UPDATE
In the aftermath of the short skirmish, many of the thugs laid wounded or dead- Victims of the groups powers and skills. All mundane. Normally, one would wonder about this sort of thing and how anyone couldn't have gotten the hint. Surely, there were plenty of witnesses out there, right? Or perhaps there was some mystical veil, manipulated and used to cover the eyes of those we knew as Mundane? Lucifer thought so, once.
And now, he could only laugh at the very idea.
Idly, he remembered as he checked the pulse of a body, what his teacher had once told him...
Flashback.
"There are two things you have to accept if you want to understand what's going on."
Rain sighed inwardly, at the rapt look of attention on her wards face. The curiosity that was going to bite him in the ass, if he ever walked right in without looking where he leaped.
"First the tough one. Magic is real. There's an entire world that exists alongside the everyday life of mankind. There are powers, nations, monsters, wars, feuds, alliances-- everything. Wizards are a part of it. So are a lot of other things you've heard about in stories, and even more you've never heard of. Vampires. Werewolves. Faeries. Demons. Monsters. It's all real."
"...So why don't people know about it?"
"Who says they don't? People have a knack for altering their perception of things, to make it more understandable. For example- You talk to a scientist? He or she tell you that there are people, who have the ability to sense and affect their environment in ways we don't really understand yet, that they can accept. Maybe you call it magic, and someone else calls it ESP, and someone else calls it the Force, but it's not a new idea. Maybe there are people whose genetic makeup makes them better able to employ these abilities. Maybe it even does things like make them reproduce their DNA more clearly than other people so that they can live for a very long time. But that is not the same thing as saying that there's an army of weird monsters living right under our noses and we don't even notice them."
"But what about the remains? Fangs, the- Some of them can't be that blind." Lucifer said with frustration. Rain shrugged in response.
"It's a big universe. It's sort of arrogant to assume that we're the only thinking beings in it- Or a variation thereof. You'll hear that a lot in our line of work. Anyway, the point is boy? Lots of people know about it." She raised a finger in a lecturing pose
"But the ones who are in the know don't go around talking about it all that much."
"Why not?"
"Because they don't want to get locked up in a loony bin for three months for observation, for starters." She said dryly.
".....Oh," Lucifer said, flushing.
"Yeah. I guess I can see that. What about regular people who see things? Like sightings and close encounters and stuff?"
Rain huffed out a breath.
"That's the second thing you have to understand. People don't want to accept a reality that frightening. Some of them open their eyes and get involved. But most of them don't want anything to do with the supernatural. So they leave it behind and don't talk about it. Don't think about it. They don't want it to be real, and they work really hard to convince themselves that it isn't."
"No," Lucifer said.
"I'm sorry. I just don't buy that. People can't be as afraid as all that."
"You don't need to buy it," She said.
"It's true. As a race, we're an enormous bunch of idiots. We're more than capable of ignoring facts if the conclusions they lead to make us too uncomfortable. Or afraid."
A troubled look crossed his face and Rain sighed out, taking a seat next to him before gesturing to the starlit skies.
"Come on, boy," She said.
"Look at history. How long did the scholarly institutions of civilization consider Earth to be the center of the universe? And when people came out with facts to prove that it wasn't, there were riots in the streets. No one wanted to believe that we all lived on an unremarkable little speck of rock in a quiet backwater of one unremarkable galaxy. The world was supposed to be flat, too, until people proved that it wasn't by sailing all the way around it. No one believed in germs until years and years after someone actually saw one. Biologists scoffed at tales of wild beast-men living in the mountains of Africa, despite eyewitness testimony to the contrary, and pronounced them an utter fantasy--right up until someone plopped a dead mountain gorilla down on their dissecting table."
A hip flask was removed from her belt as she took a sip.
"Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether."
"You're saying that the entire human race is in denial," he said.
"Most of the time," She replied.
"It's not a bad thing. It's just who we are. But the weird stuff doesn't care about that--it keeps on happening. Every family's got a ghost story in it. Most people I've talked to have had something happen to them that was impossible to explain. But that doesn't mean they go around talking about it afterward, because everyone knows that those kinds of things aren't real. If you start saying that they are, you get the weird looks and jackets with extra-long sleeves."
"For everyone," he said, voice still skeptical.
"Every time. They just keep quiet and try to forget it."
"Tell you what, Lucifer. Let's drive down to the Sheriff and you can tell them how we spent our weekend, taking down a haunted train. How its staff were the zombie bodies of old miners, who murdered a station security guard who then got up and threw you off the track." She paused for a moment to let the silence stretch and unconsciously, Lucifer winced as he clutched his side..
"What do you think they'd do?"
"I don't know," he said. He bowed his head.
"Unnatural things happen all the time," She said.
"But no one talks about it. At least, not openly. The preternatural world is everywhere. It just doesn't advertise."
"How could someone do that?" Lucifer asked quietly.
"Because it's terrifying," Rain said.
"Think about it. You find out about monsters and that there's not a damned thing you can do to protect yourself from them. You find out about horrible things that happen-- things you would be happier not knowing. So rather than live with the fear, you get away from the situation. After a while you can convince yourself that you must have just imagined it. Or maybe exaggerated it in the remembering. You rationalize whatever you can, forget whatever you can't, and get back to your life."
"Maybe," he said.
"But I don't see how things that hunt and kill human beings could be there among us without people knowing."
Rain sighed out once more, thoughtful as she contemplated before speaking.
"Yeah," She said.
"Nobody talks about this kind of thing. But all those people are still gone. Maybe a lot of them just cut their ties and left their old lives behind. Maybe some were in accidents of some kind, with the body never found. The point is, people don't know. But because it's an extremely scary thing to think about, and because it's a lot easier to just get back to their lives they tend to dismiss it. Ignore it. It's easier."
Lucifer shook his head.
"It just sounds so insane. I mean, they'd believe it if they saw it. If someone went on television and--"
"Did what?" Rain drawled.
"Bent spoons? Maybe made the Statue of Liberty disappear? Turned a lady into a white tiger? Hell, I've seen ritualized magic on television from the genuine article, and everyone not screaming that it was a hoax was complaining that the special effects looked cheap."
"You mean that clip that youtube was showing a few years back?" Rain grinned, a wide smile in reply.
"That was a Chicago boy. You'll meet him someday, you live long enough. What did you think of it?"
"Well, everyone was talking about it for a couple of days, but I heard that they found out it was a fake or something."
Rayne hummed in thought and took another sip.
"When you saw that tape, did you believe it?"
"Not really."
"Why not?"
He took a breath.
"Well, because the picture quality wasn't very good. I mean, it was really dark--"
"Where most scary supernatural stuff tends to happen," she said.
"And the picture was all jumpy--"
"The person with the camera was terrified. Also pretty common."
Lucifer scowled.
"And there was an awful lot of static on the tape, which made it look like someone had messed with it."
"Like how wizards tend to mess with tech when close, like I told you?" Rayne shook her head, smiling.
"And there's one more reason folks didn't believe it. It's okay; you can say it."
He sighed.
"There's no such things as monsters."
Rain beamed.
"Exactly! And that's why people don't wanna know- I mean, look at us. Two Damphir folk, having a little talk about if monsters are real."
"So where do we fit into it all?"
Rain gave a little shrug.
"Do what you always do boy. There will always be monsters."
She gave a grin and ruffled his head, snickering at his protests.
"Don't mean you gotta be one too."
End Flashback
"Some of these gentlemen are still alive."
"Mr. Ibis!"
The tall, skinny figure in the suit peered over his glasses at the parking lot, making a tsk'ing noise.
"At the least, you took the fight outside...Excellent. Well! I suppose I can take care of this...In exchange for a favor, which seems more than fear. Now go on then. Police will be here soon and I need to brush up on my thespian skills."
There was a beat and he suddenly glared.
"Well, go on then!"
---------
They left the funeral home and by unspoken consent, drove up to Nicholas's house...A place of familiarity and refuge for them all.
Which was why, the moment they had entered it was a shock to see it in the condition it was now. All torn up and ransacked, as though something was searching- Perhaps for the page they had obtained earlier from Nicholas's lawyer? Whoever it was didn't seem to care much for personal items and Lucifer scowled on his end, seeing a snow globe shattered on the floor from when someone was pulling everything off the shelf. There was a distinct foulness in the air.
But whoever it was, had been long gone now.
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