For a guy with black blood he sure goes red in the face a lot. Hey! If you've been living under a rock like a cute little bug, you may have missed that I released a DIGITAL SKETCHBOOK that you can get for $7+ RIGHT HERE! Thank you all for your generous support! You can also support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi! Please do! Thank you and thanks for reading!
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[Transcript]
“I like your initiative, son,” Davy sneered, clapping a fatherly hand on Gage’s shoulder. “MOST of my thralls just hang around and upside down once their to-do list’s done... but why restlessly roll in your grave until the night shift when there’s still so much daylight to burn? I’ll happily find work for you, my boy!”
Gage frowned and grumbled under his missing breath. He’d been hoping for more meaningful guidance than a mere “get back to work.”
“...You made the right call, young man,” Davy Jones smirked as he loomed back into eye contact with Gage. “The path to the penthouse starts on the ground floor... and it’s high time you started climbing. Many of my senior employees were fired last night, so to speak. There’s vacancies amidst the ash where they once stood. Plenty of room for promotion.” Davy grinned. “I see dark things in your future, son! Business as usual is changing rapidly around here, and you’re proving yourself qualified to—”
Gage scoffed, which earned a frown from Davy.
“...Was I saying something funny?” he asked, putting ten percent more fang into each word.
“Not really.” Gage shrugged. Everybody turned to cheap teen labor when adults were too expensive or in sudden short supply. Same as it ever was, like Paige said.
“...Ahh, I see. You’re skeptical, after last night’s fiasco. You think that any cold body would do to fill your predecessors’ smoking shoes. You don’t believe that change is coming!” Davy sighed. “That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, young man. You have to manifest your destiny! Don’t you realize that’s the same lack of confidence that repels that frigid flame of yours?? You have to set a lofty goal and strive for it to reach your full potential!”
Gage glowered up at Davy, letting anger beat out fear of being punished for his cheek. He didn’t want to hear any of this from the vampire who’d stopped the clock for him. Paige was right. He was stagnating at the awkward edge of adulthood for eternity... and it was all Davy Jones’ fault.
“What potential? What’s the point? I can’t be you. I’m me forever. Ugly, slouching, empty-headed, not her type. I can’t change that with confidence.” He couldn’t change anything about himself at all. That was his curse. The whole town’s curse—
“You’re right,” Davy sighed. “You can’t.”
Gage blinked up at him, and found that Davy’s gaze had started glowing with an eerie golden light.
“Stand up straight,” Davy commanded him.
A bewildered Gage instantly snapped into the best posture his gangling body had ever known.
“Say something genuinely nice about yourself,” Davy ordered next, clasping his hand and hook together to add an unspoken, pleading “for ONCE.”
“I’m... strong. And... fast,” Gage was forced to confess through gnashing fangs. He’d had to dig deep to find anything that fit Davy’s compulsory criteria.
“There you go!” beamed Davy, clapping Gage upon the back. “No, no, don’t add the caveat—I see it coming, young man! ‘Strong and fast like every other vampire.’ WELL, that’s where you’re WRONG.” Davy snapped for another thrall, a bodyguard in riot gear perched high upon the ceiling. “You two. Arm wrestle. Don’t hold back.”
In a whirlwind of obedience, Gage soon found himself with a scrawny elbow planted on Davy’s desk, staring down a larger, much more muscular vampire cop.
“I can’t—” he began to say, but then there was a mighty KRACK!! that echoed through the room.
Compelled by Davy’s orders, Gage had bested his opponent in an instant... and splintered his sire’s doubtlessly expensive desk straight down the middle.
“Ha HA! There, you see?” Davy laughed uproariously. “It’s AGE that gives a vampire their strength, young man, not MUSCLES! Not when you turned, but how long it’s been since! You’re still growing every day!”
Gage stumbled backwards, bewildered, flush with some undead facsimile of a surging heart’s adrenaline. Davy eased him into his own high-backed office chair, marveling cartoonishly at his minion as if surprised to find the throne a perfect fit. He grinned and took a mocking bow.
“Don’t forget, young man: I bit you first. There’s NO ONE that can rival you.” Davy rose back to his full height: “Except ME, of course,” the gesture added in fine print. “You were right that you have limits on your own... but with MY guidance and encouragement, there’s nothing you can’t do. Nothing you WON’T do! NOTHING and NO ONE that you cannot BE—that you, son, cannot HAVE!”
Mayor Hijack watched in horror and scientific curiosity as Gage was taken in by Davy’s words. Both halves of the homunculus agreed that this was objectively and/or subjectively far more sinister manipulation than their own humble, homegrown, farm-to-plate body-snatching. Even if they couldn’t find the chance or nerve to vaporize Cody’s evil father, the Hijacks had to at least stick around to sabotage his scheming. There was more at stake than Sophie Sybil’s safety, which was already reliant on the real Bill Spender staying fast asleep (or whatever state their meat puppets were actually put in while the Hijacks were ethically overtaking their pathetic human minds). The whole town needed a hero to save the day from Davy’s plans... and the Hijacks were that hero AND his sidekick!
Davy, meanwhile, chuckled down at a wide-eyed Gage like a sinister genie. He really had to get around to learning this weird kid’s name.
“Let’s see...” Davy mused, scratching his prodigious chin with his prodigious hook. “What’s left on the list to get you your girl? We took care of slouching, I could order you to GET OFF YOUR PHONE and READ A BOOK FOR ONCE to fill that empty head of yours with some sweet nothings she’ll adore, and then... is ugly really that much of an obstacle?”
Gage thought of Ritz.
“...No,” he said.
“Then what’s left to stand in your way?”
Gage thought of Ritz.
Davy grinned, a grin that shone within the shadow as the curtain closed behind him.
“...Competition, is it? Never a deterrent for a daring businessman. Who’s she mad about, son, if not you? Tell me. Be honest. I can weigh her options—maybe even help you tip the scales.”
Gage felt the vampiric compulsion to confess drawing closer to his secrets... no, to Paige’s secrets. Gage could say the word, and her doomed plan to have a thrall all to herself would be cut short. Then she’d have no reason to pal around with some obnoxious, grovelling rich girl replacement. Then Davy would—
Gage’s blood ran colder than its baseline, but it still ran all the same... the faintest pulse of dead biology expressing buried guilt. What would Davy do? Would he hurt Ritz? Would he hurt Paige? Gage had been deprived of tools to know in words why he was feeling shame already, discussing Paige, and winning her, behind her back like this. When those tools had been offered to him—shared as pointed jabs or soft suggestions, or raised up as a shield against a weapon he had taken up and brandished without thinking—Gage had turned them down and turned away, refusing to accept he could be anything but his sad story’s victim. Early on, when he’d still reached for empathy instead of proud self-pity, his father and his brothers had made sure to set him straight. Now he made the wrong choice on his own, without their help. This time, though, Gage sensed his soul upon a crooked cliff... even if the howling of his conscience was no more than wordless wind. He couldn’t throw anyone he knew to the wolves... or worse, to Davy Jones.
Gage, however, couldn’t keep his mouth shut, either, thanks to Davy’s binding orders. With his mind reeling, the young vampire stumbled on a loophole and dove for it without thinking. There was no more time for thinking. The words would slip free on their own if he didn’t choose them himself—
“S-s-some mascot. Paige is mad about some weird mascot.” Gage gulped, shrinking back in Davy’s chair. “Somebody in a mascot suit saw us, y-y’know, doing frickin’ vampire stuff... and Paige thought I, like, handled it poorly. Or whatever.” He shrugged a nervous shrug and looked away. “She was worried you’d, like. Punish us. Y’know? So we, uh. Weren’t gonna. Um. Tell you.”
Gage felt the compulsion ease at last as he fulfilled its terms in full... and Davy, too, seemed satisfied, drawing back and nodding with what felt to him like understanding.
“Ahh...” sighed Davy. “I see how it is. That’s the trouble with being me, isn’t it? I welcome my minions with open arms”—Davy looked down at his hook—“and people see an iron fist. Tell dear Paige that there’s no need to punish any of you. There’s no death penalty for VIOLATING THE MASQUERADE or what have you. We’re ALL evil vampires, aren’t we? I want to KNOW about these things, so I can deal with them... for US!”
“D-deal with them?” Gage asked.
“Yes, yes, leave it to me. We’ll find you far more prestigious work. You’ve earned it!” Davy turned to Hattie Henchman, who was off in a corner losing at her own shell game as she practiced sleight of hand while on the clock. “Captain, who’s on guard duty downstairs? We could use an extra pair of eyes on Cody.”
“...Sir?” asked Stephen’s mother, furrowing her scarred brow in confusion. The room began to fizzle into silence. “What, um! What do you mean? Sir?”
Davy blinked at her, and then his other gawking minions.
“Hm? What’s got you all cowering? Out with it!” he said impatiently; Davy hated being in the dark almost as much as he loathed being in the sunlight.
“Sir, your son’s at school, sir. We, uh, had a couple officers give him a ride to—”
The pressure in the room changed in an instant. Every surface suddenly felt like sinking quicksand, even as it stayed unmoving.
“WHAT. DID. YOU. SAYYY?!” Davy roared in harrowing fury, casting aside his debonair persona like the skinsuit of a werewolf. “ON WHOSE ORDERS?!”
Captain Henchman nervously glanced at the mayor. Half of Hijack lurched with fear; the other half began to draft a sensible and legally sound will.
“W-well I may have rubber-stamped some business as usual downstairs while you were BUSY, Dave, but—”
“WE ARE NOT OPERATING UNDER BUSINESS AS USUAL, YOU IMBECILE! YOU SENT MY SON INTO THE WITCH’S WEB!!”
The Hijacks gulped. Freeing Cody from captivity was the heroic thing to do, he’d thought. This way, even without getting grounded, Cody could maybe sneak away and meet his wolfmom instead of going into lockdown on the night she was and/or wasn’t herself. The Hijacks had surely done a noble deed... but was that noble deed to die for? Only time (specifically several short seconds) would tell.
Davy surged with spectral energy as he stormed closer, raising his haunted hook high. He shoved one fearful goon aside, then swiped at another who wasn’t even in his path. Where were his failsafes? His chain of command?! There was blame enough to go around and SLAUGHTER EVERYBODY!
“DID YOU THINK WE HOLD SIX MEETINGS EVERY MONTH ABOUT HIS SCHEDULE FOR FUN?! IT’S A FULL MOON TONIGHT, YOU PREPOSTEROUS FOOLS!!”
“I-is it, sir?” his secretary asked, squinting down at her notes in surprise.
Davy blanched in fear and fury. The Bayview reboot had muddled their vacuous minds! It had muddled his intricate CALENDAR! If he broke his promise—! If Shrike made good on her old threat, NOW, at this sensitive time—!
“I WANT A FERRY WAITING AT THE DOCKS! SOMEONE GET ME A CAR WITH TINTED WINDOWS RIGHT THIS INSTANT!! SOMEONE ELSE GET THE MAYOR OUT OF MY OFFICE AND BACK TO HIS SAD LITTLE LIFE UNTIL I’M HUNGRY!! PUT that GUN down, Captain! I do NOT need MORTAL BACKUP to face FAUXBIA—I have ENOUGH DEAD MINIONS ALREADY... or you’d ALL BE DEAD ALREADY!!”
“W-what about me, Davy?” Gage asked, rising from his chair. He was his strongest thrall. Surely there was something that—
“GO CLEAN UP YOUR OWN LOOSE ENDS!! That’s an ORDER! And that’s MR. JONES to you!” Davy snarled, forgetting he had ordered Gage to call him by his name. He remembered, though, the work he’d put into earning his loyalty (like two whole conversations!) and so he added the friendliest footnote he could muster in his rage: “I trust that you’ll take care of it in a manner that earns my approval... and doesn’t require still more of my precious time and attention!”
Davy swept out of his office like a bat out of a place he ought to be.