FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2410 STRANGEFATE BOOKS NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI Raven thought business was pretty slow for a Friday, but then, it was the Friday before Halloween. Most of the shop's usual clientele would be busy with the preparations for their holiday plans, not out shopping. That suited Raven fine. She was trying to decide what to do for Halloween herself. Despite Gar Logan's entreaties, she didn't think she was going to go trick-or-treating with the Titans. It wasn't that trick-or-treating was beneath her; she just didn't have any use for that much candy, and anyway, Beast Boy on a sugar rush was a thing best left to Tara to control. (The Titans were changing, as all social groups do. With graduation from high school looming for the team's early members, none of them was really sure what the next year would bring. Raven and Starfire had gradually drifted onto a sort of reserve status with most of their time taken up by their duties with the International Police. They hadn't been -replaced- by new members, exactly, but there were new members all the same, and though Raven liked them, she didn't know them as well as the original three and Gar.) She might see if the Chief was free, and spend the evening with him; or she might just sit around at home and read. That prospect didn't dismay her much. Raven could always keep herself pretty well entertained if she had to. It was one of the benefits of having an introspective temperament and a fairly high opinion of herself: she always had something interesting to contemplate. The bell on the shop's door jingled, drawing her back from her thoughts. She turned expecting to see a customer, and instead was surprised to see her employer, Jason Blood, entering. Blood didn't visit the shop much; he had his own library at home, and rarely felt any need to check up on the way Raven was managing it for him. "Hello, Jason," she said. Blood smiled, though the smile looked a little strained for some reason. "Good afternoon, Raven," he said. "I have a... message... for you." Raven arched an eyebrow. "Oh?" she said, interested. Blood removed a small piece of parchment from his overcoat pocket and placed it on the counter in front of her. "Just read it," he said, and glanced around the shop. Raven's intrigue deepened. What could possibly make Jason Blood nervous? She picked up the parchment and unfolded it to see lettering burned on it in a familiar spidery hand: Raven, ill-fortun'd bird, whose face Can make a brave man freeze in fright: Will you, O witch of bleakest grace, Go out with me this Sunday night? - E. Raven blinked, then looked up at Blood's face. "Is this some kind of joke?" she asked. Blood shook his head, a slightly embarrassed smile touching his face. "Oh, no, it's no joke. I let Etrigan roam the world of men unfettered on only one day out of the year... and that's what he wants to do with his day this year." "Why?" Blood gave her a level gaze. "You'd... have to ask him." "No, I mean, why do you let him out?" "Ah," Blood said, nodding. "Over the centuries, he's earned that much. It's an important day for his kind." "How unfettered is unfettered?" Raven wondered. "I don't give him a job to do, I don't watch what he does," Blood replied. "I spend the day playing cards with Randolph Carter in his house in Ulthar." "You're not a dream explorer." Blood shook his head. "No. I never learned to find the stairs. Carter always has to come up and get me." The immortal arcanist chuckled darkly. "It exasperates him to no end." Raven, her questions apparently exhausted, studied the note for a few moments. Well, she thought, what the hell? You were just going to sit around the loft in your pajamas reading trashy grimoires anyway. "All right," she said. Blood blinked - clearly, this was not the answer he'd been expecting. "All right?" he repeated warily. Raven nodded. "I'll go out with Etrigan." She smiled. "But if he doesn't behave himself, he's going to end up explaining it to the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak." "Be careful," Blood said wryly. "Coming from you, he might enjoy that." I have a message from another time... /* The Skids "Masquerade" _Days in Europa_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Bacon Comics Group present UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT RAVEN/THE DEMON HALLOWEEN SPECIAL scripted by Benjamin D. Hutchins pencils & inks by your visual cortex letters by Benjamin D. Hutchins editor: Benjamin D. Hutchins Bacon Comics chief: Derek Bacon (c) 2004 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2410 JASON BLOOD'S TOWNHOUSE, CLAREMONT Raven rang the bell precisely at 6:30 PM and waited. A short distance down the street, she heard a party of trick-or-treaters making their way along. One of them, she'd been amused to note when she passed them on the way up from Strange, was dressed as her. It wasn't a bad likeness, either, though the kid's skin tone was all wrong. She didn't match, at the moment, because she wasn't dressed in her working clothes. Instead, she had on her smartest civvies, including her favorite wide-collared blouse, a trim dark waistcoat, snug velvet trousers, low boots like the ones she wore with her costume, and her beautiful brocade overcoat with its satin lapels and two rows of silver buttons. The Eye of Azarath, around her throat on a black ribbon instead of serving its usual role as a cloak fastener, nestled gently in the V of her shirt collar. The door clicked, then swung open. To Raven's mild surprise, the figure standing within was not Blood. It appeared that Etrigan's day off began before evening. Doubly surprising was the way the demon was dressed. Every other time Raven had seen him, he'd been clad in the rags of once-rich infernal finery, including a tatter-edged purple cloak that stank of brimstone. Tonight, he had on... a tuxedo. Raven hesitated to wonder how he'd gotten it fitted; it didn't look like a rental job. She amused herself momentarily with the mental image of Etrigan stalking into a tailor's shop and demanding, in rhyme, a tux for a date. "Good evening, Etrigan," she said, smiling slightly. Etrigan's horned and ugly face, with its fanged mouth, finned ears, and glowing red eyes, took on a smile - an amazingly non-nasty one - at the sight of her. He took a half-step back and bowed cordially. "Raven, my dear, you do look a treat," he intoned with real cheer in his gravelly voice. "You polish up very well! Come, let's away for something to eat, And then we'll raise us some hell." So saying, he stepped forth from the house like a conquering baron, shut the door behind him, locked it with a strange and arcane key, pocketed same, and offered Raven his arm. Mildly bemused, she took it and went down to the street with him. Jason's blue Cadillac Cibola stood at the curb, freshly polished and shining in the streetlights, but Etrigan paused and frowned thoughtfully at it. Before Raven could ask him what the problem was, he'd raised his hands in a spellcasting gesture above his head and begun to chant: "Change, change, form of sedan! Free the Eldorado damned! Free the fins from fenders' mire! Scorch the road with wheels of fire! Gone, gone, boring sedan! Rise the ride of Etrigan!" As he spoke, flames danced around his upraised hands, then rose up from the street to engulf the car. When the rhyme was complete, they receded - revealing not charred wreckage, but a completely different car. Crouching at the curb now was a gleaming black 1959 Eldorado, its monumental tailfins glittering with chrome, the teeth of its grille looking as though they hungered for something to bite. Instead of rubber tires, the wheels were sheathed in quietly rustling fire. Etrigan turned to Raven with an unmistakable smirk on his face, then opened the passenger door for her and bowed her into the demonic car. They made quite a stir when they pulled up at Allard's, the restaurant attached to the Hotel Monolith. Like most really serious places, Allard's wasn't having a themed night per se - the staff weren't dressed up in costumes, nor were the customers - but it was a holiday all the same, and one of the ones New Avalon took to with a certain panache, so the place was decorated accordingly. Having a creature of Etrigan's appearance turn up in an ancient Cadillac with flaming wheels was enough to jolt even Allard's legendary doorman Carl out of his blandly welcoming demeanor and make him goggle a little. He recovered his aplomb almost instantly, though, and held the door for the couple as if they were any other pair of customers. Though Raven had long since forgiven Etrigan for the role he played in her abduction back in January - he had, after all, been forced into it by her father, a recently invested Duke of Hell, under conditions that Jason had assured her could never arise again - she was still mildly wary of him. This was not for her own sake, particularly, but just because he was still a demon prince (however much he may have been gentled by centuries of exile in the world of men), and it paid to be a bit wary of them. She wasn't overly concerned for herself. Etrigan considered her a friend, or as close as a creature such as he could get. They'd worked together on several cases, and though she didn't think she'd ever quite trust him entirely, she did rather like him, and believed that he liked her. After his unwilling involvement in Raven's January travails, Etrigan had gone to Gryphon and confessed his crime, setting in motion the events leading to her rescue at the Chief's hands. All the same, she was keeping an eye on him, for demons are mercurial, and in a social setting like this one, there were a lot of people around more likely to get hurt than Raven was if something went wrong. She needn't have worried. Throughout dinner, Etrigan remained calm, cheerful, even urbane. He had a dark wit that was made sharper by his penchant for speaking in verse. Several times during dinner, he actually made Raven laugh, a thing that could be considered an achievement by anyone who managed it. His rhyming speech pattern reached the zenith of its entertainment value when the time came to order, at which point the demon had to come up with a rhyme for "filet mignon". Since Etrigan had very little else to do when locked up within Jason Blood, he spent a good portion of his time roaming the dreamlands, and the rest of it observing the world of men through Blood's eyes. Both gave him things to talk with Raven about, since she was an accomplished dream explorer in her own right. Their conversation ranged across a wide variety of topics, from matters occult to the sad condition of the New Avalon Knights, who had just finished up another losing season. Raven, besides being mildly surprised to learn that Etrigan was a Knights fan, found it amusing that the demon believed the popular legend that supernatural forces were behind the team's chronic inability to achieve anything of note. (Admittedly, she had given that theory enough credence herself to at least investigate it a bit, but she'd come up with nothing.) She hadn't expected to have a -bad- time when she'd agreed to the date, but all the same, Raven was surprised partway through dinner by just how much of a -good- time she was having. And this was just dinner! Supposedly they were going dancing afterward - it was, unsurprisingly, anything-goes night at Club l'Enfer - and Raven found herself looking forward with a combination of amusement and dread to the sorts of moves Etrigan might come up with on the floor at Claremont's most avant-garde club. Seeing him in the tux, she almost wished she'd taken the Chief up on his offer to teach her swing dancing so that they could go to the Cobalt instead. Something about Etrigan's look tonight seemed to invite the big-band sound. It was also inviting something else, but at the moment, Raven was unaware of that. "See anything?" "Not yet." "C'mon, man. You saw that Cadillac. -Definite- supernatural activity. The owner's got to be in there someplace." "I'm looking, but I don't - wait a second - got it. There was a waiter in the way." "Well? Put it up!" "On the main screen... now." "Whoa!" "Holy - !" "Is that a Unique?" "Looks like it. Check the field guide." "Hang on - pan left. There's someone with it." "Yup, right there. A girl. Late teens, maybe?" "What do you think, Ed? Thrall?" "Gotta be. Look - she's laughing at its jokes." "Uh-huh, here it is: Etrigan, son of Belial. Says here there have been unconfirmed sightings in this area for the last three years." "Reward?" "Not as such, but its horns alone are worth millions on the materials market. But remember, you guys, we're not just in this for the credits." "Barry's right. First we rescue the girl. -Then- we take down the demon." When a half-dozen guys in jumpsuits carrying high-tech weapons suddenly burst into Allard's, Raven's first thought was that the Sky Raiders were getting -aw-fully sprocking bold. Then she realized (as she was jumping to her feet and taking stock of the situation) that they weren't Sky Raiders. They weren't wearing helmets, and the packs on their backs weren't for flight - they were connected to the weapons the men held in their hands. For another thing, their opening line wasn't anything like a Sky Raider opening, since it consisted of the sandy-haired guy who had come in through the main entrance bellowing, "NOBODY PANIC! We have the situation PERFECTLY UNDER CONTROL!" Now that's a strange way to start, Raven thought. It's usually more like "Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt." Their attack pattern was strange, too. Rather than trying to quarter the room, prevent people from leaving, and start collecting valuables, a few of them were instead opening more exit routes and exhorting people to -leave- while the rest - the ones with the heavy weapon-looking things - moved into a definite battle formation... ... centered on Etrigan. "Friends of yours?" she inquired with an arched eyebrow. Before Etrigan could answer, three of the jumpsuited men raised their weapons. "Take it down!" the sandy-haired man yelled, and the three opened fire. Rather than the discrete pulses of blasterfire or the sharply defined beams of phasers, these weapons released shrieking streams of bright orange light which bent and twisted as they poured forth from the emitters. The three streams bracketed Etrigan and then curled around him, almost as if they were semisolid objects rather than streams of energy. The demon rose to his feet and roared with outrage. Raven turned, her ironic look replaced by mild and contained anger, but before she could intervene, another of the jumpsuited men had darted in front of her. "Don't worry, miss," he said. "We're here to help you." "-Help- me?!" Raven said, but before she could elaborate on what a stupid remark she thought that was, the man had raised a small object into her field of view and triggered it. The device was a stroboscopic neural disruptor, a cutting-edge piece of non-lethal hardware which used optical principles to stun the humanoid brain. It worked under a rather more limited range of circumstances than its nearest competitors, the modulated energy disruptor and the stun-intensity phaser, but it was also gentler than those two weapons. Where they imparted outside energy to scramble the signals of the target's brain, the strobe worked entirely by messing with the target's sensorium, throwing out a carefully designed set of visual stimuli which put the observer momentarily into a kind of harmless brain lock. The effect passed within a few minutes and left no lasting aftereffects, unlike phaser and disruptor stuns, which could last hours and left their victims with pounding headaches. There was a small chance that a person exposed to a strobe stunner might have a violent convulsive reaction, but with neuroconvulsive diseases basically cured back in the 21st century, that was almost vanishingly rare and easily treated in any case. No such treatment existed for the small percentage of the human population who had violent adverse reactions to directed-energy stunning. All of this made the strobe the latest thing in non-lethality for police agencies and such in areas with large human populations, and the organization to which the man in the jumpsuit belonged prided itself on always stocking the latest thing. It certainly had its desired effect on Raven. Without consciously registering what had hit her, she dropped instantly. Etrigan saw her fall and roared again more loudly. He lunged toward her, but the beams of energy from the other men's weapons held him back. Two more entered the fray, weaving their streams into the tightening cage that surrounded their quarry, as Etrigan snarled, "If you've harmed the girl, You -may- live to regret it - But you rest assured This hellspawn won't forget it!" He turned this way and that, looking for a way out of the trap, but the howling streams of orange light seemed to have him pretty effectively penned in. The man who had stunned Raven picked her up, slung her over his shoulder, and beat it for the main exit. As he ran, he could hear Etrigan roaring after him, "For a lesser offense than abducting my date, I have carved greater men onto my breakfast plate!" "It seems agitated about something," one of the men wielding the containment weapons remarked with a wry grin. "We'll give it something to be agitated about," another said. "Increase power!" Jack Bentley was seriously chuffed. A four-year veteran of Infernal Interventions, Inc., he had been involved in some serious action in his time - the great West Proctorville imp infestation on Earth, the New Goa poltergeist case, and the infamous Man-Bat Incident in New Gotham, just to name three - but this was -really- big. No other Triple-I action squad had -ever- had an opportunity to bag a Unique before, and Jack was right in the thick of it. What was more, he had just pulled off a letter-perfect rescue. This poor kid, so obviously under the demon's eldritch thrall - God only knew what horrific plans the beast had for her after dinner. -That- was the kind of thing Jack Bentley had gotten into demon hunting to prevent. This rescue was the culmination of his life's ambition. The chance to do something like this was his whole reason for joining Triple-I in the first place. He hustled her to the strike team's tech van, one of the three vehicles parked across the street from Allard's. The tech van was the mobile operations group's nerve center, where all the information technology was concentrated. From here, grey-bearded and kindly Barry Bostrowski controlled the squad and kept it informed. The medical bay was here too, which was Jack's main goal right at the moment. "The boys seem to be doing pretty well," Bostrowski noted as Bentley climbed aboard. "This the girl?" Jack nodded as he eased the still-stunned Raven into the dentist's-chair-like diagnostic seat of the miniature medbay. Working quickly and precisely, he secured her in place with wrist and ankle straps, for her protection and his own - demon thralls did tend to thrash around a bit - before going to the medication locker. As he rummaged around for the appropriate serum - wouldn't do much good to give her a dose of, say, a broad-spectrum antiviral - he noticed that she was coming to. "... what the -?" she murmured, blinking. "Easy, miss, just relax," said Bostrowski from his control terminal. "We're experts." "We're with Infernal Interventions, Incorporated," Bentley explained as he drew a dose from a vial into a pneumatic hypo. The liquid in the vial was a cocktail of psychoactives specifically tailored to counter the physiological effects of demonic thrall - one of Triple-I's many triumphs in the company's chosen field, applying modern science and reason to the ancient art of demon hunting. Turning, Bentley checked the fluid level in the hypo, then bent over his rescuee. Raven looked at the hypo, then fixed him with a cold glare. "Let me go," she said. "-Right now-." Bentley smiled. "Just relax. You're suffering from the effects of demonic thralldom. Now that we've got you isolated from the beast, you should feel better soon." Raven kept glaring at him for a second, then closed her eyes and began to chuckle darkly. The sound seemed not to come from her so much as from everywhere at once. Bentley found it deeply unnerving. "Barry? She's laughing. Why is she laughing?" Bostrowski glanced up from his terminal screen. "I don't know," he said. "Never heard a thrall do that before." "Barry, she's -scaring- me," Jack admitted. Then he seemed to remember that he was holding a hypo loaded with Anti-Thrall. He moved to inject it - The restraints holding Raven in place glowed with an unearthly dark light, then popped open. Released, she levitated away from the chair, hovering before the stunned demon hunter with her hands open at her sides. Her eyes opened, revealing not the deep dark-violet irises of a few moments ago, but rather an eerie, featureless black glow. Jack recoiled in shock. "Oh my God - Barry, code blue, CODE BLUE, she's NOT a vic, she's a WITCH - " The small crowd which had started gathering on Allard Avenue to stare at the restaurant's flashing windows and wonder what was going on inside was a bit startled when the doors suddenly blew off the back of the big white panel van parked at the opposite curb. A smartly-dressed young woman who appeared to be in her late teens stepped down from the back of the van, smoothed her short violet hair, and turned back to address the two rumpled, shell-shocked-looking men inside. "If you gentlemen will excuse me," she said, "I'll go see if I can prevent my date from barbecuing your friends." Ed Klempton, the field leader of this particular Triple-I squad, figured he had this bad boy by the tail, so to speak, right from the get-go. The protoncasters were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing, penning the beast in behind a fence of specially tuned charged particles with an energy signature specifically designed to be inimical to the Earthly vessels of infernal creatures. Another triumph for science over the occult. Klempton had used protoncasters before, of course - they were instrumental in containing the West Proctorville imps - but this was the first time the technology had been put to the test against a Named demon. And a Unique, to boot! Ground-breaking stuff. He could already see his name on the cover page of the paper to the Journal of Applied Parascience. Add to that the fact that Bentley had swept away the girl in picture-perfect fashion, and this was all adding up to a seriously successful outing for Triple-I Field Group 37. All they had to do was wrangle the demon into position for Elliott to apply the Disjunctor, and there'd be nothing else to do but accept the applause of a grateful public. "Everybody ready?" he called. "Ready!" the others cried out. "Standing by on the Disjunctor!" Elliott Clay reported. "OK. Steady. Steady... NOW!" Clay slammed his foot down on the pedal, and the Disjunctor, a tripod-mounted device which resembled nothing so much as a half-stripped blaster cannon, spoke. As it did, the five men switched off their protoncasters, whipping the streams away from the perfectly-positioned demon so that the big gun could do its work unimpeded. The Disjunctor had a much more complicated name to the people who had built it, but to the men in the field, it was just the Disjunctor. It did just what its name suggested. Through a cleverly resonated application of energy, it disrupted the bonds which held a demon's infernal essence to the mundane materials of its Earthly vessel. Demons didn't travel to the mortal plane in their native forms, after all, but rather animated local materials with their spirits. The Disjunctor would destroy that animation, banishing the demon's essence back to the Pit and leaving the body just so much dead meat - meat which could still be studied and learned from. Like many of Triple-I's operating premises, this was based in truth, but sorely flawed. The organization had never encountered a real, honest-to-Surtur, Name-owning demon before, and while the "remote animation" principle was certainly true of imps and other minor infernals, it was -not- true of the Named - and doubly untrue of Etrigan, who had been made manifest in person, then bound, native form and all, into the being of Jason Blood. All of which meant that, in his case, the Disjunctor made a lot of light and a lot of noise, ruined Etrigan's tuxedo, and caused the demon a certain amount of discomfort... ... but that was basically it. Clay, Klempton, and the others were paralyzed with shock when the smoke cleared to reveal Etrigan, now clad in the tatters and rags of what had been an expensive suit, standing in the center of the devastated dining room. After a second, the demon opened his baleful red eyes and swept them around the room, eventually fixing his gaze on Klempton. "I'm quite unimpressed By the strength of your tools. Your blind faith in science Has made you all fools." The demon grinned, baring his gleaming sharp teeth, and added tauntingly as he advanced, "Now if you're quite done Making noise with your toys, Then retreat from my fury Like scared little boys." "THROW IT!" Klempton bellowed, opening up with his protoncaster again. The others opened fire as well, but they might as well have been spraying Etrigan with hoses. The demon's blood was up now; he ignored the pain of the lashing beams and made straight for Klempton. "You seek to arrest me? Oh, this can't be true. Your toys don't impress me And neither do you." So saying, the rhyming, wickedly grinning demon seized hold of Klempton by the web gear on the front of his jumpsuit, whirled, and pitched him square into Clay, sending both men tumbling into the corner of the dining room. "Allard's is famous For the taste of its food, But biting the patrons Is really quite rude. What YOU'VE bitten off, You've bitten in error! If you'd any sense left You'd be fleeing in terror." Clay scrambled to his feet and dove for the Disjunctor, making frantic adjustments to the controls. At maximum power, even if it didn't actually split this monster's spirit away from its body and send it howling back to Hell, it would at least blow a big enough hole in the beast that it would have to withdraw! It'd be hard to get a bead on the creature with the others' containment efforts proving ineffective, but if he didn't - "What's the world coming to? It must be dire straits When a civilized demon Is assaulted on dates." Etrigan finished relieving another demon hunter of his protoncaster, tossed the man one way and the pack the other, then turned and saw Clay turning the Disjunctor toward him. The demon grinned ferociously, baring a mouthful of gleaming fangs, then drew a deep breath and expelled a cone of yellow-white fire that washed over the weapon. Clay yelped and dove clear. One of his sleeves caught fire, but was quickly beaten out before it could do him any harm - but the Disjunctor was a half-melted wreck when the blast of fire ended. Ignoring the proton fire of the last three squad members standing, Etrigan stalked across the room, grabbed Clay by the front of his jumpsuit, and hauled him up to eye level. The others immediately stopped blasting for fear of hitting their teammate. One of them started calling on the radio to Barry for instructions, but Barry wasn't answering either. Etrigan held Clay at eye level and growled, "Your revels now are ended, boy, But I may let you keep your head. If you'd not end up like your toy, Explain yourself, or else you're dead." Clay tried to reply, but his mouth wouldn't work. Etrigan gave him a couple of seconds, then bared his fangs in a sneer and started to inhale. Clay squeezed his eyes shut and squeaked in terror. "They're demon hunters," came a voice, and both Etrigan and his might-be victim turned their heads to see Raven skirting the wreckage of the Disjunctor. Etrigan scowled. "They call themselves hunters? What am I now, a bear? Of brains these poor punters, I fear, missed their share. The battle they started could never be won. A demon's no beast to be slain with a gun." Raven rolled her eyes. "Apparently, these clowns beg to differ." "We're a fully accredited privately operated special mission task force!" one of the still-standing protoncaster operators objected. "Our operations are certified by the Federation Bureau of Investigation." "The last time I checked, your charter hadn't been recognized by the Zeta Cygni Assembly," another voice interjected from the doorway. This time everyone looked to see the red-coated form of Paige Guthrie, the Expert of Justice codenamed Spitfire, entering the wrecked restaurant with a squad of Tactical Division bluesuiters and New Avalon Police Department SWAT officers right behind her. "The home office said they'd clear it!" Clay protested, then squeaked again when Etrigan gave him a little shake and snarled. "Etrigan," Raven said. Etrigan gave her a querying look. "Put him down," Raven added with a faintly tired air. Etrigan eyed the hunter dubiously for a moment more, then released him. It took nearly an hour for Spitfire, Sergeant Christina Kohle of the NAPD's Special Crimes Squad, and the various witnesses to sort everything out. Having been told she could leave, but slightly at a loss as to what to do next, Raven stood off to one side watching the bluesuiters pack the handcuffed demon hunters off to jail and sighed. "Well, -that- was stupid," she grumbled. Etrigan came up next to her and said, "The battle filled my heart with glee." Then, seeing Klempton wince as he ducked his head to climb into the paddy wagon, the demon added in a concessional tone, "Their insurance man may not agree." Raven smiled slightly at that, then turned to Etrigan and said, "You know... I'm proud of you." The demon blinked, puzzled by the remark, and Raven elaborated, "You didn't kill any of them." Then, looking around at the wreckage that had been New Avalon's most famous restaurant, she added darkly, "Though Allard's might." Etrigan smiled toothily and said, "Though stupidity is still a sin And lacking much in mortal wit, I wouldn't wish to spoil our date Or singe your lovely outfit." Then, before Raven could respond, he raised a clawed forefinger in imperious summons to their waiter, who was passing by with a stunned look on his face after giving his statement to Kohle. "The hour grows late, there's much to do; We'll miss the band if we stay. Thus, O waiter, I command you: Bring us the check, s'il vous plait." The waiter gave him a what-are-you-nuts look and said hesitantly, "Uh... it's on the house tonight, sir." Etrigan bowed graciously to him, then offered Raven his arm. As she took it, the young witch said wryly, "I can't take you -anywhere-." Etrigan only grinned and replied, "Admit it, kid, you like my style. You can't fool me; you want to smile." They collected Etrigan's car from the valet lot and went to Club l'Enfer anyway. Raven had to admit that Etrigan fit into the club's overall atmosphere rather -better- clad in the tattered remains of a tuxedo than he would have in the tuxedo in its natural state. Raven was a semi-regular at the club, turning up pretty frequently on goth night, but Etrigan had never been there before. He was a big hit with the regular crowd, though his look was a little extreme for some of the holiday curious who were stopping in for the first time to see what the place was all about. Raven even had to admit that his moves weren't too bad. They danced for a couple of hours, then left the club and adjourned to the somewhat quieter confines of Coffee Kingdom. The coffee shop was mostly full of college kids in various costumes, all of whom were impressed with Etrigan's look. Raven hadn't known CK would be doing open mic tonight, though she supposed she should have been expecting it. She and Etrigan sipped their beverages - black coffee for him, hot cocoa for her - and chatted for a while as college students dressed like cats or astronauts or football players recited dark and gloomy verse about the day-to-day struggles of their lives. Etrigan listened to a few of the poems, then chuckled darkly and rose from the table. "This open mic's a challenge, aye, And square at me it's aimed. Sit back and I will show you why In Hell my rhymes were famed." Raven gave him a surprised look, but he merely gave her a little grin and went up to take the stage. For the next half-hour, he proceeded to hold the entire coffee shop spellbound as he stood and told the tragic tale of the fall of Camelot, the end of Arthur's reign. In alternating iambic and trochaic pentameters, with rhyme schemes growing ever more complex, his gravelly voice first ringing in the rafters, then lowered to a hushed and confidential murmur, the demon painted with words the demise of a glorious but flawed kingdom and its stout but fallible knights. By the time he was done, he had the most jaded, life-weary habitue of CK's open mic nights sniffling and ordering more herbal tea as they wept for lost and fallen Avalon. Amid sporadic, stunned applause, Etrigan bowed and left the stage, went to Raven's table, and said, "Shall we away? I've something to say." Raven, who was just as impressed as everyone else by what he'd just done, took a moment to register the question, then got up and followed him as he left the shop. They went to the park at the end of Strange Street, the empty, eerie space between Claremont proper and the lonely stone tower standing at the tip of Mignola Point. There, in complete seclusion, Etrigan turned to Raven, lowered his head, and said, "The evening's been a great success; I trust you've had a pleasant time. But now I've something to confess, So please bear with my curs'ed rhyme." He paused for a moment as if collecting his thoughts, then went on, "With Jason Blood my long association Has wrought in me a certain alteration. My demon's wrath his decent dispassion Has temper'd with a certain compassion. But should his influence one day wane Or be broken by some craft or art, The rage that made me Merlin's bane Will surely o'erwhelm my heart. The Etrigan you know, deceased, And in his place a raging beast, With all the flames of Hell released To feast." Raven nodded slowly. She'd had the same thought before, but it hadn't occurred to her that Etrigan himself might have considered it, much less that he would have found it cause for concern. Raising a finger, Etrigan said, "Mark me, O witch, these words are true. My unchained wrath would be no game. Someone must stop me; thus to you I give the means to douse that flame... " And, lowering himself slowly to one knee before her, Etrigan bowed his head and identified that means: "... My own immortal Hellborn Name." Raven blinked. She was a witch; she knew precisely what power a demon's capital-N Name, the true and final Name, had over him. Giving such a thing to someone trained in its use, as Raven was, was akin to baring one's throat to a potential enemy. Knowing Etrigan's Name, she would be able to stop him in his tracks, command him, even potentially destroy him with enough preparation and enough boldness. Demons guard their Names more jealously than anything else in all creation, for they hate nothing else so much as the thought that someone might have that ultimate power over them. "Etrigan," she murmured, astonished. Etrigan raised his eyes to hers, reached out, and took her hand between both of his. His skin was hot to the touch, like the skin of a man with a raging fever - not so very surprising for the flesh of a creature born in Muspelheim's deepest valley of flame. "Etreaigh an Mohraac," he said softly, and Raven could feel the power in the syllables as they passed the demon's lips. "Say it!" Raven hesitated - she remembered what had happened the last time she'd spoken a demon's Name, however involuntary the act had been. Then she lowered her eyes and whispered, barely audible, "Etreaigh an Mohraac." Etrigan stiffened slightly, drawing breath in sharply through his nose; then he let it out slowly and relaxed. "Good. My preparation's made, My trusted second named at last." Then, more gently, he added, "I hope you never need it, child, But better safe than Hellward cast." Raven gazed silently at him, unable to think of anything to say. After a moment, he straightened up, brushed at what remained of his tux, and remarked, "Midnight approaches. 'Tis time you were home. We're reaching the end of my time free to roam." Etrigan pulled his infernal Cadillac to a halt in front of Strangefate Books at 11:58 on the dot, then squired his date all the way through the shop and up to the door of her loft. She paused after unlocking the door, turned, and smiled. "Thank you, Etrigan," she said. "I had a lovely time." Normally, coming from Raven, a statement like that would be of suspect sincerity, but this time she actually meant it. She -had- had a good time, maybe the best time she'd ever had on a date, which was pretty bizarre, but there you go. Etrigan beamed. "My actions not once gone amiss! Have I not then earned a kiss?" Raven suppressed a snort of laughter at the look on his face, then levitated up - between Etrigan's height and her lack of it, even tiptoes wouldn't do - and briefly kissed his leathery cheek. "Good night, Etrigan." The demon made an exaggerated pout of disappointment, though he couldn't keep the merriment out of his scarlet eyes as he declaimed, "Alas! Shot down is Etrigan! I go to sulk in form of Man." So saying, he collapsed into himself with a swirl of fire, leaving Jason Blood on the landing in his usual suit and overcoat. He looked mildly baffled, perhaps even faintly embarrassed. Raven wondered how much of the last few minutes he'd witnessed. He must have made his way back up from the dreamlands to his usual place in the back of Etrigan's perceptions some time ago, to be ready for the change promptly at midnight. "Er," he said, then cleared his throat and tried again. "Good night, Raven." Raven smiled enigmatically. "Good night, Jason," she said, then went into her loft and shut the door behind her as her landlord made his way downstairs to lock up the shop. As Raven had expected all along, Batgirl was lurking in the kitchen by the time she finished changing into more casual clothes. "So?" the dark-cloaked figure asked, pulling off her mask as she did so. "How'd it go?" Raven smiled. "Not bad," she said. Cassie unfastened her cloak with its attached mask, doubled it, and put it on the table, then started pulling off her gloves. "I heard about the demon hunters," she said. "Gryphon's really pissed off. When I left his office he was threatening to go over to Meizuri and personally kick their CEO's ass for him." "That'd be a good start," Raven mused darkly. Cassie left her cloak and gloves on the kitchen table, went to Raven's wardrobe, opened the drawer where she kept some of her own clothes for occasions like this, and started peeling off her costume top. "What's the plan?" Raven wondered. Cassie smirked back over her shoulder. "Same as always. We're going to MacCready's and you're going to tell me all about it." Raven snorted slightly. "Maybe if you went on your -own- dates one of these days. It's pretty sad when someone feels the need to live vicariously through -my- social life... " Cassie pushed her head through the neckhole of a sweater, shook out her thick black hair, and made a dismissive gesture before unfastening her utility belt. "You don't go out often," she said, "but it's always so interesting when you do." Raven rolled her eyes slightly. "'Interesting'." "Well, they're more fun to hear about than Gar's dates," Cassie said as she buttoned her jeans. Raven allowed that. "All the same," she said as they left the loft, "maybe you ought to go out sometime." "I'm going out right now," Cassie said, and before Raven could split -that- conversational hair, the door shut behind them, leaving the loft silent and empty. In his townhouse a few blocks over, Jason Blood sat and gazed thoughtfully into his fireplace. I don't know what you did tonight, Etrigan, he thought, but I have a suspicion. And if I'm right, and you did what I think you did... Blood smiled and raised a glass of wine to the spectral reflection of his personal demon, fitfully visible among the flames. "Here's to Raven," he said, and drank. /* Joe Satriani "Driving at Night" _Not of This Earth_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Bacon Comics Group presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT RAVEN/THE DEMON HALLOWEEN SPECIAL starring Raven Etrigan also featuring Jason Blood Paige Guthrie Christina Kohle Cassandra Cain (Batgirl) with Barry Bostrowski Jack Bentley Ed Klempton Elliott Clay and the rest of Infernal Interventions, Inc. Field Group 37 written by Benjamin D. Hutchins some of Etrigan's lines by Anne Cross dialogue nudges + notion wranglin' by the Usual Suspects and the usual much owed to lots of other people Bacon Comics chief Derek Bacon (Lightnin) RAVEN/THE DEMON: HALLOWEEN SPECIAL Vol. 1 No. 1 BACON COMICS GROUP 2410 E P U (colour) 2004