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The sting of hot water on her lesioned skin reminded Valorie that she was, miraculously, alive. She leaned against the wall of the shower in a semi-delirious state as blood and dirt washed off of her. She had left Hurk and his undead friends shortly after the man had begun sobbing. It was a gross thing to do, really, quietly excusing yourself when someone else was in need of support, but the woman had already paid the man back. She didn’t want to put up with that sort of downer shit, especially not after everything she had dealt with lately. Valorie had spent the rest of the night out on the streets, a vial of Demon’s Blood gripped tightly in her hand in case the need for it arose. Okay, okay, so perhaps she was purposefully wandering outside of some old hole in the walls waiting for a Rat to crawl out of them. 

She needed answers, or at least that was what she told herself. She had a few brushstrokes illustrating why somebody had been sent to kill her, but Hurk had been pretty sparse on details and by the time she had thought about pushing him for more the man was more or less invalid with despair. It was a terrible idea, but she decided she would test her theory by putting herself forward as bait. Yet, when a Rat finally did come out of some dilapidated apartment building it had been Valorie that had to rush him down to get his attention. If they were out for her ass then he hadn’t gotten the memo. Hell, he barely seemed capable of functioning from the way he was shambling to how he didn’t even bat an eye at her dirty, disheveled, and bloody appearance. 

She needed answers, but she wanted a high and she wanted one that she considered less dangerous than Demon’s Blood—after all, she had almost nearly destroyed her body because of that shit. Valorie wasn’t the kind of dumbass to make the [i]same[/i] mistake twice most of the time. So, obviously, she traded down. One vial of Demon’s Blood for two doses of Runez. A real rip off, going by street prices, but she didn’t bother with haggling. She just wanted to not be there for awhile, and if some goddamn piece of shit nightmare killer came after her then she’d be that much harder to hit. Plus, she still had two more vials of Blood. Worst case scenario and she’d just pop one of those and change the chemicals of her body with some super powered speedball that'd either make her indestructible or at least make her feel that way until the end. 

So much for going cold turkey. So much for keeping promises.

No trouble came that night, and by the morning light she was no longer jaunting across crosswalks or phasing through streetlights. She hid out in a park near Cain’s apartment smoking a pack of cigarettes that she had discounted for herself in her haze until mid-morning, and then decided to risk entering his place. He was, thankfully, already out. After disposing of her bloody clothes and throwing up into the trashcan (the Runez, she decided, had not been as pure as she had been led to believe), she had hopped into the shower. That had been thirty minutes ago, maybe longer. At this point, her skin was a raw red like a lobster’s and a strangely pleasant pain was pulsing from her wounds from her fight with that crazy comic book bitch.

[i]What's her name, again? Vindictive? Vengeance? Vigilance?[/i]

That was the first time she should have died. Last night was the second. No, fuck that, that was wrong. There were so many other times. There was that night where she had almost overdosed. Almost, only because in her mind an overdose only occurred if it was officially declared by a sleepy-eyed doctor at three in the morning in some rundown free clinic. Then there had been the one night with the weird tasting drink. Her second job. That one time she had written the wrong rune, the other time where she had said the wrong thing. The dead already hated coming back; they were downright violent when they came back wrong. How many times, how many times, the better question was how many times had she saved herself? 

At least that was a number she could keep track of with one goddamn hand. 

[i]Fucking hell, what am I doing?[/i] she thought, her hand curling up into a tight, tiny ball as it slammed against the wall of the shower.

The vibrations must’ve signaled the water heater to give up at the point, and quickly the shower became unbearably cool. Valorie swiped the fog away from the mirror and glared at her emaciated, self-abused body.  [i]Disgusting.[/i] She toweled herself off quickly and tossed on a over-sized sweatshirt she had borrowed off of some forgotten, alcohol-fueled hookup. [i]Disgusting.[/i] She collapsed onto the couch and hazarded a glance at her bag, knowing fully well that she’d jump at any excuse to use her second dose of Runez even though it had been a bad batch. [i]Disgusting.[/i] She poured a double into one of Cain’s tumbler from some decanter and took a large, stiff drink. Her face wrinkled as she shook her head back and forth no, no, no.

“God-shit-fucking-shit disgusting,” she said between a fit of coughs, whatever the hell kind of spirit she had just drank burning away at her taste buds as she poured herself another double. “Ugh, seriously this stuff is [i]so[/i] disgusting. Nobody’s impressed that you drink this shit by choice, Cain.” 

Exhaustion overtook her halfway through her second glass, and when she woke up the sun had gone down and her cup was still amazingly balanced the armrest of the couch. She set the wounded soldier on the table where it would remain until she either poured it out or forgot how gross the liquor had been. Stomach rumbling, she smothered her appetite with a cigarette and walked over to the bookshelf. She idly flipped through some of the books as the cigarette burned until she found a rather colorfully and explicitly illustrated one with chapters titled things like ‘Hexes: Inflict Pain and Restrain’ and so on.

It was a bit too dry despite the graphic images, but she still found herself devouring the material. ‘The common hexer would prepare charms activated by incantations by etching runes into wooden planks carved from either a holly or alder tree. Often, these hexers would be caught with their prepared spells and condemned for practicing witchcraft. The more shrewd and practiced hexer, one that all students should strive to be, are capable of executing hexes through conducting the charged magic in air with a silent series of nigh-unnoticeable finger twitches, allowing them to public inflict suffering on any adversary without alerting attention to themselves. One such spell that even amateurs can execute without the need of timely preparation is an equilibrium jinx that tricks an individual into feeling that they are losing their balance, quite often causing them to readjust their movement in such a way that forces them to fall. While often bruising no more than the victim’s ego, it is not to hard to theorize the potential uses of the jinx if one’s foe was walking along a rush river or standing near a steep drop.’’

And so on. Valorie took photos of choice passages for later consultation. Of course, she’d still need some practice; in the meantime it wouldn’t hurt for her to stock up on a box of bullets. Since it was already out, she looked at her phone. It was getting on in the evening, but her sleep cycle was now screwed after staying up all night. Cain hadn’t come home yet. He hadn’t even sent her a text. It wouldn’t be accurate to described her as necessarily worried or concerned; she knew the old man could handle himself or at least she assumed as much. Still, she did feel a slight unease that he had failed to get in touch with her. 

Or disappointment, really.

She kicked her feet up on the table and flipped through her newsfeed: 42 Cute Outfits For Less. Elves Hate Him: Man Claims To Hold Secret For Longer Life. Slayer Strikes Again, Slaughters She-Elf! Valorie rolled her eyes as she scanned through the detailed article, thumbing through the comment section not unlike how somebody would gawk with morbid curiosity at a horribly bloody carwreck. Anything about that crazy Lediyah bitch was overshadowed by the Slayer. Her feed updated with a live broadcast of the Swat storming some fancy hotel to do something, whatever, the news was boring.

Tossing her phone into her bag and slipping on some pants, Valorie pulled her hood over her head and slipped her knife into her sweatshirt pocket. After the nonviolent encounter with the Rat last night she wasn’t sure who was or was not hunting her, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her from going out. It’d give her a chance to see if she could pull off a few of those hexes, and she always had her old failsafe if those didn’t work. Besides, her stomach was positively barren and no amount of cigarettes or angry junkies would be able to keep her hunger underfoot. 

Maybe she’d use her newfound wealth to eat in one of those snotty restaurants where they listed the food as market price and had whatever the hell a “sommelier” was on staff. She’d sit there in her sweatshirt and leggings, cross her arms, turn up her nose, and pretend that she knew what the fuck she was supposed to do when they handed her the cork to a wine bottle. Better yet, Valorie was pretty sure that no fucking psycho for hire would come barging into a place with some fancy French name looking for a Rat that had been a rat. And all of those places were pretty close to the Firm. She could swing by and see if they had any further books on hexes, or at the very least see if Kurtz knew anyone that’d sold handgun ammo without checking IDs. Regardless, she knew that she had to begin watching her own back.