The night before that encounter at Carol’s pce found Carol, Audrey and Malcolm driving home from a game at the house of Dungeoneers co-designer D. Erik Hendrix. During that meeting, they discovered that Hendrix was also a sort of a prophet named Darvik Henax from the same world as David’s warrior girlfriend Thellissandra.

  On their way home, Detective Audrey Ross noticed that someone seemed to be following the car she, Malcolm and Carol were in.

  Carol had, at the detective's suggestion, executed some driving moves that verified they were, in fact, being pursued.

  “At this point,” Audrey informed the others, “we have three options. First, we can just drive on normally; maybe they really are not following us or are just following us for a short period of time and will lose interest after a while. Second, we can attempt to shake them. I have some training on this but, all cards on the table, have never been in a car that was being tailed, only in foot pursuit situations. Third, we can attempt to confront them directly. This is extremely dangerous when we do not know who they are, or if they are armed, and I am not armed as I left my gun in my safe before I met you tonight.”

  In the back seat, Malcolm realized that, while he had been attracted to Audrey Ross from the moment they met in junior high, he had never been as attracted to her as he was in that moment. Pushing that thought aside, he said: “Do you think we could let them get closer? My camera is pretty good at night, and I might be able to get their license…”

  “If you can do that,” Audrey replied, gncing back at him, “Then I might be able to get a friend at the station to run the ptes. Carol, are you up to it?”

  “I do not see a pte on the front so I would have to get behind them. I think I can do that but I'm not sure.”

  Detective Ross gnced at the other car. “Bst, you’re right - either they don’t have a front pte, or it’s covered. How good is your camera? Those windows don't look tinted.”

  “I only know one way to find out,” Malcolm replied.

  “Okay then, as soon as the car heading towards us passes, I’ll try to switch nes and fall back. See if we can get some shots in passing and maybe even their back end.”

  Malcolm rolled down his driver’s side window to cut down potential gre and readied his phone. As soon as the oncoming car caught up to them, Carol shifted nes and hit the brakes; the pursuing car lurched forward and Malcolm quickly took several pictures as it passed, and leaned out a bit to try and get the license pte as well.

  “Can you turn this into a full U turn?”” Audrey asked.

  Carol did not answer, just performed the stated task and was barreling down the road, back toward the expressway.

  The car that had been chasing them smmed on its brakes and spun almost fully around while Malcolm rolled up the window and checked the images he’d captured.

  “Crap, only the driver looks, well, human,” he said and passed the phone to Audrey.

  After sending herself the partial shot of the other car’s license pte, Audrey looked at the other pictures. “What the heck are those?”

  “The blue guy I have no idea about but the red one in the passenger’s seat looks like what attacked David and Sandra on the street - I think she called it a Demonling.”

  “Just sent the pte off to the desk sergeant. Hopefully he has time to run it,” Audrey said, then looked back and nervously said “please tell me I am not seeing what it looks like I am seeing.”

  Malcolm was about to turn and look when Carol saved him the need: “if you mean a red thing just crawled out of the window and appears to be clinging to the roof then I cannot do that,” she said.

  “David said those things hurl fireballs,” Malcolm warned. “It would be kind of funny if they hit the pothole that you just dodged and threw an axle,” he added, then felt an odd wave of vertigo for a moment. The feeling had just passed when they heard a hideous metal grinding on pavement noise from behind, followed by a loud thud that shook their car. Carol pulled to a quick stop while demanding “what was that?”

  “Looked like the other car hit something and that red thing flew off, and, well, exploded against your car, Carol,” Audrey said, stunned.

  They all filed out, and Malcom turned on the fshlight function of his phone. There was a rge scorch mark against the rear passenger’s side corner of the car.

  As they were examining it, they heard a crashing sound behind them. Whirling around they saw that the door had fallen off of the other car and a man was dragging himself out. He swore loudly, then bellowed “What have you done to my car!?”

  Audrey stepped forward, indicating for the others to hold back. “I am Detective Audrey Ross of the Metropolitan Police Force. Please identify yourself.”

  “I am taking your car and leaving your corpses for the birds!” The man snarled, while taking what looked like a switchbde out of his pocket. When he triggered the bde, however, what emerged from the end of the handle was a field of gssy darkness bcker than the night sky above them.

  Malcolm feared that he recognized the weapon, and half disbelieving, half warning, said “A Hunger Bde?”

  In Dungeoneers, Hunger Bdes were part of a category of magical items cssified as “demon touched,” which generally corresponded to one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins. Dave and Malcolm had argued several times over whether Hunger Bdes represented Greed or, as the name suggested, Gluttony, but both had agreed they were an attempt to bring weapons like Michael Moorcock’s Stormbringer into the game without the legal complications they had faced when the first printing of Gods of the Realms had included deities from a few fictional mythologies. In the game, a Hunger Bde gains a subsequently increased bonus to hit and damage a target each time it strikes the same foe, as if it gets a taste and wants more, until either the wielder or the target is dead.

  The man from the other car lunged at Audrey with his knife. He seemed a little sluggish and she easily avoided his first strike, but he seemed to gather strength as he moved. His second strike almost connected, but she managed to drop down just below his weapon and came up with both fists striking his wrist. He yelped in pain and the weapon fell from his grasp. He attempted to smash down on her with his other arm, aiming a blow at her side, but she turned, took part of the hit on her shoulder and rolled with the rest of it. The force of the blow almost knocked her to the ground, and she was clearly hurt by it, but managed to keep her footing, grab his wrist, and leverage his remaining momentum to throw him to the ground.

  As this was going on, Malcolm eased over to where the knife had fallen. On the ground, the bde looked like normal steel. He fought a strange urge to pick it up and instead kicked it away as far as he could.

  Audrey had managed to keep a grip on the rger man’s arm and now had one foot on his back, while she removed a set of handcuffs from a pocket on her beige jacket.

  The man was struggling and swearing like a drunken sailor, so Malcolm hurried over and added his weight to pin him down as Audrey spped one side of the cuffs on the arm she held. Malcolm helped her grab his injured arm and bring it close enough to apply the other cuff

  “I guess those things are not just useful in the bedroom,” Malcolm joked. Audrey looked over at him, flushed slightly and looked away quickly.

  Carol came up to them carrying a small cooler. “Got his little toy in here. Did not want to touch it myself but I’m not sure what we can do with it.”

  Audrey then leaned down to the struggling, swearing man and, in a clear voice that sounded far stronger than she felt, said: “I’m going to walk down to that corner there and call this in. I will say that you appeared to be going a little too fast and hit something in the road, disabling your vehicle. We stopped to try and render assistance, but you were so upset at what happened to your vehicle that you attacked us and had to be restrained. I will make no mention of exploding monsters or bizarre bck knives. Go along with this story and you’ll probably be held overnight and released in the morning. Otherwise, you will definitely face a psychiatric hold for far longer than that. Am I clear?”

  The man stopped swearing and turned as well as he could to look at her. “What did the old man give you?”

  Malcolm stepped in with “A great game and some friendly advice. Why is it any of your business?”

  “Did he give you the Legacy of Five?”

  Audrey stepped in with “I don’t think any of us even know what that is.”

  He looked at her, then Malcolm, and tried to look at Carol but his position did not permit the tter. “Unless you are good liars you are telling the truth, so I did not fail. I will repeat your fiction to the authorities “

  “Didn’t fail? Fail at what?” Carol asked.

  “If you are lying, I did fail and it’s too te to matter. If you are not, then it doesn't matter either. So, I have no reason to say more.” And with that he fell silent and remained so until local authorities arrived and asked for his side of the story before repcing Audrey’s handcuffs with their own. He repeated the story Audrey suggested and went meekly with the police. One of the cops asked about the burn marks on Carol’s car and she cimed they had been there for a while. The officer accepted that, and the local police took the attacker, who gave his name as Johnathan Daniels, away and bade the trio a good night.

  The rest of the trip was uneventful, and they reached Carol’s house a little after one in the morning. Her partner, Liz, had just finished getting ready for bed when they came in. Carol introduced Audrey to Liz, and they spent a few minutes chatting, before Audrey remembered her car was parked downtown.

  “Well, we have a guest room,” Liz offered. “And Mal has slept on the couch before, both intentionally and not…”

  “Hey, we all knew how Titanic was going to end, and I didn't see the point in sitting through it when I was exhausted!”

  “I sleep very soundly,” Audrey said, “unless the bed is really tiny, we could share.”

  Carol and Liz exchanged gnces that spoke volumes without saying a word as Malcolm fumbled for an answer: “well, it’s kind of tiny but I suppose if we keep our clothes on well, nah, I know the couch, but if you really want, ah, no, I’m, well…”

  Audrey looked over at him and innocently batted her shes over her big blue eyes, “Why Malcolm, it sounds like you are afraid of little old me!”

  Malcolm winced at this and said, slightly smiling “I just watched you casually toss around man bigger than the two of us combined; a healthy amount of fear may be justified…”:

  Liz chuckled at this, and Carol said: "He’s not wrong.”

  “That was not casual, I was straining a lot there!”

  The rest of the group ughed at this.

  “So come on Mal, let’s share a bed,” she said, a pyful smile on her lips and mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

  He looked at her and then the other two women as if looking for a lifeline, then sighed. “All right. I know where the guest room is, and it is a nice bed. Come on.”

  He led her off to the guest room and Liz leaned close to Carol: “they really do not see it do they?”

  Carol ughed. “Unless one or both is a far better actor than anyone gives them credit for, no. So far it is more amusing than frustrating to watch.”

  Liz kissed her and then said “Agreed. Come on, let's do what they will probably both be thinking about all night instead of sleeping or actually doing…”

  Carol returned the kiss “You read my mind.”

  ***

  Malcolm showed Audrey the spare bathroom first then took off his jacket and shoes and waited for her to come out. She came out of the bathroom after a few minutes with her hair tied back, put her jacket on top of his, slipped out of her shoes and smiled at him. “This could be fun,” she teased. He looked away to hide the fact that his cheeks were a little red, mumbled something and went into the bathroom. When he came out, she appeared to be asleep on her back. He gently y down on top of the bed and did his best to ignore his definite arousal. He closed his eyes and felt her shift position. She rolled onto her side and a little closer to him, and one arm flopped across his chest. He shifted position slightly so that he could gently kiss the hand on his chest and drifted off to sleep. He never saw the smile that crept onto her lips at that gentle kiss.

  He awoke to the smell of frying bacon, just as Audrey came out of the bathroom. She had showered and put her clothes back on, but her hair was still wrapped up in a towel. He was a little surprised how pretty she looked like that. “Good morning,” he said.

  She smiled at him, and he found he really wanted to pull her into the bed with him. “Good morning sleepyhead,” she replied. “Sleep well?”

  “Other than this recurring dream about a giant teddy bear, yeah. You?”

  She ughed. “Yes, actually. And that was a nice dream, right?”

  “One of the nicest,” he replied.

  He then sat up in the bed: “Guess I should take a quick shower too.”

  “I think I left you some hot water,” she said.

  “Oh, I didn’t pn to use any,” he replied.

  She waited until the door closed before she ughed at that and was surprised that part of her wanted to follow him into the shower - but the rest of her needed to get to work and wanted some of that bacon that she smelled.

  “Good morning, Detective Ross. I trust you slept well?” Carol greeted her when she entered the kitchen.

  “To be honest, I was so tired I could have slept on the floor. And Malcolm was surprisingly gentlemanly. Four stars out of five.”

  “If you are here for bacon, take it from the pan on the left; the one on the right is Liz’s vegan crap and Mal likes to keep Kosher, so it's the closest thing in the house “

  “I did not know she was vegan,” Audrey replied, taking a pte, putting some of the real bacon on it and making herself a piece of toast.

  “She’s not; she just eats vegetarian six days a week and only eats meat on Saturdays. Never figured out why but I think it's gotten both of us to eat a little healthier. Want some eggs or cereal or something?”

  “Nah, but I could stand some coffee.”

  “The coffee maker is over there, and the pods are in the drawer beneath it. Take what you want,” Carol replied, waving at one of the countertops.

  Audrey was almost done eating when Mal came in. “Which pan is the stuff you call vegan crap? I could use some,” he announced. Carol just pointed to the pan that still had stuff in it, swallowed the bite of egg in her mouth, and said “there is cereal if you want some, and eggs in the fridge.”

  “Nah, just this and some coffee. Thanks, Carol dear," he replied.

  After they ate and Audrey returned the towel she had been wearing as a hat, Carol drove them to where Audrey had left her car and then went on to her salon.

  “Want a ride anywhere?” Audrey asked Malcolm as Carol pulled away.

  “Nah, only three blocks to work and they rarely expect me to be on time. It was nice hanging out. We need to do it more often,” he replied.

  “It was nice, and you are much sweeter than you let anyone see,” the red head replied.

  He flushed slightly. “Maybe we should, oh, ah, nah. See you tonight at Carol's, at six?”

  “With bells, or maybe just reading gsses, on” she replied, smiling. She watched him walk away, and he gnced back just before turning a corner, gave her a little wave, which she returned, and then she got in her car, took a quick swing by her house to feed her cat, and then drove to the station for what promised to be a thrilling day of filling out reports.