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General Election Polling Discussion Thread (August 16, 2020)
Introduction
Welcome to the /politics polling discussion thread for the general election. As the election nears, polling of both the national presidential popular vote and important swing states is ramping up, and with both parties effectively deciding on nominees, pollsters can get in the field to start assessing the state of the presidential race. Please use this thread to discuss polling and the general state of the presidential or congressional election. Below, you'll find some of the most recent polls, but this is by no means exhaustive, as well as some links to prognosticators sharing election models. As always though, polls don't vote, people do. Regardless of whether your candidate is doing well or poorly, democracy only works when people vote, and there are always at least a couple polling misses every cycle, some of which are pretty high profile. If you haven't yet done so, please take some time to register to vote or check your registration status.
Polls
Below is a collection of recent polling of the US Presidential election. This is likely incomplete and also omits the generic congressional ballot as well as Senate/House/Gubernatorial numbers that may accompany these polls. Please use the discussion space below to discuss any additional polls not covered. Additionally, not all polls are created equal. If this is your first time looking at polls, the FiveThirtyEight pollster ratings page is a helpful tool to assess historic partisan lean in certain pollsters, as well as their past performance. This is likely to be one of the last clear snapshots of polling until at least mid-September. Historically speaking, the party conventions impart a statistically significant 'bump' in candidates' poll numbers. This convention bounce averages around 5 points for candidates (though some candidates have far surpassed this number), but the trend of high bounces has seen a decline in recent elections. With increased coverage of each party during their respective conventions (DNC: August 17-20, RNC: August 24-27), and this year's conventions taking place in a mostly-remote setting, it is hard to predict how large or any impact on the polls will be.
Prognosticators are folks who make projected electoral maps, often on the strength of educated guesses as well as inside information in some cases from campaigns sharing internals with the teams involved. Below are a few of these prognosticators and their assessment of the state of the race:
Cook Political Reports - Charlie Cook's race ratings are well regarded in the political field, and he's been in the business for a while. Cook is known to incorporate both public and nonpublic (ie. internal polling) information in his projections. Also covers (and is perhaps better known for) Senate and House races.
Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball - Larry Sabato has also been in the political prediction business for a while now, and the team at the UVA Center for Politics has been fairly successful in past cycles. Towards the end of the election cycle, Sabato has a policy of making a call in each state, refusing to leave any race in the tossup category. Also covers Senate and House races.
Inside Elections - Inside Elections, run by Nathan Gonzales, is the successor to Stu Rothenberg's Rothenberg Political Reports, which used to be a part of Roll Call. This prognosticator did fairly well in 2018, though Rothenberg himself boldly (along with some other pundits) predicted in 2016 that Donald Trump's path to the presidency was nonexistent. Also covers Senate, House and Gubernatorial races.
Daily Kos Elections - Daily Kos Elections is the direct successor to the Swing State Project website, which merged with Daily Kos in 2010. Despite the liberal lean of the site as a whole, the Daily Kos Elections predictions tend to be fairly even-handed, if not even slightly bearish for Democrats. Presidential numbers aren't up yet but they have Senate, House and Gubernatorial races.
RRH Elections - Red Racing Horses Elections is a site founded by former conservative-leaning members of the Swing State Project community. Despite the conservative nature of the commentary, like DKE, the race predictions tend to be fairly neutral, if slightly bearish for Republicans. Like the Crystal Ball, RRH will call all races before the election so that none are left in the tossup category. The presidential rankings have not been published but they do cover Senate, House, Gubernatorial and Row Officer (statewide elected officials, such as state Attorney General, Secretary of State etc.) races.
Polling models are similar to prognosticators (and often the model authors will act like pundits as well), but tend to be about making "educated guesses" on the state of the election. Generally, the models are structured to take in data such as polls and electoral fundamentals, and make a guess based on research on prior elections as to the state of the race in each state. Below are a few of the more prominent models that are online or expected to be online soon:
FiveThirtyEight - after months of work, the model is live! 538's team of analysts have put together a beast of a forecast for 2020. It runs 40,000 simulations of the election and uses that data to come up with a projected winner out of 100 sampled outcomes. It also breaks down the projection to show potential electoral college results, popular vote share, tipping point state likelihood, and it can even be broken down into state-level analytics.
Princeton Election Consortium - this is the model run by Dr. Sam Wang, a neuroscience professor at Princeton University. This model has run in the past two cycles as well, though Sam Wang famously said he'd eat a bug if Donald Trump won the election because his model predicted no path to victory for the eventual winner of the 2016 election. Also includes projections for Senate and House.
JHK Forecasts - the earliest model on the scene this cycle. Jack Kersting's model is one of the newer ones this year and also includes projections for Senate and House.
The Economist - this is the model run by G. Elliott Morris, who previously had a midterm election model under The Crosstab.
Niskanen Center - Rachel Bitecofer's projection, which only seems to update a couple times a cycle. Part of this has to do with Bitecofer's central argument that there are generally no swing voters, and electoral fundamentals drive the outcome of the election. This was put to the test in the 2018 midterms, where Bitecofer very early on predicted a Democratic pickup of 40-45 seats in the House, which fell about where the election ended up.
Lean Tossup - a foreign model from Canada. This model did relatively well in the 2019 Canadian election, but this appears to be the first time they've tried forecasting the US Presidential election. Also includes Senate and House projections.
Primary Model - Helmut Norpoth's model does not actually change with inputs anymore. The outcome it predicts, stated as a 91% chance for President Trump to win reelection, is premised entirely on the primary vote totals in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries from earlier this year. Despite being a bit of an outlier against other models, this one was among the only to forecast that then-candidate Donald Trump was a favorite to win election in 2016, and has been applied to correctly predict the winner of 5 of the past 6 presidential elections.
Prediction Markets
Prediction markets are betting markets where people put money on the line to estimate the likelihood of one party winning a seat or state. Most of these markets will also tend to move depending on polling and other socioeconomic factors in the same way that prognosticators and models will work. Predictit and Election Betting Odds are prominent in this space, although RealClearPolitics has an aggregate of other betting sites as well.
General Election Polling Discussion Thread (Aug 9, 2020)
Introduction
Welcome to the /politics polling discussion thread for the general election. As the election nears, polling of both the national presidential popular vote and important swing states is ramping up, and with both parties effectively deciding on nominees, pollsters can get in the field to start assessing the state of the presidential race. Please use this thread to discuss polling and the general state of the presidential or congressional election. Below, you'll find some of the most recent polls, but this is by no means exhaustive, as well as some links to prognosticators sharing election models. As always though, polls don't vote, people do. Regardless of whether your candidate is doing well or poorly, democracy only works when people vote, and there are always at least a couple polling misses every cycle, some of which are pretty high profile. If you haven't yet done so, please take some time to register to vote or check your registration status.
Polls
Below is a collection of recent polling of the US Presidential election. This is likely incomplete and also omits the generic congressional ballot as well as Senate/House/Gubernatorial numbers that may accompany these polls. Please use the discussion space below to discuss any additional polls not covered. Additionally, not all polls are created equal. If this is your first time looking at polls, the FiveThirtyEight pollster ratings page is a helpful tool to assess historic partisan lean in certain pollsters, as well as their past performance.
Prognosticators are folks who make projected electoral maps, often on the strength of educated guesses as well as inside information in some cases from campaigns sharing internals with the teams involved. Below are a few of these prognosticators and their assessment of the state of the race:
Cook Political Reports - Charlie Cook's race ratings are well regarded in the political field, and he's been in the business for a while. Cook is known to incorporate both public and nonpublic (ie. internal polling) information in his projections. Also covers (and is perhaps better known for) Senate and House races.
Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball - Larry Sabato has also been in the political prediction business for a while now, and the team at the UVA Center for Politics has been fairly successful in past cycles. Towards the end of the election cycle, Sabato has a policy of making a call in each state, refusing to leave any race in the tossup category. Also covers Senate and House races.
Inside Elections - Inside Elections, run by Nathan Gonzales, is the successor to Stu Rothenberg's Rothenberg Political Reports, which used to be a part of Roll Call. This prognosticator did fairly well in 2018, though Rothenberg himself boldly (along with some other pundits) predicted in 2016 that Donald Trump's path to the presidency was nonexistent. Also covers Senate, House and Gubernatorial races.
Daily Kos Elections - Daily Kos Elections is the direct successor to the Swing State Project website, which merged with Daily Kos in 2010. Despite the liberal lean of the site as a whole, the Daily Kos Elections predictions tend to be fairly even-handed, if not even slightly bearish for Democrats. Presidential numbers aren't up yet but they have Senate, House and Gubernatorial races.
RRH Elections - Red Racing Horses Elections is a site founded by former conservative-leaning members of the Swing State Project community. Despite the conservative nature of the commentary, like DKE, the race predictions tend to be fairly neutral, if slightly bearish for Republicans. Like the Crystal Ball, RRH will call all races before the election so that none are left in the tossup category. The presidential rankings have not been published but they do cover Senate, House, Gubernatorial and Row Officer (statewide elected officials, such as state Attorney General, Secretary of State etc.) races.
Polling models are similar to prognosticators (and often the model authors will act like pundits as well), but tend to be about making "educated guesses" on the state of the election. Generally, the models are structured to take in data such as polls and electoral fundamentals, and make a guess based on research on prior elections as to the state of the race in each state. Below are a few of the more prominent models that are online or expected to be online soon:
FiveThirtyEight - this model isn't active yet (though Nate's been sharing some results from it, so it may be coming out soonTM ), but it's the original model from Nate Silver that debuted in 2008 and really kicked off this genre of race prognostication. For now, here's the polling aggregates that they've set up in lieu of a now-cast (which is likely not returning to the model this year). Will likely also include Senate and House projections like in past years.
Princeton Election Consortium - this is the model run by Dr. Sam Wang, a neuroscience professor at Princeton University. This model has run in the past two cycles as well, though Sam Wang famously said he'd eat a bug if Donald Trump won the election because his model predicted no path to victory for the eventual winner of the 2016 election. Also includes projections for Senate and House.
JHK Forecasts - the earliest model on the scene this cycle. Jack Kersting's model is one of the newer ones this year and also includes projections for Senate and House.
The Economist - this is the model run by G. Elliott Morris, who previously had a midterm election model under The Crosstab.
Niskanen Center - Rachel Bitecofer's projection, which only seems to update a couple times a cycle. Part of this has to do with Bitecofer's central argument that there are generally no swing voters, and electoral fundamentals drive the outcome of the election. This was put to the test in the 2018 midterms, where Bitecofer very early on predicted a Democratic pickup of 40-45 seats in the House, which fell about where the election ended up.
Lean Tossup - a foreign model from Canada. This model did relatively well in the 2019 Canadian election, but this appears to be the first time they've tried forecasting the US Presidential election. Also includes Senate and House projections.
Primary Model - Helmut Norpoth's model does not actually change with inputs anymore. The outcome it predicts, stated as a 91% chance for President Trump to win reelection, is premised entirely on the primary vote totals in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries from earlier this year. Despite being a bit of an outlier against other models, this one was among the only to forecast that then-candidate Donald Trump was a favorite to win election in 2016, and has been applied to correctly predict the winner of 5 of the past 6 presidential elections.
Prediction Markets
Prediction markets are betting markets where people put money on the line to estimate the likelihood of one party winning a seat or state. Most of these markets will also tend to move depending on polling and other socioeconomic factors in the same way that prognosticators and models will work. Predictit and Election Betting Odds are prominent in this space, although RealClearPolitics has an aggregate of other betting sites as well.
. To understand the context of this guide, you should first know a bit about workwear in general. u/Smilotron wrote this excellent guide, which I highly recommend you read. In the guide, he defines Americana as a subset of workwear. This guide defines western workwear as a subset of Americana, and focuses on the elements of Americana that have a Western vibe. Basically, it tries to thread the needle between rodeo dad and basic workwear. Still, the west is a big place. For this guide I don’t narrowly focus on one area of the west, but think more cowboy than park ranger. I’m also leaving out tailoring (something I don’t know much about) and SLP-esque stuff, although the latter does have several points of overlap. I added a couple inspo album to help show what I mean: Personal Inspo Album RRL Inspo Album from u/ancient-alien Materials One of the most important aspects of western workwear is wear. Clothing that is noticeably broken in and worn looks best, so pick materials carefully. Denim, leather (both top grain and suede), and waxed cotton show wear quite well. Wool and cotton are good materials as well. Polyester, rayon, and other synthetic materials are best avoided. I’m going to refer to both roughout and suede as “suede” because the difference isn’t very important. Also, I honestly don’t know the difference between different cotton weaves so if I say “cotton” I mean everything that’s not denim or waxed cotton. Fit There’s a fair amount of leeway when it comes to fit. You want to stick to relatively slim (not skinny) clothing: you don’t want to be swimming in anything. Still, you can go a bit wider and a bit slimmer with no issues. History A lot of Americana depends on history and heritage. I’m going to start off with a couple articles on the history of some of these items. Feel free to skip this, or read the rest of the guide and come back, it’s not essential. Bandanas Cowboy Boots Filson Levi's/Denim Mackinaw Jacket Wabash (just mouse over the underlined word “wabash” in the details section) Western Patterns Woolrich
Common Items
Jackets Leather Jackets (Black Roughout Trucker, Tan Racer, Brown Suede Racer, Brown Shearling) These are probably the most classic jackets for Western workwear. Any type of leather works, but suede and shearling look better than top grain. Stick to shades of brown and tan. Cafe racer, trucker, and button-up leather jackets are the best cuts. Buy From: Taylor Stitch ($), Freenote Cloth ($$), RRL ($$$) Chore Coats (Waxed Cotton Freenote Cloth Jacket, Cotton Jacket) Brown chore coats are another classic element of western workwear. Waxed cotton is better, as it breaks in much more than standard cotton, but both work. Color is very important. Stick to a warm brown for regular cotton chore coats. Waxed cotton coats have more leeway: nearly any shade of brown looks good. Buy From: Carhartt ($), L.C. King ($$), Freenote Cloth ($$$) Denim Jackets (Raw Denim Jacket, Shearling Jacket) Denim jackets are a bit tricky. While they certainly go with the denim-heavy vibe of western workwear, wearing them with a denim shirt and jeans is difficult to pull off. For all those non-denim shirts, however, denim jackets are great. It’s best to stick to medium wash, dark wash, or black denim. Make sure that there is a noticeable difference in wash between the color of your jacket and your jeans. A shearling lining can also help to separate multiple levels of denim. If you’re curious, this is a quick primer on the types, but they’re minor differences that don’t matter much in the end. Buy From: Levi's ($), Taylor Stitch ($$), Orslow ($$$) Wool Jackets (Patterned Overshirt, Patterned Overcoat, Gray Mackinaw, Red Mackinaw) Wool jackets are the heavy hitters that make this viable in truly cold conditions. These split into two main groups: patterned jackets and mackinaw jackets. Western patterned jackets are tough to find, as very few bands carry them. They can come in any form, from overcoats to overshirts. Of course, patterned jackets are possible in other fabrics, but the brands that sell these almost always make them in wool. Mackinaw jackets are much easier to find, but not all of them look Western. Stick to gray or red buffalo plaid. Buy From: Filson Mackinaw ($$), RRL ($$$) Others (RRL Knit, Wabash) I’ve listed the main categories of jackets, but there are still a few other types that work, although they are a bit more niche. The first is Wabash. Wabash is a bit of a weird one- it’s denim adjacent, as it’s indigo dyed and fades like denim. It wears in very well. The other is the RRL knit cardigans. These are typically intricately patterned and very high quality. While there are certainly more jackets that I haven’t mentioned, this list covers the main ones. Buy From: Ben Viapiana ($$$), RRL ($$$) Shirts Plain Denim Shirts (Dark Wash, Medium Wash, Light Wash, Chambray, Embroidered) Denim shirts are an absolute essential. While any denim shirt will do, a Western yoke helps to put it firmly in the category of Western. A Western yoke is the extra piece of fabric that comes over the shoulders, as you can see in this pic. Check out this guide for more info on shirt parts. Just like denim jackets, be sure there is a significant difference between the color of your pants and your shirt. Light and medium wash shirts are the most easily worn, but dark wash can work as well. Chambray shirts are so similar to denim shirts that I’m not going to differentiate between them, so they’re included in this as well. Embroidery and wear can make these a lot more interesting. Buy From: Levi's ($), Taylor Stitch ($$), Iron Heart ($$$) Patterned Denim Shirts (Wabash, Decorated, TS Western, Striped Denim, RRL Jacquard) There are a few patterned denim shirts, although they are a bit rare. Wabash shirts are the most common, although they can still be tough to find.. There are also a few shirts that have a similar pattern to Wabash, but with a more intricate design instead of just dots. Striped denim shirts and shirts with jacquard patterns are two other good options. Buy From: Ben Viapiana ($$$), Iron Heart ($$$) Other Cotton and Wool Shirts (Red Iron Heart, Freenote Cloth, Faherty Patterned, Pendleton Flannel) These shirts are difficult, but not for lack of options. Rather, the overwhelming amount of options makes it difficult to find shirts that really fit the Western vibe. It’s difficult to make any hard rules about which shirts work, but there are a few guidelines. First, a Western yoke goes a long way towards cementing that Western look. Second, pay attention to color: red, orange, and brown are generally the best colors. This is probably best seen with the Pendleton flannels. This flannel has that dusty Western vibe, while this one just looks really flat. You can also see this with the Iron Heart buffalo plaid flannels. This flannel definitely looks more Western than this green one. In addition, pay attention to patterns. Buffalo plaid is a safe bet, and you want to stay away from anything that’s too busy. While this shirt is the same color as the Iron Heart one above, the addition of an extra color and all those lines makes it way too busy. Shirts with Western patterns, such as this shirt look really good, but are tough to find. Buy From: Taylor Stitch ($), Pendleton ($$), Iron Heart ($$$) Henleys (Natural Henley, Indigo Henley) Henleys are an Americana staple. White/natural henleys are the most classic, and can work on their own or as undershirts. Indigo, black, and gray are also good options. Buy From: J. Crew ($), Taylor Stitch ($$), Merz B. Schwanen ($$$) Others (White Oxford, White Indigo Stripe, RRL Striped, Suede) There are a few other niche options that don’t really fit well into a category. White shirts work as a good basic, although they don’t have a strong Western vibe. There are some white patterned shirts that look good, many of which have a Mandarin collar. Suede shirts are also a fantastic option in almost any color but, again, are difficult to find. Buy From: RRL ($$$) Pants Jeans (Black Jeans, Medium Wash, Raw) Jeans are absolutely the core of western workwear. In terms of fit, sticking with relatively slim (not skin tight) jeans are a safe option to avoid the rodeo dad look. Make sure to either cuff or crop your jeans so that there isn’t too much piling up on your boots. A variety of washes can work, including black, but washes that mimic natural fading are best. For example, these jeans look a lot better than these jeans primarily due to fit and how natural the fading looks. Buy From: Levi's ($), Naked and Famous ($$), RRL ($$$) Other Pants (Suede Pants, White Jeans, Brown Pants) While jeans are really all you need, there are a few other options. Suede pants look good in almost every color. White jeans are a surprisingly good option, but it’s difficult to find the right cut and thickness. Brown pants, while not giving as strong of a Western vibe, can also work. For brown pants, stick to a warm brown (just like with the regular cotton chore coats). Buy From: Rogue Territory ($$), RRL ($$$) Shoes Cowboy Boots (Dark Brown Suede, Light Brown Suede) Cowboy boots are the most obvious option for footwear. There are, however, a couple ways you can go wrong with these. First, don’t tuck your pants into your boots. Next, let’s look at two pairs of boots: these work boots versus these Lucchese boots. They’re both brown cowboy boots with stitching on the toe, but the Lucchese boots look far better. This is due to a few things: the work boots have a thick lugged rubber sole, a square toe, and a much chunkier profile. The Lucchese leather is also shinier. From this example, you can see the importance of silhouette: cowboy boots should be relatively slim, have a thin leather sole, and not have a square toe. Suede and top grain both look great, and any shade of brown or tan is a good color. Buy From: Tecovas ($), Viberg ($$$), Lucchese ($$$) Chelsea Boots (Brown Chelseas) If you don’t want to go full cowboy, chelsea boots are a fantastic option. The same warnings of cowboy boots apply: make sure the sole and toe aren’t too large and chunky or you end up with Blundstones. On the other side, you want to avoid streetwear chelsea boots with a crepe sole like these Common Projects. Also steer clear of anything highly polished like these boots: you want your boots to look like they can take a hit. Something like these Vibergs are perfect. As with cowboy boots, suede and top grain both look great, and any shade of brown or tan is perfect. Buy From: Astorflex ($), R.M. Williams ($$), Viberg ($$$) Other Boots (Engineer Boots, Brown Lace-Up Boots) Engineer boots are an option with a strong Western vibe, but they’re a bit of an acquired taste. Of course, you can forgo all of these shoes altogether and simply wear a set of standard brown boots. Just like with the chelsea boots, you need to thread the needle between overly chunky work boots and sleek dress boots. Something like Iron Rangers are a good example. Once again, stick to brown and tan. Buy From: Red Wing ($), Oak Street ($$), Viberg ($$$) Accessories Hats (Tan Hat, Brown Hat) Hats are difficult to style without being over the top. Keep them relatively small and unstructured, and you should be good. Dark colors also help to avoid looking like these idiots. Buy From: Stetson ($), Hampui ($$), Lone Hawk ($$$) Jewelry (Jewelry) Rings can look super dope, but show some restraint. Turquoise, signet, and band rings look cool, but keep the size to a minimum. Something like this is a little much. I haven’t seen many bracelets or necklaces, but go ahead and wear them. When it comes to turquoise jewelry, please try to buy from Native American artists. This helps to support the communities that originally created a lot of this art and are historically impoverished due to the actions of the US government. Please do your research, however, as this article shows the devastating economic impact that fake Native American jewelry can make. I’ve listed a couple sites that are legit as far as I can tell. Buy From: Etsy ($-$$$), Iron Heart ($$$), Pueblo Direct ($$), Alltribes ($$) Bandanas (Bandana) Bandanas are heavily associated with the American West, and there are lots of cool bandanas with interesting patterns and prints. Stick it in your pocket, tie it around your neck, put it in your closet to look at every once in a while, or do whatever. These can be hard to style without looking costumey, but have fun with it. Buy From: Etsy ($), Mister Freedom ($$), RRL ($$$) Belts A lot of people associate western clothing with huge belt buckles. These can be pretty hard to pull off, so it's best to stay away from these if you're unsure. u/CharmingCan7 pointed out to me that studded belts are a great addition that are more subtle and easy to style. u/FamousLastName made this amazing post about studded belts, everyone should totally read it. Buy From: 706 Union ($$$) Other Guide and Inspo Albums u/ancient-alien posts some pretty slammin Western fits, although he leans more SLP than workwear RRL Inspo Album: a huge inspo album from u/ancient-alien Bandana Inspo Album: an inspo album from u/jerichokilo Cowboy Inspo Album: an inspo album from u/jerichokilo Mackinaw Jacket Inspo Album: a bit of history and an inspo album from u/ayysic Westernish Inspo Album: a super cool and creative album from u/criminal_pink Denim Shirt Inspo Album: an inspo album from u/thisishirokisamerica Workwear Guide: a guide from u/smilotron Cory Mahlke Instagram: an Instagram that features a lot of Western fits Boot Brand List: an overwhelming number of places to buy boots from, courtesy of goodyearwelt Raw Denim Buying Guide: an overwhelming number of places to buy raw denim from, courtesy of rawdenim
Buying
Aggregators AB Fits- Lots of niche brands available Berkeley Supply- Probably the coolest store I’ve been into, they offer a ton of staple brands Blue Owl- Mainly Japanese workwear, but has some Western stuff as well Franklin and Poe- Workwear shop in Philadelphia Huckberry- Huge aggregator of a lot of brands, including some niche ones Lone Flag- California brand that sells the standard brands Self-Edge- Very high end workwear Snake Oil Provisions- Super cool store that focuses on Western workwear Stag Provisions- Texas brand that sells a lot of cool stuff, including RRL Standard and Strange- Lots of cool vintage and repro brands Withered Fig- Virginia based store that is more curated Brands $ Astorflex- Good budget footwear including chelseas Carhartt- Heritage brand with great chore coats J. Crew- Sell some staples such as denim shorts and jeans, but nothing exciting Levi’s- Good budget denim Stetson- Huge cowboy hat maker Taylor Stitch- Relatively budget-friendly brand that sells some western shirts Woolrich- Really old American brand, tons of stuff on eBay, don’t buy new $$ 3Sixteen- Great denim and some jackets that work well with Western workwear Bradley Mountain- MiUSA jackets, luggage, and leather goods Corridor- Very rarely has Western clothing, but they make my one of my favorite shirts Filson- Another OG American brand, they make a few good shirts and a lot of jackets Flint and Tinder- Huckberry’s in-house brand, lots of cool MiUSA staples L.C. King- MiUSA chore coats and denim Left Field NYC- MiUSA denim and some shirts Lucchese Boots- Heritage cowboy boot brand Naked and Famous- Great entry-level raw denim Outclass- Workwear brand that has some stuff with a Western vibe Pendleton- An OG American brand, you can find a ton of their vintage stuff used on eBay and in thrift stores Rogue Territory- MiUSA brand, whose highlight is their denim and waxed cotton jacket Tecovas- Modern cowboy boots, definitely the best for the budget Thursday Boots- Very budget-friendly boots $$$ Ben Viapiana- Fantastic custom stuff Freenote Cloth- MiUSA brand that make a lot of Western workwear Ginew USA- MiUSA native owned brand that sells all sorts of Western staples Gitman Vintage- MiUSA brand (although that may change) that make some Western flannels Grease Point Workwear- Very cool MiUSA workwear Harden Co.- Vintage inspired MiUSA workwear Iron Heart- Very substantial flannels and denim Lone Hawk- Very interesting restored vintage hats Merz B. Schwanen- Vintage-inspired henleys Railcare Fine Goods- MiUSA denim and jackets RRL- Some of the best Western clothing out there Tellason- MiUSA denim, jackets, and shirts Viberg- Some of the best side-zips and chelseas you can buy
I am a Sheriff's Deputy in Bull's Heart, Texas. Part 2.
Part one lives here. It'll make more sense if you it first. https://www.reddit.com/Revblackrage/comments/hxikru/bulls_heart_texas/ I was half way to my car before I knew it, fresh cup of coffee in my hand. Ellie wouldn't let me leave without one. I set the cup of coffee down on the roof of the Dodge and started digging around in my pockets. Looking for my keys. A scream ripped out of the restaurant behind me. It was long and loud. Sounded like someone had just stuck their hand in a deep fat fryer. Or had it forced into one. It startled me and I jumped, So much so that I dropped my keys. I heard a snort. Which sounded suspiciously like it was at my expense. I looked over my shoulder as I bent over to grab my keys. Murray's horse, Pistola, was tied up in a parking spot, about three spaces down from me. It was technically against city ordinance to tie an animal up in a commercial parking lot. Outside of Rodeo season of course, And there was special emphasis on undead mammals. But if you won't tell, I won't. The skeletal equine was staring at me over a feed bag strapped to his face. I pretended not to notice that the feed bag was stained brown, with a suspicious blackish liquid dripping from the stained burlap. Sometime's in Bull's Heart, the answers just aren't worth the questions. "Cut me some slack, dude" I said. With a voice that may or may not have registered a bit of annoyance. "I'm not a three hundred year old dead horse. Shit creeps me out sometimes." I could have sworn that old Pistola, rolled his eyes at that. But that may have been just me giving the horse too much credit. Another shorter scream erupted from the diner. This one ending suddenly. The context clues I had at my disposal, told me it was Marcel who was doing the screaming in there. Now were I a normal Sheriff's Deputy it would be my job to run into that Diner, ready to get to the bottom of it. But. I already knew the score and felt no need to investigate further. Plus, fuck that guy. Stripers had no protections under the law and I was specifically instructed to ensure their safety at my discretion and i discresified that Marcel was a worthless piece of human wreckage, who should be fed to a wood chipper. His death would truely be a net benefit to humanity as a whole. And that was about as far as I was willing to take it. Just as I scooped up my keys, I heard a low nervous sound from the undead horse. One of those 'Hey I'm not cool with this' sounds horses make. A rustle of feathers creeping out of the night sky, the horse's call of unease it's only accompaniment. "Fuck" I swore outloud. A rustle of feathers on a night time breeze could mean only a few things in Bull's Heart and only one of them would creep out a horse. I stood up straight. Looking for it. Resting my paw on the handle of my Smoke Wagon. My fingers wrapping around the checkered grip of the ridiculously large revolver. They always come when the stink of blood is on the air. They bring the cold with them too. As was attested to by the shiver running down my spine and the light steam I was suddenly exhaling. The hairs on my bare arms stood up in response to the suddenly frigid air. On one level I knew that I was under no immediate threat.... But you tell that to two hundred thousand years of evolutional preservational instincts. Shit was there for a reason. Yes I suppose you could say the thing perched over the door of Earl's diner made me uncomfortable. Just a touch. The neon lighting from the diner's sign cast an odd neon red hue across it. The light seemed to accentuate the shadows it lurked in. But I wouldn't even have to look at the damn thing to know it was watching me. The whole site of the thing was like watching a demon stalk you. Nobody was really sure where they had came from. Nobody who'd been to the Great Beyond, or any other such ports of mystical or metaphysical call, could recall such a creature in any of their travels. I would describe it as a humanoid, with big ragged vultures wings. Bipedal body. Bird's legs. A man's chest. I usually saw a big fuck off beak, that was attached to a face that looked similar to a plague doctor's mask. But rarely did two people see the same thing when they looked at the creatures. Well for the most part. The going theory was that they were some matter of shape shifters. But that still left a lot to explain. Everyone described the same ragged wings and the same piercing eyes. Orbs of a pure white, that burned with a mix of corruption and malevolent anger. Like spotlights of hate on a greasy black night. But nobody could agree on secondary characteristics. To me they all looked the same, but if I tried to describe what I saw, you wouldn't know what I was talking about, because you saw a horses head with a seagulls beak for a face, or some other such silliness. This particular creature's wings were drooped over it like a cloak. I could see the eyes boring into me from the inky black recesses of it's wings. No notion of a head, or shoulders, or anything could be discerned from the shadows. I glared back at it for a moment, before I took a good weaver style shooting position, drew my smoke wagon and planted it's front site post right smack dab between those dumbass eyes. It did nothing but glare back at me with those huge hate filled peepers. I couldn't even tell if it understood what was happening. But I could make out it's inky black talons flexing on it's perch, as if it was about to throw itself forward and rip my belly clean open in a fit of avian fury. Everything in me told me to pull the trigger on my Magnum Research BFR and send a .45-70 Government Consecrated Exploding Sabot round right into the thing's forehead. Everything in me wanted to send that unearthly thing back to whatever soulless void it spawned from. The things aren't right for this world and everything in me was telling me to send it back where it belonged. To the pit it crawled out of. But technically........Under Texas department of Fish and Game code, They are classified as an endangered species. So all I could do was whisper "Bang" like a petulant child and reluctantly holster my weapon. I am not horribly mature, I admit. Yeah, sure they stole dead bodies. Sure they flew around from Dusk till Dawn creeping the living fuck out of people. Sure they had all the sentience of a learning disabled possum. But some genius decided to call them an endangered species and grant them protected habitats. Like the forests surrounding Bull's Heart. Because where the fuck else would they be able to go? The thrice cursed things are Illegal to hunt for sport or harvest. And if you kill one by accident, you better have your ducks in a row. Because you are about to be investigated for Poaching. Which in Texas, means you are going to face a lot of Jail time. Which is some Fucking liberal bullshit, if you ask me. Our local game warden, a fella named Lingelsou, was very particular about the animals of what he calls 'His Forest.' He also had zero problem running in Deputys for violations to the Texas Fish and Game code. He once arrested a Deputy named Landis for taking one down. Even though he had a good reason for it..... well maybe not a good reason exactly, but a pretty damn good excuse. About once a month or so, Deputy Landis has a condition that.... Well it's just best that he gets away from people for a couple days or so. He goes a little wild in that time frame. So he goes out to a plot of land he owns out in the woods and just rides it out. Safer for everyone that way. During one of these..... Fits I guess you could call it. He took down one of the creatures and ate half of it. Warden Lingelsou took him in for it. It didn't matter that Deputy Landis wasn't in his right frame of mind. He still didn't have a population control hunting license, which was the only way to legally hunt them. Sheriff Onryu had gone to bat for the Deputy, going so far as to site the American's with disabilities act of 1990, trying to point out that Landis had a condition and certain accessions had to be made in order to provide a fair and equal environment for him. Including free reign hunting rights for the thing that lived inside of him. Lingelsou wasn't buying it though. "Laws be laws" The Game Warden had said. "In my forest and in my jurisdiction, the laws be respected" Sanctimonious do-gooder Prick. But the creatures did a good job of keeping their number's low and they didn't really go out of their way to attack people. Unless cornered. Which is a good thing. Because when they are worked up into a good lather, they can take and dish out a lot of punishment before they finally go down. Kind of like a skybourne Armadillo. Only less cute. This specimen, as if sensing my unease, leaned forward and screeched at me. I got the impression of a beak sticking out from between it's wings. The screech was loud in the frigid silence. It gave off the audio sensation of nails on a chalkboard mixed with a crying newborn. A pretty unpleasant mixing of audible input. Than the burning eyes turned back to Pistola, and I briefly wondered if the Creature was going to go after the undead horse. I mean they were death eaters and technically the horse was dead after a fashion. I would legally be allowed to shoot it at the point, as Pistola was technically livestock....Deadstock?..... Anyway, in Bull's Heart, you could defend tame animals from wild Animals. Especially with all of the weird crap that lives in our woods. But before I could sink much thought into it, the creature reared on it's haunches, gave one last terrifying screech and took wing, quickly disappearing into the night sky. My caveman ego wanted to believe that it was because the Creature was made uncomfortable by my presence. But more than likely it figured that the staff of Toothy Earl's weren't going to toss Marcel's corpse out the front door, so there was no point in hanging around. Either way Pistola seemed to be okay with the end result, as he let out a sigh of equine relief as the potential predator made it's exit. I watched the night sky in the direction it flew off for a moment, wondering if it was going to change it's mind and come back. They have a name. Like we don't just call them 'Creatures.' I just happen to think the name is stupid. Real fucking stupid. Because it's not a hot chick on a winged horse swinging a sword. It is in no way shape or form a Valkerye. And yes that is a hill that I am willing to die on. It's a fucking bird monster, not a chick who escorts dead warriors to the All Father's table. Can't put that shit on the side of a panel van from the seventies. End of discussion. I just call them 'Shitbirds.' When I was certain that the Shitbird was gone for good, I turned and gave Pistola a nod. "You're safe now, Sir." I said with a professional smile. "You're welcome." The Horse just stared back at me with Milky dead eyes. He seemed super unimpressed. "Fine" I said with a bit of feigned exasperation "act like that thing didn't have you scared out of your peanut sized mind" The Horse snorted at me again and again I swear he managed to roll his pupiless white eyes at me. That damn horse was smarter than he was letting on. I shook my head and turned back to the Charger. But as I got into the Dodge, I thought I heard something. Like words floating out of the dark. Scratchy. Raspy. Just at the point of hearing. The point were you aren't sure if it's your inner monolog or your ears, and i definitely wasn't quite sure which one it was. "The.... Master.... Comes...." I stared off in the direction the creature had flown. Well that was odd. I couldn't be sure that I had heard it.... But I couldn't completely write it off either. * I knew the way to the Miller's house like the back of my hand. We were out there enough after all. The Miller's were two people that shouldn't have been together. But they were also both extremely stubborn. Neither was going to be the one who broke first and left. They also refused to admit they had problems. Even when they were doing their best to rip each other apart. Made conflict mediation between the two parties a royal bitch. They were one of the reasons I hated this God forsaken town. I was going to meet up with Gruk and Daliwal at the foot of the Miller's drive and we would go up their property as a group. It's usually best to go out on calls with as much back up as possible. Especially in this town. I briefly thought about Gruk's condition. I glanced down towards the Digital Defensive Control Suite sitting in the middle of my Patrol car's center console. The screen showed that the U.V. Defensive lighting rig that sat on the roof of the Uparmored Charger Hell Cat cruiser was off. I reached down and tapped the off button just to be sure. I than reached over and hit the manual safety, locking it out of action. A lot of citizen's of Bull's Heart had one condition or another that made U.V. light anything from annoying to downright lethal, so much so that the local Government classified U.V. lights as destructive devices. If you had some? You had better have a very damn good reason for having them or you were going to jail. Occasionally certain people would kick up a stink about it, make some noise about it being a violation of the 2nd Amendment, but they usually didn't get much support because.... well it's hard to get people real worked up about lightbulbs. It would have been a damn shame to take Gruk and possibly Daliwal out of action, due to some avoidable asshatted dipshittery. I actually wasn't sure if U.V. would take Daliwal down or out, but I did know his kind were nocturnal, so better safe than sorry. I turned down the dirt road that would take me to the Miller's front gate. Something about the way the lights of my cruiser played down the narrow tree lined dirt road gave it an ominous feeling. I was hoping it wasn't a sign of things to come. "Here the fuck we go" I grumbled outloud. I saw Gruk's S.U.V. and Daliwal's cruiser parked next to the Miller's cattle gate. Gruk had to drive one of the bigger S.U.V.s due to her massive size. "More like her massive ass" I said to myself, giving myself a slight chuckle in response, finding myself hilarious. And before you ask, yes I am aware that I am an idiot. I parked behind the big SUV and got out, but not before I let dispatch know where I was. "Jen, Whiskey Hotel, 10-23 at the Miller's" I told dispatch over the radio. "Roger that, Whiskey Hotel, good luck!" "Roger. Thanks. Out." Daliwal and Gruk were standing in front of the latter's cruiser, looking up the property. Gruk turned her massive head my way. The black pupils of her eyes seemed to dig right through me as she stared. Her lips parted slightly and she gave me a disdainful sneer. "Oh look..." She said said sounding gruff and vaguely British, like a bad guy from a Lord of The Rings Movie "'Ey sent a pathetic little 'Oomie to back us up..." The look on her face could have frozen fire. She looked like she wanted to rip open my belly and play with what she found there. She squared up her shoulders like she was ready to throw down and raised her hands up to shoulder height. Flexing every muscle she had in her upper body. Her jaw fell open revealing some seriously nasty gleaming white canines. A Threat display if there ever was one. Her Body Armor and her duty belt did nothing except add to idea that she was preped and ready for a real slobberknocker. She took a step forward, looking every bit of the bruiser she really was. From the top of her pony tail to the soles of her size twenty black Bates combat boots, she was built for war. Literally. Thats what her race had been bred for. "Only thing 'Oomies is good for is filling bellys...." Daliwal looked over at her with a 'what the fuck?' Look on his face. He seemed genuinely suprised by her words and aggressive actions. He looked over at me, his big yellow-green eyes going wide. He raised a hand to his beard and stroked it a few times. Looking back and forth between us. I got the feeling that was how his nerves liked to showed themselves. The palm of his hand faced outwards and his fingers seemed to go backwards like their joints were reversed. He was a transfer from another town like Bull's Heart, somewhere in Florida. Thunder? Or maybe it was Cougar Teeth? Not that it mattered I guess. He had only been with the Sheriff's department a few weeks now, and most of that had been training time. He may have been a veteran. But here in Texas, he was 'The new guy' and he was still trying to figure out what was what. The look on his face said that he wasn't quite sure what he had found himself in the middle of here, but he wasn't a fan of it. I wasn't used to the backwards hands thing yet and it was still a little weird for me. Tiger head was off putting too, but that was easier to get used to. Seemed like a hell of a nice guy so far though. Like he was really working hard to dispell the negative views most people had towards free form shape shifters. He didn't need to though. He wouldn't have earned his Star if he were an asshole. I tried to come up with a witty zinger to shoot back at Gruk, but I was drawing a blank. I almost went with 'ol reliable,' a Shrek reference. But I wasn't feeling it. So I just raised my hands to the waist, making sure not to spill my coffee, and mugged a sarcastically terrified expression at her. "Ohhhh scary" I said in the most mockingly insincere voice I could muster, rolling my eyes as hard as I could. "Cut the fuckin' shit, Gruk, you're scaring the new guy" "Watch your language!" Gruk said suddenly, dropping the bad movie Orc accent like a bad habit. Her real voice sounded more like a housewife from somewhere in the mid west. Like Nebraska or some shit. Flat but somehow bubbly. You always had a suspicion that the next word out of her mouth was going to be 'Ope.' "And besides, He isn't scared he already knows I'm a total sweetie" She said fixing him with a wide smile. Which despite the fact that it showed off her massive fanged canines, still managed to come across as incredibly warm and inviting. Like someone's mom. "I gave him some of my famous oatmeal cookies, would a big nasty evil orc make cookies for the new guy?" She directed the last question at Daliwal. He looked like he was still in shock at the rapid shift in tones. His eyes were wide and his jaw was still slightly hanging open. I could tell that he wasn't exactly sure if we weren't playing a game of 'fuck with the new guy' His shifted his gaze between our faces. He swallowed, a bit nervously. "Well...." His voice had that crisp English accent that alot of educated Indian Immigrants had, when they learned their English at a British founded University. You could tell from his tone that he wasn't super comfortable in the situation. ".....The .....'Cookies'--" I got the feeling that he had to mentally restrain himself from saying 'biscuits' "--did have Raisins in them, so the question of your being a 'Sweetie' or something of a malicious sort hasn't really been settled just yet." It took me a second, but I got the humor. Fucker was just so goddamn dry in his delivery, that it almost didn't land. I gave him a chuckle. I got the notion that he was gonna be an okay guy to work with. Once He got settled that is. Gruk however stared at him for a moment. She didn't quite give a laugh, but she did give him another award winning smile. She placed her left fist on her waist and pointed at him with her other hand. "I'm gonna have to keep my eye on you, Mister!" She said with a bit of humor in her voice. "And don't you worry about the Raisins, just my way of messing with the new guy, I guess. But don't worry. They help a body increase blood production. Thats good for you..... and Me." Daliwal waited a beat before giving Gruk a wide-eyed nervous chuckle, before breaking eye-contact and looking down to make sure his boots were still on his feet. His timid response set me off. I let lose with a stifled laugh. I squeezed my eyes shut and laughed into the back of my hand. My sides shaking. Now Daliwal wasn't a small guy, he was broad across the shoulders. Had Fangs and Claws of his own. A Gun too. I didn't know him too well, but I would bet that He could take care of himself in a fight. His kind were usually pretty good with their mitts. Or at least thats what I had heard about them. (That might just be a stereotype though. If it is, and anyone of you out there reading this are of the Raksasha people and have a problem with it, please know that I meant nothing by it.) But when a Person of Gruk's size and ability, friendly disposition or not, makes a mention of your platelet count it could be a little disconcerting. Especially since Gruk, in addition to being one of the largest specimens of Orc you would ever meet was also afflicted with Vampirism. She was hell on wheels without the condition. Half the department had called her 'Mama Bear' because if you were down and bleeding and you needed someone to drag your ass out of the fire, she was the one you would want arriving on scene. Believe me. I know what it's like to be laying on your back, getting the shit kicked out of you, looking up and seeing Gruk come charging onto the scene like a cross between The Incredible Hulk and Jesus Christ. But as to how she came across the Vampirism, It's actually kind of a sweet story. A few years back she fell for a local gal named Maddie and they got married. Maddie was a vampire. In good standing of course. But than again she had to be, because rogue Vampires get run out of town pretty quick, if not staked down for the morning sun. A man by the name of Kincade ran the local Vampire Coven and he was a stickler for 'The Rules of Fair Conduct' which 'The United Night Walker Covens and Clans of The United States, Mexico, and Canada' had applied to towns like Bull's Heart. Kincade ran a tight ship and The Sheriff's Department had rarely if ever had reason to pick a fight with the Blood Suckers. Well.... Except that one time..... But thats neither here nor there. Plus we don't like to talk about it around here. It would be especially impolite to discuss it with outsiders. Anyway the point is, that with the Vampirism accentuating her already considerable strength and hardiness.... she had gone from Hell On Wheels to a One Woman SEAL Company. Part of the lovely couple's wedding vows had been Maddie converting Gruk into a Vampire. Maddie had taken Gruk's name and Gruk had taken on Maddie's condition. I had to admit. It twanged on the dusty strings of my heart. For some reason, it struck me as beautiful. To not only tell someone you want to be with them forever, but to take steps to actually do so? Well, I'm not gonna lie. I shed a few happy tears at the wedding. I guess I'm a bit of a softy. "Senior Deputy Gruk" I said, doing my best to come to Daliwal's rescue "if you could quit subtley terrifying the New Guy for a moment? I think we got us a wellness visit to make, if you would like to take charge and lead your valiant warriors on a crusade in the name of public safety? Now would be a good time for that." "Oh, party pooper" Gruk said. But she drew up to her full height and turned to look up at the Miller's House. It was a white ranch style sitting on top of a slight hill. The lights were off and nobody appeared to be home. "Okay" She said looking down at me "First things first, Cowboy." She pointed down at the Magnum Research BFR in my Holster. "Go to the trunk of your car and get a gun that isn't stupid" "Goddamnit" I grumbled. * Five minutes later we were walking up the Miller's Driveway. A fifth Generation Glock 40 sitting in my Holster. We had to hoof it up the property. Because the cattle gate across the driveway was locked. Which wouldn't have mattered. Because once a car crossed the Miller's gate, it tends to experience engine trouble. Never getting more than twenty feet before shutting down completely. Radios had issues too. Hell the 3D RMR Night Site on my pistol was probably dead. Like it's 10 year battery was burnt out. It was something to do with the Nature of the Millers..... and the Magic they threw around. Electronics hated the stuff for some reason. So normally we just left anything that had a battery in the car. I was staring up at the House as I walked. It was odd. Usually at this point we could hear them screaming at each other, the pop and fizzle of Magic spells going off. Inhuman roaring as demons were summoned. Not to attack, but to help bolster arguments. Dishes breaking. Tonight though? It was different. Dead silence. Like the house was a tomb. My eyes were going from window to window. Looking for any sign of life and finding none. No fluttering curtains. Lights popping on and off. No nothing. Just the crunch of our boots on old asphalt. I almost didn't notice the temperature drop, until I was exhaling steam. I shivered inside my uniform. I was just about to ask 'Where the fuck did that come from' When Daliwal spoke up. "We are being watched" He said quietly. "I see them too" Gruk said. All merriment lost from her voice. She was switched on now and jokes would be unprofessional. She eased the AR Pistol she carried off of her belt. It was chambered in .458 Socom, and of course the entire lower was custom made to fit her gigantic hand. Including a massive grip that resembled the handle of a 1911 Pistol rather than the traditional AR group. Making it the next best thing to a Bolter. "I count twelve in the trees on the West side of the clearing" "I count eight on my side" Daliwal replied, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I can't see shit" I said, wishing I had some form of natural night vision, like my creature of the night comrades. "Valkerye" was all Gruk said. "Shit" I muttered. "Language" Gruk gently admonished, without taking her eyes off of the Trees on the edges of the clearing. I followed her gaze out to the trees. I could just barely make out the little pinpoints of white light, that would have been the eyes of the Shitbirds. I whistled lowly. There were a bunch of them out there. I had never seen so many in one place. Usually when there is more than two or three in one spot, they would fight each other. It looked like these assholes were just coping a squat and having a watch. Very odd behavior for Shit Birds. "I've never seen so many..." Daliwal said, a tremor of discomfort in his voice. I noticed that his tail was held down, close to his leg. That might have been a good tactical decision to keep the appendage out of the way....... or it might have been an involuntary fear based response. "Don't let them get to you" Gruk said, her voice soaked in matronly concern. "They never come for us..... just for the dead." "Yeah" I said, turning my attention to the house. "Boss Lady is right. Pay them no mind." I took a sip from the Coffee cup I was still holding. I was intentionally trying to look as nonchalant as possible. Partially for the new guy, partially for the fact that I wasn't going to give the Shit Birds the satisfaction of spooking me twice in one night. I did my best to walk like I didn't have a care in the world. Daliwal looked over his shoulder at me. His eyes widened slightly when he recognized the stylized Alligator on the cup. Toothy Earl's logo. "You were at Toothy Earl's earlier?" He asked me, his ears perking straight up "Was.... Um.... Was Miss Ellie working?" "Yup" I Responded "She was breaking in a New Striper. Didn't go so hot for him" "Ah" The new guy said "Do you happen to know if.... If.... She is...uh... talking to anyone?" "She talks to a lot of people" I said playing dumb "it's part of her job, silly boots" "Oh... Uh... No..." He said, turning back to watch his side of the clearing, and the Valkerye in the Trees beyond. "I meant is she.... In a relationship with anyone?" "Well" I said continuing on in the playing dumb vein "I'm sure she has a lot of relationships, with a lot of people--" "Oh be nice" Gruk grunted at me "You know what he meant." She said to me. To Daliwal she said "Yes there's a fella she talks too, but I don't know if it's serious. Tall, blonde, human, a lot of people think he might really be that one lightning guy, the one with the hammer.... oh what is his name.... oh it doesn't matter." Her voice picked up a little more Growl as she went on. Apparently remembering that we were supposed to be focusing on the task at hand "Both of you need to pay attention to your sectors. Or I'll treat you both like a couple of juice boxs and call out another couple of Dumb Dumbs to back me up, when I've sucked you both dry." "Yes ma'am!" Daliwal said, responding to the matronly authority in her voice. "Yeah" I said, properly scolded, not even attempting to go for the obvious joke there. "Sorry, Boss." She was right. Now wasn't the time for jaw jacking. She had left it unsaid, but there were more Shit Birds out here than anyone had ever seen in one spot. They were acting strangely. This was the quietest 'Millers Call' I had ever been out on. I would wager that it was Gruk's quietest one too. It was too weird of a night to be acting like a dumbass rookie. There was a time to fuck with the new guy and this wasn't it clearly. I followed Gruk's lead and drew my Glock. I checked the RMR site and noticed that my Dot was in fact no longer illuminated on the glass. Like the battery was dead. Fucking Miller's and their spooky ass hoodoo. The rest of the short walk was quiet. I watched the front, where the house was. Gruk and Daliwal watched the sides. They stayed quiet. I would occasionally peek off to the side, at the trees in the distance. White Eyes Beamed back at me, making them look like under dressed sparsely decorated Christmas Trees. I kind of wished we were talking more. As the feeling of all those eyes on me was driving me crazy. Felt like ants skittering up and down my spine. Some light conversation would be great to take the mind off of current events. When we reached the house, Gruk mounted the steps to the porch and paused. She looked around. She tilted her head up to the side and sniffed the air around her. She suddenly tensed up "What?" I asked her. "Blood" She responded "Lots of it. Human." Now were this the movies. The Vampire would look at me like I was a pot roast and get a strange look in her eye. But this isn't the movies and Senior Deputy LaVonda Gruk is a goddamn professional and I'll not have you imply otherwise. She treated it like a call for help and instantly got ready to run into an unknown situation to potentially save a life. She raised her massive pistol and trained it on the door. She motioned to me with her head, telling me to kick the door for her. She looked at Daliwal and patted herself on the backside, wordlessly telling him to stack on her. He nodded and did as he was instructed. I leaned against the opposite side of the door, back against the wall. I raised my leg and swung it back, giving the door a solid donkey kick. The door flew open in an explosion of cheap trim and paint flakes. Gruk and Daliwal flowed into the house. Gruk having to duck down in the doorway, so she wouldn't bang her head on the door jamb. "Sheriff's Department!" She yelled. The living room was empty of life. There was a stone table set up where a coffee table would be in a normal house, with stone bowls and unidentifiable powders in them. Jars full of God knows what lined a massive book shelf that covered an entire wall. Candles lit the space, some burned all the way down. Looked like they had been going for a while. Strange symbols were painted everywhere. I recognized a couple of them, just from being on the job so long.This looked like a Wizard's lab or a Witch's brewery. It probably was too, knowing the Millers. "Clear!" I heard Daliwal yell. His voice a bit more of a roar, with the adrenaline surging through his veins. Gruk looked over at me. She pointed to her nose and than pointed towards a door leading off the living room, she than patted her backside again. I got behind her, ready to go wherever she would take me. Gruk always took point. She was the most likely to survive a Shotgun blast to the face and stay in the fight. So it made good tactical sense. But it was also just the way she led. From the front. We left Daliwal in the living room. To hold our only known exit, in case someone squirted past us. Gruk and I cleared the rest of the house, finding nothing. We came to a stop at a closed door at the end of the main hall. She looked at me and tapped her nose again. I got her meaning. This was where the smell was strongest. I nodded and reached down for the door knob, i jiggled the handle finding it unlocked. I shoved it open and in went Gruk, pistol at the ready. I flowed in behind her. The smell of tangy copper hit me in the snout like a bag of hammers. I involuntarily gagged. I couldn't see anything. It was pitch black. But I knew it was bad. Room smelled like a badly run slaughterhouse. I felt around for a light switch. Found a candlebra instead. 'Good enough' I thought to myself as i dug in my pocket for a lighter. I gave the bic a couple of test flicks. "Wait" Gruk said from somewhere in the darkness. "It's bad. It's real bad." "Yeah" I said. I had gathered that much from the smell. "But how bad can it be?" I lit the candle. It must have been a candle with some magic to it. Because it lit that room like a surgery ward and Gruk was right. It was bad. It was real bad. It was a bedroom. You could tell because a massive California King-size bed occupied the center of the room. The comforter was soaked in reddish brown blood. There was a lump of meat in the center of the bed, that I slowly realized was a woman's torso. On one night stand there were ten neatly severed fingers. In two columns of five each. On the other night stand was a head. Devoid of a face. Just ragged skull staring at the doorway. At the foot of the bed were two legs, crossed over each other like an X. I realized that various organs and bits of body were arranged around the torso in a circle. I looked over at Gruk. She was staring wide eyed at the wall above the headboard. I followed her gaze. The face of Giselda Miller stared back at us from the wall, where it had been nailed up like a trophy on display. Eyeless of course, because the eyes were still in the skull. But I knew that face. It had screamed all matter of venom and curse at me before. There was something weird about this. Well, yeah no shit it was weird. But there was a strange sort of order to where everything was placed in the room. I looked over at Gruk. She looked back at me. I saw her swallow a few times, like she wasn't sure what to make of this all. Her face looked almost helpless and I felt bad for the Giant Orc. "We...." She started to speak. Her voice a little unsteady. She paused and closed her eyes. She swallowed a few more times. "We need to get out of this room" she said, more in control of her voice. "Yeah" I said moving towards the door. I had seen this level of carnage before. Part of the job. People say when you see shit like this enough, eventually you get used to it. Well I'm still waiting on that fucking day. "Forensics will have our butts" Gruk said, command voice firmly back in place "if we mess something up" "Yeah" I said. Not particularly giving a shit why we got out of the room, but just happy to do so. We pulled Daliwal out of the House with us. Gruk closing the door behind us, to preserve the crime scene. We spun him up on what we had seen. His eyes narrowed in thought. "What?" Gruk asked. "Back in Florida. We had a Necromancer in town....." "Awww fuck" I interrupted with a sigh, knowing where this was going. Necromancers were bastards and I didn't want to deal with chasing one down. I had one throw a dead cat at me once. It bit me. Shit was weird. Gruk did that hand-shake shushing thing that mom's do when you were interrupting their shows. She wanted me to stick a sock in it. Probably had a problem with the cursing too. "What you describe...." Daliwal went on "sounds like a ritual she did. We never found out why she did it. We figured out who it was and showed up at her door step with a lot of firepower. She did not come peacefully." The look on his face, and the way he stroked his beard, said it was a bad memory. Gruk had an uncomfortable look on her face too. I couldn't say as I blamed Her. This could be real bad. If somebody was going around killing people for some silly necromancer bullshit..... well my week was about to get a lot fucking busier. It's always something with this fucking town. "Okay" Gruk said "So let's get down past the Gate and see if we can get some back up out here." "Gonna have to wake up the Sheriff" I sighed. "She'll be pissed if we don't. But in the mean time, we need to get people out looking for Mark Miller. His whereabouts are unknown, so that makes him our only suspect at this point." And since the power's that be have a sense of fucking humor...... I heard a rustle of wings above our heads. Right before about two hundred pounds of meat was dropped right in the middle of our little pow-wow. It was a body. The legs caught me square in the chest, knocking me on my ass. The face attached to the body's head, sure looked a lot like Mark Miller's face. Albeit a little more battered and beaten than usual. Dead bodies have a certain look about them and Mark Miller was rocking the fuck out of that look, broken neck and all. All three of us looked up. A Valkerye hovered about twenty feet above us. It's wings wide open, like it was riding a thermal. It's eyes blazed as it glared at us from on high. I had never seen one not skulking in shadows. I had never seen one this brazen. "THE MASTER COMES!" It screeched down at us. Thats when all hell decided to break loose.
I am a Sheriff's deputy in Bull's Heart, Texas. Part 2.
Part one lives here. It'll make more sense if you read it first. https://www.reddit.com/Revblackrage/comments/hxikru/bulls_heart_texas/ I was half way to my car before I knew it, fresh cup of coffee in my hand. Ellie wouldn't let me leave without one. I set the cup of coffee down on the roof of the Dodge and started digging around in my pockets. Looking for my keys. A scream ripped out of the restaurant behind me. It was long and loud. Sounded like someone had just stuck their hand in a deep fat fryer. Or had it forced into one. It startled me and I jumped, So much so that I dropped my keys. I heard a snort. Which sounded suspiciously like it was at my expense. I looked over my shoulder as I bent over to grab my keys. Murray's horse, Pistola, was tied up in a parking spot, about three spaces down from me. It was technically against city ordinance to tie an animal up in a commercial parking lot. Outside of Rodeo season of course, And there was special emphasis on undead mammals. But if you won't tell, I won't. The skeletal equine was staring at me over a feed bag strapped to his face. I pretended not to notice that the feed bag was stained brown, with a suspicious blackish liquid dripping from the stained burlap. Sometime's in Bull's Heart, the answers just aren't worth the questions. "Cut me some slack, dude" I said. With a voice that may or may not have registered a bit of annoyance. "I'm not a three hundred year old dead horse. Shit creeps me out sometimes." I could have sworn that old Pistola, rolled his eyes at that. But that may have been just me giving the horse too much credit. Another shorter scream erupted from the diner. This one ending suddenly. The context clues I had at my disposal, told me it was Marcel who was doing the screaming in there. Now were I a normal Sheriff's Deputy it would be my job to run into that Diner, ready to get to the bottom of it. But. I already knew the score and felt no need to investigate further. Plus, fuck that guy. Stripers had no protections under the law and I was specifically instructed to ensure their safety at my discretion and i discresified that Marcel was a worthless piece of human wreckage, who should be fed to a wood chipper. His death would truely be a net benefit to humanity as a whole. And that was about as far as I was willing to take it. Just as I scooped up my keys, I heard a low nervous sound from the undead horse. One of those 'Hey I'm not cool with this' sounds horses make. A rustle of feathers creeping out of the night sky, the horse's call of unease it's only accompaniment. "Fuck" I swore outloud. A rustle of feathers on a night time breeze could mean only a few things in Bull's Heart and only one of them would creep out a horse. I stood up straight. Looking for it. Resting my paw on the handle of my Smoke Wagon. My fingers wrapping around the checkered grip of the ridiculously large revolver. They always come when the stink of blood is on the air. They bring the cold with them too. As was attested to by the shiver running down my spine and the light steam I was suddenly exhaling. The hairs on my bare arms stood up in response to the suddenly frigid air. On one level I knew that I was under no immediate threat.... But you tell that to two hundred thousand years of evolutional preservational instincts. Shit was there for a reason. Yes I suppose you could say the thing perched over the door of Earl's diner made me uncomfortable. Just a touch. The neon lighting from the diner's sign cast an odd neon red hue across it. The light seemed to accentuate the shadows it lurked in. But I wouldn't even have to look at the damn thing to know it was watching me. The whole site of the thing was like watching a demon stalk you. Nobody was really sure where they had came from. Nobody who'd been to the Great Beyond, or any other such ports of mystical or metaphysical call, could recall such a creature in any of their travels. I would describe it as a humanoid, with big ragged vultures wings. Bipedal body. Bird's legs. A man's chest. I usually saw a big fuck off beak, that was attached to a face that looked similar to a plague doctor's mask. But rarely did two people see the same thing when they looked at the creatures. Well for the most part. The going theory was that they were some matter of shape shifters. But that still left a lot to explain. Everyone described the same ragged wings and the same piercing eyes. Orbs of a pure white, that burned with a mix of corruption and malevolent anger. Like spotlights of hate on a greasy black night. But nobody could agree on secondary characteristics. To me they all looked the same, but if I tried to describe what I saw, you wouldn't know what I was talking about, because you saw a horses head with a seagulls beak for a face, or some other such silliness. This particular creature's wings were drooped over it like a cloak. I could see the eyes boring into me from the inky black recesses of it's wings. No notion of a head, or shoulders, or anything could be discerned from the shadows. I glared back at it for a moment, before I took a good weaver style shooting position, drew my smoke wagon and planted it's front site post right smack dab between those dumbass eyes. It did nothing but glare back at me with those huge hate filled peepers. I couldn't even tell if it understood what was happening. But I could make out it's inky black talons flexing on it's perch, as if it was about to throw itself forward and rip my belly clean open in a fit of avian fury. Everything in me told me to pull the trigger on my Magnum Research BFR and send a .45-70 Government Consecrated Exploding Sabot round right into the thing's forehead. Everything in me wanted to send that unearthly thing back to whatever soulless void it spawned from. The things aren't right for this world and everything in me was telling me to send it back where it belonged. To the pit it crawled out of. But technically........Under Texas department of Fish and Game code, They are classified as an endangered species. So all I could do was whisper "Bang" like a petulant child and reluctantly holster my weapon. I am not horribly mature, I admit. Yeah, sure they stole dead bodies. Sure they flew around from Dusk till Dawn creeping the living fuck out of people. Sure they had all the sentience of a learning disabled possum. But some genius decided to call them an endangered species and grant them protected habitats. Like the forests surrounding Bull's Heart. Because where the fuck else would they be able to go? The thrice cursed things are Illegal to hunt for sport or harvest. And if you kill one by accident, you better have your ducks in a row. Because you are about to be investigated for Poaching. Which in Texas, means you are going to face a lot of Jail time. Which is some Fucking liberal bullshit, if you ask me. Our local game warden, a fella named Lingelsou, was very particular about the animals of what he calls 'His Forest.' He also had zero problem running in Deputys for violations to the Texas Fish and Game code. He once arrested a Deputy named Landis for taking one down. Even though he had a good reason for it..... well maybe not a good reason exactly, but a pretty damn good excuse. About once a month or so, Deputy Landis has a condition that.... Well it's just best that he gets away from people for a couple days or so. He goes a little wild in that time frame. So he goes out to a plot of land he owns out in the woods and just rides it out. Safer for everyone that way. During one of these..... Fits I guess you could call it. He took down one of the creatures and ate half of it. Warden Lingelsou took him in for it. It didn't matter that Deputy Landis wasn't in his right frame of mind. He still didn't have a population control hunting license, which was the only way to legally hunt them. Sherrif Onryu had gone to bat for the Deputy, going so far as to site the American's with disabilities act of 1990, trying to point out that Landis had a condition and certain accessions had to be made in order to provide a fair and equal environment for him. Including free reign hunting rights for the thing that lived inside of him. Lingelsou wasn't buying it though. "Laws be laws" The Game Warden had said. "In my forest and in my jurisdiction, the laws be respected" Sanctimonious do-gooder Prick. But the creatures did a good job of keeping their number's low and they didn't really go out of their way to attack people. Unless cornered. Which is a good thing. Because when they are worked up into a good lather, they can take and dish out a lot of punishment before they finally go down. Kind of like a skybourne Armadillo.Only less cute. This specimen, as if sensing my unease, leaned forward and screeched at me. I got the impression of a beak sticking out from between it's wings. The screech was loud in the frigid silence. It gave off the audio sensation of nails on a chalkboard mixed with a crying newborn. A pretty unpleasant mixing of audible input. Than the burning eyes turned back to Pistola, and I briefly wondered if the Creature was going to go after the undead horse. I mean they were death eaters and technically the horse was dead after a fashion. I would legally be allowed to shoot it at the point, as Pistola was technically livestock....Deadstock?..... Anyway, in Bull's Heart, you could defend tame animals from wild Animals. Especially with all of the weird crap that lives in our woods. But before I could sink much thought into it, the creature reared on it's haunches, gave one last terrifying screech and took wing, quickly disappearing into the night sky. My caveman ego wanted to believe that it was because the Creature was made uncomfortable by my presence. But more than likely it figured that the staff of Toothy Earl's weren't going to toss Marcel's corpse out the front door, so there was no point in hanging around. Either way Pistola seemed to be okay with the end result, as he let out a sigh of equine relief as the potential predator made it's exit. I watched the night sky in the direction it flew off for a moment, wondering if it was going to change it's mind and come back. They have a name. Like we don't just call them 'Creatures.' I just happen to think the name is stupid. Real fucking stupid. Because it's not a hot chick on a winged horse swinging a sword. It is in no way shape or form a Valkerye. And yes that is a hill that I am willing to die on. It's a fucking bird monster, not a chick who escorts dead warriors to the All Father's table. Can't put that shit on the side of a panel van from the seventies. End of discussion. I just call them 'Shitbirds.' When I was certain that the Shitbird was gone for good, I turned and gave Pistola a nod. "You're safe now, Sir." I said with a professional smile. "You're welcome." The Horse just stared back at me with Milky dead eyes. He seemed super unimpressed. "Fine" I said with a bit of feigned exasperation "act like that thing didn't have you scared out of your peanut sized mind" The Horse snorted at me again and again I swear he managed to roll his pupiless white eyes at me. That damn horse was smarter than he was letting on. I shook my head and turned back to the Charger. But as I got into the Dodge, I thought I heard something. Like words floating out of the dark. Scratchy. Raspy. Just at the point of hearing. The point were you aren't sure if it's your inner monolog or your ears, and i definitely wasn't quite sure which one it was. "The.... Master.... Comes...." I stared off in the direction the creature had flown. Well that was odd. I couldn't be sure that I had heard it.... But I couldn't completely write it off either. * I knew the way to the Miller's house like the back of my hand. We were out there enough after all. The Miller's were two people that shouldn't have been together. But they were also both extremely stubborn. Neither was going to be the one who broke first and left. They also refused to admit they had problems. Even when they were doing their best to rip each other apart. Made conflict mediation between the two parties a royal bitch. They were one of the reasons I hated this God forsaken town. I was going to meet up with Gruk and Daliwal at the foot of the Miller's drive and we would go up their property as a group. It's usually best to go out on calls with as much back up as possible. Especially in this town. I briefly thought about Gruk's condition. I glanced down towards the Digital Defensive Control Suite sitting in the middle of my Patrol car's center console. The screen showed that the U.V. Defensive lighting rig that sat on the roof of the Uparmored Charger Hell Cat cruiser was off. I reached down and tapped the off button just to be sure. I than reached over and hit the manual safety, locking it out of action. A lot of citizen's of Bull's Heart had one condition or another that made U.V. light anything from annoying to downright lethal, so much so that the local Government classified U.V. lights as destructive devices. If you had some? You had better have a very damn good reason for having them or you were going to jail. Occasionally certain people would kick up a stink about it, make some noise about it being a violation of the 2nd Amendment, but they usually didn't get much support because.... well it's hard to get people real worked up about lightbulbs. It would have been a damn shame to take Gruk and possibly Daliwal out of action, due to some avoidable asshatted dipshittery. I actually wasn't sure if U.V. would take Daliwal down or out, but I did know his kind were nocturnal, so better safe than sorry. I turned down the dirt road that would take me to the Miller's front gate. Something about the way the lights of my cruiser played down the narrow tree lined dirt road gave it an ominous feeling. I was hoping it wasn't a sign of things to come. "Here the fuck we go" I grumbled outloud. I saw Gruk's S.U.V. and Daliwal's cruiser parked next to the Miller's cattle gate. Gruk had to drive one of the bigger S.U.V.s due to her massive size. "More like her massive ass" I said to myself, giving myself a slight chuckle in response, finding myself hilarious. And before you ask, yes I am aware that I am an idiot. I parked behind the big SUV and got out, but not before I let dispatch know where I was. "Jen, Whiskey Hotel, 10-23 at the Miller's" I told dispatch over the radio. "Roger that, Whiskey Hotel, good luck!" "Roger. Thanks. Out." Daliwal and Gruk were standing in front of the latter's cruiser, looking up the property. Gruk turned her massive head my way. The black pupils of her eyes seemed to dig right through me as she stared. Her lips parted slightly and she gave me a disdainful sneer. "Oh look..." She said said sounding gruff and vaguely British, like a bad guy from a Lord of The Rings Movie "'Ey sent a pathetic little 'Oomie to back us up..." The look on her face could have frozen fire. She looked like she wanted to rip open my belly and play with what she found there. She squared up her shoulders like she was ready to throw down and raised her hands up to shoulder height. Flexing every muscle she had in her upper body. Her jaw fell open revealing some seriously nasty gleaming white canines. A Threat display if there ever was one. Her Body Armor and her duty belt did nothing except add to idea that she was preped and ready for a real slobberknocker. She took a step forward, looking every bit of the bruiser she really was. From the top of her pony tail to the soles of her size twenty black Bates combat boots, she was built for war. Literally. Thats what her race had been bred for. "Only thing 'Oomies is good for is filling bellys...." Daliwal looked over at her with a 'what the fuck?' Look on his face. He seemed genuinely suprised by her words and aggressive actions. He looked over at me, his big yellow-green eyes going wide. He raised a hand to his beard and stroked it a few times. Looking back and forth between us. I got the feeling that was how his nerves liked to showed themselves. The palm of his hand faced outwards and his fingers seemed to go backwards like their joints were reversed. He was a transfer from another town like Bull's Heart, somewhere in Florida. Thunder? Or maybe it was Cougar Teeth? Not that it mattered I guess. He had only been with the Sheriff's department a few weeks now, and most of that had been training time. He may have been a veteran. But here in Texas, he was 'The new guy' and he was still trying to figure out what was what. The look on his face said that he wasn't quite sure what he had found himself in the middle of here, but he wasn't a fan of it. I wasn't used to the backwards hands thing yet and it was still a little weird for me. Tiger head was off putting too, but that was easier to get used to. Seemed like a hell of a nice guy so far though. Like he was really working hard to dispell the negative views most people had towards free form shape shifters. He didn't need to though. He wouldn't have earned his Star if he were an asshole. I tried to come up with a witty zinger to shoot back at Gruk, but I was drawing a blank. I almost went with 'ol reliable,' a Shrek reference. But I wasn't feeling it. So I just raised my hands to the waist, making sure not to spill my coffee, and mugged a sarcastically terrified expression at her. "Ohhhh scary" I said in the most mockingly insincere voice I could muster, rolling my eyes as hard as I could. "Cut the fuckin' shit, Gruk, you're scaring the new guy" "Watch your language!" Gruk said suddenly, dropping the bad movie Orc accent like a bad habit. Her real voice sounded more like a housewife from somewhere in the mid west. Like Nebraska or some shit. Flat but somehow bubbly. You always had a suspicion that the next word out of her mouth was going to be 'Ope.' "And besides, He isn't scared he already knows I'm a total sweetie" She said fixing him with a wide smile. Which despite the fact that it showed off her massive fanged canines, still managed to come across as incredibly warm and inviting. Like someone's mom. "I gave him some of my famous oatmeal cookies, would a big nasty evil orc make cookies for the new guy?" She directed the last question at Daliwal. He looked like he was still in shock at the rapid shift in tones. His eyes were wide and his jaw was still slightly hanging open. I could tell that he wasn't exactly sure if we weren't playing a game of 'fuck with the new guy' His shifted his gaze between our faces. He swallowed, a bit nervously. "Well...." His voice had that crisp English accent that alot of educated Indian Immigrants had, when they learned their English at a British founded University. You could tell from his tone that he wasn't super comfortable in the situation. ".....The .....'Cookies'--" I got the feeling that he had to mentally restrain himself from saying 'biscuits' "--did have Raisins in them, so the question of your being a 'Sweetie' or something of a malicious sort hasn't really been settled just yet." It took me a second, but I got the humor. Fucker was just so goddamn dry in his delivery, that it almost didn't land. I gave him a chuckle. I got the notion that he was gonna be an okay guy to work with. Once He got settled that is. Gruk however stared at him for a moment. She didn't quite give a laugh, but she did give him another award winning smile. She placed her left fist on her waist and pointed at him with her other hand. "I'm gonna have to keep my eye on you, Mister!" She said with a bit of humor in her voice. "And don't you worry about the Raisins, just my way of messing with the new guy, I guess. But don't worry. They help a body increase blood production. Thats good for you..... and Me." Daliwal waited a beat before giving Gruk a wide-eyed nervous chuckle, before breaking eye-contact and looking down to make sure his boots were still on his feet. His timid response set me off. I let lose with a stifled laugh. I squeezed my eyes shut and laughed into the back of my hand. My sides shaking. Now Daliwal wasn't a small guy, he was broad across the shoulders. Had Fangs and Claws of his own. A Gun too. I didn't know him too well, but I would bet that He could take care of himself in a fight. His kind were usually pretty good with their mitts. Or at least thats what I had heard about them. (That might just be a stereotype though. If it is, and anyone of you out there reading this are of the Raksasha people and have a problem with it, please know that I meant nothing by it.) But when a Person of Gruk's size and ability, friendly disposition or not, makes a mention of your platelet count it could be a little disconcerting. Especially since Gruk, in addition to being one of the largest specimens of Orc you would ever meet was also afflicted with Vampirism. She was hell on wheels without the condition. Half the department had called her 'Mama Bear' because if you were down and bleeding and you needed someone to drag your ass out of the fire, she was the one you would want arriving on scene. Believe me. I know what it's like to be laying on your back, getting the shit kicked out of you, looking up and seeing Gruk come charging onto the scene like a cross between The Incredible Hulk and Jesus Christ. But as to how she came across the Vampirism, It's actually kind of a sweet story. A few years back she fell for a local gal named Maddie and they got married. Maddie was a vampire. In good standing of course. But than again she had to be, because rogue Vampires get run out of town pretty quick, if not staked down for the morning sun. A man by the name of Kincade ran the local Vampire Coven and he was a stickler for 'The Rules of Fair Conduct' which 'The United Night Walker Covens and Clans of The United States, Mexico, and Canada' had applied to towns like Bull's Heart. Kincade ran a tight ship and The Sheriff's Department had rarely if ever had reason to pick a fight with the Blood Suckers. Well.... Except that one time..... But thats neither here nor there. Plus we don't like to talk about it around here. It would be especially impolite to discuss it with outsiders. Anyway the point is, that with the Vampirism accentuating her already considerable strength and hardiness.... she had gone from Hell On Wheels to a One Woman SEAL Team. Part of the lovely couple's wedding vows had been Maddie converting Gruk into a Vampire. Maddie had taken Gruk's name and Gruk had taken on Maddie's condition. I had to admit. It twanged on the dusty strings of my heart. For some reason, it struck me as beautiful. To not only tell someone you want to be with them forever, but to take steps to actually do so? Well, I'm not gonna lie. I shed a few happy tears at the wedding. I guess I'm a bit of a softy. "Senior Deputy Gruk" I said, doing my best to come to Daliwal's rescue "if you could quit subtley terrifying the New Guy for a moment? I think we got us a wellness visit to make, if you would like to take charge and lead your valiant warriors on a crusade in the name of public safety? Now would be a good time for that." "Oh, party pooper" Gruk said. But she drew up to her full height and turned to look up at the Miller's House. It was a white ranch style sitting on top of a slight hill. The lights were off and nobody appeared to be home. "Okay" She said looking down at me "First things first, Cowboy." She pointed down at the Magnum Research BFR in my Holster. "Go to the trunk of your car and get a gun that isn't stupid" "Goddamnit" I grumbled. * Five minutes later we were walking up the Miller's Driveway. A fifth Generation Glock 40 sitting in my Holster. We had to hoof it up the property. Because the cattle gate across the driveway was locked. Which wouldn't have mattered. Because once a car crossed the Miller's gate, it tends to experience engine trouble. Never getting more than twenty feet before shutting down completely. Radios had issues too. Hell the 3D RMR Night Site on my pistol was probably dead. Like it's 10 year battery was burnt out. It was something to do with the Nature of the Millers..... and the Magic they threw around. Electronics hated the stuff for some reason. So normally we just left anything that had a battery in the car. I was staring up at the House as I walked. It was odd. Usually at this point we could hear them screaming at each other, the pop and fizzle of Magic spells going off. Inhuman roaring as demons were summoned. Not to attack, but to help bolster arguments. Dishes breaking. Tonight though? It was different. Dead silence. Like the house was a tomb. My eyes were going from window to window. Looking for any sign of life and finding none. No fluttering curtains. Lights popping on and off. No nothing. Just the crunch of our boots on old asphalt. I almost didn't notice the temperature drop, until I was exhaling steam. I shivered inside my uniform. I was just about to ask 'Where the fuck did that come from' When Daliwal spoke up. "We are being watched" He said quietly. "I see them too" Gruk said. All merriment lost from her voice. She was switched on now and jokes would be unprofessional. She eased the AR Pistol she carried off of her belt. It was chambered in .458 Socom, and of course the entire lower was custom made to fit her gigantic hand. Including a massive grip that resembled the handle of a 1911 Pistol rather than the traditional AR group. Making it the next best thing to a Bolter. "I count twelve in the trees on the West side of the clearing" "I count eight on my side" Daliwal replied, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I can't see shit" I said, wishing I had some form of natural night vision, like my creature of the night comrades. "Valkerye" was all Gruk said. "Shit" I muttered. "Language" Gruk gently admonished, without taking her eyes off of the Trees on the edges of the clearing. I followed her eyes out to the trees. I could just barely make out the little pinpoints of white light, that would have been the eyes of the Shitbirds. I whistled lowly. There were a bunch of them out there. I had never seen so many in one place. Usually when there is more than two or three in one spot, they would fight each other. It looked like these assholes were just coping a squat and having a watch. Very odd behavior for Shit Birds. "I've never seen so many..." Daliwal said, a tremor of discomfort in his voice. I noticed that his tail was held down, close to his leg. That might have been a good tactical decision to keep the appendage out of the way....... or it might have been an involuntary fear based response. "Don't let them get to you" Gruk said, her voice soaked in matronly concern. "They never come for us..... just for the dead." "Yeah" I said, turning my attention to the house. "Boss Lady is right. Pay them no mind." I took a sip from the Coffee cup I was still holding. I was intentionally trying to look as nonchalant as possible. Partially for the new guy, partially for the fact that I wasn't going to give the Shit Birds the satisfaction of spooking me twice in one night. I did my best to walk like I didn't have a care in the world. Daliwal looked over his shoulder at me. His eyes widened slightly when he recognized the stylized Alligator on the cup. Toothy Earl's logo. "You were at Toothy Earl's earlier?" He asked me, his ears perking straight up "Was.... Um.... Was Miss Ellie working?" "Yup" I Responded "She was breaking in a New Striper. Didn't go so hot for him" "Ah" The new guy said "Do you happen to know if.... If.... She is...uh... talking to anyone?" "She talks to a lot of people" I said playing dumb "it's part of her job, silly boots" "Oh... Uh... No..." He said, turning back to watch his side of the clearing, and the Valkerye in the Trees beyond. "I meant is she.... In a relationship with anyone?" "Well" I said continuing on in the playing dumb vein "I'm sure she has a lot of relationships, with a lot of people--" "Oh be nice" Gruk grunted at me "You know what he meant." She said to me. To Daliwal she said "Yes there's a fella she talks too, but I don't know if it's serious. Tall, blonde, human, a lot of people think he might really be that one lightning guy, the one with the hammer.... oh what is his name.... oh it doesn't matter." Her voice picked up a little more Growl as she went on. Apparently remembering that we were supposed to be focusing on the task at hand "Both of you need to pay attention to your sectors. Or I'll treat you both like a couple of juice boxs and call out another couple of Dumb Dumbs to back me up, when I've sucked you both dry." "Yes ma'am!" Daliwal said, responding to the matronly authority in her voice. "Yeah" I said, properly scolded, not even attempting to go for the obvious joke there. "Sorry, Boss." She was right. Now wasn't the time for jaw jacking. She had left it unsaid, but there were more Shit Birds out here than anyone had ever seen in one spot. They were acting strangely. This was the quietest 'Millers Call' I had ever been out on. I would wager that it was Gruk's quietest one too. It was too weird of a night to be acting like a dumbass rookie. There was a time to fuck with the new guy and this wasn't it clearly. I followed Gruk's lead and drew my Glock. I checked the RMR site and noticed that my Dot was in fact no longer illuminated on the glass. Like the battery was dead. Fucking Miller's and their spooky ass hoodoo. The rest of the short walk was quiet. I watched the front, where the house was. Gruk and Daliwal watched the sides. They stayed quiet. I would occasionally peek off to the side, at the trees in the distance. White Eyes Beamed back at me, making them look like under dressed sparsely decorated Christmas Trees. I kind of wished we were talking more. As the feeling of all those eyes on me was driving me crazy. Felt like ants skittering up and down my spine. Some light conversation would be great to take the mind off of current events. When we reached the house, Gruk mounted the steps to the porch and paused. She looked around. She tilted her head up to the side and sniffed the air around her. She suddenly tensed up "What?" I asked her. "Blood" She responded "Lots of it. Human." Now were this the movies. The Vampire would look at me like I was a pot roast and get a strange look in her eye. But this isn't the movies and Senior Deputy LaVonda Gruk is a goddamn professional and I'll not have you imply otherwise. She treated it like a call for help and instantly got ready to run into an unknown situation to potentially save a life. She raised her massive pistol and trained it on the door. She motioned to me with her head, telling me to kick the door for her. She looked at Daliwal and patted herself on the backside, wordlessly telling him to stack on her. He nodded and did as he was instructed. I leaned against the opposite side of the door, back against the wall. I raised my leg and swung it back, giving the door a solid donkey kick. The door flew open in an explosion of cheap trim and paint flakes. Gruk and Daliwal flowed into the house. Gruk having to duck down in the doorway, so she wouldn't bang her head on the door jamb. "Sheriff's Department!" She yelled. The living room was empty of life. There was a stone table set up where a coffee table would be in a normal house, with stone bowls and unidentifiable powders in them. Jars full of God knows what lined a massive book shelf that covered an entire wall. Candles lit the space, some burned all the way down. Looked like they had been going for a while. Strange symbols were painted everywhere. I recognized a couple of them, just from being on the job so long.This looked like a Wizard's lab or a Witch's brewery. It probably was too, knowing the Millers. "Clear!" I heard Daliwal yell. His voice a bit more of a roar, with the adrenaline surging through his veins. Gruk looked over at me. She pointed to her nose and than pointed towards a door leading off the living room, she than patted her backside again. I got behind her, ready to go wherever she would take me. Gruk always took point. She was the most likely to survive a Shotgun blast to the face and stay in the fight. So it made good tactical sense. But it was also just the way she led. From the front. We left Daliwal in the living room. To hold our only known exit, in case someone squirted past us. Gruk and I cleared the rest of the house, finding nothing. We came to a stop at a closed door at the end of the main hall. She looked at me and tapped her nose again. I got her meaning. This was where the smell was strongest. I nodded and reached down for the door knob, i jiggled the handle finding it unlocked. I shoved it open and in went Gruk, pistol at the ready. I flowed in behind her. The smell of tangy copper hit me in the snout like a bag of hammers. I involuntarily gagged. I couldn't see anything. It was pitch black. But I knew it was bad. Room smelled like a badly run slaughterhouse. I felt around for a light switch. Found a candlebra instead. 'Good enough' I thought to myself as i dug in my pocket for a lighter. I gave the bic a couple of test flicks. "Wait" Gruk said from somewhere in the darkness. "It's bad. It's real bad." "Yeah" I said. I had gathered that much from the smell. "But how bad can it be?" I lit the candle. It must have been a candle with some magic to it. Because it lit that room like a surgery ward and Gruk was right. It was bad. It was real bad. It was a bedroom. You could tell because a massive California King-size bed occupied the center of the room. The comforter was soaked in reddish brown blood. There was a lump of meat in the center of the bed, that I slowly realized was a woman's torso. On one night stand there were ten neatly severed fingers. In two columns of five each. On the other night stand was a head. Devoid of a face. Just ragged skull staring at the doorway. At the foot of the bed were two legs, crossed over each other like an X. I realized that various organs and bits of body were arranged around the torso in a circle. I looked over at Gruk. She was staring wide eyed at the wall above the headboard. I followed her gaze. The face of Giselda Miller stared back at us from the wall, where it had been nailed up like a trophy on display. Eyeless of course, because the eyes were still in the skull. But I knew that face. It had screamed all matter of venom and curse at me before. There was something weird about this. Well, yeah no shit it was weird. But there was a strange sort of order to where everything was placed in the room. I looked over at Gruk. She looked back at me. I saw her swallow a few times, like she wasn't sure what to make of this all. Her face looked almost helpless and I felt bad for the Giant Orc. "We...." She started to speak. Her voice a little unsteady. She paused and closed her eyes. She swallowed a few more times. "We need to get out of this room" she said, more in control of her voice. "Yeah" I said moving towards the door. I had seen this level of carnage before. Part of the job. People say when you see shit like this enough, eventually you get used to it. Well I'm still waiting on that fucking day. "Forensics will have our butts" Gruk said, command voice firmly back in place "if we mess something up" "Yeah" I said. Not particularly giving a shit why we got out of the room, but just happy to do so. We pulled Daliwal out of the House with us. Gruk closing the door behind us, to preserve the crime scene. We spun him up on what we had seen. His eyes narrowed in thought. "What?" Gruk asked. "Back in Florida. We had a Necromancer in town....." "Awww fuck" I interrupted with a sigh, knowing where this was going. Necromancers were bastards and I didn't want to deal with chasing one down. I had one throw a dead cat at me once. It bit me. Shit was weird. Gruk did that hand-shake shushing thing that mom's do when you were interrupting their shows. She wanted me to stick a sock in it. Probably had a problem with the cursing too. "What you describe...." Daliwal went on "sounds like a ritual she did. We never found out why she did it. We figured out who it was and showed up at her door step with a lot of firepower. She did not come peacefully." The look on his face, and the way he stroked his beard, said it was a bad memory. Gruk had an uncomfortable look on her face too. I couldn't say as I blamed Her. This could be real bad. If somebody was going around killing people for some silly necromancer bullshit..... well my week was about to get a lot fucking busier. It's always something with this fucking town. "Okay" Gruk said "So let's get down past the Gate and see if we can get some back up out here." "Gonna have to wake up the Sheriff" I sighed. "She'll be pissed if we don't. But in the mean time, we need to get people out looking for Mark Miller. His whereabouts are unknown, so that makes him our only suspect at this point." And since the power's that be have a sense of fucking humor...... I heard a rustle of wings above our heads. Right before about two hundred pounds of meat was dropped right in the middle of our little pow-wow. It was a body. The legs caught me square in the chest, knocking me on my ass. The face attached to the body's head, sure looked a lot like Mark Miller's face. Albeit a little more battered and beaten than usual. Dead bodies have a certain look about them and Mark Miller was rocking the fuck out of that look, broken neck and all. All three of us looked up. A Valkerye hovered about twenty feet above us. It's wings wide open, like it was riding a thermal. It's eyes blazed as it glared at us from on high. I had never seen one not skulking in shadows. I had never seen one this brazen. "THE MASTER COMES!" It screeched down at us
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