Detective Paul Young has been working some strange cases as of late, but it seems that nothing is as strange as time that he spends with the young men, Ivan and Clay. Ivan had been the morgue assistant in Knoxville a few years back, and he’d met Ivan’s partner Clay during the mess that escalated from the experiments at the apartment complex in North Carolina. They’d arrived in Knoxville recently and in order to help them, Young has to call on a relatively new friend.
Dotty McDermit is the Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigations Knoxville Field Office and she had assisted Young in addressing corrupt police officers in his department. The two were something like friends, but they shared a passion for law enforcement that made them excited to work together.
“This guy,” McDermit says, “he’s small time. He’s probably connected to bigger traffickers in the state and in this portion of the country, but me going in and overriding local police will look personal, not to mention my lack of jurisdiction. I don’t know the people in North Carolina well enough to suggest a case, either.”
Young sits in her office with a disappointed Ivan and Clay. They are currently fugitives, after recently escaping from local jail to save a friend from strange things that were assaulting them, and all of that had ended badly. Young had witnessed the two of them do extraordinary things, Ivan glowing and floating and Clay changing his size, but it seems that they have both lost those abilities. Now they are hoping to avoid a return to jail and they have very few options.
“We can go talk to the judge. Maybe I can suggest leniency.”
Young drives and McDermit sits next to him; Ivan and Clay are somber in the back. When they arrive at the local court house, the two hang their heads in the judge’s office while McDermit and Young converse with the woman who had sentenced them to jail time.
“There’s a guy that comes here,” the judge says tearfully, “usually once a week, and I can forget he was here like a dream I had, but I know he’s real because every time he comes, he reminds me of you two and how unfair I was, and he makes me think it was the right thing to do. He didn’t come this week. I remember you all, and I’m gonna do everything in my power to make sure neither of you see the inside of a jail cell ever again.”
Young is happy for them, and they look as happy as they can manage, but they are both different, somber maybe, and he can feel their spirits are still heavy.
McDermit heads back to Tennessee, but Young stays in North Carolina to help Ivan and Clay cope with their new reality. When they are home, they both look relieved and Young sits with them in the living room.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” he says cautiously. “Y’all can sit out any zombie fights in the future, just enjoy your life together.”
“It’s ok,” Clay says. “I guess after everything my family been through, I was just hoping to turn all that rage, all that energy, into something good. And we did it together, me and you.” He grabs Ivan’s hand and kisses it.
Just then, a ball of flame seems to descend from Clay’s ceiling and Young is speechless. On close examination, it is a spider engulfed in Ivan’s flame and it settles on the coffee table in the middle of the room. It grows in size and as it does, it steps onto the floor and rests on the table, and when it is done growing to human size, it has the torso of a woman. It is similar to the spider Anes, whom they had encountered at the home of Clay’s aunt Bernadette, but it is not her and they both know it. Young hardly blinks at the sight.
“Clay,” the spider says with a strong voice, “I have guarded you for as long as my sister has sought to destroy you. My name is Anat. My sister lost her powers long ago and she has doomed beings of the stiff world who have come to wield it, but the dark angels tell me that you and your love were destined to have it. And I have been tasked to ensure that you do. I saved your life when you were shot and on the verge of death, and I intercepted the spider who took your energy from Ivan. I return them to you now.”
The flame rages to fill the room and Young cowers and screams, but he feels nothing. He marvels at the view inside the room that is tinted green and raging.
“I have appeared before you to restore you one last time, soldier. Anes will soon die, and as her sister, we forged a bond in our youth that will mean my end when she meets hers. You must be careful, take very good care of one another. The dark angels are watching, but they are beings like you and they can only do so much. Take care of yourselves.”
When the flame subsides, the spider is gone.
“Can one of you fly me back to Tennessee?” Young asks. “I need some time to recover from this before I get back to my own weird shit. And you two will be hearing from me. Got me fighting magical spiders. I’m glad everything’s back to normal for y’all, but I can’t sleep here. Next thing I know the grasshoppers gone be talking to me.”
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