Casey sat up straight at the knock on his hotel room door. His mind went through who would be knocking on the door on a Saturday afternoon as he got up and answered it.
It was the new guy, a shrimpy dark-skinned man with a dusty hat low over his face. “Good afternoon,” the man said and grinned, glancing down at Casey’s boxers. “May I come in?”
Casey looked down, and stepped inside. “Yeah,” he went to the couch and plucked a pair of jeans from it, stepping himself into them. “What do you want?”
“I have a message for you.”
“Yeah?”
“‘K’weswa Ka’chuh.‘”
He whirled around suddenly, staring at Fletcher. “What?”
“K’weswa Ka’chuh. That mean anything to you?” He leaned against the stereo, watching Casey’s reaction of confusion and fear. “You are the Black Fox, Lord Hino’s champion, yes?”
“I’m not Lord Hino’s – how do you know?”
“My apologies. Whispers on the wind. I heard a woman’s voice call that as I passed through to get here. What does that mean? I’m unfamiliar with that language.”
“It’s Croatoan. It means ‘Help me, Black Fox.'” He approached the man. “Where did you hear it? Can you take me there?”
“In the Umbra. And yes, I can take you there. But there’s some caveats you need to know.”
Casey started getting dressed. “I don’t care. I need to save her.”
“Black Fox, to be honest, you can’t do this alone.”
“You’ll be with me.”
“Oh, no, I won’t.”
He stopped. “No?”
“I can guide you there, but I can’t do much fighting.”
“I’ll do it anyway.”
“Black Fox, you should get some help with this–”
He was fully dressed now. “Okay, let’s go.”
The man shrugged, and grabbed a hold of Casey’s arm, holding it in a near vise-grip. “Do not let go,” he said, and said a prayer in Egyptian that Casey fully understood:
Anubis protect us
Osiris avoid us
I build this to bring
A guest through to your world.
I am responsible for him
I shall punish his transgressions
And sing of his glory as he aids us.
Then, the next thing he knew, he was in a murky place where there was an coffin with an entrance into a cave. The man pushed him into the coffin and he fell down, down, landing hard on dust. As soon as he got up though, he was looking into the very hungry maw of a werewolf.
Casey tried to back off, but the wolf went at him, and a fight ensued. He dispatched him after a long time, but then looked beyond the body of that wolf – which disappeared at its death – to see more. Casey was bleeding and his leg was resetting.
“Hey, um, man?”
“My name’s Fletcher, Black Fox.”
“I think you’re right, Fletcher.”
Fletcher offered a smile in the gloom. “You’re a good man that knows his limitations.”
“I know them all too well.”