Tales of Carrion Mansion

Chapter 25

Road Hazards

by Skytower

The Dead Diamond River snaked through the town of Le Corvus necessitating nearly a hundred bridges. Almost all of them had been built and re-built during Le Corvus's two centuries of existence. Many had not. Once built most were left to survive or fall on their own. Many led into the farmlands that surrounded the town, some led into Heavenly Swamp. Some led nowhere, their arches starting across the river or stream but ending half way. When she was growing up a friend of her mothers had told Elvira that trolls lived under bridges. When Elvira asked what a troll was no adult was able to give her the same answer twice. At least no answer that satisfied her. Some said a troll was a small creature, some said a big one. Some said rich, many said poor. Some said mean, others said friendly. Her mother and her teachers claimed they didn't exist at all. Frustrated and never one to trust an adult Elvira decided to find out on her own. Unfortunately try as she might Elvira never found a troll. She found a landlocked hippie mermaid, some gremlins and various other mythical creatures, but no trolls. What the six-year-old Elvira did find that summer was nearly every short cut in town.

Elvira used those shortcuts now riding as fast as she could through the night. It was a moonless autumn night with a chill wind blowing softly through the trees. Most of the paths Elvira used had never been lit by streetlights and the darkness completely enveloped the world. Elvira was left with only her memory and the dim light provided by the bikes wheel-powered headlight. Had she been on her moped Elvira would have turned its more powerful headlight on, but her robot doppelganger had broken her moped. Her little sister had been vague on exactly how it had happened and Elvira was in too much of a hurry to find out. So she had grabbed a hockey stick and Guenivere's bike and set out.

Another way her moped would have saved time was speed. It had taken an hour of constant peddling through fields, back yards and dirt roads for Elvira to reach the neighborhood Mindy had been lured too. Turning onto a paved road Elvira slowed to get her bearings.

Set in a loop of the Dead Diamond River the neighborhood was given to frequent flooding, something ignored when the military needed quick housing during the 1950's. Normally neither Elvira nor Mindy would have gone near it. But Lisa Douglas had set a clever trap for her friend and Mindy had walked into it. Or rather driven into it, which was why Elvira was going to the house first. The silver 1959 Malibu Stacy Thunderbird convertible wasn't an ordinary car. It had started out life as a childs toy and been rebuilt by aliens, modified to Mindy's sci-fi crazed specifications ("We have to put this in it, it just wouldn't be a supercar without this!") and finally grown to full size by junior mad scientist Jeremy Carrion. Mindy loved to drive it and like Calliope was disappointed when Jeremy did not give the car the power of flight. The car had a sophisticated weapons system directed by an on board voice responsive computer and its scanners were good enough to take a picture of a postage stamp on the moon. Finding Mindy and Calliope with the car would be a lot easier than finding them without it. There was also the matter of videotape of Mindy showering and transforming into a fairy a tape Elvira knew her friend would want back at all cost.

When she was a block away from the house Elvira slammed on the breaks. There were few streetlights and the house itself was a dark shape at the end of the lane. But there was light from another source. To the left of the house a yellowish/red glow filtered through the trees. There was not only light but sound as well. Elvira stood for a minute letting her breathing slow down so she could hear better. The voices were unintelligible but the screams were not. Someone was in trouble. The screams were semi-familiar, but not Calliope or Mindy. For a moment Elvira hesitated. Then she hoisted the bike onto her shoulder and stepped into the woods.

Elvira Peterson stood a stocky five feet five inches tall. A pair of blue jeans and a black sweater combined with her dark brown hair to make her nearly invisible in the shadows. Even after the long bike ride the young woman wasn't tired and carried the bike easily. Five minutes of walking through the woods as silently as she could brought her to the edge of a small brook that ran off of the Dead Diamond River. On the other side of the brook an interrogation was taking place.

I bet Gotham is a safer place than this town, Elvira swore silently.

Though cleaner than many rivers the Dead Diamond River had it's share of civilizations jetsam and flotsam. Shopping carts, street signs, car batteries and engines showed up now and then. Cleaning them out had become a spring and fall festival with prizes. But even the most thorough cleaning could miss something. So if anyone was looking to truss up two fairies and torture them something could usually be found. In this case a stop sign. A bungee cord from a tree suspended the sign a little above a small fire. The sign drifted in and out of the fire at the whim of the creatures that hung on the cord and sat on the branch. Small hideous gargoyles they stood nearly a foot and a half tall. Two were male, one female. Their skin was grey/green, their teeth red and their eyes yellow. None of them had any hair or wore any clothing. Their hands and feet were claws and their wings bat like. Both males had erections.

The gargoyles did not act alone. The creature that stood half in half out of the brook was something from the nightmares of Greek antiquity. The bottom half was a snake's tail with a sharp ice blue stinger. From the waist up it was a woman, with large breasts. Two heads, one male, one female capped the broad shoulders. Their teeth and eyes was a match for the small gargoyles and like them the creature had no hair. As they spoke Elvira could see a forked tongue in each mouth. The color of the creature's skin was grey scales in the tail, rough textured black in the chest and arms and ultra-smooth white for both heads. A giant diamond shaped black gem set in gold was grafted into the skin between the bare breasts. The creature was at least ten feet long from tail to head.

"You will answer us sooner…" the male head began.

"Or later." The female head finished. Their voices were soft, almost lyrical.

"I don't know!" Jill whispered her voice more full of pain and exhaustion. The sign was perpendicular to Elvira for a moment and she recognized the two fairies. Jill was the slimmer of the two, with flaxen hair and a square jaw. Her face was full of the pain she was in. One of her four wings was gone, the other three were badly singed. A strip of duct tape across her legs held her upside-down against the sign. One of the gargoyles leaned down and absently poked between her legs with a stick. Beside her Jack hung upside-down as well. Two of his wings were gone, but the male fairy hung limply showing no sign of life. A lead fishing weight had been tied to his penis.

"You must know." The creature's male head said. Casually he picked up a small branch and threw it into the fire. It lit quickly causing the fire to rise. The flames touched the bottom of the metal and Jill screamed. "For you were here two days before we were."

"You two were both imprisoned for thousands of years." The female head said. "Only another fairy could have freed you, the fairy we sensed from this place. We have found you, we will find her."

"The end is beyond your ability to affect." The male head said. "The only thing you have control of is your pain. Soon your body will die and we will take your spirit. The freedom you have enjoyed is over."

"Oberon's will be done." They both said.

In battle there are times for silence and times for noise. Often they follow each other quickly. This was one of those times. Elvira stepped into the clearing as quietly as possible laying her hockey stick across one foot. Lifting the bike over her head Elvira waited for a few seconds. Then with a shriek that she had practiced many times on the hockey rink, the young woman threw the bike into the air. It caught the snake creature in the chest and the impact and surprise brought the creature to the ground. Even as the bike soared through the air Elvira had flipped her hockey stick into her hands and was following it. With a jump she landed on the bike, pinning the snake creature to the ground. It thrashed its tail wildly, its arms pinned under the bike. Holding her hockey stick in both hands Elvira brought it down with all her might across the twin throats of the creature. The pain stunned it for a moment and Elvira moved, rolling over its head and onto the ground. Her hockey stick flashed up as she came to her feet again, hitting the attacking gargoyle like it was a hockey puck. The gargoyle sailed into a tree on the far side of the brook and lay still.

The other two attacked, hideous mouths gaping with ear splitting screams they dove toward her. Elvira slapped another one out of the air with her hockey stick even as she grabbed the third ones leg and smashed it into the water. She bent down and pressed the thing as hard as she could into the mud, ignoring the pain in her hand as it clawed at her. She held it for only a few moments, then released it and slapped the final gargoyle out of the air with her fist.

Two of the gargoyles were on the ground stunned. The third was vainly trying to get his wings to carry him into the air but the mud was sticking to them. Elvira ignored them and leapt onto the snake creature again. It had torn the bike in half in its fury and was just starting to rise. Elvira landed hard on its chest with both feet pushing it down again. It screamed as she mashed both its breasts under her feet. Using the but end of the hockey stick Elvira clubbed the heads and then leapt up into the air and came down with all her weight on its stomach. In a soundless gasp the air was forced from its lungs. It lay still for a moment stunned. Leaping through the fire Elvira unhooked the stop sign and ran into the woods.

The fight had lasted no more than two minutes and Elvira hoped she was in time to save Jack and Jill. A crashing sound and screaming behind her voided any slim hope the young woman had that she had won the battle completely. Elvira wasn't surprised, she had learned long ago that mythic abominations were tough to beat. She ducked and swerved as the gargoyles attacked once more. Luckily they were still hurt and the branches of the trees gave her some cover. The creature was not far behind though, crashing its way through the forest.

Elvira leaped out of the trees exactly where she planed to be. She had learned long ago never to go into a fight without a planned escape route. The car was in front of her, parked near the house. With a leap she ran across the back and dropped into the driver's seat.

"Car on!" Elvira shouted.

Instantly there was a hum and the lights on the car came on. Elvira slammed the gas pedal down and the creature just coming out of the trees was showered with dirt and gravel from the wheels. Elvira skidded wildly down the driveway and onto the street barely keeping the car on four wheels. With one hand she reached over and shoved the stop sign onto the floor. Jack and Jill hung limply with only a moan from Jill proving that she was still alive.

Something whizzed past her head and stuck into the dashboard. It was a small piece of metal, one of the spokes from the wheel of Guenivere's bike. Looking over her shoulder Elvira saw the gargoyles diving at the car while a glance in the rear view mirror showed the snake creature moving up fast. Elvira slammed on the breaks and braced herself just in time as the creature slammed into the back of the car. She floored the gas pedal again and the gargoyles that had overshot her crashed into the windshield. Two of them fell off and Elvira grabbed the third one and threw him to the ground. Then she swerved the car hoping to run over him but he dodged out of the way.

"Car! Emergency com link to the mansion!" Elvira shouted. The snake creature was pursuing again and the gargoyles could not be far behind. "Car! Aerial defense multiple targets!"

"Carrion Mansion, Theodore T. Bear speaking." The speaker said even as two small laser guns popped out of the Thunderbirds tail fins and started firing at the gargoyles.

"Teddy I need Jeremy or Helga now!" Elvira shouted rounding a curve on two wheels.

"Theodore T. Bear if you please madam." Theodore replied. "The master is busy…"

"Get him you sack of stuffing!" Elvira shouted interrupting him. "Or I swear you'll spend the next two weeks in the drier!"

A glimpse in the rear view mirror gave Elvira a split second to swerve as the creature threw a speed limit sign at the car. It passed by her and sliced a human-thick limb off of a tree.

"Car rear attack, defend!" Elvira shouted.

The sound of a machine gun firing gave her a moment of hope but those hopes were dashed by a quick look in the mirror. The bullets were hitting but they didn't seem to be doing any good. The snake creatures natural side to side movement made tracking difficult even for the cars weapon systems.

"Jeremy here." The speaker said.

"Jeremy this is Elvira! Remember how I said it'd be a cold day in hell before I let you teleport me anywhere again?"

"Yes."

"Well check the cars scanners cause right now there must be a couple of demons having a snowball fight down there. I got two hurt fairies here and that things what did it. I need teleport now!"

"My she is a mean looking creature isn't she." Jeremy said.

"No kidding!" Elvira shouted avoiding another street sign.

"The problem is I can not teleport the car unless it is standing still."

"Great."

Elvira quickly ran through her mind a map of Le Corvus. So far she'd been going heading toward the mansion anyway, but there was no way she'd reach it in time nor did she want to lead that thing into the town. She thought briefly about the speed trap on the highway but decided against it. It hadn't worked against a biker gang it wouldn’t work now.

"Car." She said. "Rear defend, concussion grenade."

"Subject is too close for safe detonation." The car replied and Elvira winced at the Data-from-Star-Trek voice Mindy insisted on using. Trust her friend to have crush on a robot! The creature was gaining and so far the lasers had taken out only one of the gargoyles. She watched as the creature came close enough to pound on the back of the car with its hands. The impact nearly rocked the car off of the road and Elvira had to fight to hold it steady.

"Car, smoke, tactical display." Elvira said making a decision.

A thick black cloud flowed from the back of the car and the creature slowed enough for Elvira to put some room between them again. But the green display that lit up the windshield showed that it was moving up quickly. Either it didn't need to breathe or the smoke just didn't bother it. Elvira swerved back and forth grateful that there was no traffic.

"Car, oil slick." Elvira said.

For a moment she hoped the oil coming out of the back of the car would slow the creature down, but it had little effect.

"I told Mindy that never really worked." Elvira cursed. "I wanted a flame thrower but nooooo, miss 'it always works for James Bond' had to have it her way."

It was gaining again and the machine gun was out of bullets. Elvira didn't think the lasers would do any good against the creature since they were only keeping the gargoyles at bay, the heat hurting them a little, but not really harming them. The main lasers were in the front of the car, useless to her now.

"Car stop smoke! Deploy and eject emergency stop parachute!" Elvira shouted.

There was a slight whomphf sound as the small parachute mounted under the truck was released. Elvira watched through the mirror as it enveloped the snake thing. A small part of her mind, the same part that was annoyed at the voice of the cars computer, made a note to tease Mindy about the giant bat symbol on the parachute. For a moment the creature wrestled with the fabric, then it tore loose and came on again. But the delay had given Elvira nearly a half mile to work with.

"Car smoke."

Again the inky black smoke flowed from the back of the car and covered the road. Elvira watched her display as the creature moved up once more. When it was twenty feet away Elvira made her move.

"Car, stop defend, stop smoke, engage stealth mode." Elvira said swerving to the side of the road. She took her foot off of the accelerator but didn't use the break. The young woman held her breath as the cars speed dropped quickly and the slight shimmer in the air told Elvira the Thunderbird had become nearly invisible. Her plan worked and the creature and the gargoyles shot past her. Even then Elvira only let the car slow. It only took a few seconds for the creature to realize what had happened. Elvira watched her display as it stopped and turned suddenly. But it was a good fifty feet away.

"Car, drop stealth screen!" Elvira shouted. "Front lasers fire!"

From the headlights of the car twin blue beams erupted hitting the creature squarely in the chest. For a moment it fell back, then it screamed defiantly as it came forward through the beam.

"Car cease fire!" Elvira shouted slamming on her breaks. "Teleport now Jeremy!" The car skidded to a stop and the world around Elvira shattered like a mirror.

Teleporting, as Elvira had long ago found out, was like being in a hot shower and having it turn ice cold, then having a flashbulb go off in front of your eyes. For an instant you just don't exist. No heat, no cold, nor any thought or awareness. The only thing that anchors your soul to the body is a tenuous thread of life, of belief in your own existence. It doesn't last long but it last long enough.

Reality formed around the car quickly and the warm chemically laden air of Carrion Mansion's dungeon replaced the cold autumn night air.

"Car off." Elvira said reaching down to the floor of the car for the stop sign. She gasped as she saw Jack and Jill in full light for the first time. One of his arms was broken and hung at a bad angle. His wings, the ones that were left, were singed, black and broken. His face was covered in claw marks, the normally silver blood of a fairy turned shiny black. Only the slight fall and rise of his chest gave any evidence of life. Jill was in better shape, but her wings too were black and burnt, her entire body was crisscrossed with welts and claw marks. They were both badly burned as well. There were small metal pins driven into their legs through the duct tape.

"They've been through a bad time." Jeremy said opening the car door. Elvira was grateful for the concern in his voice.

"No kidding." Elvira snapped. "Can you help them?"

"Certainly." Jeremy said picking up the stop sign. He carried it into one of the many alcoves and placed it carefully on a table. Elvira followed him. Jeremy Carrion looked 12, with green eyes and red hair cut short. He wore a simple NASA style jumpsuit and moved with the air of someone who knew everything. Elvira wasn't sure how much he actually knew, but past experience had taught her that he knew enough. And he was nowhere near 12 years old.

"I've got the jam." Jeremy's twin sister Helga said walking into the dungeon. She was carrying a large bottle of Smuckers Rasberry jelly.

"We better get them off this metal plate first." Jeremy said.

"Who ever did this to them was pure evil." Helga said handing him a tiny laser. Her voice held actual anger and that surprised Elvira.

"It wasn't friendly that’s for sure." Elvira said. "It was some sort of two headed giant snake and it had three munchkin gargoyles for help. Might be a good idea to turn on the mansions defenses. I think the thing was some sort of fairy hunter."

"I did that as soon as you teleported in." Jeremy said. "We'll need some honey as well Helga."

"Right." Helga said going to a storage locker.

Elvira stepped back and let them work. As insane as it would sound to anyone who knew what the twins had done to her and Mindy, Elvira knew they weren't really evil. They were, in their own twisted way, gentle. At least toward beings like Calliope and Jack and Jill. You only had to worry about Jeremy and Helga if you were a normal human person. Still she watched carefully as Jeremy pointed a small wand-like instrument at the metal spikes in the fairies legs. The spikes shimmered and then vanished.

"As I suspected." Jeremy said getting the last of the spikes from Jack's legs.

"Iron." Helga agreed.

"That's not good for them?" Elvira asked.

"Iron to a fairy is deadly." Jeremy said. "It's like introducing mercury into a humans bloodstream."

"Merely holding it to their skin is painfull." Helga said as Jeremy removed the spikes from Jill's legs.

"Mindy…" Elvira whispered. Her friend was out there, somewhere and now there was a fairy hunter and three gargoyles hunting her. Every instinct screamed at Elvira to get moving but she stayed. Plan, her mind screamed back at her instincts, always plan.

Jeremy used a small laser to cut the tape away from the fairies legs. That same laser cut the lead weight away from the fairy's penis. Jack moaned as the weight was removed. Jeremy filled a bowl with the jelly and eased Jack into it, pushing the hurt fairy into the jelly until only his head was above it. At the same time Helga filled another bowl and did the same for Jill.

"Think jelly is going to do it?" Elvira asked.

"Jelly is a powerful restorative." Jeremy said.

As is honey." Helga said handing him a small tablespoon filled with honey. "We might have Aunt Petunia use her webbing as cast for his arm."

"That could work." Jeremy said. "But lets give the rest of his body a chance to absorb the jelly first."

Jeremy held the honey to Jack's mouth and Elvira watched as the fairy instinctively swallowed it. Helga did the same with Jill.

"Thank you." Jill whispered opening her eyes as the honey entered her mouth. She swallowed quickly and her eyes focused on Elvira. "You are as Mindy always knew you to be, very brave and foolish. The hunter would have killed you without a moments thought."

"I'm used to that sort of reaction." Elvira said shrugging. "It's a gift. What was that thing Jill?"

"It… They are the last elves on Earth."

"You're kidding? Those illustrations Mindy's D&D books are way off."

"They are they King and Queen of Well-Wish-Woods?" Helga asked excitement in her voice.

"And their children." Jill said.

"Wow!" Helga whistled. She started toward the massive computer that took up the west wall of the dungeon. "I better go re-set the mansions defense systems."

"Ages ago…" Jill started responding to the questioning look Elvira gave her "when Oberon decided to flee this world, the ruling council of the elves decided to go as well. But there were those who wished to stay, confident that they could find a way to live with humans. But Oberon and the Ruling Council of Elves would not allow that. They feared that if even one elf or fairy were left behind humans would some day follow them."

"He might have been right." Elvira said.

"They were a group of foolish frightened children who could not bear to see the world change." Jill said with scorn. "Hypocrites of the lowest order. There was a terrible war, with the Council and Oberon using human mercenaries to slay the elves and spidermen to capture the fairies. Of the elves, the males were killed, the women taken into whorish slavery, their children…" She stopped and took another sip of the honey. Then with pain that was far more than physical she went on. "The children were stripped from their families, stripped of their elvan heritage and given to humans who raised them cruelly. They were twisted by such upbringing and became monsters who spread pain and evil all their lives. Their mothers were worn down by the harsh life forced upon them and most of them died. Jack and I were searching for the few survivors when we felt Mindy's rebirth."

"So you came looking for her." Elvira said.

"We felt her distress." Jill said. "We arrived two weeks ago only to be caught."

"They've been torturing you for two weeks?" Elvira asked amazement and sympathy in her voice.

"We knew nothing of where she was." Jill said. "Jack took most of their attention, he played many games." She looked at the male fairy. "Too many games. Hints, riddles… Outright lies…"

"Brave and foolish huh?" Elvira asked.

"Always." Jill said not bothering to keep the love and pain out of her voice. "But we didn't know anything. Not really."

"They didn't believe you didn't know." Jeremy said.

"They know of Mindy's existence. They want her."

"What they want and what they'll get are two different things." Elvira said. "Tell me more about them."

"One elf family survived intact." Jill said.
"They were given to Oberon and his punishment was truly wicked."

"From what you've told me he wasn't they type to let a person off easy." Elvira said.

"Never." Jill agreed. She shifted more into the jelly and Elvira could tell the fairy was struggling to stay awake. Jeremy gave her another spoonful of honey and she swallowed it before going on. "He took their bodies and minds and twisted what had been a family of joyous love into a party of vicious hunters. Should any of the fairies he imprisoned ever become free their task was to hunt down the fairies, destroy their bodies and capture their spirits into the black gem."

"That thing on their chest."

"Yes. Within that endless stygian darkness a fairy can know only torment. Beware Elvira, for they will hunt you now and…"

That was all the strength the fairy had. With a sigh her eyes closed and her body relaxed into the jelly.

"You lead an interesting life." Jeremy said looking at her.

"Oh come on, everyone has two head snake things after them." Elvira shot back. Inside she wasn't as cocky as she sounded. That thing had taken some good shots, killing shots for any normal human and all Elvira had managed to do was slow it down and make it mad.

"Do you plan to fight it again?" Jeremy asked using some sort of laser to heal the cuts in her hand.

Elvira thought for a moment. The myth around Le Corvus and Karloff highschool was that Elvira Peterson loved to fight anyone, anytime. That she began each day with a fight and ended it the same way. That she was borderline psychotic and dangerous to be near. That on Halloween she drank blood. The truth was Elvira liked to fight, loved the thrill of combat, but she chose her opponents, how to fight and when to fight them carefully. Dumb players fight, Elvira told Mindy the first time they met, smart players fight and win. That was true for hockey and Elvira took it as true for everything else. To that basic philosophy Elvira put two addendum's: if the fight was lost, so was your life, and: the term "fair fight" was an oxymoron.

With that philosophy as her guide Elvira approached every battle like a wolverine guarding her cubs. She used moves picked up everywhere from bad kung-fu movies to professional wrestling. The few times she lost her opponent gained only a Pyrrhic victory as it often came with broken limbs. Elvira fought bullies, drug dealers and aliens the same way. It had always worked. It had even worked against a giant robot. But Elvira knew it would not work now.

"If I do I'll have to fight it outside of the box." Elvira said. "What do you know about this thing Jeremy?"

"Very little." Jeremy admitted putting the laser down.

"Thanks." Elvira said moving her hand. She'd ignored the pain and would have gone on ignoring it, but it was good to have it healed.

"I know more." Helga said running back to them. She was carrying a palm pilot and handed it to Elvira.

"No musty old books for you guys." Elvira said reading the display. On it was a small drawing of the creature along with the gargoyles. Beside it was a series of Asian pictographs. "What does it say?"

"You can't read this simple language?" Helga asked.

"Public schools Helga." Jeremy reminded her.

"Oh, I'd forgotten, poor thing."

"What language is it?" Elvira asked holding her temper. She often suspected that the two of them loved making her feel like she was in kindergarten.

"It's an ancient dialect of the Kron-Tree people." Helga said.

"Oh. What does it say?"

"Well this thing was once Spruce the Lovely and her husband Oak the Stubborn and their children Leaf the Charming, Brook the Babbling and Sunbeam."

"Just Sunbeam, no title?"

"None listed." Helga said checking.

"So they hunt fairies."

"Right. They don't have any magic except for the black gem, but the sting from them causes; "The eternal sleep of stone" Helga quoted. "They are invulnerable to "weapons made of man" and "are like the strength of twenty".

"That explains why the lasers and stuff didn’t bother them. Do you guys have any weapons made by aliens or demons?"

"Mother and father took them away from us years ago." Jeremy said.

"We got a bit out of control." Helga admitted.

"Oh well. Anyway to break the curse they are under?"

"I don't know." Helga said. "No ones ever tried. They've only been spotted 5 other times in history. The last of the Kron-Tree wrote this record. Their high priest managed to free one of the fairies Oberon imprisoned and they attacked the village."

"What happened?"

"The fairy was taken and the village was wiped out, every one turned to stone except the high priest and his wives."

"And entire village? How many people?"

"Five hundred."

"And the high priest and his wives?"

"They were turned into fairies and tortured for years, then their fairy bodies were destroyed and their spirits trapped into the gem. The high priest wrote this record on the wall of his cell just before his death."

"And you want me to catch this thing?" Elvira demanded.

"It would really help my grades." Helga said in a plaintive tone. "Mindy won't let me take her to show and tell."

"There must be a way to free them from the curse." Jeremy said. "The ancient wizards, even Oberon, thought like modern lawyers. There was always a loophole."

"I'll email a couple of my professors." Helga said. "They might come up with a theory. In the meantime if you can capture them all I'd really appreciate it."

"Catch them? Helga I had trouble…" Elvira trailed off for a moment as a thought struck her. "Catch them huh?"

"It'd really be something special." Jeremy said. "Even more so than you and Mindy."

"And you'll have to fight them anyway." Helga pointed out.

"I got an idea… There might be a way…" Elvira turned and looked at the car. "If you can make some modifications to the car… and I get a lucky shot…"

"What did you have in mind?" Jeremy asked.

"Can you put a shrink ray in it that will affect them?"

"I think so." Jeremy said. "They are invulnerable so nanite infusion is out of the question, but affecting their reality interface could be done. But it will take time."

"Well send me to Sour Simon lane and then get started." Elvira said heading toward the teleport booth. "I still have two more people to save tonight and one of them has a fairy hunter after her so I better get started."

"Try not to hurt the fairy hunter too much." Helga called after her.

End.

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