***
Chapter 3 : Signs and Portents
***

Time is a circle. Is there anything new?

\\That which has been is that which will be.\\

Can the past predict the present or the future? Or
should we know? Perhaps it is not for mortal eyes.

\\And that which has been done is that which will be
done.\\

Who can read such ciphers? Who can tell us what our
path should take?

\\So, there is nothing new under the sun.\\

But, what of things that know no sunlight, hidden in
the darker corners of the universe? Who can see them
and give us warning? Who can read the signs and
portents buried in the dark of more than human hearts?

***

"I didn't know you were into this weird shit, Duo.
Sorry, buddy, but this isn't really my field."

Duo sighed. He was running out of contacts. He'd never
really tried to track down a demon before, content
instead to be one to enemy soldiers.

"That's okay, Donald. Talk to you later."

He reached to break the contact, but the man stopped
him. "Wait a sec. I think I know someone who might be
able to help you."

"Yeah?"

"His name's Damian McNeil. Give me a minute to dig up
his number."

Finally. This was the first promising sign all day. He
couldn't get Michael's eyes out of his mind. They'd
seen something, something more than even the war could
account for. Wufei and Zechs were talking to the local
law enforcement about they knew of the man the
Preventor's had been trying to apprehend. Since his
presence tended to be off-putting to some officials,
he'd volunteered to stay behind and see if he could
dig up anything.

A face again appeared on the screen. "His number's
1-435-237-7845. Good researcher. Don't use him too
often 'cause he does mainly historical stuff, but this
is just his thing. The guy's damned creepy, collectin'
all this occult mumbo jumbo, just what you need. His
rates are reasonable too."

The former pilot smiled. "Thanks a bunch."

"No prob. Anytime, Duo."

The screen went blank. Hopefully somebody upstairs was
smiling on him, he needed a break. Of course, it might
all be pointless, the ravings of a madman. **The scary
part was he looked so damned sane when he was saying
all that crazy stuff. His eyes weren't lying.**

He reached out and dialed.

//Beep. Beep. Beep.//

The com continued to beep. **Must not be anyone there.
Or it's the middle of the night there and my one lead
is going to be incredibly pissed off at me.** He
hadn't recognized the code for the area, though it was
on Earth.

He was about to hang up when a vaguely European voice
croaked out "Hello."

The man on the screen was about thirty-five, with
brown hair and a face pasty and pale from lack of sun.
Light glinted off his glasses. What Duo could make out
of the surroundings were old-fashioned paper books,
piled in clumps on a dusty desk.

"Hi, is this Damian McNeil?"

"Yes?"

"My name is Duo Maxwell. A friend of mine, Donald
Robertson, said you might be able to help me. I
understand you have an interest in researching the
occult."

Suddenly, the man perked up. "It is my hobby. My
obsession, you could say."

**Bingo.** That had obviously been the right thing to
start with. **He probably thought I was asking him to
dig up some dusty, boring family history or
something.**

"I have a sketchy description. How much would it cost
me to have you check it out for me and see what you
can find?"

"Give me the description first." The man seated
himself at the desk in front of the screen, watching
him intently, glasses glowing almost eerily. He looked
like a vampire. Donald was right, the guy was creepy.

"They were pale, white, and dressed in black leather,
so something like it. The leader was a man, but he had
pins arranged in a grid all over his head. There was a
woman with him, but her scalp had been peeled off and
tied down to her shoulders."

He looked at Damian closely. The man didn't seem
surprised at anything he was saying. In fact, he was
nodding, like it was making perfect sense.

"Anything else?"

"Chains. They were directed and prevented escape.
Also, they mimicked the voices of the dead."

"Interesting." Damian pushed his glasses up his nose
and leaned back in his chair. "Where did you get this
description? I don't think it was first hand."

"How do you know?"

"Well, you're in too good shape to have come into
contact with them," replied the man, matter-of-factly.

"You're actually believing this?"

"Oh, yes. There are documented accounts. It's not as
strange as you might believe. I take it that this
isn't just casual interest, then? Was it a friend
perhaps? Or a relative?"

"What?"

"Who survived, of course." The man was as cold-blooded
as a snake. "You had to get this description from
someone and I don't think it was researched. If that
was the case, you wouldn't need me."

"Just an acquaintance."

"Ah, well, they're lucky. To survive an encounter with
the Order of the Gash."

"Order of the what?"

"Gash. Hell's elite damned."

The idea was insane, but he had been the one to pursue
this train of thought. **Maybe I should have just gone
with Wufei and blamed it on shock.** He looked on
Damian's grinning face and shivered. The itch of
something crept up his neck again. He'd never been
sure about God, but Hell was something he'd seen too
many times in reality.

"Can you do it? You seem to know a lot about them."

"So you are going to look for them, then?"

There was a thought. Did he really want to meet the
things that had done that? The problem was, he did. He
wanted, no, he needed, to know.

"We'll see," he said, noncommittally. 

Damian nodded. "You are. I can tell."

He flashed back to Michael's hospital room. //"You
know, don't you? You're friends don't believe me, but
you do. I can tell."//

The man had continued in spite of his distraction.
"Who wouldn't want to know what comes after? For this,
I'll give you a deal. I'll send you everything I can
find." Dark eyes a hint too bright pierced him. "In
return, you do the same when you do find them.
Preferably before you try to summon them."

"That's it?"

"Yes. Trust me, it's worth it."

"What do you mean, 'when I find them'? I probably
won't."

"Oh, you will. Once you start looking, you'll find
them." Damian paused and smiled wider, this time with
teeth. "Or they'll find you. It's just a question of
time."

***

They had found out nothing that they hadn't already
known. With the smuggler gone, there were no more
leads to the pirates and what had destroyed the
Preventor team. Basically, they had wasted a day and
the killers were that much farther from their grasp.
Zechs took a deep breath, looking upward at their
hotel, unconsciously seeking out their room on the
third floor. Wufei was muttering to himself about
'local incompetents' and fuming. Hopefully Duo had had
more luck than they.

He reached up one hand and brushed his bangs out of
his face, tucking some behind his right ear as they
crossed the street and made for the door. Duo had
mentioned trying to find some information through his
contacts. The boy had had a strange look in his eye
ever since the interview with Ramsey. It was a gleam
that seemed somewhat disturbing behind those usually
cheerful eyes, but Duo had been a Gundam pilot after
all and it was times like this that he could believe
it easily.

"Do you think he's found anything?" Zechs asked his
partner as they went inside and made for their room.

"Humph. He's probably looking for demons." There was a
bitter edge to the statement. Wufei had been acting
rather touchy ever since they'd reached the colony. He
apparently didn't get along well with Duo, though
Zechs had to admit to himself that he didn't mind the
young man's company at all. Quite the opposite in
fact.

Pulling out his key card, Zechs knocked once on the
door to let Duo know they were there. Surprising a
Gundam pilot was never a good idea, as three months
working with Wufei had taught him. The lock made a
hishing sound as he slid the key in and the light
turned green. He pushed it open and held the door for
the younger Chinese man.

Duo smiled at him as he entered.

"How'd it go?"

"Not so well," the blond replied. "We didn't find out
anything new."

"That sucks, man."

Zechs shut the door behind him with a click. "We're
going to have to do some investigating of our own.
What about you?"

"Well, I may have found something."

He watched Wufei walk past Duo without a word, set
down his case of papers at a perpendicular angle to
the desk and attempt to drill into the braided boy's
head using his eyes alone. It didn't appear to be
working. Duo was probably used to it by now and
ignored it.

"I called up some people I know and one of them
suggested a researcher in the occult..."

His partner snorted derisively. "Demons? Maxwell, do
you really expect us to believe that fairy tales
killed those men?"

Duo ignored the interruption. "I gave him Ramsey's
description and he recognized it."

That was interesting, but not really unexpected.
People often had nightmares with things they knew.
Still, it might be useful to find out what triggered
it.

"Really?"

"He's sent me some preliminary information and is
going to get back to me with more detailed stuff. And
unless Ramsey has some interesting and disturbing
hobbies, I doubt he could get a match to these simply
from past association." Duo handed him a print out.

Zechs looked at the picture on it, a sketch really, of
a man's head. There was nothing really extraordinary
about it, if you ignored the detailed pattern of pins
gridded across it.

"Familiar, huh?"

The former Lightning Count nodded and handed it to
Wufei.

"The Order of the Gash. Damned souls who now serve in
Hell as soldiers against humanity."

"Ancestors! That's..."

"Crazy." Duo smiled wider as Wufei shook his head in
disbelief. 

"Do you think someone was imitating these demons?"

"Maybe." He took the picture back from Wufei and set
it onto a pile of other papers on the desk.

***

"You fool!"

"But..."

"Don't you realize what you've done? You've probably
led them right to my doorstep."

Bremand was angry, no more than that, he was furious.
Not only had this little two timing thief killed
Preventor agents, he had come running straight to him.

"I wasn't followed, they were all too busy trying to
find out what happened."

"What? That's easy enough to explain. You rigged your
place with a bomb and now they're all howling for your
blood," his voice noticeably calmer, though his anger
had not lessened. It did not do to show too much undue
emotion in front of his men, but this had caught him
by surprise. He'd have to make an example, that much
was clear. "I can't allow this sort of thing to
happen, you know. It's bad for business."

"Wait! Please!" the other whimpered. Pathetic, just
like the rest of him, from his long unwashed hair to
the nervous twitch on his left cheek to the way he
cowered in the chair across from Bremand's desk.

"Why?"

"Because that's not what happened at all. I... I
didn't rig a bomb. The Preventors probably still don't
know what happened. It's..."

"Yes?" he said, impatience evident from both his tone
and the way he tapped his foot against the floor.

For a moment, he worried that the man was going for a
weapon, despite the expert search and the men standing
by out of sight for that purpose. The rifling through
clothes stopped and something was pulled out from
beneath the immense jacket. "This." The object was put
forth for his perusal.

"A box. Most impressive," Bremand said sarcastically.

"No, this is what did it."

"Really?"

***

"So you see, I'm bringing it to you," Charlie
finished. He'd left out a great deal, but told Bremand
all the important stuff. Hopefully it would be enough
to save his neck. The Preventors hadn't been his
fault, he'd only been trying to keep up his end of the
deal. He shivered at the thought of black eyes, eyes
with no whites that looked into his soul. He never
wanted to see those again. Let someone else have the
box, yes, let someone else deal with it, with them.

"Very interesting. I'll have to test it." Bremand was
fingering the object, but his gaze met his again.
"But, I can't change my mind. An example is still
necessary."

"What?" That bastard, after what he'd done. Charlie
jumped to his feet and ran for the door, but didn't
get very far. Pain in his leg, and he fell, then pain
in his chest. Coughing blood, his last glimpse of this
world was Bremand smiling smugly at him, box in hand.
The world began to go dark. He could hear laughter,
but whether it was Bremand or Them, he couldn't tell.
Despair. He'd kept his bargain, he brought more
victims in exchange for his own life, but it hadn't
mattered had it. He was still damned.

TBC ...


======
Notes:
I'm adding a notes section just cause I feel like it... well,
actually, I'm planning on letting you know some stuff.

Okay, for those of you who are still clueless, this story is a
crossover with Hellraiser. (You know, the movies with the guy
that looks like a pincushion.) I have only seen the first 4 movies
so I have discounted anything from the fifth one. But those I have 
seen enough times that I could probably write transcripts of them
from memory. This, more that GW is where I'm going to play with canon.
I mean, this is about Hell, I'm just running with it.
It's not based on the written material available, though I will
make a few references to a few comics and such. If I do, I will note 
it. Otherwise, only things seen on screen count for this. 

If you want more information, I suggest watching the movies or you
can try the Hellbound Web at http://www.cenobite.com

Well, here's more stuff you probably don't care about at all, 
but I thought I'd share.

The beginning is a bit of paraphrasing of one of my favourite
biblical quotations. 

Damian's first name is a bit of a tribute to the Omen movies.

Donald's first name came from the Mayor of Casterbridge, a book
I absolutely can't stand. I have no idea why I thought of him, 
but I did.