Previous Post #332: And Even More Untold Tales of the Ghost Taxis: Stop The Meter Go straight to Part One: The Rules Debate Go straight to Part Two: Garbage In, Garbage Out Go straight to Part Three: How Does Your Garden Grow? Go straight to Part Four: The Red Tower of Vesalia Go straight to Part Five: Partying With The Dead Go straight to Part Six: The Haggis of Shinty MacBlood Go straight to Part Seven: The Last Cab Home Go straight to Part Eight: The Shortest Route and the Quickest Route Previously: Lair Legionnaire Nats (Bill Reed) has accidentally gained ownership of the Ghost Taxi Co., a mystic organisation currently facing hostile take-over by the sinister Westminster Necropolis Company on behalf of Hell-Lord Sage Grimpenghast. The only way to thwart the villainy is for the Lair Legion to win a mystic scavenger hunt organised by acting sorcerer supreme Vinnie De Soth – and so far they’ve only gained one out of three maguffins of doom, with two more to go. There’s everything to play for… Previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom. Descriptions of cast at Who's Who in the Parodyverse. Locations explained in Where's Where in the Parodyverse. Al B. Harper's notes on Costa Del Lune *** 5. Partying With The Dead     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Darling, you should have seen her. White leopard skin in May? What was she thinking?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…couldn’t help laughing when his false fangs just fell out into his cup of blood…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wearing endangered species is so passé anyhow. This is thylacine...”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…tried to make a jumpsuit from Doom Gerbil fur but we haven’t seen him since…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…enjoy the taste of Goldfish of Destiny with a white sauce but you have terrible dreams about it the night before…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…said to Baron Otto right there if you expect me to wear that you’re going to have to loosen the straps by at least three notches…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…how hard it is to get Hedgehog of Time off Persian carpet?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…tried to tell me it was all part of the ritual and that bad old Alistair Cromley enjoyed sitting on something like that, and I said…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I quite like Thai food but it’s important to get the real thing. Always check their passport before eating them.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You heard that Penny Blood’s a new series of creatures are all laced with heavy irony, of course? They leave totally scathing wounds…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…just like that, cheeky as you please, grinning even as the holy water sprayed out of the fire sprinklers…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…don’t get me started on that Johnstantine person. Do you have his phone number?”     The sun set behind the ancient Castle Del Luna and the ancient fortress cast cold shadows over the pan-tiled roofs and cobbled alleys of the old village. Down in the harbour the fishermen pulled in their skiffs and the shopkeepers shuttered their stalls. On the higher terraces a lamplighter ignited the wrought-iron gas mantles. Children were called in from the streets. Houses were closed up for the night. The castle’s shadow spread far and dark.     This was Costa Del Luna, one of Europe’s oldest and smallest sovereign states, fastness of the Family Del Luna as far back as the manuscripts in the Rosicrucian Hermitage reached, tax haven for the powerful, playground for the conscienceless.     The sun went down and the party of the dead began.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…told her ‘you might be the Enthrallress but you’d still better give him back those Trousers of Destiny, find wherever you tossed your Panties of Infinity, and get the hell out of my jacuzzi’…     Ã¢â‚¬Å“All I’m saying is if Off-Central Park wanted sentient statuary there’s more aesthetic choices than a second-hand gargoyle. I mean what are they trying to say?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…best thing you can say about LeVeau M’Tumbe is that costume of hers comes off really quickly…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…not so Marvellous without his orgonic viagra, from what I hear…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No seriously. Turned to the Apostate right there in the dungeon, down on his knees, weeping. We didn’t know where to look.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…heard she was so furious you’re not even allowed to say the name Magweed on penalty of being sold to Disney…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…another false alarm. Not the Celestian Madonna at all. We ate her anyway, of course…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No, word is somebody drank Nosferos’ blood. There’s another elder out there we just don’t known about…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…almost worth getting impaled just to meet the Carnifex. He could impale me any time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Space Fandoms make the best throw rugs…”     Beneath the cathedral-like vaulted roof of the Grand Basilicum (with its Moorish architecture and sixteenth century carvings by Mordellini Bautista) the rich and powerful of Europe gathered to talk and dance. Tongueless servants flitted between them serving drinks - or in the case of those guests who preferred fresh beverages simply baring their necks – while ancient creatures of shadow gossiped and romanced. Liaisons and alliances began and ended as the band played Danse Macabre.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…Picnic of Doom was livid, given how much time he’d spent getting sand into the food in the first place…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…new season of arias by the Choir Menstrual, but I said my dear they don’t make castrato like they did in the seventeenth century…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…thought Parodiopolis would be more entertaining now that horrid little plumber man’s gone but without the Willow it’s just no fun. The Croque D’Or just can’t compete…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…and then he tried to slip his pseudopod up my skirt, claiming he was trying to find his chthonic manuscript…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…his last words were ‘It’s a cat. I’m a ninth-tier Diabolic Cacorauder of the Order of Anarchy. It’s lunch.’”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…ever since he got it back from the Laundry of Doom. It simply won’t come off and that wretched counter girl of theirs just laughed and said…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…heard that the Westminster Necropolis Company are going after the Ghost Taxis, darling. They intend to sell them on to Sage Grimpenghast.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well perhaps he could get them to be a little bit more courteous. That one driver was very abusive because I didn’t leave him a tip.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, that’s not all, sweethearts. Didn’t you hear that some mortal’s contesting it? A dreary little superhero or something? And there’s going to be a trial of ownership by the old rules?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Call those the old rules? What happened to the really good old days where they peeled the contestants skins off and made them wrestle to the death in a pit of needles?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s strictly a hobby now. Anyhow, apparently there’s a full Hunt going on under the Triumvirate’s arbitration charter. You hadn’t heard about it? The Shaper and the Destroyer of Tales are simply going furious tugging things in different ways.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Suppose that explains why the karmic demiplanes are more like minefields these days. It’s not been the same since Immortipatus got sucked up his own aura. Whole ultrastructure’s going to the dogs.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You heard that the Necromancer General tried to apply for the position? Snubbed all round, of course. Oik.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Still, a scavenger hunt would be rather jolly. Who’s taking the bets? What are they hunting for?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody’s quite sure. It’s all terribly squalid. It’s gauche enough that superheroes are dragged into it, but I heard they’d even dragged that mouldy old Shoggoth into the ring. I mean really… What are you pointing at.”     The master of ceremonies stood beside the ballroom door and announced the newest visitors: “The Probability Dancer and the Manga Shoggoth.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh dear.” ***     A handsome man with a devilish smile looked over at the doorway and nudged the partygoer beside him. “Look over there. Things just got interesting.”     His companion wasn’t as handsome and his jacket didn’t have as much black frogging but he too gazed appreciatively at the young woman stood by the doorway who was looking round the dancefloor. “Interesting indeed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I saw her first,” noted Daimon Soulshredder. He pointed to the character slouching beside her who seemed to be oozing out of his suit across the carpet. “I don’t fancy yours much.”     Styxus De Soth scowled over at the suited Shoggoth. “That’s the lesser manifestation separated from its main biomass,” he recognised. “Does it really think there aren’t a dozen people in this room capable of elder-binding it just like that – including me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who cares. Wrestle all you like with the elder being. I’m much more interesting in grappling the hottie.” The charming incubus made a beeline for the trim brunette in the leotard. “Daimon Soulshredder,” he said.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No, the Probability Dancer,” answered Sarah Shepherdson. “But thanks for playing. You’ve been a great contestant.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m Daimon Soulshredder. Call me Daimon. Allow me to take you for a drink.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You mean get me a drink, Daimon.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If you insist. Come on, I’ll introduce you to some people. Well, some entities.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’d better split up to question people,” the bandage-swathed being beside Dancer decided.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Let’s both just stay in one piece for now,” Shep answered carefully. She’d worked with the Manga Shoggoth before. “I’ll go see what Daimon wants to show me and you can check around the other guests.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll go graze on the buffet table,” agreed the loathsome elder being, speaking quite precisely.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I believe my acquaintance Styxus had a few words for you,” Daimon told him equally precisely     Dancer allowed her new partner to hook his arm round hers and lead her into the party. The music changed from classical to something more jazz and blues.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” asked Daimon.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Gatecrashing, mostly,” Dancer admitted. “I don’t see anyone I recognise.”     Daimon steered her to the gallery where he could point out the guests. “The usual poseurs and wannabees,” he judged. “Liétald del Lune and the whole ruling family were here earlier but they all hurried off rather quickly half an hour ago. Rumour is they’ve all rushed away to consult the Abyssal Exsanguinous, the Genealogist Arcane, for some reason. But there’s a few people who aren’t total bores.”     Dancer looked down onto the shadowed candlelit ballroom below. She could see the Shoggoth working his way through the room by the scatter patterns and the occasional candelabra blinking out as it became part of the buffet.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve got scions from most of the others of the Nine Families here,” went on Daimon Soulshredder. “That’s Prince Walloon Hertzog in the gold lamé speaking to Pandemonica Ananké and Opheli Incantantrix. There’s Louis and Druella of the Morgolath, making fun of Rubelin Coriomundi’s new face transplant. Well, it is hideous. I’ve no idea who he got it off. There’s Valentia Harrow trying to get people to notice her cursed engagement ring from Avogadro Rouge. Golgotha De Soth’s the one smirking because she’s already seduced Valentia’s fiancée and smooching with the Devos Jaggarnath, Prince of the Rakshasas.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Quite a gathering,” Dancer agreed, peering into the shifting darkness below the gallery.     Daimon went on. “The fat drunk in the corner is Lamentus Vlastivock. He’s cringing there to try and avoid meeting Baroness Morbo, the bulbous-headed alien hybrid in the strapless orange Versace. Ulrika doesn’t take rejection well and I think she’s in her spawning cycle.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is that Baron Otto von Zemo?” recognised Dancer, peering down at the Teutonic “unalive” in the Junker uniform.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The bald guy leaning over to look down Mystic Morgana’s cleavage? Sure. You know him?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know his grand-daughter better,” Dancer replied. “I’m not feeling I really fit in here.”     Daimon placed a cool hand on Dancer’s shoulder. “Darling, don’t worry. You’re one of us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m really not.”     Daimon pulled her closer. “Don’t be so modest. I don’t think anyone else here tonight can say they’ve wiped out an entire planet. You did bring Galactivac to Skree-Lump, didn’t you?”     Dancer went pale.     Down amongst the grandees who were too evil and sober to take to the dance floor with the younger lords of darkness the Manga Shoggoth was taking a more direct approach.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Excuse me,” he bubbled at the Flensing Man, “but have you seen the elder vampire Vrykolakas by any chance? We require a vial of his blood.”     The Flensing Man rippled his long needle-talons. “Do you know who I am?” he hissed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can guess,” answered the Shoggoth. “You are the minor night horror that gets destroyed by the loathsome elderspawn to demonstrate that the elderspawn is serious? Am I right?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Er, no.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you sure? I mean, normally I’d check with my high priestess Ebony but she isn’t here right now. Only Dancer, and she’s busy being seduced by somebody who’s bad for her. But if you are volunteering to be the object lesson it would be very helpful if you could clearly indicate so.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not. Totally not. Wow, is that the time? I must be leaving.”     The Shoggoth moved on to Dr Ludovick Trenchcoat. “Excuse me, but have you seen the elder vampire Vrykolakas by any chance? We require a vial of his blood.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re here for Vrykolakas’ blood?” Daimon Soulshredder asked Dancer. “You’re here for the auction?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Auction?” Dancer frowned. “What auction?”     Daimon pointed to one of the tables in one of the alcoves. “Those guys? Atlas and Census Jones. The Jones boys. Used to work for the Shaper or the Chronicler or one of those types. Now they’re major league occult middlemen. They shift a lot of dodgy artefacts.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’ve got Vrykolakas’ blood?” Shep checked. “Only we need it tonight.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Auction’s not until tomorrow,” Daimon noted. “Is this to do with that Ghost Taxi scavenger hunt?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s right. Mr Weissman told us where to find the blood. We just expected it to be within this Vrykolakas person.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“First off, Vrykolakas isn’t a person, he’s a consulting undead. Other necroforms come to him with their problems and he helps them out. For a fee. Some say he’s one of the original Children of the Night, a son of Cain or Lilith, of the First Cursing. And secondly, what the heaven did you pay Rupert Weissman to get that kind of information out of him?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He told us where to find the blood,” Dancer said brightly, “and the Shoggoth spat him out.”     Daimon glanced nervously down at the floor where the Shoggoth had cornered the Geometry of Doom and was discussing lower mathematics. “I think that might be why Weissman sent you here, then. His revenge.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Revenge? What do you mean revenge?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Jones’ have got a drop of Vrykolakas’ blood, they say. That’s pretty major. A vampire who drinks another vamp’s blood gains that vampire’s strength, and Vryko’s stuff is primo. That means we’ve got a major cast in tonight waiting for the auction, some real big players. Lots of powerful, nasty beings.” Daimon ran his fingers along Dancer’s cheek. “One innocent sacrifice.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh?” said Sarah. “Who?”     Daimon clearly hadn’t seen her Spark test scores. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Manga Shoggoth,” recognised Atlas Jones, slightly nervously. “You can’t touch us, we’re insured.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Also,” replied the Manga Shoggoth earnestly, “I cannot touch you as it might cause your mundane organic chemically-bonded skin-sacks to dissolve and suppurate into five-dimensional goo and drip away into realms of pan-eternal outer madness.” A drop or too of translucent protoplasm seeped between his face bandages as he tried to approximate a smile.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Er, yes, that too,” agreed Census Jones. “But the fact is we’re protected, and this is neutral ground.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If it wasn’t neutral ground there’d already be a war happening here between these night creatures,” added Atlas.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“As opposed to a bidding war, which is what we’re hoping for tomorrow,” smirked Census.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you do have some of Vrykolakas’ blood,” the Shoggoth observed. “I thought I smelled something rank. I require it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then place your offer tomorrow when the auction starts,” advised Atlas. “Although I should warn you that I’ve already got reserve bids from the House of Ananké and the Clan Morgolath, and a very handsome proposal from Aubrey de Lune.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I had a very handsome proposal from Golgotha de Soth,” confided Census. “Although that had nothing to do with the auction.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No offer from the Westminster Necropolis Company?” noted the Shoggoth. “Interesting.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh yes,” Atlas said brightly. “I guess if you need it for your scavenger hunt then Dr Wormcallow’s boys will be bidding for it too.” He rubbed his hands together. “This is going to be good.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Call for you, Grace,” called Nurse DuBois. In Paradopolis the night shift was just beginning, which meant that Grace O’Mercy was taking charge of Phantomhawk Memorial Hospitals Emergency Room. The Night Nurse picked up the phone on triage reception and activated line 2.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hi, Grace,” said Hallie, the Lair Legion’s resident artificial intelligence. “Sorry to call you at work but it’s for a case. I’m trying to track down some info for Dancer and the Shoggoth and for some reason Marie Murcheson seems to think you’re the person to ask.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ask then,” offered Grace. She looked away from the phone just long enough to call, “Put him in room seven, get Henson to mop up the spaghetti, then have someone lube that euphonium off Big Thick Eddie. I’ll be over there in a minute.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right,” Hallie agreed. “Well, we need to know about vampire blood. I guess you’ve seen some weird stuff in your time at Phantomhawk ER. Would you happen to know what the deal is on vampires drinking other vampire’s blood?”     If Grace’s heart was still beating it would have skipped a beat. “Me? Why would I know something like that?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Marie thought you might, and Hatty agreed. Ebony’s off on some kind of vacation that doesn’t involve battling insane cultists and Vinnie De Soth’s refereeing this weird occult treasure hunt so if you do know anything…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A vampire gains the strength of another vampire by drinking their blood,” answered Grace. “The blood is the life. A stronger vampire can dominate a weaker one by feeding off them. A weak vampire could become incredibly strong by taking the blood of an older vampire. Er, so I hear. In E.R.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So if someone was to drink the blood of that ancient nosferatu Vrykolakas?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then they’d be awfully powerful and in a huge amount of trouble. I doubt that Vrykolakas would like it very much.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s dangerous?” checked Hallie. The Legion didn’t have too much on the elder vampire.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s so dangerous that he’s smart enough never to have battled the Lair Legion,” pointed out Grace. “He’s the one that other undead go to for specialist advice on necromancy. He’s thousands of years old and all that time he’s been researching and learning. Half the occult entities on Earth owe him favours. He really won’t react well to someone drinking his blood. How would anyone be able to get his blood anyway?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good point,” agreed Hallie. “I’ll pass that back to Dancer and the Shoggoth.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“One other thing. When vampires are making people like them the human has to drink a little of the vampire’s blood. It enslaves them. It could be that anyone ingesting Vrykolakas’ ichor expecting to get his power might have a very nasty surprise.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ouch. Thanks, Grace. I’ll make sure the Legion know the dangers.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No problem. I’ll get back to cleaning up this little catheter mishap then remind that guy trying to sell his meth-laced vomit to the addicts that this is a hospital.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right. Okay. Bye.”     Grace O’Mercy sighed. “Some nights you really want a drink,” she admitted. “Just say no.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re very charming,” admitted Dancer as she smooched in close to Daimon Soulshredder as the band played something slow and easy. “I keep thinking maybe I should be objecting to your plan to sacrifice me and bid my essence in the auction tomorrow.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But you won’t,” Daimon told her. “A herald of Galactivac is a very valuable commodity so I can’t let you go, but I can make sure you have a good time before your time is up. I promise that when you die it’ll be of bliss.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s really sweet of you, Daimon. Most guys who date me aren’t so up-front about how they’re going to use me then toss me away.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m very special. You’re a very lucky girl to die in my arms.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t you think my team-mate the Manga Shoggoth might object to your plans?” Dancer wondered.     Daimon shook his head. “Styxus and Rubelin are preparing the elder sign to bind him now. He’s only the lesser Shoggoth after all. He’ll make a useful item to bid as well.”     Dancer shook her head and pushed herself up to Daimon more. “You haven’t thought this out,” she whispered in his ear. “First off, how would the Atlas brothers get a drop of Vrykolakas’ blood? Unless he wanted them to, of course. Say to get everybody gathered here tonight for tomorrow’s auction, to set a trap for the Lair Legion, as if he’d been hired in advance by the WNC.”     Daimon frowned. “So what if he did? You fell into the trap, didn’t you? You’re mine now. You can’t resist.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, that brings me to points two and three,” Dancer went on. “Point two is that it’s a really cosmically dumb idea to try and charm me with that sub-Johnstantine bad-boy shtick when I’ve already fallen for the real thing a time or two. Or about fifty. Maybe seventy. Seventy-five. It’s especially dumb to try using your incubus seduction powers on me while you’re smooching with me on the dance floor, given how my probability powers are activated by me dancing.”     Daimon stiffened a little. “Er…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Point three is that elder signs do work on the Shoggoth, that’s true, but there’s always a chance that they’re not constructed properly and that there’s a fatal flaw in them that allow the Shoggoth to break free. And then he’d be cross. Guess what the chances of that happening are if there’s a Probability Dancer on the dancefloor?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Um…” swallowed Daimon.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,” confirmed Dancer. “See those young men screaming and gibbering towards the bathroom covered in gel? Don’t they look just like Styxus and Rubelin?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ah…” winced the incubus.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And that moist feeling in your pants right now?” went on Dancer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That would be me,” bubbled the Shoggoth. “Hello.”     By coincidence the band started to play something loud and frenetic just then so nobody really worked out just why Daimon Soulshredder was leaping about, waving his arms, and screaming wildly. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The scam’s over,” Dancer told the Jones brothers. “We’ve defused your trap.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And Daimon Soulshredder’s trousers,” added the Shoggoth, frothing in his gelid blob form.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That was nothing to do with us,” Atlas Jones said hastily. “We’re just middlemen. We don’t know anything.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No refunds,” Census added quickly and reflexively. “It’s not like we offer a guarantee. There’s no call for it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Whoever won the auction tomorrow would get a visit thereafter from Vrykolakas, would they not?” suggested the Shoggoth. The loathsome elder beast bubbled in close to the worried Jones brothers. “You keep the profit from the sale, the purchaser returns the goods with profuse apologies in exchange for not being annihilated, and the Legion should have been destroyed by the entities at this rather dull party here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Any deal that Vrykolakas might have struck with the WNC is nothing to do with us,” denied Atlas. “If the time-seers at the Necropolis Company thought to call in a consulting vampire ahead of time then you can’t hold us responsible. We’re just businessmen.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So did the WNC buy a drop of Vrykolakas’ blood when they were hiring him to set this trap?” demanded Dancer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m guessing it was with Vincent De Soth five minutes after the scavenger hunt started,” admitted Census. “You never had a chance of winning this one. That was the point.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Drat,” cursed Dancer. “Well, at least we got to make the world a little bit crappier for Daimon Soulshredder and his pals.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There are others here who deserve destruction,” growled the Shoggoth. “I shall make a list.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’d better go,” Dancer decided. “There really are people here we wouldn’t want to annoy without the full Lair Legion at our back.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, you should go,” agreed Atlas, who was still not happy about the proximity of the Shoggoth, or the fact that Daimon Soulshredder’s pants were slowly dissolving inside the elder being’s protoplasm.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ll go then,” agreed the Shoggoth. “But first I intend to have a dance. It’s only fair.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A… a dance?” worried Census.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh yes,” agreed the Shoggoth. “Dancer, what are the chances of the band playing the Hokey Cokey?” He slithered out onto the dance floor. “I’m feeling a little bit sloppy right now.” *** 6.    The Haggis of Shinty MacBlood     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Other side of the road!” screamed Nats, “It’s England! They drive on the left! The left!”     Rosalind “Roswell” Fellkirk stopped watching the road entirely as she turned round to argue with her passenger. “Listen, buster, I’ve been driving these cabs since I was twelve years old. I know what I’m doing.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re ploughing straight through a truck! Aaaaggh!!” responded Bill Reed.     The sixty-ton oil tanker drove straight through the Ghost Cab as if it wasn’t there.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Technically we’re not in England,” the Librarian noted, absorbing some useful local travelogues from his interface to his Lunar Public Library. “We’re in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but this part is Scotland. Calling the people here English can cause unnecessary dental work.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s not like I wanted you to have to do this stupid scavenger hunt,” fumed Roswell, swerving to avoid a red Royal Mail post box that somehow seemed to have become part of the local ley network. “I never asked for you to become the next owner of my father’s Ghost Taxi business. I’m sure I could have found someone with psychic potential that could hold a chymeric contract that wasn’t so… you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey! I never asked to be attacked and amnesified and chased by dead men in hearses and stuff,” Bill Reed objected. “It’s not my fault if this kind of thing happens to me all the time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That chymeric contract really is interesting,” the Librarian mused, ignoring the screaming match between the flame-haired cabbie and the flying phenomenon. “It looks like a modification and updating of an original pact forged in 1874 by Lucius Faust, then sorcerer supreme, to harness ambient occult energies in what was then Parodiopolis from the sleeping elder godling Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu, the Groper Out of Grossness, by chartering a Ghost Hansom Company.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. It stops a lethal build-up of elder force and it allows us to drive through oil trucks without exploding Nats in a big fireball,” agreed Roswell. “Not that I’m saying that would be a bad thing.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, I’m right here!” objected Bill Reed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, I can tell by the whining.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This version of the charter was established in 1922 by one Heddington Venerable,” the Librarian continued. “It’s co-signed by the Abyssal Greye, Lavinia of the Underdark, and Carrington the Shaper. It allows for lost spirits to be anchored to the occult real estate that is the taxi depot, brokered by a mortal with psychic gifts who acts as their connection to the world of the living.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That was my dad,” Roswell agreed, blatantly ignoring a dry-stone wall and taking a shortcut through a village graveyard. “He got talked into the job by the old guy who did it before him, Julio Cacciatore. Mom wasn’t happy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Did he drive like you?” Nats wondered, seeking a reason for Mrs Fellkirk’s unhappiness.     The cab screeched to a sudden halt, hurling Nats into the front seat. “We’re here,” Roswell announced defiantly. “Loch Obergarghel.”     The cab had screeched to a halt inches from the edge of a quaint stone quay beside a long green lake. Old limed cottages were strewn down an uneven cobbled road towards a big crenellated manor.     There was a sleek classic hearse parked outside the big house.     Roswell revved up her Ghost Taxi and rammed it. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good to meet you, your, um, Lairdship,” Nats bade Rory McArghel, hereditary Laird of the Clan McArghel. “Sorry about the slight fender-bender out in your courtyard.”     McArghel was a man in his late fifties, stout and kilted, with a huge greying-black beard almost to his stomach. He finished pouring the whiskies and looked around in puzzlement. “Where are the gentleman in the funeral vehicle?” he wondered in his Highlands burr. “Are they calling the Automobile Association?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re seeing to their car,” Bill answered precisely. “It somehow got hurled into the Loch and they’re… checking into it.” That was code for “I telekinetically threw their curse-fortified vehicle half a mile down the lake and then I tossed their undead asses after it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sometimes Mr Reed does get some things right,” Roswell admitted with grudging approval.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re here on a matter of historical interest, your grace,” Lee Bookman told the Laird. “We’re interested in the famous Haggis of Shinty MacBlood.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s famous?” asked Nats.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s famous?” asked Roswell.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Och aye,” the Laird told them. “It’s world famous round here.”     The Librarian explained as usual. “Shinty MacBlood was a local war-leader back in the struggles against the English about eight hundred years ago. His cause was aided by a mysterious Paradox Stranger who helped him to bake a most terrible war-haggis.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I thought a haggis was something you ate?” puzzled Roswell.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Assuming you call sheep’s heart and liver and lungs pulped up and cooked inside the sheep’s stomach something you eat,” shuddered Nats.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ah, there’s oatmeal and suet and onion an’ the like as well,” enthused the Laird. “Nothing like it wi’ neeps and taters on Burns Night.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nothing at all,” agreed the Librarian precisely. “Anyhow, legend says that Shinty’s haggis was made from a rather special sheep, the Black Ram of Death.”     Roswell frowned. “I’m guessing it tasted a bit salty,” she suggested.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well the interesting correlation is that back in the twelfth century the then Destroyer of Tales did use ovine shapes for his agents of destiny,” noted the Librarian.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The what?” Roswell blinked.     Nats tried to explain. “There’s this cosmic office that… See, the Chronicler uses ravens and the old Shaper liked goldfish and… Back in the beginning there was this King of Tales, and he…” He turned to Lee Bookman. “This exposition stuff is harder than it looks.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The key point is that this haggis was an instrument of destiny, an artefact that allowed MacBlood to triumph over his enemies for a time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Till he were betrayed,” added the Laird gloomily, “by a wumman.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“At least he wasn’t betrayed by a sheep,” Nats consoled the Scotsman.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He wasn’ae Welsh,” objected the Laird.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Shinty was seduced then handed over to the English by a temptress called Remorse Kiskilla,” the Librarian explained. “They killed him of course. They made him eat his own haggis.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But the haggis was reclaimed frae his body,” Rory McArghel told them. “Cut oot and preserved through the ages. It’s here in this very hoose the noo.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s on display in this manor now,” the Librarian translated.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We need to borrow it,” Nats told the Laird. “Maybe permanently. It’s for a scavenger hunt. Er, I mean, I’m with the Lair Legion. This is a Lair emergency. We’re commandeering your haggis.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It is important,” Roswell added. “Please. People’s very souls depend upon this.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well…” began the Laird. “If it’s as you say…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Speak nae more!” came a shrill Highlands voice from the doorway. “Dinnae betray yuir sacred trust! Dinnae gi’ away oor hooly treasure to th’ Sassenach intruders! Death tae th’ murrains! Scotland fore’er!”     Roswell gazed at the furious hairy tartan-swathed lunatic that had just burst into the Laird’s hall. “Um…?”     The Librarian recognised him at once. “The Bagpiper! Don’t let him blow on those…”     It was too late. Lee Bookman was swallowed into the Bagpiper’s Sporran of Doom. Then Ewan McGore played his Skirl of Destruction and the battle began. ***     Deep in the underwater caves below Loch Obergarghel the sonorous wail of the pipes reverberated over and over. The ancient creature that slept there roused from its slumber, uncoiled its serpentine lengths, and answered the call.     Obie was awake. She undulated to the surface, rising in a high spray of green foam, coiling her neck to where the battle was raging.     Bill Reed had grabbed the Bagpiper and was trying to wrest his pipes from him. Roswell was clinging to the piper’s sporran as Nats bounced from wall to wall. She winced as she got a view of exactly what a Scotsman wore under his kilt.     Obie slithered over and swallowed Nats whole.     Roswell reached up under McGore’s kilt and tugged. The skirl of the bagpipes went very high then tapered off into a strangled dying squawk – an unintentional one, as opposed to regular bagpipe music.     Bill Reed forced the great serpent’s jaws open and flew out. “I hate when that happens,” he snarled. “At least this time I got out through the mouth end.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s a lake monster,” Roswell warned him with a slightly hysterical giggle. “Don’t let them eat you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tis Obie!” the Laird gasped, looking out through the hole where the side of his house had recently been. “Tis Obie rising frae th’ loch!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, I noticed,” Nats admitted. “But don’t worry. I can handle one giant monster.”     The Bagpiper shouted Gaelic curses at the intruders that would despoil his nation of its national treasures. The other seventeen lake serpents burst out of the water and joined the fight. ***     Inside the Sporran of Doom there was a foetid smell of unwashed Bagpiper, rotted scraps of uneaten slumpie and pork pie, the skeletons of several small mammals, and the Chief Undertaker of the Westminster Necropolis Company.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why Dr Wormcallow,” said the Librarian. “Fancy meeting you here.”     The corpse-pale mortician regarded Lee Bookman soberly. “You are fortunate that I am present. The usual function of this odiferous sub-dimensional artefact is to bombard those sucked into it with nightmarish projections drawn from their own unconscious.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you’re stopping that?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The nightmares are afraid of me.”     The Librarian looked around him. There didn’t seem any obvious way out from the hessian darkness. “I take it the Bagpiper objected to you removing the Haggis as well.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That is the case. We were prepared to lay the Lair Legion to rest. We had not anticipated an insane mutated Hibernian with a transdimensional groin pouch.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s an oversight anyone might have made. But at least we get a chance to chat. Perhaps you can tell me why you’re so keen on getting hold of the Ghost Taxis after all this time?”     Dr Wormcallow started at Lee for an uncomfortably long time before answering. “The opportunity only arises when ownership is in flux. I’m sure you have read the provisions of the charter. Whoever owns the company has access to many hidden pathways and secret places in Parodiopolis, not least to chambers redolent with the elder power of Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu; but he is not the oldest secret beneath the city nor the most terrible.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s… not comforting,” owned the Librarian. “And Sage Grimpenghast sees opportunity in accessing all of that?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And to the lost souls of the metropolis, yes. He is keen to exploit the city before it is destroyed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Destroyed?”     Dr Wormcallow refused to offer any further explanation of what the WNC’s future-seers had discerned. It was going to be a good time for undertakers.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Any ideas on how we get out of here?” the Librarian asked the mortician.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh yes,” Dr Wormcallow replied. “I believe the Sporran of Doom can be breached given the right stimuli. I believe I can provide those stimuli.” He looked at Lee Bookman. “There will have to be a release of necromantic energies first. One death should do it.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t just get eaten!” Roswell screamed at Nats. “You’re a superhero! Do something superheroey!”     Nats telekinetically knotted the nearest lake serpents together and pyrokinetically set fire to the bagpiper’s beard. “I’m on it,” he argued. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and go grab the Haggis?”     The Bagpiper directed some of the Obies towards the cab driver. “Swell,” she spat and punched the Scotsman in the face. “If you want something doing…”     Nats slammed into the monster nearest to her and wrestled it to the ground. It vomited green slime all over him. Roswell vanished into the interior of the castle.     The Bagpiper rose wrathfully, preparing for the skirl of destruction. At his command the serpents ganged up around Bill Reed, slamming him to the ground again and again.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The noo!” screamed the frantic Scotsman. “Hae wi’ him and ding him the drochet wi’ th’ de’il’s own drum-scoon!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” puzzled the Laird. This was too Scots even for him.     Nats heaved himself free of the lake beasties, driving them away with a series of pyrokinetic detonations; but he felt himself getting weaker.     The howl of the bagpipes hit him like a brick wall, toppling him into the rubble of the manor house.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tis long sang ye were due to dee!” howled the Bagpiper. “Dread yuir weird, Sassenach!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And drain your lizard!” Bill called back defiantly. He’d probably got the beginnings of a concussion.     The Bagpiper gestured for the Obies to finish the flying phenomenon off.     But then his sporran exploded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Complete works of Billy Connolly,” gasped the Librarian, toppling out of the ruptured dimensional space. “Does it every time. Had the Sporran in stitches. Then unstitches.”     Dr Wormcallow didn’t get jokes. He rose to his feet in proper nosferatu fashion, stiff at a board, pivoting at the heels. “Enough,” he said. He gestured to Roswell who’d just retrieved the Haggis from the laird’s display case. “Bring the item to me,” he commanded.     Roswell made a rude noise. “You work Ghost Taxis for as long as I have you learn fast enough not to fall for the old hypnotic voice trick. Or the going-in-to-get-my-chequebook scam. Or the could-you-look-under-the-back-seat-for-me come on. &%£$ off!”     Nats had had enough. He levitated the nearest Ogie right out of the water and used it to pound the Bagpiper into unconsciousness. Then he turned on Wormcallow.     Half a dozen shadowy beings that might have been the spectres of WNC operatives past flickered in around Roswell and the Haggis.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My game, I believe,” said the chief undertaker.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Watch out!” warned the Librarian, dropping the worm nearest to him by transmitting Moby Dick into it’s tiny cranial cortex. “Those are harrowgrims, as described in the fifteenth century Codex Abominata by Mad Asparagin the Harper! Think junior Doomwraiths. They drain life energies!”     Nats had a sense for undead and these things gave him a screaming headache. He tossed them aside but just telekinetic contact left him weak and shaking, hardly able to remain airborne. “Run!” he told Roswell.     There was nowhere to run.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fine,” spat Rosalind Fellkirk, surrounded by spectres. “Take it!” She hurled the gory delicacy down at Dr Wormcallow’s feet. “It’s not like we haven’t got other items to still compete.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Actually,” the Librarian winced, “I’m just getting word from Hallie that we appear to be down 3-1 so far.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“4-1,” the undertaker told them, picking up the haggis. “Don’t move or the harrowgrims slaughter the girl.”     Bill Reed gritted his teeth. “This isn’t over yet,” he warned.     Another hearse arrived for Wormcallow. This was an ancient dray pulled by four black night-mares. “Of course it isn’t,” the senior mortician agreed. “I never said that the harrowgrims wouldn’t slaughter the girl anyhow. Goodbye.”     As the hearse dived into shadows and vanished the phantasms attacked.     The Librarian sucked Billy Connolly back into his mind and the Sporran of Doom reformed around the harrowgrims.     Roswell tumbled to her knees, dry-retching. “It’s okay,” Nats told her. “You’re safe now. We’ll get after him somehow. The taxi can follow him, right?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re not following him, idiot,” Roswell gasped.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But he’s got the haggis.”     Roswell clutched her stomach. “He’s got a haggis. I called into the Laird’s kitchen on my way to the display case. He’s got the Laird’s supper. I ate the Haggis of Shinty MacBlood.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Um, didn’t that kill Shinty?” suggested the Librarian.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What part of the attempted vomiting didn’t you understand?” asked Roswell. *** 7. The Last Cab Home     The Ghost Taxi Rank occupied one of the forgotten corners of occult Paradopolis. It was a grimy one-storey building of old brick and concrete, for the main part one huge garage with servicing bays, fuel pumps, and a mesh-fenced compound. A barred-in glass booth caller’s station occupied the middle of the floor. A cluttered office behind led to a tiny staff kitchen and the Fellkirk family’s private quarters.     It was a dark, wet, foggy morning. The funeral cars seemed to drift out of the mists like harbingers of death.     The men – or things that had once been men and things in the shape of men – were in full black mourning fig. They wore white gloves and black top hats with crepe and silk ribbons. Their faces were locked in masks of mournful study. They departed from their hearses and glided over towards the taxi rank.     Tanner met them at the door, leaning on a wicker basket stencilled Mr Lye’s Laundry. “Going somewhere, squires?” he asked them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We have come for what is ours,” said Mr Knellcrom, licking his pale lips with a desiccated white tongue. “You shall not deny us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Me deny you, no,” agreed Tanner. “I’m just here making a laundry delivery, that’s all. But Miss Waver couldn’t make it today. Bad time of the month. I can really sympathise. So I brought along other help instead.”     A large man of baked clay ducked his head to come out through the rear door of the garage. He had the Hebrew word for truth drawn upon his brow.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Shadrack, on the other hand,” went on Tanner as he inspected his sharp fingernails, “Shadrack is a holy golem, forged to destroy evil. He hates evil. He’s basically a God-powered engine of evil-stomping. Shadrack might deny you.”     Mr Knellcrom eyed the towering giant of clay with a growing discomfort. Pottery eyes glowed redly in the gloom.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or you could just wait for the contest to get settled right and proper,” Tanner suggested to the Westminster Necropolis Company. “That way nobody gets their guts ripped out and trampled on the floor. Well, not yet anyway.” ***     The Ghost Taxi rippled into then mundane world outside the High Senate of Vesalia. Dancer waved from the front passenger window. “Hi!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can explain everything,” Myrna the cab-caller blurted guiltily. “See I was just checking some mess in the trunk and the keys were still in the ignition and…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s okay,” Al B. Harper assured the near-frantic woman whose cab had been stolen. “We can track it down. We can find the perpetrator.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Killer Shrike,” spat Yuki Shiro. “It was his DNA on the beer cans, his hair fibres on the carpeting. I just need his blood sample to confirm it and I can easily get that by ripping his head off…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t advise it,” warned the Manga Shoggoth, oozing out of the newly-arrived cab to join the group. “You rip off a few heads and people never let you hear the last about it, as if that’s all there is to know about you. It’s very stereotyping.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’d better go,” Al suggested. “It’ll be a tight fit for all of us in one Ghost Cab but we’d better go back up the people who actually got what they set out for. Besides, I really want to know if this vehicle uses the same aetheric vibrational harmonies as Myrna’s.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You could always ask Mr Pasquanelli,” Dancer suggested. She’d already heard her driver’s life story, death story, and pretty much everything else about him. “He’s hoping to put himself through Invisible College.”     The Vesalian apes watched the humans vanish.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s nice when they visit,” Wise Galor sighed, “but it’s always a relief when they go home.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wheeeeeeee!!!” shouted CrazySugarFreakBoy! as he dopplered through bizarre dimensions surfing behind a WNC hearse on a strand of silly-string. He affixed a second thread and began to haul himself up onto the vehicle.     Mr Mortlack looked in the rear view mirror and saw the wired wonder glowing fluorescently behind them, bright against the funereal monochrone of the pathways of the dead. “Destroy that interloper,” commanded the undertaker. Mr Testament nodded and opened the side door of the hearse.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s me!” CSFB! noted as the mortician climbed out to face him. “I just love me some interloping.”     Mr Testament opened his jaws impossibly wide and breathed a plague-spray at the mocking superhero.     CSFB! ducked under the cone of death, rappelled beneath the vehicle and came up on the hood. “Breath mint?”     Mr Testament moved very fast for a dead man and was on Dreamcatcher Foxglove in a non-existent heartbeat. Then the mortician fell backward, shattering the windscreen, a piece of engine motor embedded in his chest.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It came off in my hands while I was crawling under there,” CSFB! explained. “I hope it wasn’t anything important?” He hurled a rocket soda bottle at the car’s interior and sprayed silly string all over Mortlack’s eyes.     Mr Testament grabbed him and smashed a white-knuckled fist hard into his face. CrazySugarFreakBoy! crashed down onto the hearse’s bonnet then bounced right back and headbutted the undertaker.     Mortlack ripped away the silly string and a fair portion of his face and aimed the funeral car right at the nearest necromantic pocket.     Dream saw it coming - felt it coming, really - a zone of utter death. He slithered over Testament, into the interior of the vehicle, past Mortlack in the driver’s seat, over the cold coffin that occupied the rear, then out of the back door to tumble away into the darkness.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And that is the end of that annoyance,” hissed Mr Testament.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” agreed Mr Mortlack. Then he added, “Where is the artefact?” ***     Killer Shrike turned left down Morrow Alley and headed for the Fatal Toilet. As a bar it sucked, but the beer was cold and the connections were solid and it was very hard to get barred there.     Hatman caught him without warning and rocketed him up to thirty thousand feet. “You have something that doesn’t belong to you,” the capped crusader noted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,” agreed Simon Maddicks, “A huge ugly growth holding onto my jacket.” He glanced down at the city far below. “But for the moment you can keep on grabbing it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yuki and Al B. are really good at figuring stuff out,” Hatman told the villain-for-hire. “The Shoggoth tracked down that stolen Ghost Taxi to where it was dumped outside the Zero Street Mission. It had phased itself so nobody had been able to strip it down.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Kids today have no ingenuity,” objected Killer Shrike. “So do I get a phone call or what? Only I’m thinking you got no evidence that doesn’t depend on weird science or purple-haired robochicks.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Just give us the Saliva Spectacular and you we’ll let this drop,” Jay Boaz promised. “Or not drop, at your option.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You don’t scare me, boy scout. I know how you guys work.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Really? Then you’ll know my next move is to get Dancer to talk to you.”     Shrike’s face changed. “Okay, okay. You might wanna check a weird little funeral parlour joint on Morrow and Epting, but only because I got my additional expenses claim canned. And lower me down somewhere near the pub. I need the john real fast.” ***     Hatman hit the funeral parlour but the Sputum Spectacular had already been collected by Dr Wormcallow. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’d have liked to have seen Vesalia,” remarked Urthula Underess, the party ghoul on Visionary’s lap. “Besides, I might have learned some new words if Yuki hasn’t calmed down yet.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve got the Necronastycon in Icy’s snowball,” Vizh pointed out. “It’s a race anyway and I really want to get it back to Vinnie before it thaws. Dancer and the Shoggoth are picking up Yuki and Al B. And why exactly do you still have to be sitting on my lap? We’ve already located the maguffin of doom.”     Urthula squirmed a little. “I’ve got to get my fun where I can find it. It’s not like you’ve finally got round to a little interfacing with that green AI hottie, is it? Or is there something you want to tell us?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Usually Hallie doesn’t radiate any heat at all,” Icy explained helpfully, “above ambient temperature. Her hologram can generate mild thermal signatures to approximate the feel of human flesh when she uses her hard light generators.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And has Hallie approximated the feel of human flesh for you yet, Visionary?” Urthula demanded. “No? Then I stay where I am. Those seat cushions are far too sucky for my liking.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And Visionary is just sucky enough?” asked Icy innocently.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t wreck my springs,” Korvo growled from the driver’s seat of the Ghost Cab. “You want to do stuff on the back seat that’s extra, and you clean up afterwards.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are we there yet?” asked Visionary.     Korvo rammed the dimension gear into neutral and phased the cab back onto a regular Paradopolis alley. “I hope so,” the driver muttered. “My shift should’ve ended at dawn. And you think that Roswell is gonna process my overtime slip? Bah.”     The vehicle came to a sudden halt. Urthula tumbled off Vizh and landed on the floor.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Uh oh,” said Icy, looking ahead. The road was blocked by a pair of hearses.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Uh oh,” agreed Vizh, looking behind where two more sleek black vehicles were rolling in to block their retreat. “Time to go ghostly, Korvo.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Gee, yeah, why didn’t I think of that?” spat the driver. “Must be because I know we can’t ghost through those jalopies.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They don’t look too friendly,” admitted Icy. “Do you think it would help to make them Slushees?”     The gaunt figure of Dr Wormcallow emerged from the shadows. “Visionary, come forth!” he commanded. “Tell your minions to remain in the vehicle. If your ice manifestation attempts anything he will be vaporised to steam.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ouch,” winced Icy. “I bet that would really hurt. It would cook my carrot.”     Urthula remained undercover on the cab floor. “Must… resist… comeback…” she told herself.     Vizh stepped out of the cab, his hands up. “Isn’t this against the rules?” he demanded. “I mean, it’s a scavenger hunt not basketball. You can’t just snatch the ball.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You are going to give me the Parchment Penitential of your own free will,” the chief undertaker told the possibly-fake man. “You will hand the Necronastycon to me and then of my own free will I will release this young woman that my associates have snatched at random from the streets of your banal city.” He gestured to where two more black-garbed pall-bearers were dragging a struggling girl.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Please!” she screamed, clutching her Mimble’s shopping bag to her chest, “Let me go! I didn’t do anything!”     Visionary looked at the struggling girl. “I see,” he said.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“See doesn’t seem very happy,” Icy noted. “Do you think she would like a Shushee then?”     Urthula wasn’t impressed. “Ha! They think Vizh is going to cave just because some innocent life is threatened, when he knows the whole world could be doomed if he gave the Book of Rude Names to these WNC bozos? You think he’s make that kind of trade knowing…” She rubbed her forehead. “Aw crap. He would.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I would,” agreed Vizh. “Sorry. I’m not good with this weighing up people’s lives versus an obscure greater cause thing.” He ducked back into the cab and dusted the snow off the evil volume. “Anybody got something to wrap this thing in?” he asked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My pantyhose?” Urthula suggested. “I knew you’d ask for them someday. Everyone does.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s wrong with my snowball?” wondered Icy. “You said you wanted the book frozen and silent.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,” agreed Visionary quietly, “but now I want it lashed to this whatever-the-hell-it-was that my ward Kerry slipped into my coat pocket this morning, and I want this slow fuse ignited by the cab’s cigarette lighter.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If this manifestation of the book is blown up then the Necronastycon shifts to another host,” Urthula recognised, “and is lost to the WNC.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. No points all round,” Vizh answered. “Not exactly a win, but under the circumstances…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Should I tell Dr Wormcallow that he’s being a meanie?” wondered Icy.     Visionary dragged the frozen lingerie-bound volume from the cab’s back seat and carried it over to Dr Wormcallow. “This isn’t fair,” the possibly-fake man objected as he laid it in the back of the hearse alongside the caskets that contained the Sputum Spectacular and what Wormcallow thought was the Haggis of McBlood. He didn’t say who was being unfair, though. He’d learned something from all those years with Lisa.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Death isn’t fair,” replied the undertaker with no trace of mirth or compassion. In fact he seemed to relish the idea.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He did what you said,” the woman shrieked. “Let me go now! Let me go!” She struggled in the grasp of the pall-bearers. Her shopping bag split open, spilling purchases over the wet ground. When she was released she grovelled on the road beside the hearse, trying to scoop up the things she’d lost.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Need any help?” Vizh asked her.     She shook her head. When she’d finally retrieved everything she raced away as if all the devils in hell were after her. Wormcallow didn’t even watch her go. She was no longer of interest to him.     He raised one long white finger. “Let this be a lesson to you little superheroes,” he told Visionary. “There are some forces against which you have no chance.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m head of the Junior Lair Legion Training Programme,” Vizh told him before the hearses departed. “I’m all about the lessons.”     He had almost got back to the Ghost Taxi when the blast from the exploding hearse knocked him off his feet.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Uh oh,” Vizh said as the areas was showered with burning shreds of hearse. “Maybe I should think about giving Kerry a small allowance increase?” ***     CrazySugarFreakBoy! tumbled through endless night and he felt cold. He never felt cold. This place was sucking the life from him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A big rescue would sure come in handy right about now,” he admitted.     A pair of cab headlights shone out in the darkness. As it got nearer he fell with a squelch into a big pile of Shoggoth tentacles.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Holy hentai! Hey, where are my Japanese schoolgirls in sailor suits?” he objected.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you okay?” called Dancer. “I tried to get us as close as the probabilities allowed, and then Al did some calculations based on Yuki’s sensor readings. Um, could you ride on the roof? It’s a bit crowded in here and Mr Pasquanelli is a bit worried about his springs.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Did you get the object?” demanded Yuki, to the point.     CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s grin lit up the pathways of the dead. ***     The young woman with the torn Mimble’s bag staggered away from the blast zone then ran as fleetly as she could down a series of maze-like alleys. She jumped lithely onto a fire escape ladder and somersaulted up to the roof.     Hatman was waiting there. “How did it go?” he asked her.     She brushed back her shining blonde hair and grinned. When she emptied her bag out the Sputum Spectacular and a fake haggis rolled across the floor. “The sting is good,” admitted Champagne Cacciatore, international jewel thief, “but stinging the stinger is better yet.”     Her shopping bag shifted shape and resumed her more familiar zaftig form as Silicone Sally. “I’m just surprised that Visionary went with the flow. I was sure he’d blurt something out and give the game away.”     Hatman accepted the objects and carefully stowed them. “Vizh has been doing this a while,” he pointed out. “We all have. We learned long ago that it’s good to have a Plan B. And a Plan C. And a Plan F.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So what’s the plan now, o glorious leader?” wondered Sally.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Now?” Champagne answered for Hatman. “Now it’s time to make the Westminster Necropolis Company wish they’d never crawled out from the shadows that they lurk in. Right?”     The capped crusader pulled on his Hatman hat. “Right.”      *** 8. The Shortest Route and the Quickest Route This section takes place after Jason's tie in "Meanwhile Back At The Warehouse..."     Sage Grimpenghast, Master of Ignorance and Teacher of Deceptions favoured the look of a dusty Victorian schoolteacher, almost human, gowned with his prominent shaved skull beneath a dusty skullcap. Only the tiny stumps of horn and the serpentine eyes betrayed that he was actually an archlord of one of the abyssal hells; and his power was waxing. Humans were enjoying a very special time of ignorance and deception.     Grimpenghast was awaiting Vinnie de Soth as the young man returned from a rather late lunch. The fiend looked up from a scroll he was annotating in sticky red ink and acknowledged the newcomers to the abandoned warehouse on the mystic soft spot. “Ah, the putative sorcerer supreme! The temporary acting possibly-sorcerer supreme, Vincent Arcanus Greymalkin De Soth! And the fair miss Liu Xi Xian, elementalist provocateur. Now we can begin.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You stay away from him,” Liu Xi warned. “He’s not alone. He’s not falling into your traps.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is he not?” asked Grimpenghast, raising one thin eyebrow. “Then whose traps is he falling into, Liu Xi Xian? Yours?”     The Chinese girl placed herself between the devil and the young man. “I’m not trapping Vinnie! I’m his friend, that’s all.”     Grimpenghast licked his lips. He seemed to be savouring the taste of deception. “Temporary acting possibly-sorcerer supremes that need friends to stay alive are my favourite kind. And friends that have so many emotional holes in their defences as an insecure murderous bartered whore destined to doom the Parodyverse does are my favourite kind of friend.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t answer,” Vinnie interrupted Liu Xi. “This isn’t just a trap for me. It’s a trap for you. Grimpenghast likes this sort of thing. It’s as close to amusement as he can ever reach, sad limited twist of evil that he is.” He looked over at the Master of Deceits. “Going to be kind of humiliating to get beaten by a temporary acting possible-sorcerer supreme, don’t you think? Not good for the demon-cred at all.”     Liu Xi was struck again by the difference between the tousle-haired young man in the scruffy denims when he was facing off against supernatural evil from when he was stammering over a mis-spoken compliment about her blouse. She linked her hand around Vinnie’s arm. “What he said,” she grinned at Grimpenghast.     The demon lord shrugged. “If Mister De Soth really hopes to stand in for Xander the Improbable he should have considered starting his career with a battle he had some hope of winning. Perhaps a contest with the Abyssal Rasputatious or someone? Interfering in the ownership arrangements for the Ghost Taxi Company was something of an error; but then how could he know that I was the Necropolis Company’s sponsor? Oh wait, he’s the temporary acting possible-sorcerer supreme. He’s supposed to know things like that.”     Liu Xi frowned back. “Do you know just how powerful I am?” she demanded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh yes,” agreed Sage Grimpenghast. “Wonderfully powerful. Powerful enough to cause really irreparable damage. I’m looking forward to it.”     Liu Xi looked up sharply. Those last words were in the voice of the man she’d once been sold to, her first lover, the man she’d burned to death as her power manifested.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ignore him,” Vinnie advised her. “He’ll be doing card tricks next. He’s attacking you to rattle me. He’s written out a binding soul contract there for you to sign to save me, giving him eternal dominion over your enslaved spirit. That’s what he’s going for.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I haven’t quite written it out yet,” admitted Grimpenghast. “There are still some clauses I’m working on. The phrase ‘indentured prostitute to the infernal legions’ still seems somewhat clumsy to me.     Vinnie folded his hand over Liu Xi’s as she gripped his arm tighter to control her temper. “Don’t let him bother you. All his phrases seem somewhat clumsy when you bother to think about them. He’s incredibly powerful but incredibly limited. You’ve dealt with people like that before. You’re still standing.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or lying back with your legs spread,” sneered Grimpenghast. “Oh, but Mister De Soth hasn’t even had a sniff yet, has he? He’s still deluding himself that he’ll ever get past the ‘friend zone’ without using his sorceries on you. But he’ll weaken and then you will too, Liu Xi Xian, and when you’re his concubine you’ll never even know you’ve been enspelled.”     Liu Xi looked from the demon lord to the rumpled acting sorcerer supreme. “I’m making this worse, aren’t I?” she asked Vinnie. “I thought I could bodyguard you but he’s using me as a way to get at you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s trying to use you as a way to get at me,” Vinnie replied. “But while he can see every nasty thing you ever did, every secret hate and lie and failure, he can’t see the rest of you. He can’t even perceive it, that shining love you show for everybody around you, that care and compassion that drives and defines you. He can’t ever see your secret hopes or your blinding truth or any the things that make you who you really are. That’s why he’s a caricature demon lord and you’re a wonderful person.” Vinnie faltered. “Um, I mean, when I say you’re…”     Liu Xi stopped his blabbering with a kiss. “I know what you mean.”     Sage Grimpenghast made a noise that sounded like tt and made another annotation to his contract. The Lair Legion were going to be here soon. ***     The warehouse doors at both ends of the building opened simultaneously. From one side came the funeral cars of the Westminster Necropolis Company; from the other came four Ghost Taxis. They drove through the abandoned storage bays and met at the exact spot where Paulo Yansen had raped and murdered nine old women in 2001.     Vinnie and Liu Xi stood together beside a large packing crate where the blood of Vrykolakas already sat in a tiny crystal phial. Sage Grimpenghast stood in the shadows to Vinnie’s left.     The Lair Legion formed up around Visionary as the possibly-fake man exited his cab with the Saliva Spectacular. CrazySugarFreakBoy! clutched the Amulet of Lost Souls. Nats stayed close to Roswell, who was still looking distinctly ill.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve got three,” Hatman told the WNC. “We know you got the blood to Vinnie by cheating but we’ve got the rest of the remaining maguffins.”     Dr Wormcallow exited from the oldest of the horse-drawn drays. Mr Mortlack and Mr Testament placed an old eagle lectern before him. “You have miscounted,” the chief mortician instructed them in his thin dead voice.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I ate the real haggis!” Roswell shouted at him, clutching her guts. “I know that’s how Shinty MacBlood died, slow and painful, but I don’t care! I’m saving my people, my dad’s people, his company. You don’t get it, you don’t get them, and you don’t get Paradopolis!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How noble,” remarked Sage Grimpenghast. “I’ll enjoy having that one on my staff.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You have miscalculated,” repeated Wormcallow, “because I still have the Book.” As he spoke Mr Mortlack unswathed a large heavy volume from a black silken covering and laid it on the lectern.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That book got all blown up!” objected Icy. “There were burned bits of gardening tips everywhere.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And it remanifested itself in another suitable volume,” the Librarian realised. “It possessed another host. A host the WNC had already got prepared!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You have the Book of Rude Names,” rumbled the Shoggoth, his voice echoing from corners of the warehouse that shouldn’t have been there.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Just so,” agreed Dr Wormcallow. “The Parchment Penitential and all the rest of the Necronastycon. And this volume it has chosen to occupy was specially selected by us. It’s a manual of embalming and corpse preparation techniques.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Do not let him read from that book!” Al B. Harper called out. “There’s some kind of n-space realityform distortion on the arcane spectrum already nearly formed around the…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Problem with Al’s explanations,” said Yuki, racing forward, “is that by the time he’s explained what I’m whupping its already whupped.”     She got within five feet of Wormcallow then tumbled to the ground, her cyborg systems leached of energy. CrazySugarFreakBoy! got further. He almost reached the lectern before rigor mortis locked him down.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s a double-cross!” called Nats. “Or a triple-cross. Or whatever we’re up to! Lair Legion Line-Up!”     The Shoggoth didn’t line up. He dissolved into a wall of goo that gushed out across the warehouse floor towards the WNC hearses.     The Necropolis Company were ready. The embalmers opened their canopic jars and the wave of Shoggoth writhed and congealed as if dunked in acid.     Hatman and Dancer rolled out of the gel and slammed into the undertakers. “What, you don’t think we practice this stuff?” Shep asked them as she pirouetted amongst them. “Why do you think my shampoo bill is so high? Although the Shoggoth does make a pretty good natural conditioner.”     Icy began to move forward into the necromantic field that had dropped CSFB! and Yuki, but Nats dragged him back. “Sorry, carrot-top,” he told the snowman, “but my dead-stuff sense is warning me that we have other incoming. So…” The flying phenomenon barrel-rolled round and hurled Icy like a vast living snowball straight into the wave of walking dead that was burrowing up through the concrete floor.     Visionary grabbed Roswell’s hand, ducked his head like a quarterback, and sprinted for the crate where Vinnie stood. Dimensions began to shift around him, elongating the distance from thirty feet to three thousand miles.     The Librarian dived forward, resisting the necromantic whisperings of the Book of Rude names long enough to slam Barack Obama’s biography into the volume to confuse it. Lee Bookman went down but Visionary made it to the crate.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There!” he gasped, hurling the vial of Sputum Spectacular and the Amulet of Lost Souls down beside the Blood of Vrykolakas.     Roswell dived in and tossed her whole self onto the crate. “We win!”     Sage Grimpenghast made a hissing sound. “So close,” he told them. “If only that was the real table and the real De Soth.” His illusion faded as the necromantic field washed outwards again, dropping Vizh and Roswell to their knees, overcoming Dancer’s probability resistance and Hatman’s Buffy cap, weakening Icy so the undead horde could begin to tear great handfuls of snow away from him.     Liu Xi took a step forward to intervene but Vinnie caught her. “You can’t take sides,” he told her. “You’re with me. If you interfere that’s counted as me interfering, and that’s the end of the contest and the start of the war. Grimpenghast could eat us whole.”     Liu Xi cursed in Cantonese. “There must be something we can do?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not right now,” Vinnie told her. “That’s the downside of this job. We can’t stop Wormcallow using the Necronastycon to take down our friends.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Those aren’t my rules!” shouted Liu Xi.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I do have a rules variation right here,” smirked Grimpenghast, proffering his contract.” This contest was being played on a number of different levels.     Al B. Harper looked up from his calculations. “Yuki!” he called to the power-drained cyborg P.I. “The frequency is 666 arcanathaums! Set up a counterwave!”     Trapped inside a useless metal shell Yuki Shiro hardly had the power to keep her sensors going. A counterwave would drain the last of her energies, the ones maintaining support to her human brain.     She never even hesitated.     The Necronastycon vibrated. The necromantic field wavered.     Nats swooped down and grabbed the suddenly-silent book. He swerved round Wormcallow and rose into the air, channelling pyrokinetic energy into its pages. When it burst into a ball of fire he was hurled to the ground, burning.     Icy froze him.     Hatman rolled over to Yuki and jolted her with his Con Ed hardhat.     Mr Mortlack and Mr Testament picked up Roswell and the two remaining maguffins and presented them to the sorcerer supreme.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Noo,” gasped Roswell, too weak to struggle. “Don’t…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I believe this means that we have won the contest, Mr De Soth,” Mortlack asserted. “The Ghost Taxi Company is now a division of the Westminster Necropolis Company.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hold it!” called Vizh, “Roswell’s on out team. That means one point for us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She’s not yet presented the Haggis,” noted Mr Testament. “You’ll have to cut it out from her first.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We will help,” promised Mr Mortlack. “With pleasure.”     As the undertaker reached for Roswell with a disembowelling knife the blade flared to livid heat then evaporated into gaseous iron.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sage Grimpenghast wasn’t cheating when he just happened to make an illusion,” Liu Xi argued. “I just happened to make a superheated plasma pocket and that guy stuck his knife into it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It matters not,” replied the Master of Deceits, “The Westminster Necropolis Company have now presented three of the five contested objects. They win.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They cheated!” objected Hatman.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They didn’t,” ruled Vinnie De Soth. “I’m sorry, but the WNC win. The Ghost Taxi Company will be theirs. That includes Roswell and Nats.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s not fair!” Dancer cried. “You have to give them a chance. Or I do.”     Roswell looked up with wide terrified eyes. “I’m gonna puke.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Duck!” shouted CrazySugarFreakBoy!, bouncing the Librarian and Visionary our of the way.     The haggis-vomit was huge and spectacular and proved caustic to WNC hearses. And WNC personnel.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Did anyone bring a breath mint?” wondered Icy.     Nats staggered to his feet. “Roswell… Rosalind? Are you okay?”     The ginger-haired taxi girl was ashen-pale. “Not so much. I spewed up the Haggis Horrible but I belong to Sage Grimpenghast. We both do.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“At last,” smirked the Master of Ignorance and Teacher of Deceptions.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Uh oh,” swallowed Bill Reed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vinnie…” called Hatman.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes?” prompted the acting sorcerer supreme.     Hatman pulled his lawyer’s wig on. “I object! Technically the legal entity designated the Parodiopolis Ghost Taxi Company has been ruled prima facie and a priori as the asset of the Westminster Necropolis Company. Any transfer of title ad valorem has yet to be ratified and that’s going to happen super corporem mortuum meum.     Vinnie smiled as he translated that last Latin tag. “Mr Boaz raises a very important point, Sage Grimpenghast,” he admitted. He picked up the sad exploded remnants of the scavenger hunt. The Amulet of Lost Souls was dripping with Saliva Spectacular and Haggis and elder vampire blood. “You can’t transfer an asset like psychic real estate ahead of time and I haven’t formally awarded the Ghost Taxis to the WNC yet. In fact before I do that I’m going to have to address their infraction.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Infraction?” echoed Dr Wormcallow. “What is this foolishness?”     The Manga Shoggoth reformed from his sticky fragments. His usual translucent form roiled and bubbled with anger. You invoked the Book of Rude Names! the loathsome elder being fumed. You called the power of the Fairly Great Old Ones! You idiot! Tekki-li!     Vinnie turned to Liu Xi. “Another job of the sorcerer supreme is to discourage this kind of thing. There are rules. Reading the Necronastycon breaks quite a lot of them. There has to be a penalty.”     Womcallow sneered. “What do you mean, a penalty? You have no power over the Westminster Necropolis Company, little pretend-Xander!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sure I do,” Vinnie told him. “I can fine you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fine us?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yep. In punishment for your invoking the Book of Rude Names I’m hereby fining you one Ghost Taxi company.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” hissed Grimpenghast.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. I’m awarding it to Nats and Roswell. He’s a psychically-necrosensitive trouble magnet and she’s an arcanely-mutated survivor of Haggis trauma. Together they fight crime. Or, um, drive cabs.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’d watch it,” admitted Visionary.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If you could find your remote control,” noted Dancer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait, I get half-ownership of the company?” recognised Roswell. Her face fell. “I get half-ownership of the company with him?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You cannot do that!” shouted Wormcallow, the first time he’d raised his voice for centuries.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can,” Vinnie assured him. “And if you object I can call on Earth’s greatest superheroes to teach you a very important lesson.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Go ahead, corpse,” CSFB! told the senior undertaker. “Make our day!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think we’ve locked on to your vibrational frequencies by now,” Al B. promised the WNC. “But I’m really okay with a field test.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Things explode during Al B.’s field tests,” Yuki footnoted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And don’t count on the Necronastycon manifesting in your back-up prepared repository,” the Librarian added, massaging his forehead. “It’s been rerouted.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t count on remaining in less than seventeen billion pierces octupled to the power of slurgh to the nth,” bubbled the Shoggoth.     Dr Wormcallow stood at bay.     Sage Grimpenghast clapped. “Wonderful, De Soth, wonderful! Truly worthy of a young temporary acting possibly-sorcerer supreme in his first attempt at a mystic conflict! You have forgotten only two things.”     Vinnie swallowed hard. “I have?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He has?” echoed liu Xi, looking round.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He hass,” agreed Vrykolakas, forming up out of the darkness, a bald deformed impossibly-fall nosferatu wrapped in old pain and sorrows. “I have come for my blood.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Pope’s mitre,” Nats hissed to Hatman. “Now, dude!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And the second thing,” Grimpenghast went on, “is that you have all come together and elected to defy me in a place of my choosing, where my power reigns.”     And the walls, floors, and roof of the warehouse turned absolutely black. And began screaming.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hallie!” Champagne called down Visionary’s comm-card. “Hallie, are you reading this?” She held the credit-card-sized communicator so the built-in scanner could show the warehouse surrounded by the black wall of wailing souls.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Every time I think about teaming-up with the LL I bump into something like this,” Silicone Sally noted, “and then I come to my senses.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I see it,” the Lair Legion’s resident A.I. told them over the comm-card, “but I have no idea what I’m seeing. It’s way beyond the card’s diagnostics.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s a wall of souls,” Urthula told them. “It’s a painful cruel way of carving off a portion of reality so that other rules can prevail within. A little pocket of sheer hell.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can’t reach the team inside,” Hallie warned.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe there’s a door somewhere?” speculated Champagne. “A door with a lock.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s no way in or out now,” Urthula warned. “Somebody’s sprung a trap and nobody’s getting out of there now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So…” Silicone Sally shuddered, staring at the screaming faces that occupied the soul barrier, “do we have time to order pizza?” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You wanted to know why I chose to take you on, Grimpenghast?” Vinnie challenged the Master of Deceits. “You haven’t worked it out?”     Sage Grimpenghast stared back at the acting sorcerer supreme with a blank expression.     Yuki knew. “Biggest dog in the room,” she called out. “You start by fighting the weakest, you gotta fight all of them. You go in there and you take down the biggest, meanest sonovabitch there ever was, start as you mean to go on, everyone else backs off.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s you,” Vinnie explained to Grimpenghast helpfully. “A sonovabitch.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A bold plan,” conceded the demon lord, “with one flaw. It requires you to take me down. And I don’t think your little superhero friends have the power to oppose me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, I remember Mefrothto saying that,” CSFB! reminisced. “And Blackhurt. And Dormaggadon.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And Vesperine,” remembered Liu Xi.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ooh, and Frightmare!” Nats added, holding his hand up. “Don’t forget him!”     Vinnie shook his head. “This isn’t your fight, guys. You can’t win this one. Grimpenghast’s got us in a pocket dimension behind a barrier of tormented souls where he can stack all the cards.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Stacked decks don’t really bother me,” remarked Dancer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vinnie,” Liu Xi whispered to the young exorcist, “if I have to… deal with Grimpenghast… I mean sign a contract to save everybody… you and everybody…”     The Master of Deceits smirked.     Vinnie sighed. “Okay, we’re really screwed. There’s absolutely no way past a soul barrier unless you can somehow do something with the tormented spirits themselves. And for that you’d need some kind of powerful artefact like… the Amulet of Lost Souls or something.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But…” began Icy. Then he got it. “Oh.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You would also need a power source,” noted the Shoggoth, “something like the Haggis of Shinty MacBlood.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And a necromantic agent,” added Nats, “like Vrykolakas’ ichor.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And some way of combining them all and transforming the effect,” calculated Al B. “A catalyst such as the Saliva Spectacular.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But where could you find all those things together?” wondered Vinnie. “Oh, wait…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vinnie de Soth!” gasped Liu Xi. “You planned this?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Comes with the job,” realised the Librarian.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can free those tormented souls, Vinnie?” Visionary asked. “Do it!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“On it,” agreed the acting sorcerer supreme. “Now!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hold!” objected Sage Grimpenghast. “This isn’t…”     And then he was torn away from mortal reality by a surge of vengeful, loosed, and suddenly very empowered lost souls.     Reality twisted round and dropped the Lair Legion back in the mundane iteration of the warehouse.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Most refreshing,” noted the Shoggoth as the Legion rolled on the floor gasping. “Quite bracing.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wheeee!” said Icy.     Vrykolakas glided across the floor. “And now…” he hissed.     Yuki was in his face. “Hold it, spooky. You’re a big-ass ubervamp, we get that. You have massive powers and you’ve been doing bad stuff to humans for as long as you can remember. But I’m not flesh and blood, I don’t mind control easy, I’m lethally fast and awesomely strong and in a real bitch of a mood. I can rip out your heart before you even twitch. So you might want to rethink your next action.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You might want to think about that too,” Hatman advised Dr Wormcallow.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And now…” Vrykolakas continued, “I expect the return of my blood. My agreement with the Westminster Necropolisss Company called for its ssafe return. There were forfeit clausesss.”     It didn’t seem possible for Dr Wormcallow to turn paler but he did. “B-b you saw what happened,” the senior mortician stammered. “It was De Soth. He used your blood.”     Vrykolakas was not known for his sympathy. “You leased it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You might want to turn away now,” Vinnie advised the Legionnaires. “And, you know, hide behind a taxi to keep the gore off your costumes.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Did that vampire know this might happen when he did his deal with the WNC?” wondered Roswell Fellkirk.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It seemed like he might have back when we discussed it,” admitted Vinnie De Soth. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So our jobs are safe?” Myrna checked for the third time. “Even those of us who might have… misplaced a cab for a while. Although driving that cab is totally not in my job description anyway.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re all safe,” Roswell assured them. “It’s going to be business as usual, driving the karmic routeways, picking up the fares of fate.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Except I’ll be here some of the time too,” Nats told them. “There’s that other flat in back there, and I was needing some digs.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” said Roswell. “I get Bill Reed as a neighbour. Whee.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Meet the new bosses same as then old boss,” grumbled Korvo. “Do we get a raise?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You get to not have your immortal essence dragged to its final destination before you have a chance to redeem yourself,” Roswell told him. “But any time you prefer to leave you know where to turn your keys in.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Things should be back to normal now,” Vinnie assured the cabbies. “You’ll need to lay low for a while as you rebuild your chymeric manna after all that out-of-state travel, but I’d say the Ghost Taxi Company is in good hands.”     Roswell glowered at Nats. “Jury’s out on that.” She clapped her hands. “Well come on, people, there’s fares out there waiting for rides. There’s travellers to spook and lives to change and buses to cut up! Move like you’ve got a purpose – because you have again!”     Dancer watched the drivers hurry for their cabs and Myrna call out dispatches. “So you’re really going to do this, Bill?” she asked Nats.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Beats delivering Chinese,” the former flying delivery boy answered. “These people – or dead guys, or whatever they are – they need another chance. Maybe me too. So we’ll see what happens.” He glanced over at the fiery ginger-topped fury whipping the crew into shape. “Besides, I like to live dangerously. Um, you think Roswell might be up for a date sometime?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Do not get drunk and end up in bed with her,” Dancer instructed. “Try something new.”     Nats grinned. “Same advice to you,” he replied.     Across the garage Liu Xi approached Vinnie. “So you had it all planned?” she accused.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I, um, I apologised to the Legion for manipulating them. In advance.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And that makes it okay, does it?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you mad at me? Only I battled a demon lord today and my nerves aren’t that good. Could you maybe shout at me another night? I mean day. I wasn’t thinking about you at night. I mean, in the night. I mean I don’t think about you in bed. While I’m in bed. Or you being in bed. Or in bed with me. Well, not a lot. Not too much. I mean…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Back rub,” Liu Xi told him. “My place. Now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A back rub would be nice,” Vinnie admitted, calming. “Um, who’s rubbing who?”     Liu Xi winked at him. ***     The Carnifex looked up from his newspaper. “Yes?” he asked Mr Flay.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Something you’re going to want to know about, boss,” the enforcer told him. “It seems as if there’s a new sorcerer supreme in town.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A new acting sorcerer supreme,” clarified Mr Skinner.     The Carnifex folded his newspaper carefully and dabbed the side of his mouth with his napkin. “Well then,” he said, “we’d better make arrangements.” *** Next Issue (when it happens): Enough of these lesser heroes with their trivial petty concerns. It’s time to go to the big leagues at last as the Parodyverse’s Greatest Hero takes his well-deserved spotlight. Be here to be thrilled and dazzled by the long-awaited Untold Tales of the Carnifex. The internet will be carved in two (and its living heart will be devoured in bloody steaming chunks). *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2009 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2009 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

...eating that haggis was perhaps the most spectacular act of bravery that has ever graced "Untold Tales". It might be a tighter race on the most spectacular act of stupidity scale, but hey... it worked. You have to admire Ros's commitment... she's not afraid to get her hands dirty to save her business. (Speaking of which, I hope she washed up before eating after her method of momentarily silencing the Bagpiper.)

A lot of fun to be had this chapter, from Lee's showdown with the chief undertaker to the various Obies running amuck, to the triumphant return of the Bagpiper himself.

It looks like a lot now hinges on CSFB retrieving the first artifact, unless some of the other objects are also going to come back into play. Oh, and since I forgot to mention it last time, I've quite enjoyed all of Hallie's cameos. I think she could relate quite well to Roswell's dispatch job.

Looking forward to the next part!