“What, like from War-Gunner 50k? That’s absurd, there’s no fucking way that you…” Her eyes stared at me, igniting silver from within.

  I felt something invisible reach out to me, like TV static sparkling across my mind. My mental response was instantaneous. Just as Shady taught me.

  Front of mind, back of mind.

  The front—nothing, empty static. The back, panicked thoughts that the vampire was digging through my head for my secrets.

  I used the back of my mind to calm myself and then to portray a sharp image in the front of my mind. A radiant, golden throne with a massive half-mechanized skeleton sitting on it, grinning down at cowering North.

  “Try digging into my head again, and my Wendigo Princess will bite your head off,” I stated sharply.

  Shady’s teeth dug in another inch, making North cry out.

  “No, no, no, that can’t be… you can’t be real…” North choked. “War-Gunner’s just a game… it… you…”

  The rain intensified, lightning flashing overhead.

  “Shades, knock her out,” I said.

  A large Wendigo fist descended with a whoosh on the head of the vampire girl with a solid thunk. North's silver eyes rolled back, and she went limp in the mud.

  "Chocula nap circle!" Shady announced proudly.

  "Good job. Now, can you snap these handcuffs off?" I turned and held up my cuffed wrists.

  "Snap circle!" Shady released North's unconscious form and grabbed the chain between my cuffs. With a casual flex of her claws, the metal parted like tissue paper. "Emperor snap! This is a BEEP!"

  I rubbed my wrists, then looked at the carnage in my driveway. Black ichor mixed with rainwater, body parts scattered across the gravel. One of the thrall torsos was still twitching, fingers clawing at nothing.

  "We need to clean this up," I said, then headed to the black Packard.

  The interior smelled of old leather, rotting eggs and chemical antifreeze scent. In the trunk, I found exactly what I expected from a vampire about to abduct me: more handcuffs, heavy chains, rope and duct tape.

  I grabbed the restraints and collected the four Thompson submachine guns from the scattered remains.

  "Shady, I need you to completely destroy these thrall things. They're still moving."

  "DESTROY CIRCLES!" She bounded over to the twitching remains with great enthusiasm. "SMOOSH SMOOSH SMOOSH!"

  What followed was less destruction and more... artistic expression. Shady stomped, crushed, and scattered the thrall pieces with the dedication of Peppa Pig jumping in muddy puddles. By the time she was done, the largest remaining piece was roughly the size of a quarter.

  "MAXIMUM SMOOSH ACHIEVED!" she declared, almost entirely splattered in black ichor, gore dripping off her in rivets of rain.

  She came up to me with a wide grin. Backlit in the gloomy rain by a flash of lightning she looked like a wild monstrosity, face-skull somehow longer and featuring even more teeth. I became quite certain that her body and face shifted around slightly when she got excited by the prospect of murder.

  I inhaled and immediately regretted it.

  “Jeez you smell.” I let out.

  "I smell like BEEP! Bad circle smell!" She bobbed.

  “Get the vampire.” I said.

  Shady scooped up North's limp, wet body. "CHOCULA SNACK TRANSPORT! Where vampire circle?"

  "Kitchen for now," I said, opening the front door with a key and limping inside.

  The kitchen light revealed just how thoroughly covered in thrall blood Shady was. Black ichor dripped from her antlers, matted her fur, and she left dark footprints across the floor. The smell was overwhelming.

  I checked her pants pockets, discovering a wallet with her ID.

  "Secure her in that chair," I pointed to one of the heavy metal kitchen chairs stacked in the back.

  I went through the vampire's torn petticoat next, pulling it off her to leave her in a tank top. She had no weapons, but I found a smartphone locked with a password, car keys, and a small vial of something that looked like liquid mercury.

  When I looked up, I discovered that Shady somehow wedged the vampire into the chair, North’s legs shoved through the side holes below the handlebars at an incredibly awkward and potentially hard to escape from angle.

  “Secure vegetable!” She bobbled, bending the metal handles back into shape with her Omnid strength.

  “Uhhh… good job,” I said.

  I handcuffed North's wrists to the chair handles, then wrapped the chains around her arms and the chair back multiple times, securing them with a padlock I'd found in the car. For good measure, I duct-taped her ankles to the chair legs.

  Feeling curious, I checked her pulse. Nothing. Her skin was cold to the touch, like she'd been in a freezer. No breath misted from her nose or mouth.

  "Is she actually dead?" I muttered.

  "UN-DEAD CIRCLE CHOCULA!" Shady stated loudly.

  "You really need a bath," I said, wrinkling my nose at Shady. "You smell like a toxic waste dump."

  "NO BATH!" Shady crossed her arms. "No Emperor BEEP! Alone Chocula circle!"

  "Shady, go have a bath damn it."

  "Death is circle! Acceptable circle!" She rebutted.

  I sighed. "Fine. Let’s bring the vampire with us to the bathroom."

  "CIRCLE EMPEROR!" Shady immediately grabbed the entire chair with North still chained to it, lifting it with far too much ease. "BATH ADVENTURE! Vampire supervision circle!"

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  We trooped upstairs to the bathroom, Shady banging walls as she maneuvered the chair-bound girl up the stairwell and through doorways. She placed North in the corner, the vampire's head lolling against her chest.

  "Shower first," I said, turning on the water. "Need to get the worst of it off."

  "SHOWER CIRCLE!" Shady crammed herself into the shower, making submarine periscope sounds again, sounding like a voice from some commercial or movie. "PING! PING! Detecting dirt at bearing two-seven-zero!"

  I grabbed a sponge and soap. "Hold still.”

  She didn’t hold still.

  Trying to wash a seven-foot cryptid who insisted on spinning in place while making appliance sounds was like trying to bathe a caffeinated hurricane. Black water swirled down the drain as I scrubbed at her fur, occasionally having to dodge an enthusiastic antler.

  "Stop twirling. Your antlers are still gross," I said, attacking them with the sponge.

  "ANTLER CIRCLE MAINTENANCE!" She lowered her head so I could reach better. "Emperor provides circle service! Five star hotel, book now! BEEP!"

  After what felt like thirty minutes of scrubbing, the worst of the thrall blood washed away. Shady's black fur was back to its normal black and silver shade instead of toxic-waste-black.

  She still smelled kind of off, but I felt too bruised and exhausted to wash her any further.

  "Aight, have a bath," I said, putting the plug in and starting to fill the tub. “Maybe that’ll help.”

  Shady immediately sat in the rising water, making motorboat sounds. "BRRRRRRR! This is a boat circle! Navigate to clean!"

  I dug through my half-unpacked bathroom box and exhumed a bubble bath bottle. I poured it into the bath, which excited Shady to no end. As the water rose, she discovered she could make even more bubbles by blowing into it. This occupied her completely.

  "Eeeeeeee! BUBBLE CIRCLES!" She declared and started drinking the bathwater.

  "Shady, no! That's soapy water!"

  "SOAPY WATER CIRCLE!" She agreed, then drank more, panting like a happy dog. "Tastes like BEEP! 19’99 hand soap for antlers! Acceptable flavors!"

  I gave up on being critical of my personal Nightmare Fuel critter, sitting on the floor with one of the looted Tommy guns across my lap. The weapon was heavy, all metal and wood, smelling of gun oil.

  Shady seemed fully invested in creating what she dubbed a "circle fortress," piling bubbles on her chest and head between her antlers.

  I glanced at North, still unconscious and chained to the chair. In the bright bathroom light and bonked by Shady, she looked even less human. Her skin had a slightly crystalline, surreal quality to it, like frosted glass or slightly orange scales.

  "EMPEROR THINKING LOUD!" Shady observed, splashing. "Vampire is circle problem?"

  "Yeah," I admitted. "I don't know what to do with her."

  "EASY CIRCLE PROBLEM!" Shady submerged completely, then erupted from the water like a breaching whale. "NOM NOM NOM! No vampire circle!"

  "We're not eating the vampire, Shady."

  "But NUTRITIOUS Chocula! Full of sparkly this is a square! BEEP!"

  "No eating people."

  "Vampire no people! Vampire mushroom square!" She blew more bubbles, looking thoughtful. "Vegetable!"

  “What?”

  "All circles in the circle of life!" She declared and started singing what I deduced was supposed to be 'Circle of Life' from The Lion King, but the words included a lot of "BEEP!" and "Circle."

  I tiredly checked my tablet. More reports from the resistance.

  "EMPEROR SAD CIRCLE!" Shady observed, reaching out with a wet, soapy hand to pat my head. "Happy! Shady protec circle!"

  "Thanks, Shady."

  "Acceptable welcome!" She went back to drinking bathwater.

  North stirred slightly, a soft groan escaping her lips. Her eyes fluttered open, silver irises focusing slowly. She tried to move, realized she was thoroughly bound, and then noticed where she was.

  "Why," she said slowly, "am I in your bathroom watching an Omnid take a bath?"

  "MUSHROOM CIRCLE!" Shady bobbed in the bubblebath. "WITNESS MY CLEAN!"

  North stared at Shady, then at me holding the Tommy gun, then back at Shady slurping bubbles.

  "This might be the weirdest kidnapping in history," she muttered.

  "You started it," I pointed out.

  "Fair point." She tested the chains. "These are mine, aren't they?"

  "Yep."

  "The irony is not lost on me." She looked at Shady again. “Why is she behaving like that?”

  "Temporary technical difficulties," I stated.

  "Technical difficulties?" North repeated flatly. "The Frontenachii Princess, heir to a multi-dimensional empire, the undying star that launches a thousand warships… is having 'technical difficulties' that make her act like a drunk toddler?"

  I shrugged, refusing to elaborate any further.

  "Look, Emperor," North said, straining against the chains. "Whatever stupid game you're playing here, you need to understand something. The Frontenachii Scrutimancers will eventually find you. They can read minds. They can sniff paths forward in the Astral.

  I leaned forward, ignoring her concerns. "Tell me about your family, North. How many vampires are in Cascade?"

  North's jaw tightened. "I—"

  Shady's head snapped toward her, teeth bared with a deeply unnerving growl that made my bones ache. "TASTE LIKE EXPIRED CIRCLES! NOM NOM INCOMING!"

  "Seventeen!" North said quickly. "There are seventeen of us. My grandfather, my parents, my siblings, hundreds of thralls. We own the old Cascade Hotel, three apartment buildings downtown, and a few hundred acres of farmland in the mountains."

  "How long have you been feeding on the locals?"

  "We don't feed on locals," North said, looking offended. "We're not stupid. The chances of infecting someone is too high. The crystalline fungi takes a long time to bloom in a person, the human body rejects it, unless it's injected in daily, the process can fail.”

  “How long is the conversion process?”

  “Depends on a person. Sometimes years. More compatibility equals faster bloom. Missing persons would draw attention.”

  “Do you eat human blood or is that nonsense?”

  “Yes. We get blood shipped in from Portland. Medical waste, blood bank supplies close to expiry."

  “Uh-huh, you’re all harmless vampire vegetarians, I’m sure,” I said.

  “VEGETABLE VAMPIRES!" Shady cackled, blowing bubbles. "BROCCOLI CHOCULA!"

  "Your family," I continued, "they know you're here?"

  “No.”

  "You came alone. Why?"

  "Because I thought I could handle one low level human and what smelled like a slightly magic, dog-shaped talking construct," she said bitterly. "I didn't expect..." she gestured at Shady with her chin, "A fucking Frontenachii Omnid Princess.”

  "UNEXPECTED CIRCLE SURPRISE!" Shady agreed.

  "Listen," North said urgently. "We need to leave. All of us. Now. My family has gateway fragments… pieces of the original artifact we used to escape our dying world. We could open a small portal, get off this planet before—"

  "The Admiral said they'd detect any dimensional gates," I interrupted.

  "Only large ones!" North insisted. "A small jump, maybe to a parallel Earth, something close in dimensional frequency. We'd be gone before they could triangulate our position."

  "And go where? To another Earth that might be worse?"

  "Anywhere is better than here!" North's composure cracked. "You don't understand what the Frontenachii do to crystal fungi like us. They don’t just kill us outright, they harvest us, overwrite what we are. Our blood, the network of thought, gets turned into processors for their weapons. Our consciousness becomes trapped inside, aware but unable to disobey. It's worse than any hell you can imagine!"

  “So the Corpse Seekers and their guns…” I said.

  “Are made from well-aged crystalline fungi colonies like me,” North let out. “The Corpse Seekers absorb us, remake us, turn us into more weapons wielded by their prad Divisions! Why the fuck you think it’s called a Corpse Seeker? It seeks things like me!”

  “Walking Corpses,” I said.

  “I’m not exactly a corpse,” North let out. “I’m alive.”

  “You’re corpse-adjacent,” I pointed out.

  "Crystal corpse-adjacent shiny!" Shady observed, scooping bubbles onto North's head from where she sat with long ass limbs.

  North sputtered, trying to shake the bubbles off. "Will you control your—uhh—Omnid thrall?”

  "She's having a fun, happy bath time. You're happily educating me about your xenotype. Everyone's happy!" I insisted, not feeling even slightly happy about this development.