People move to a town like Tanglewood because they want quiet. They want the illusion of a world that makes sense—a place where the biggest news is a pothole on Main Street and the Friday night football score.

If that’s the town you’re looking for, I highly suggest you stop reading and go buy a postcard.

I’m Sheriff Bart Miller. At least, that’s the badge I wear in the daylight. Underneath the town hall, in the dark, I’m the guy who signs the Black Ledger.

The files you’re about to read aren’t neat, linear chapters of a grand adventure. They are the cracks in the foundation. They are the incident reports, the cover-ups, and the After-Action logs of the Black Rose Society. Read them however you see fit. In our line of work, cause and effect don’t always shake hands in the right order.

You won’t find sweeping victories in these pages. You’ll find the Tuesday mornings where we had to convince a waitress that the sacrifice demon in her kitchen was just a bad hallucination from a gas leak. You’ll find the records of the blood we spill to power our grimoires, the memories we erase using the local radio tower, and the terrible, quiet things the White River washes up when it decides it’s tired of keeping our secrets.

It’s about an operative who shoots first and asks questions never, a seer who pays the price for everyone else’s magic, and a sister who sees the end of the world in charcoal and oil paint.

We don’t do this for glory. We do it because if we don’t hold the line, the dark bleeds through. We’re just trying to maintain the illusion of a normal town for one more day, no matter what it costs us.

Welcome to Tanglewood. Mind the shadows.

— Bartholomew Miller
Tanglewood Sheriff

Every town has its secrets. Tanglewood’s have teeth, claws, and a hunger for human attention. The Black Rose Society doesn’t fight monsters—they manage them, file them, and pray the wards hold until morning.

First-person urban fantasy where the horror is real, the magic costs everything, and the monsters aren’t always the ones from other dimensions.

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Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

The shadows in Tanglewood are deeper than you think.

Tanglewood looks like a normal city, right down to the local bakery and the daily grind. But when a child goes missing in the dangerous woods, the veil drops. Discover what happens when magic and nightmare collide in Slipped, Book 1 of the Black Rose Files.

Step Into a Mother's Nightmare

Tanglewood’s cops deal with more than just traffic tickets. When Officer Samantha Miller awakens to dark family secrets and ancient magic, the city's monsters take notice. Dive into the systemic rot of a magical city in Revenant.

Discover Real Family Tragedy

Abducted by a mad necromancer and dragged to a demon-ruled world, Tamara's magic is the only thing keeping Tanglewood from total annihilation. Experience urban fantasy pushed to its absolute breaking point in Innocence.

All the Hells are Calling

When your job is closing interdimensional breaches, a horror flick at the drive-in shouldn’t raise your heart rate. But when the projector glitches and broadcasts a live feed of your own future disaster, you can’t exactly look away. Now I’ve got a parking lot full of civilians, a creature that’s breaking more than the fourth wall, and a strong suspicion that my night off just got written out of the script.

The Black Rose Files is urban fantasy horror gone wild, one small town caught in the crossfire of magic and nightmare, beauty and demons, ghosts that taunt and monsters that are not always what they seem…

SPECIAL SONG Created by Serene Serendipity

BRS FIELD REPORT – AFTER ACTION / PERSONAL ADDENDUM

OPERATIVE: Bryce, Lanie (FLD-0251)
INCIDENT: Star-Lite Drive-In, August 12th
FILE REF: 22-00580
STATUS: PUBLIC NARRATIVE SECURE
REPORT TYPE: Voice Log Transcript | Personal Commentary

STARTLOG

So, there I was, just sitting at the Star-Lite Drive-In, sucking down the second Coke of the night.

It was a Friday night, and the place was packed, like it is most weekends. There’s so damn little to do in this town.

Well, at least for the civvies. Most will look for any excuse to get out and do something, especially in high summer like then.

Pickup trucks lined up, and SUVs were filled with families; teenagers sat on blankets, trying not to be caught sneaking a little feel. The air hung thick with the acrid tang of gasoline, battling the sweet, buttery scent of popcorn. Freshly mown grass, sharp and green, wafted from where Ramsey had clipped it the day before.

There were even some kids running around, chasing each other through the rows, despite the late night and the horror movie playing on the giant screen just a dozen or two yards away. Giant white monument against the darkness, lit up bright with the colors of The Thing.

Funny movie, that one. I remember it scared the hell out of me when I was a kid, but once you’ve had encounters with real interdimensional shape-shifters, the movie versions just don’t hit the same.

That’s all part of “the game,” though, right? We on the “unknown front lines” get to handle all the chronically weird crap that spills through Breaches, and the rest of the world keeps getting to spin like nothing ever happens.

Price you pay for keeping things safe, I guess. If it means some movies just don’t scare like they used to, so be it.

Still, maybe it would be nice, at least once in a while...

I was just plopping what must have been the fiftieth handful of popcorn in my face—gods, I swear the stuff is my weakness—when the screen stuttered.

Now, maybe no one else really caught it, but when you work for the Society, you get trained to be hyper-observant. It’s one of the first things they shove down your throat.

For a heartbeat, perhaps two, the images on the screen flickered. Instead of the scene of some guy walking in the snow, it went dark, with the face of—I swear I am not joking—Mortimer Howard, mouth wide open in the dark like he’s shouting orders or something.

Then, the whole thing went back to normal.

I dunno. I guess the fatigue I’d been feeling lately kind of got to me. The last operation in E-583 was a lot harder than any of us expected it would be. Two days tromping through a freaking swamp on a low-oxygen planet can really take a toll. But Tamara said she’d seen an invasion from there coming, and she was right.

We sat for hours, five of us, at the thinning, swatting away the annoying mosquitoes while focused on the spell. Finally, we knew we’d crushed the trouble. I was just glad to get back home and into the shower, even if the drain from the spell made me want nothing more than a week’s worth of sleep.

Still wanted that, even then while staring at that screen.

But damn it, I just wanted a sense of the normal. You know? Some semblance of the mundane to remind myself there’s something outside of the Black Rose Society and duty.

Let a girl dream.

So, yeah, pardon me if I wanted to chalk the glitch up to some trick of the light or a bug in the projector. Excuse me if, even for a moment, I let down the guard and relaxed.

I’m only human.

I was just settling back down again when Kurt Russell walking through the ice switched again. This time, the screen showed Hightower Scrap Yard. It was dark as hell, but there was absolutely no doubt in my mind it was Hightower.

But that wasn’t all. Moving along the piles of trashed cars and rusting junk were figures, and I could tell in a heartbeat they were people I knew.

Not by their faces. Those were, for some reason, really blurred up there on the screen. But the outfits? The charms hanging from their belts and the guns in their hands? Those were, with no shred of doubt in my mind, my friends. My fellow soldiers stepping into Breaches and making sure this goddamn ball of dust we live on stays safe.

And they were moving fast.

The sound from the flick combined with a bit of static as words filtered through the speaker sitting on my window. I couldn’t make them out—too jumbled and broken—but they were definitely there. What hit me most was how panicked in tone they were.

That was already bad. Toss in the big pulsating black mass everyone on the screen was heading for, and we’re talking epic-scale damned.

I jerked up out of the seat, crashing out of the car door as the crowd around noticed something was up. Some people were laughing a little, maybe thinking whatever was going on was some kind of prank. A couple of kids were pointing.

My blood was cold, sweat not from the heat of the night starting on my skin.

What was on that screen was no damned prank. It was a Breach.

It was just a question of what kind.

I ripped the phone off my belt and hit the code to send out the alert.

SITE: STAR-LITE.

My eyes kept shifting from the phone to the movie, trying to think of what to put.

EVENT: ACTIVE BROADCAST. PUBLIC EXPOSURE: HIGH.

REPORT: LB-0415

I was about to slam the phone back on my belt again when I had another thought.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not really all that savvy when it comes to electronics and associated phenomena. It’s just not my style. I’m more about digging in and getting stuff done, not sitting around boards and dealing with signals.

Hank Bessemer, though, was one of the best, and I’m not just saying that because he might read this report later. There’s no one I’d trust more with anything dealing with audio and video. Whatever was happening around us at that drive-in, Hank would likely have a clue.

REQUEST: SPC-3415

The movie on the screen had completely slipped away by this point, replaced by my fellow operatives facing down this black mass of something, and every few moments things would alter slightly, like frames jumping ahead or backward.

I should have gone, should have headed to Hightower then and there to help them out with whatever the hell this was, but damn procedure said I should stay in place and make sure the civvies were safe.

Heart pounding, breath going a mile a minute, I did my best to pay as much attention to both the screen and the people around me as I could. The crowd was murmuring, some kids laughed, but so far everyone just seemed a little bewildered at the change.

Maybe they thought something went wrong with the double-feature. Hell, if I hadn’t seen my people there for myself, I probably would have, too.

When the screen switched, a scene exploded onto it, and I saw my car—the one I was standing right next to—now upside down with smoke.

Pixelated, sure, but there was zero doubt it was mine.

The static crackles from the surrounding speakers took on a low hum along with it, rumbling and rhythmic, though slow. It was like the heartbeat of an enormous animal echoing through a vast room. Little prickles of voices, too, started in, sparkling through the static.

The frames shifted again, and the close-up showed what appeared to be arms or worms, a writhing mass, as they wrapped themselves around Tamara. Her mouth was open, a scream drowned out by the static rattle and hum.

My heart dropped as I stared at the horrifying sight. How the hell was this happening? How did Tamara even get there? She never leaves headquarters. She’s too afraid to get out.

Another shift, and this time the entity was now inside of a giant box, one of the big ones we use to contain the really dangerous ones we need to get rid of. Someone was marking it with DELTA-7 as the thing inside squirmed and whirled and slammed into the sides.

From there, the shifts kicked in even harder, changing every few seconds, from one scene to the next, each seeming to go back and forth in time.

My feet hoofed to the small concession and projector building at the center of the lot. I had to push aside a kid—sorry about that—because he just kept walking in front of me. I yanked the projector booth door open, and Ramsey was in full panic, desperately trying to get the system back online.

“Lanie!” he shouted. “What the hell is going on?”

“Bart told me they’d be doing some stupid ‘government satellite hack test’ soon.” Sounded dumb even as I said it, but I had to think on my feet, you know? But I figured using Sheriff Miller would be fine. “He didn’t know when, but this is probably it.”

“Government satell—Lanie, I don’t—”

I raised my hand. “Look, I know, Ramsey. I know. But it’s not like something like this hasn’t happened before.”

His mouth closed, and he stared at me pretty damned intensely for a moment. But then he nodded, taking a deep breath and relaxing.

Well, at least relaxing as much as someone in his position could do when his precious business was suddenly being infiltrated by a government Psyop.

“Just do me a favor, would ya?” I figured if he could have turned the movie off, he would have by now. “See if you can cut the audio? That sound’s really crazy.”

“I can try, I guess.” He shifted, checking some of the knobs on the panel in front of him. “I just—”

“If anyone asks, tell them it’s a silent art film.”

I was already walking away as I said it, hoping it’d be enough to keep Ramsey satisfied, or at least to stop asking questions I couldn’t answer.

Thankfully, Hank was already pulling in beside my car as I walked out of the projection booth door and into the night.

I noticed the crowd was getting restless as I went to his van. Ramsey did his job—mostly—as the crackles of The Thing’s audio shut off, but the strange static and lower pulses remained.

Worse, even.

No one was laughing anymore. The kids weren’t running about in play; they were looking for their moms. The teens on blankets who’d been surreptitiously exchanging longing glances at each other were still there, but their eyes flashed worry, and maybe a little fear.

Was it the sound? The flashing of the screen? Or just the fact that there was something odd going on?

Hank’s face etched with worry, but he was already busy connecting wires from his van’s cluttered interior to the speaker poles nearby.

He nodded at me as I got close. I squinted, trying to catch exactly what he was up to.

“Heya, Bryce.” He spared only a quick glance while hanging the last wire over the top of the pole he leaned in front of. “Interesting night, hmm?”

“Something like that.” I tried to keep an eye on the screen, but things were moving on it so rapidly it was more like one of those stop-motion films I’d see as a kid. The effect of it was giving me one hell of a headache. “Anything I can help with?”

“Nah.” He stood and stepped toward the van. “Just gonna see what we’re dealing with here. That sound’s a wild one, yeah?”

I tilted my head a bit, letting the sound wash over me for a moment. “It started up as soon as the movie screwed up. Hank, I think we’re seeing like... the future or some kinda alternative here.”

I had seen nothing of Tamara on the screen after that, but her expression in that moment was a portrait of terror and deep pain. Gods, I hoped it was in the future and not happening now.

As he got things hooked up in the van, I explained as best I could what’d been happening, but I honestly had no clue what we were dealing with.

His eyes never left the screens in front of him as I talked, and by the time I finished, he was nodding to himself. “You’re right, Bryce.” He pointed to one of the lines moving on the screen. “This is temporal.”

Shit. I hate dealing with anything temporal. It never fails to turn into a mess.

“You sure, Hank? Couldn’t it be an illusory entity or—”

“Yeah, I am sure. Whatever that thing”—he waved toward the giant screen outside—“might be, what we’re dealing with here is a backward echo. Here, let me show you.”

I stepped back a little. “I trust you, Hank. Couldn’t tell you what I am looking at, anyway.” I exhaled. “So what do you think? Is it, maybe, back-casting? Warning? Threatening?”

“Can’t tell ya, Bryce. There’s definitely temporal magic happening, but I can’t tell ya why.”

“Keep trying.” I stepped back, heading toward my car.

Around me, I saw some people were gathered around their cars and pickups, craning their necks to watch the screen, while others remained seated inside, lost in their thoughts. All of them, every face I could see reflecting the light of the screen out there, looked afraid. It was like, in that moment in time, all the people were connecting to that dark thing on the movie screen and collectively feeling dread.

Was it feeding on them? Was that the point of all of this? It wouldn’t be the first time an entity like that had popped up in Tanglewood. There was that one time the fricking fuzzball from C-3236 broke through and terrorized the church...

But no, this seemed something else entirely. That Breach was about a single being feeding on and harvesting fear, but it had zero to do with time.

Besides, this just felt different.

That is, it did until the thing, that blob, that ball of darkness, seemed to turn to the people around me and noticed them.

That’s when panic set in, and someone screamed.

There comes a moment like that in situations. I remember back when I was in training at the Police Academy, one teacher talked about how, if you watch a crowd close, you can tell when things are going to break. It’s like a pool of water. Everything’s cool and calm until a little piece of leaf or a small stone gets tossed in, and the world ripples around it.

That ripple came in the moment that woman screamed.

Instantly, everyone else started moving. The weird, almost hypnotic state people had been in to that point faded, crashing away as panic spread out.

Even I felt it, a little. Can’t help that kind of thing, really, when you’re surrounded by a lot of emotion, especially since I was already holding stuff back from seeing people I know—especially Tamara—going through something on the screen.

Breathe, Lanie. Breathe.

I was already so tired before all of this started anyway; I didn’t know how much I had in me to do, but I still started chanting the calming mantra Tamara had taught me a couple of years ago. Didn’t just do it for me, though. I tried to project it as much as I could muster, catching a look of everyone I could as I whispered the words. I kept them going as I made my way back to the concessions building and stepped inside.

Thankfully, everyone who had been in the place had been drawn out with all the strange crap happening. It wasn’t hard to find the microphone for the PA system and click it on.

I mustered as much of the calm, authoritative cop voice as I could and said, “Everyone! Please stay calm.”

Even over the growing rumble of engines starting up outside, I could hear the words echoing slightly.

I pressed the button again. “Please, everyone, remain calm. It’s just a mix-up with the film reels.” I let it go and whispered the calming mantra again for a moment before hitting it one more time. “Just stick around... we’ll get it fixed real soon!”

I tossed the mic onto the counter, hearing the click as it landed, and went back outside.

Thankfully, the people around seemed to respond to my voice. They weren’t calmed... not really. But they did at least stop trying to get out of the place, and the panic-mode softened.

I really hated using anything like that against people, but there was no way I could let so many people be exposed to that awful substance and just leave. Like it or not, containment is rule number one in our business, and this whole thing was definitely, beyond any doubt, firmly within the realm of our business.

The surrounding fear was still palpable. Even I could feel it, hanging in the air like a fog. But there also seemed a sense of curiosity, as well, and I hoped that would be enough.

The figure on the screen, that weird black mass of whateverthehell was still there, still writhing and twisting and staring. I swear, though no eyes were present, it understood our being there, and it watched.

As I got back to the van, Hank was still lost in the sounds and images, fiddling with knobs and watching his screens.

“I don’t know why,” he said as I got close, “but the entity isn’t actually now. It’s here. But it’s not now.”

“Okay... so what does that mean?”

For the first time since he plopped himself back into the van, he turned away from the screens and stared me down.

“I think it’s trying to warn itself about itself getting captured.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how it’s doing it, but that’s what the signal seems to be putting out.”

Gods, I hate temporal magic.

“The question, then, I guess, is why here? Why now?” I stepped back as he hauled himself out of his van.

“I think it’s you, Lanie.”

My brow creased as I squinted. “The hell? How?”

“You said yourself you saw your car crashed on the screen. I think in this future version it’s showing, there’s a connection between you.” He pointed to the mass. “It’s sent messages back in time, maybe, to try to help warn itself it would be caught, and you, being here, and there is making it all solidify right now.”

“Then how the hell do we stop something like that? How do we fight something that can manipulate time or send back pre-prophetic messages or whatever the hell all of this time stuff means?”

He scratched his head, thinking for a moment. I didn’t want to, but my eyes kept going back and forth between the entity and him, the entity and him, the entity and...

I just wanted to watch a movie, man.

Finally, he broke his silence.

“I don’t think I can block the signal. Not without some kind of massive emitter, anyway. But maybe, just maybe, I can help to redirect it.”

“Uh huh. And how are we supposed to do something like that, Hank?”

He tapped on the van’s side. “Well, I’ve been recording the signal, right? I think I can funnel it back into itself using what I’ve got so far.”

My heart jumped a little. “Well, then do it!”

He held up a finger. “But that’s not going to work.” His face darkened. “At least, not without something to anchor it all.”

I sighed, the feeling of dread I’d already been dealing with deepening even further. “Just lay it out.”

“That anchor’s going to have to be you.”

Yep, I fricking knew it.

“See, I can feed the signal more into the array,” he said, pointing into the depths of his van. “That part’s easy enough. But there needs to be a point for that signal to act as a beacon. You’ve been here from the start, and you’re there at the end. It’s gotta be you.”

“You know I hate this, right, Hank?”

“It gets worse.”

I crossed my arms. “Worse? How? It’s already bad enough.”

“We know whatever’s going to happen in the future goes really bad.” His head shook. “I mean, really critical failure here. You might see your friends die. You might see yourself die...”

I turned to face the screen again, that ugly black mass grabbing someone else and flinging them into the distance. The weariness I’d already dealt with all night crashed in further, the weight of it all hitting harder.

Still, no matter what else I might have felt, I also knew I couldn’t let what I’d seen play out on the screen actually turn out real.

“Just tell me where to stand.”

A few minutes later, I was in the middle of the front row, standing as tall and straight as I could muster, and feeling pretty damned crazed with a bracelet and a dozen wires coming off of my wrist.

But I held my arms out, my eyes locked on what I hoped was the mass’ own, while Hank did his thing in the van.

C’mon, Hank. Just hit the stupid button already.

I don’t know, really, if I could say I hated that thing in that moment. Everything had happened so fast, I barely had time to think, let alone process it all.

But I had watched it hurt people I care about, and that was more than enough to make me angry. Maybe more than I’d ever known before.

It was when those thoughts cycled through that Hank pressed a key and my world ended.

Well, at the very least, it froze.

The small amount of light that escaped from the screen still shone on me, with the illumination on my arms and the conductive bracelet that Hank had put in place being reflected into the night. But the screen went into pure static, with the being in the center stilled.

That’s when the brutal details of what had been happening in the future swept through me like fire, and I lit up just the same.

Ozone and burned hair, harsh acrid odors, hung in the air as screams echoed around me. I can see them, the people, coming at me, and all I want to do is to run, to get away, to escape whatever these beings want to do to me...

My arms and legs scramble, and I do my best to skitter away, to flee into the night, all of me frantic and hurrying and terrified as these things, these horrible bipedal things come after me and how did I even get here to begin with because all I know was one moment I was asleep and the next I am in the dark and a strange place and...

And then they grab me, they hold me; they pin me down and they make loud noises and screams and what do they want from me and I have to fight back, to hurt them, to make them go away, and what is that box oh no they...

Don’t let them take me. Don’t let them take me. Don’t let...

The world around me shattered into pieces, the loud reverberating hum and screeches and whines coming from my throat ending as the screen in front of me jarred, the static popping, and then The Thing started playing again from the moment it had all stopped before.

The black mass was gone.

My arms dropped, sweat pouring off of me as my jaw clenched, my throat raw from the harsh screams from it faded away.

I hadn’t been a witness of my friends or myself fighting against the creature.

I had, for those moments, been the creature. I was it in those moments it was being captured, and it used its power—whatever power that was—to send a message to itself in the past.

I dropped to my knees, the gravel pressing into my skin through my jeans, and I am not ashamed to admit that in that moment I cried.

I’m not sure how long it was before Hank came to my side and helped me up, his voice all excited as he told me he was able to send the signal back on itself and cancel out the time-loop we’d been stuck in. As he took off the wires and bracelet, I drank the cold water he gave me, which helped to clear my head—if only a bit.

I even gave a little laugh when I noticed the movie was just blithely playing along as if nothing had happened, though most everyone around was still milling about in confusion.

A few minutes later, there was a loud click as the PA kicked on. “Ah.” Ramsey’s voice cut through the dark over the orchestral score playing through the speakers on the poles. “Ah, well it appears things are back and we got it all fixed. Um. If you come to the concessions, we’ll give everyone a free ticket for next week...”

Leave it up to a businessman to make the most of things, I guess.

A couple of vans were pulling into the lot even as some people started up their cars and got ready to leave. I recognized them as being ours.

Good. They’d at least mark who was here so we could do a little processing on the folks later. Things could get back to some semblance of standard operating procedures, anyway.

With Hank putting his equipment away, I replayed the events, searching for clarity in the jumble of my thoughts.

Somehow, I’d forged a connection with that thing that transcended words. I don’t know if Hank was right, that it was because I was someone who existed in two different “times” simultaneously. I couldn’t tell you even what the thing really was.

But I got the sense that we didn’t have the full story.

“Well,” Hank interrupted my thoughts. “The data from this one is going to be an interesting study.”

“Probably keep the mages busy for weeks.”

I put the empty bottle in the trash can Hank kept behind his seat.

“You know, I don’t think it was showing us the future for its own sake, to warn itself.”

Hank stopped wrapping the wire he was working on. “What do you mean?”

I shrugged. “I can’t really explain how I know, but at that moment, it was as if I could feel the weight of its suffering. That thing was terrified. I think it was trying to beg us to stop it.”

“I guess that makes sense.” He tossed the wiring into his bag. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“What any good soldier would do with intel.”

I crawled out of the van and pulled out my gun, quick-checking the clip. The silver-tipped rounds were always ready, gleaming with deadly promise.

“I’ll use it.” I slid the clip into place with a solid click. “But first...”

I pointed to the screen.

“First, I think I’ll have a little ‘chat’ with our star. See if it wants to change the ending.”

The horror movie playing on the screen wasn’t the real monster. It was the one inside my head.

And it could be negotiated with.

ENDLOG

NOTE BY ARCHIVIST HOWE (ADM-3841):

FLD-0251 subjective account has been logged. Objective data (video, audio, spectral analysis) confirms a temporal/psychic echo event. Entity remains classified as ∆-7 HOSTILE. File 22-00580 marked for quarterly review.

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MORE BLACK ROSE FILES STORIES:

OTHER SERIES:

TALES FROM CENTER:

BITTEN THEN WRITTEN:

As I stared into the maelstrom before me, a curse muttered under my breath. Tamara was right.

Damn her. Damn me for not listening.

She’d been right. Of course she had. Her magic went beyond anyone else in the Society, giving her visions of future events and the locations of portals in a way no one else seemed to be able to accomplish.

Even if they weren’t always totally clear, you could rely on good old Tamara to at least have a clue something was going on.

Boy, she called this one loud and proud.

I raised my rifle, cool metal pressing against my cheek, and aimed at the six-foot woman standing twenty yards off.

“By order of the Black Rose Society and the Contract of Plenthon Bas 1831, I order you to vacate this dimension and return through the portal from whence you came.”

They were the standard words we Initiates were told to speak should we encounter any other-planar beings, but I didn’t figure this one was going to listen.

They rarely do.

As she lifted her arm, my eyes narrowed, expecting a burst of otherworldly power that would either annihilate me or maybe turn me into a frog. They always try those tricks, don’t they?

My finger tightened on the trigger, the other hand reaching down to the medallion strapped to my belt. The few words of protection hissed from my lips as the familiar static numbness tickled my palm.

No bolt of energy or lightning struck out from the woman, though. Instead, the mist around her deepened as the light of the sun dimmed, bringing the forest surrounding us to a bitter twilight.

My eyes flicked to Bart a few feet to my left, his own gun raised to his chest as he took aim into the thickening fog.

“You think she listened?” His voice, deep and bassy, crossed the distance between us.

I shrugged but held my tongue, listening for signs of movement.

The murk carried the scent of muck and dying vegetation, probably a manifestation of the woman. I didn’t know what form of being she was, but she reminded me of that bitch-Lord from the outer planes who could manipulate plants to do her bidding. She had long black hair just like this one, though not as pale-skinned.

Then again, it could just as easily have been the fact that it was fall and that’s just what plants do at that time of year.

These things could get hairy, though. For all I knew, this demon-chick was bringing roots up beneath our feet to pull us into hell at that very moment.

I needed to get eyes on her, and fast, before we totally lost control of the situation.

My boots squelched through the mud beneath me as I took a few hesitant steps forward.

“A child.”

The voice was husky, rasping through the air as a hum more than a vocalization.

My steps halted, and I braced the rifle against my shoulder anew.

“Bring a child, or your world is destroyed.”

Great. A fricking sacrifice demon. If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s something that tries to screw with kids.

Bart had the same sentiment. Nothing messed with the children of our town.

“We doing this, Lanie?”

I nodded, though I didn’t know if he could see through the murk between us.

Searing light shot through the fog as a powerful wind kicked into high gear, parting the mist within the span of a few heartbeats. The woman, now thirty yards away, extended both arms into the air above her as crackles of power formed between her hands.

Hideous laughter resounded as the bright light intensified; arcs of what could have been lightning sprung out at odd angles. I had to slit my eyelids tighter to keep from being blinded, but I couldn’t look away.

Not yet.

I raised the rifle higher, and aimed down the sights.

One smooth pull of my finger and the bullet flew, the horrendous crack of ignition overwhelming the quaking of magic sparking from the demon before us.

I exhaled as the bullet struck the ball of light.

I didn’t miss.

It flew true, smashing into the crackling mass, but did nothing more than distract the woman from her casting. Her arms wavered slightly, which was exactly what I hoped for.

I didn’t figure something as mortal as a bullet would affect the critter, but I damn sure hoped it’d get the thing’s attention.

Her arm dropped, long and thin fingers clawing together to point at me across the distance.

“Pitiful fool!” The rasp easily crossed into my ears, despite the whipping wind. “You don’t know wha -”

A flash of green light interrupted her speech, smashing into her face, hiding her lips beneath as a mass of slimy, moving things poured from her mouth.

She screamed, but it plunged into a gurgle as more of the tiny creatures formed out of the light. Though the green swiftly faded, the maggoths didn’t disappear. They burrowed.

First, the lips faded into a gooey substance, before the middle part of her face began to melt. Her clawed fingers tried to pry them off, frantically grasping at the next which opened up in her maw, but once the maggoths got started, there was no stopping them.

I’d seen their work before, of course, but it never failed to make me queasy. If even one of the damn magic things latches on to you, you’re damned.

Bart and I hung back, keeping ourselves a safe distance away in case the sacrifice demon decided to have a trick up her sleeve before completing her death throes.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long for the maggoths to finish their work. They sank into the ground, leaving her body nothing more than a puddle of blackened goo on the forest floor. The fog and wind faded as the bubbles playfully popped in the pool.

I hit the radio, calling in the Cleaners. We’d have to wait for them to get there, of course. Couldn’t risk a civvy coming along and finding remnants of magic lying around.

“Think they’ll ever listen, Bart?”

He cast a glance my way as he finished packing his grimoire. “Who? Intruders?” When I nodded, he sighed. “Probably not. Too much at stake for them.”

I knew he was right. The Black Rose Society had been dealing with things like this for centuries before. Probably would be far after my own bones were dust.

Still, it’d be nice to have a break once in a while.

Well.

At least the insurance is good.

END LOG

AFTER INCIDENT REPORT

• Report ID: AAR-22-0914

• Incident File: 22-00580 (Breach: Class 2, Sac-Ent)

• Location: Tremaine Forest, Sector Gamma-4

• Reporting Officer: FLD-0251 (Bryce, Lanie)

• Secondary Officer: FLD-0127-L (Miller, Bartholomew)

PERSONNEL NOTES:

• FLD-0127-L: Performance standard.

• FLD-0251: Performance standard.

• SPC-0443-X: Credit for early detection.

ATTACHMENTS: GPS Logs, Spectrographic Snapshot (pre-neutralization), SUP Cleanup Invoice (SDL-558).

Thank you for being here, and being the best you that you can be in this moment. If you’d like to check out more works within the Black Rose Files world, here are some full-length novels.

FULL LENGTH BOOKS IN THIS SERIES:

• Slipped: Black Rose Files Book 1

• Revenant: Black Rose Files Book 2

• Innocence: Black Rose Files Book 3