Ways to hide an evil cultist's body

Dec 10, 2021 11:23 pm

Are your coworkers into black magic?

I've been listening to a podcast called Scared to Death,* and on the 100th episode they told a story about a young woman who was singled out for some kind of demonic sacrifice. This poor girl was tormented, threatened on the phone incessantly, and even her friends were harassed until she was basically alone. The constant torment gave her the reputation for being a troubled teen who, if she "disappeared" would be presumed to have run away from home.

It was a horrifying story, but I couldn't help thinking of what Kit would do. She would call on her powerful allies and get some help tracking down the cultists who were plaguing her, and then she would take care of them one by one, in a lethal and satisfying manner.The difference between true horror and urban fantasy is the helplessness of the protagonist. I'd like to think I'd also be proactive about shutting that noise down. I'm not saying it's okay to kill people, in general, but if evil cultists were harassing me ... let's just say that no one knows how to hide a body like a writer who listens to a lot of true crime podcasts.

Context matters a lot. Context is the difference between a serial killer and a decorated war hero. Whether you're paranoid for always locking your doors or a naive idiot for not locking yours despends on the neighborhood. In the Kit Melbourne novels, book three, Vampire's Dayrunner, is the one that really kicks it up a notch with the violence. Not that she doesn't fight off threats before, but this is the novel where she starts to be really proactive about it. There's a scene at the end, when Kit's upset because she just killed a bad guy, and Holzhausen tells her it gets easier. Kit says "I don't want it to get easier."

I didn't know it at the time, but I think that line set the path of the relationship between Kit and Holzhausen. In Vampire's Dayrunner, he put her through hell because he wanted to harden her. And she does end up harder--but only up to a point. Because even if circumstances require you to occasionally rain holy hell down upon some evil cultists, you don't want to be so hard that you can't let anyone else in.

*I am borderline obsessed with scary story podcasts, especially stories that are true stories of hauntings, cryptid sightings, or other paranormal stuff. Any recommendations?

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