The Rats of Midnight by Sean Munger

Author:Sean Munger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror;cults;demons
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Published: 2015-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The Scam

Love stayed only two nights. On Sunday, the second of January, he vanished while Raven was at the office and Eric out buying groceries. While there was no sign of a struggle or forced entry to the apartment—the door was locked and Eric found nothing missing or in disarray when he got home—Raven couldn’t foreclose the possibility that the boy had become the Order of Murinae’s latest victim. She spent Sunday evening looking for him at the various places around Portland which homeless youth were known to haunt, and she called Ebony Crete to ask her to keep an eye out for him. On Tuesday Ebony called Raven at her office. “I put the word out to other shelters in the area. A friend of mine at a shelter in Eugene says she saw a long-haired blond kid with a one-eyed black dog at her shelter last night. He seems to be okay.” Eugene was two hours south. Raven had no way of contacting Love but at least her mind was at ease that he hadn’t become rat food. After seeing that thing down there, she thought, I’d get out of town, too, if I could.

That Wednesday inexplicably Mayor Tice reopened O’Bryant Square to the homeless. Raven agreed with Ebony that they shouldn’t let Tice buy them off. Raven amended the complaint for the NERD lawsuit slightly but filed it Thursday morning, still alleging that the City had violated federal civil rights laws by refusing to police the square. That afternoon Ben Metcalfe called her angrily to report that Tice had already retaliated by freezing three zoning change applications that were in the works for a Rod Artemis deal. Raven was in a meeting with Gary Klekas and Neil Marek and Metcalfe’s indignant message hit her voice mail. She didn’t even return his call. Technically she was no longer Metcalfe’s associate. As of January 3 she was a member of the technology and e-commerce practice group.

She wasn’t quite sure whether Metcalfe’s anger was genuine or just part of the charade, which she guessed would be enhanced by the appearance of animosity between them after she jumped ship to Klekas’s group. A few days later she received a voice mail at home from Elaine Metcalfe. “We’d like to invite you to dinner at our house next Saturday evening. Please do bring your fiancé. Ben and I enjoyed meeting him at the firm Christmas party.” Raven took the invite for what it was: an official summons.

The Metcalfes lived in a large house in Lake Oswego, the swank suburb southwest of Portland. On a cold January evening the lake itself—which the house abutted—was uninviting, but the house was beautiful, a modernist structure of glass and stacked brick that looked like a postmodern pastiche of Frank Lloyd Wright and a suburban office park. After she and Eric drove up to the place they paused before getting out of Eric’s Explorer. “Whatever happens,” he said, “the most important thing is that we stay together.

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