by ghouls.

Well, the phosphor grenade was a good idea. So she -was she a she?- she was in the 'information industry'. Might as well be the government, they got all theirs second hand from people like her, anyway. Still, the bunker, the guns, even the cords coming out of the computer all felt very federal to Clayton. He stopped himself on the way to the lift, and sighed.

You want information, 'X'? Let me tell you something, that thing up there, that's not Scarlet, not entirely, anyway. Seems like you already know I ran into her a few years ago, and I won't bore you with that story, but the so called sorceress I ran into back then? She didn't have half the power she does now. She was little more than a brainwashed Manson family daddy's girl in the most disturbing way possible. And that book she's pulling all her spells out of? That couldn't possibly be the same one I took from her 'family'. The patriarch was little more than a nutjob who figured out a few charms and dabbled in blood rituals, the rest of the book was pure gibberish. So, if that is the same book, it sounds like someone's added a few chapters."

He took a few steps back toward X, "I have a feeling you might have already known that though, so why don't you skip the silent savior act and tell me what you know and more importantly, how you knew to find me. Just what are we- I mean me, I, whatever. What am i up against here?"

It had been unnoticeable at first, but there was a pounding coming from just above them, at the point they made their entrance into the lair. It was growing louder with each thud shaking the earth.

Ellie as X listened intently to Clay as he expounded on the matter of identity and occult power. Now he asked her for information, a prudent course of action given the situation.

"Mr. Wray, The occult has always been outside my sphere of study. I have very few associates that are experts in the field that reliable or sane." She said, pausing to think about Elaine and her Japan training... no, ordeal was the better word. She almost felt like even thinking about Elaine would summon her.

"Hard, quantifiable science has always been my deal. I may not know exactly how she came back, but I know this: there was a spatial anomaly several days ago in this region. Spatial anomalies that coincide with the appearance of... for the lack of a better term, the super dead. What are we up against? Metahumans, mystics or super beings listed and confirmed as killed, brought back to an undead state, with their original abilities enhanced and serving some greater goal. I am investigating these anomalies and-"

Then the safe house alarm sounded as the screens blinked to footage of the street outside, of a giant hell beast stalking the streets. Ghouls shuffled all around the building they were under. X quickly flips a switch on the computer set up and the whole underground safe house powered down into some kind of sleep mode. The place goes dark and quiet, the computer's CPU's go into sleep mode, and the only for the two pinpoints of light indicated X's eyes. X does not bother to tell Clay to be quiet.

The Hellbeast passed by their street sniffing, its glowy eyes of death peering into the basement's windows. X had gone to the wall, as if to hide from his view.

After a few minutes, assuming Clay made no sound or loud moves, the Hellbeast would move on.

"If we can take out Scarlet, we can probably avoid confronting her attack dog." X suggested, slowly making her way towards the Lift. "Truth be told I would like to hire you as a consultant in the days to come. I have a specimen I could use help to study. But first, Scarlet's rampage poses a genuine threat to the city. She has to be stopped."

Clayton knew enough to freeze there in the dark while the hell hound made its rounds. The dig was heavy, if you couldn't tell by looking at it, the sound if the earth crunching beneath its feet was a dead give away. The thing seemed sure he was in there, she creativity caused it to linger before moving on. Sort of like when you're sure you left your keys somewhere only to discover you must've left then somewhere else entirely.

He sighed with relief when the creature moved on.

"Ok, X, I'll let you help me out here for now, since what little you seem to know is more than I've got." He said, following her to the lift.

Sure, the occult wasn't her expertise, but she knew more than she was letting on, and as much as he would loved to stay far out of the situation, he was made a target and pulled into her mess by whatever she was after.

"Let's go make these superdead... Super... Deader?" He raised an eyebrow at his own statement.

**********
Six years ago
**********

Clayton found himself being lead out into the humid open air by the bearded man he'd spit on earlier. Whatever they'd been drugging him with was wreaking havoc on his insides. Something they claimed was necessary to "cleanse him of impurity."

The man shoved his shoulder with a good amount of force, "Just keep walking, boy. We're just going to that barn over there." Clayton stumbled forward.

"You know, you should feel honored. I'da killed to be in your position," the stains on the man's overalls said he'd kill for a lot of things, "but it couldn't be me. Nosir. Not my place. Ya see, it had to be you, boy. It's been you everytime, and always will be. You don't know it now, but your body is destined to host the Patriarch. We've got this big wedding set up for it and everything. As soon as you speak the oath, his will will replace yours. Just as it should and always will throughout ti- guggh." The man gargled at the suddenness of the strangling. Clayton heard enough. The truth was that managed to free himself from the rupees that kept his hands tied almost immediately after the big man re tied his arms after taking him off the chair he'd been tied to.

The man thrashed wildly in an attempt to free himself. Clayton maneuvered behind the man and planted his knees in the giants back for leverage as he continued to choke him with the rope. The man was certainly strong. He managed to keep up right as he thrashed, slamming Clayton's back into a tree with a great amount of force.

Eventually the struggle was over.

Clayton took a moment to rest against the tree. Panting, he put his hand to his side where he made contact with the tree. The warmth of his own blood coated is finger tips.

He took one more deep breath before he stood and stepped over the man on his way to his wedding.