05/31/2025 Snippet, TOM VARGAS AND THE CASE OF THE MEDDLING PRIEST.

Got to finish this up.

…

The first one we found was dead, but it wasn’t our fault: he was like that when we got there. He was looking pretty tattered, too. He must have been fighting things made out of claws and teeth, and hadn’t quite won.

Lacy visibly stopped himself from pushing the corpse around with his foot. “What do you think?” he asked. “Chupacabra?”

I shook my head. “Wrong kind of cuts. Wild chupacabras do puncture wounds. These were made by claws.”

“We have clawed monsters down here?” asked Mike. “When did that happen?”

“It didn’t,” I told him. “We got the chanecks down here, same as always.” I squatted to get a better look at the corpse. Might as well: these pants were going to need cleaning, anyway. Maybe an exorcist. “Ehh, that might be from a chaneck’s fingers, or mouth. But they don’t go after people.”

“Even people who were cultists?” asked Lacy, as he looked around, and visibly decided not to light a cigarette. The fumes down here… “Maybe they started something.”

“Who?” Mike asked. “The cultists, or the chanecks?”

“Yes.”