It had been what many would define as a long day. For Dominic Dusk, also known as Albert Lichtenstein it had been pretty average. He had grown up in a superhero household, and underwent his own training. Gained his own powers, had his own life fall apart. It's part of what drove him in this life. He allowed his mind to wander as he walked the streets, as Evening gave way to Dusk.
He knew the way to Paloma's apartment, when she first went missing he had staked the place out. First in the hope that she had found her wayward lover, and had just spent the time catching up and forgot to tell him. Then as the weeks turned to months in the hopes that there would be some indication on what had happened to her. The letter arriving at his office with the two envelopes within it granting him power of attorney and asking him to settle her affairs should the worse happen wasn't the most positive sign, but he had still held out hope. That's why he started this job, well. After what happened in the police between him and-
"Shit."
Walking with the flow of pedestrian traffic he turned his attention to his jacket, going from one pocket to the next. Personal cell, keys, Palomas keys, pad, pencil... He pulled his work cell from his pocket and nearly winced at the number of notifications he had. Missed calls, voicemails, emails, texts. Emails were easy, payment notifications, payment missed notifications, deals, spam, the occasional threat from a spouse who he had caught cheating. Texts, there weren't really that many. Mainly missed call notifications.
Dominic put his phone up to his ear as he went through his voicemail, his feet followed an unmarked path through the other people walking the streets. They had thinned out for a while as he walked the streets, Palomas apartment was far enough away that he should really have used some form of transport. That said he did his best thinking while he was on his feet, walking the streets. Guided as if by instinct, he flicked through the messages. Only one today was someone demanding payment, which was a nice surprise. Everything else was the usual. Jaded lovers, what definitely wasn't an attempt to get blackmail material on the mayor, trade secrets. Amongst these jobs, there was always something. Always one request that reminded him why he did what he did, and as if on cue the very last message loaded in:
"Hi. Um… hi. This is Joanie. Joanie Porter. I… I’m not sure if you remember me. You came by the St. Dymphna’s a while back. The group home. You gave me your card when you left.
Anyway. We need your help. Look there’s a chance we’re just overreacting but one of kids here has gone missing and we don’t know what else to do. My friends and I have been trying to look for him ourselves but it is getting… I just have a feeling this is more than just a kid running away.
Can you give me a call back when you can? Even if it is just to tell me I am overreacting. I would take that right now.”
It stopped him in his tracks. St Dymphnas wasn't just a home where unwanted or runaway children ended up. It was a home where unwanted or runaway children that were grays ended up. Arguements with his father, and occasionally William, had led him to spend a few nights there over the years. Largely because his best friend Alex had been a resident. In his professional life the occasional lost kid case led him there. Some, with loving parents who actually want them to help, he found. Others, who were escaping abuse or neglect, strangely evaded him.
A missing kid from a home of missing kids, a kid who was probably a gray. Dusks gut churned unhappily, it wasn't unusual for kids to either move on or move home unexpectedly but they usually told someone or left a note somewhere. The fact that his peers were looking for him, at a time where Grays were disappearing with frightening regulatory... He saved the voicemail as he approached Palomas building and made a reminder on his personal cell to phone her back in the morning.
Looking up at the nice high-rise Dusk smiled to himself, he remembered the first time Paloma described her place. Nice building, nice neighbourhood but there was always something about it that upset and plagued her. When he first visited her apartment, while spacious with grand views. It wasn't the top floor.
S T . D Y M P H N A ‘ S H O M E S T . D Y M P H N A ‘ S H O M E
F O R W A Y W A R D Y O U T H S F O R W A Y W A R D Y O U T H S
Joanie
The Docks district was waking up around them as the trio made their way through the tight streets and old brick buildings. Delivery vans rolled past, their engines rumbling against the brickwork, and they passed groups of people heading about their day. A pair of dog walkers chatted outside a corner shop. A cyclist weaved through a line of parked cars. Someone swept outside a café, sending the smell of warm bread into the air. The pavement still held the cool of the night, but the sun was already warming the tops of the warehouse roofs, turning the windows into pale gold mirrors. The whole neighbourhood felt like it was stretching its limbs after sleep.
Joanie followed suit. They’d gotten home late last night from the Slats, which maybe hadn’t been the best idea given she was due to start her new job at Old Prue Gables in half an hours time. She was surprised the others had dragged themselves out of bed to join her on her walk in this morning. She had a good group of friends.
Trey was currently mid-way through his rant, which he did every year during the draft season.
“The Calder Coyotes have lost their minds,” he moaned, hands tucked into his pockets. “Drafting Harker over Quinn? Ridiculous. I could run that team better than half their management.”
“You can barely run your own life.” Mina laughed, rolling her eyes.
“I’d still do a better job,” Trey insisted. “Give me a clipboard and a headset and I’d turn that team around in a week.”
“You can’t even skate!” Mina exclaimed.
Joanie let out a quiet laugh. Watching the two of them bicker was a good distraction, something light to hold onto while her nerves twisted in her stomach. Her hands stayed tucked into her sleeves as her gaze drifted toward the road that led to Marth’s family’s bed and breakfast. The thought of starting there today made her chest flutter.
Mina caught the look on her face.
“Hey. How’re you doing?” She asked, playfully bumping her shoulder. Joanie hesitated.
“I’m nervous.” She confessed, trying to smile. “You didn’t have to walk me there, though. I appreciate it, but you really didn’t need to.”
“We wanted to,” Mina said. “It’s a big day.”
Trey nudged her lightly with his elbow from the other side. “And after your shift, we’re getting food. I’m starving already.”
“You’re always starving,” Mina said.
Joanie breathed out slowly. For a moment, everything felt simple.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and frowned as she read the name of the sender.
Caleb.
Good luck today. You’ll do amazing.
Joanie stopped walking as her stomach tightened. He had messaged her a few times since their meeting at Sandra’s the other day, apologising for everything that happened. She had ignored every single one. So how on earth did he know about her new job?
Trey saw her expression change.
“Who’s that?”
Joanie turned the screen so they could see. Mina frowned in response.
“Caleb?” She asked. “What does that asshole want now?”
Joanie locked the phone, shaking her head as she began to move forward again.
“He keeps messaging. I haven’t replied.”
Trey hesitated, then spoke quietly. “I… might know why he texted.”
Joanie froze.
“What?” She asked, turning to look at her friend in confusion.
“I talked to him. Last night.”
“Trey, you didn’t.” Mina gasped, her eyes widening.
“I was worried,” he said. “You’ve been different since Harborlight. And you wouldn’t talk to us. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Joanie’s chest tightened as her pulse jumped.
“I thought you said you had my back.” She exclaimed, her fist tightening slightly. He knew how she felt about Trey. Especially after everything that had happened and everything they had seen. How could he betray her like this? After everything he had said the night before.
Trey’s expression softened, guilt flickering across his face. “I do. That’s why I messaged him. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Mina stepped closer to Joanie.
“Trey, she doesn’t need this right before her shift.”
“I know,” he said softly. “I just want her safe.”
Joanie opened her mouth to answer. To tell him she didn’t need protection. But before she could, a voice interrupted her train of thought, cutting across the street.
“Morning, kids.”
They turned.
A battered white van was parked across the road, half in the shade of an old warehouse. Four figures leaned against it, watching them like they had been there long enough to enjoy the conversation.
She recognised the one who spoke immediately from when Trey had pointed him out to her back at Harborlight. It was Detonator Dane, the club’s champion.
“Seems like we’ve stumbled across something fun.” He jeered, rolling a small metal sphere across his knuckles, tapping it lightly as if daring it to ignite.
It rolled through Bret’s chest before he ever reached the entrance, rattling the corrugated steel walls of the converted warehouse like distant artillery.
The sign above the doors simply read:
THRICE
Inside, Calder City’s forgotten youth had found religion. Hundreds packed shoulder to shoulder beneath rusting girders and hanging speaker arrays. Sweat clung to the air. Guitar feedback screamed across the venue as the lead singer threw himself into another chorus, the crowd erupting into a violent sea of elbows and bodies. Thrice was an alternative music venue in Wicklow that lay in stark contrast to finer sites like The Velvet Room. It was dark, dingy, loud and full of life in all its sacred forms; good and bad.
Bret stood just inside the entrance, rain dripping from the hood of his coat. His phone vibrated once. He pulled it out as So-Mi’s face appeared on the screen in the same pixelated form it had earlier.
“Find him Bret.”
That’s all she said before she disappeared. His pulse quickened. Somewhere inside this crowd, Tae’s phone had finally resurfaced. So-Mi, and her strange and wonderful tech ability had apparently got a ping from it. When pressed why she couldn’t have done that earlier, all she said was that the signal was way too erratic to follow. This further mended credence to an idea that had been forming in Bret’s head for a while now. Tae was using Blood and he was being granted some sort of teleportation ability. Yet, if the church man had to guess, he would think the boy had little to no control over it and was bouncing around like a ping pong ball, making it damn near impossible to track.
Entering Thrice, he handed his coat to the young man at the counter. He was genuinely surprised cloak attendance still existed in this here twenty first century. Bret descended the stairs briskly, the Pilgrim scratching beneath his skin. The crowd below parted and closed in waves around him. Every movement created another possibility, another route. He slipped between dancing bodies with practiced ease, his eyes never stopping, his ears filtering conversations beneath the roar of distorted guitars. There were drug deals, arguments and the laughter that could only be heard from young people in the prime of inebriation.
Then…
A smell, rusted and metallic. Blood.
His head turned sharply. The scent was wrong, it was way too fresh, way too familiar. The Pilgrim whispered danger was close, very close.
A scream tore through the music.
At first almost nobody noticed. Then there was another. People nearest the stage began backing away, not in panic, but confusion. The mosh pit opened unnaturally, like water flowing around a rock. Bret pushed forward as the band faltered. The guitarist stopped playing first. Then the drummer followed.Finally the vocalist turned. His microphone slipped from numb fingers. Standing atop one of the towering speaker stacks, silhouetted against strobing white lights, was something no human mind could immediately understand.
Tall. Far too tall. Its body was all tendon and bone, stretched into proportions evolution had wisely rejected. Digitigrade legs bent beneath it like those of some impossible hunting animal, while jagged antlers rose from a blood-soaked skull, scraping sparks from the lighting rig overhead. Rainwater dripped from matted black hair. Its breathing echoed through the now eerily silent venue. It was less loud than it was heavy.
Bret felt an old word surface from somewhere deep within memory. His grandfather pointing toward distant fells. A story from childhood. A creature glimpsed between ancient trees. A name; Hart. Not a stag but something older, something wilder.
”Bollocks.”
The Hart slowly turned its head, its black eyes swept across hundreds of terrified faces. Then it screamed. The sound was almost human, almost. The venue erupted. Bodies crashed toward every exit simultaneously as people climbed over one another in an attempt to escape. Someone fell. Another disappeared beneath the stampede. The Hart leapt. It didn’t jump. It covered the distance between the speakers and the dance floor in a single impossible bound, landing hard enough to buckle concrete beneath its feet. Panic became chaos.
Bret moved, not toward the creature but toward the people. “LEFT!” His voice cut through the noise. “There!” He grabbed a fallen woman beneath the shoulders and hauled her upright before shoving her toward a side exit. “You two!” A pair of security guards looked at him. “Open the loading bay!” They hesitated.
The Hart crashed through a steel support behind them.
That got them moving.
Another high pitch scream. A lighting truss snapped loose overhead. The Pilgrim had already seen it. Bret sprinted. Three strides. He vaulted a barricade and caught the falling aluminium rig before it crushed a cluster of teenagers. His shoulder exploded with pain. Old injuries reopening beneath fresh strain. It was always in these moments, in the midst of fear, chaos and pain that he wished that he had been gifted with some sort of super strength or durability like nearly everyone else. Instead, he’d have to fork out for more bandages and painkillers and the bloody church didn’t pay him well enough for that to continue.
It didn’t matter in the long run, he had to keep moving.
The Hart hit him from the side, he didn’t even see it coming. The impact launched Bret across the venue. He smashed through an empty merchandise stand before crashing into a stack of spare amplifiers. Everything rang in his head and his vision doubled.
The creature didn’t wait. It was already moving again and it was bloody fast. No, not merely fast. The Hart was erratic. One moment it was galloping across the floor, the next it was clambering halfway up a concrete pillar before then ricocheting sideways across a walls d launching itself toward another fleeing concertgoer.
“No!”
Bret threw himself into its path, using his entire body to knock it off its charge. The antlers missed the civilian by inches. One tine ripped through Bret’s sleeve instead, carving a line of fire across his upper arm. He answered with an elbow beneath the creature’s jaw.Bone met bone. The Hart staggered. He doubted it was from pain, more likely it was from surprise.
Bret didn’t press the attack. He couldn’t. Another section of balcony gave way. More people. Always people first. The fight became movement. The Hart bounded through the venue like a terrified animal, every instinct screaming for escape while its immense strength turned every collision into catastrophe. Bret followed as best he could, reading paths, predicting collapse and redirecting momentum away from the people.
He made a point not to try and chase the creature away, instead only intercepting where innocent lives intersected its panic and trying to herd the Hart away.
A charge sent Bret through a window and into the rain-soaked alley behind the venue. The Hart rounded on him there. For the first time, there was no one else around, just the two of them. Steam rose from the creature’s body as it breathed in ragged, desperate bursts. This was not rage, it was exhaustion, fear. Bret had been around animals enough to know the difference.
He lowered his stance. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
The Hart answered with a broken, mournful cry, then it charged.
The alley became instinct. Brick walls. Fire escapes. Overflowing bins. Every surface was a potential path. Bret slipped beneath slashing claws and kicked off a wall. He twisted around the antlers, running purely on adrenaline and probably one too many energy drinks. He scrambled toward the rusted chain suspending a construction scaffold overhead and with every ounce of strength he had, pulled on it, forcing the steel to snap.
The scaffold crashed down between them, though it did not trap the creature. It did but Bret a few more seconds. The Hart stumbled, trying to get back to its feet. Its movements then changed, becoming slower, its body jerking.
The King’s Blood was burning itself out.
Another step. Its antlers cracked, breaking away from its skull and hitting the floor. A sharp report echoed through the alley. One tine shattered against the pavement. The creature stumbled again then collapsed. Bones began to move, not outward; inward. Legs folded back into human anatomy with wet, sickening pops. The remnants of the antlers splintered, shrinking beneath torn flesh. Muscle receded. Hands returned. The impossible monster shrank into a young man curled on cold concrete, naked save for torn articles of clothing clinging to bloodied skin.
A boy, no older than nineteen, lay bruised, shivering and utterly terrified.
Bret did not even think. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off as quickly as he could, revealing his blood stained torso to be washed by heavens tears from above. He covered the young man up and then leaned back against a wall, trying to catch his breath. He could hear the sirens in the distance, no doubt to quickly be followed by Vanguard’s best and brightest come to take the glory.
The boys eyes fluttered open. “…please…” Barely audible. “I…” His body trembled violently. “…I couldn’t…”
A voice broke through the rain. “Billy?” Bret turned.
So-Mi stood at the mouth of the alley, soaked through, breathing hard as though she’d sprinted the last mile. Her confidence was gone. In that moment, she looked impossibly young, like the girl who had first appeared to him at St Brigid’s, looking for her brother. She hurried forward, dropping to her knees beside the boy. “…Billy?”
His eyes found her and recognition flickered. “So…” He tried to smile and failed. “…Mi…” She stared at him in disbelief.
“Oh my God…” Her hands hovered uncertainly over his shoulders, afraid to touch him. “I know him,” she whispered, more to herself than Bret. “He… he and Tae used to skateboard outside my apartment.” A tear escaped despite herself. “He’d come over after school.” She laughed once; broken. “He could never beat me at Mario Kart…”
Bret leaned his head against the wall, the heat from fresh wounds beginning to sizzle on his skin as whatever chemical inside him that allowed him to carry on, evaporated. Silence settled over the alley for a brief moment as the weather masked the sirens. Rain washed diluted blood toward the drains.
Among the shattered concrete lay a single broken antler. Ivory. Still warm. Bret looked at Billy. Then at So-Mi. Then at the fragment of the Hart resting on the floor. And he came to two realisations.
The first was that So-Mi had been right before when she said he needed help. It seemed clear that this El Jefe character was going to keep sending people out onto the concrete wilds of Calder City, doped up on King’s Blood, consequences be damned. Bret had options, paths branching out before him. He could leave it all alone, forget about Tae, forget about So-Mi. He could go to Cressida and hand everything over to Directorate Nine. He could do that. He could also leave it for the police or Vanguard but he doubted anything would come of that. People like them, people from the streets, they’re forgotten about so easily.
The second realisation was much easier to contemplate. Bret’s eyes fell on Billy and then drifted down to an open slash across his torso and the glass protruding from his left wrist. He was angry.
For the first time, in a very long time, Bret was really fucking angry.
The ceiling of the Haunt's basement was a winding maze of various pipes, conduits and ducts. Most of it had been capped, valves shut off, wires pulled, but enough was still working that the basement was filled with a subtle, dull hiss. Pipes creaked and moaned while the snap of shifting metal in the ductwork echoed through old concrete rooms with ceilings low enough to make even a person of moderate height duck through cement-block doorways.
"I hope that dial stays locked in on WKNT as our 'Days of Remembrance' special... Crackling audio echoed through the narrow corridor, the broadcast illuminated on a cracked monitor hoisted above a desk littered with electronics and soldering equipment. Cables in neat braids were zip-tied into harnesses that ran parallel with the raceways on the ceiling above. The makeshift workspace was shared with various keyboards and synthesizers alongside other recording equipment.
________________________________
Smoke rose from the tip of the soldering iron as the hooded figure continued to work on the circuit in front of him. The hum of a 3D printer in the corner added a constant drone behind the broadcast as the figure nodded along. He looked up from his work, his eyes fixing on the angular caricature of a rat's head that made up the large mask in front of him.
A smile crossed the man's face, the scars that marred his visage twisting with the grin while he stared into the glowing green LEDs that illuminated the face of the mask. He'd been considered a rat his whole life, a bilgerat raised in the Wharves, destined never to amount to anything. Mikołajek Kamiński may not have been a household name, but DJ R3TCH!D R@T was on the tip of everyone's tongue.
Now the people of Calder City worshipped the rat.
...Becca, I have to ask, since you know your Calder Capes pretty well, do you remember the Piper?"
The Piper, Landin Johansson. He had left a tremendous impact on Mikołajek's life. Or rather, an impressive void. His sperm donor of a father, the Piper had used his abilities to assault Mikołajek's mother, coerce her into relations with him and then bailed the minute those actions had consequences. Naturally, no other suitor came calling once word got out that his dear mother had been a Graybanger.
Even the Molls wouldn't take her.
Given the difficulty that Krysia had in proving her consent was coerced to the police, let alone any lawyer that would hear her out, Mikołajek's mother had never been able to press charges against the alleged super.
"...dead, killed in a shootout with the Pointe District Police in the middle of Swashbuckler's Splashdown." The female host stated, only serving to widen Mikołajek's grin as he stared into the rat mask beaming with pride. It had been easy enough to procure the Piper's armaments, offer to sign a few autographs, take some pictures, all the while lying through his mask to the Calder City Police Department about what a fan he was of the Piper.
Grease the right palms, and evidence from closed cases was fairly easy to acquire. But Mikołajek was not some overly confident, arrogant fool either. Once he had successfully reverse-engineered the Piper's technology using equipment he had discovered in a similar hideaway to his own beneath the Swashbuckler’s Splashdown Park, Mikołajek had simply returned the originals.
His version greatly improved upon the design anyhow. Frequency dialation allowed Mikołajek to target specific age groups, giving his music almost a hypnotic quality that compelled the listener to do exactly as their new Rat God desired.
Lyrics for several new songs sat scribbled in front of him, Mikołajek finding himself humming along to the hook of 'I'm Robin H00d, B!t₵h'. A monitor beside him began to play a snuff film while his latest single filled the room. Reaching across towards the glowing green mask, Mikołajek removed an ear, pulling out the circuit board before replacing it with the one he had been working on and reconnecting the quick connector.
"Local DJ 'R3TCH!D R@T' is the talk of the local scene again with his new single 'Break Stuff (& Kill Ur Rents)'. The evocative title is followed by even more vulgar lyrics which encourage the listener to do exactly that, all while set against a heavy bassline and disorienting instrumentals. Using snippets of local news segments, spliced with TockBox and SnapShot videos, the song is unfortunately catchy with a rhythm that will hype you up and make you want to follow its earworm lyrics."
A broadcast from another of Calder's radio stations played concurrently with the video unfolding in front of him. Mikołajek began to smile as the teenager at the focal point of the video began to swung around an aluminum baseball bat, destroying their parents' living room decor before moving on to family photographs and even awards that dotted the mantle.
"...not just "edgy" or "rebellious." It is a direct incitement to violence. In what world is it acceptable to market a track that explicitly encourages teenagers to harm their parents? We are living in a society that is falling apart at the seams, and this person is actively pouring gasoline on the fire for a few streams..."
Screams began to drown out the talk show as the video displayed the teenager now turning the bat on his father. The older man's jaw hung at an unnatural angle, an eyeball had been freed from its socket while teeth and blood collectively littered the accent rug in the middle of the demolished room.
As the father's laboured breathing came to an end, the enraged teenager tightened his hands on the bat, moving around to target the mother. Mikołajek grimaced slightly, a glimmer of humanity causing him to look away before the screaming suddenly resumed.
"Oof, that is rough, buddy. Anyways, folks, here's local artist and current Calder City favourite, DJ R3TCH!D Rat with 'I'm not Gray (& I Luv It)."
Once was a man who lived a life so mundane, it could only be true.
_ _ _ _ _ Practically invisible to the world around him, life carries on while he felt perpetually stuck treading water just to keep his head
_ _ afloat. Fortunately for the man, fate had different ideas and intervened with a heavy hand. Pushed into a corner, the man
_ _ was driven to hide amongst dusty shelves and heavy tomes. In the silence, he could hear his name being whispered,
_ _ over and over again, until his hand touched one particular opus. A worn book, bound in leather and tarnished steel. Though
_ _ sealed, it opened for a price, and upon spreading its pages, the man's life was changed forever. _ _ _ _ _ _ Now, he is the Warlock they call...
LOCATION:THE WAMPANOAG APARTMENT COMPLEX - MILK STREET
It was absolutely fascinating how the Grimoire had adapted to its new form.
Perfectly emulating Archie's lost phone, by the time he had finally arrived home, it had racked up an impressive missed call and text count from both Harri and Boz. The young lawyer was completely enthralled as the device functioned not only exactly like the one it had replaced, but far beyond the capabilities of a mundane cellphone. It was intuitive to his every thought and whim, cycling through emulated applications and composing messages as they came to Archie.
Thankfully, it still seemed to require his input before sending.
But it was not texting that Archie wanted. No, instead he found himself rapidly pouring through the pages of the Grimoire. The book's author, Zechariah Auber, had left behind a complete manual to mag'ik and a history of the lineage of Emyrs. His emerald eyes had watched in surprise as the book filled out his own name beneath Auber on the 'family tree.' Beside his own name was another direct apprentice of Zechariah Auber, but the name had become corrupted, ending his lineage as the floating symbols refused to form a word or name that was legible to Archie.
Continuing to thumb through the pages, the sandy-haired man laid his eyes on every word on the screen. Foreign languages instantly translated, glyphs became graphemes. Illustrations were suddenly animated, showing the precise movements to conjure forth bursts of flame and bolts of electricity. But what stopped Archie in his tracks was one of the earliest pages of the Grimoire.
A sound of discontent escaped the lithe male's mouth, a scowl upon his face turning to a frown while reading the rules. Re-reading them, he found himself both unimpressed and utterly underwhelmed with how vague the guidelines actually were. Bookmarking the page for later, Archie made a mental note to return and draft a secondary reading of the rules, something more rigid for himself to follow. If this 'mag'ik' was as dangerous as Galloway had made it out to be, then there ought to be more rules than the one listed above.
Still, the apparently arcane-touched Archie couldn't risk the temptation to try to cast something as he flipped until he found a simple illumination spell. Following the directions on the page, Hardwick moved his hand along with the animation several times before muttering to himself.
"S-solas, uh, n'hir-a." Sparks crackled from the palm of his hand, a quick flash of light barely illuminated beyond his hand in the musty corridor of the apartment building. His green eyes went wide in shock that it had worked at all. Waving his hand in shock as though it were on fire, he held it out in front of himself again before repeating the phrase, only this time louder and more confidently.
"Solas n'hira!" An orb of light appeared in Hardwick's hand, casting a soft white light over the corridor of the apartment before the fledgling warlock rounded the corner towards his unit. Continuing to walk down the dimly lit corridor, Archie was so enamoured with poring through the Grimoire and the success of his first spell that he didn't even notice Harri waiting outside his apartment door before nearly tripping over her.
"Where the ₣ʊ₵κ have you been?" Harri stood, ripping into Archie almost immediately before wrapping her arms around him. Archie felt his cheeks begin to flush before the sensation of something wet started to soak through his shirt. Harri lifted her face; her mascara was smudged, her eyes red with fresh tears welling up in their corners.
"I have been worried sick." Harri sniffled, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. "I didn't know what to think when you didn't reply. First you went missing, then Tess-"
"Wait," Archie interjected, "Treasure's missing?" He asked. Beyond having two doting parents, there was another reason Archie had always envied Harri. She had a younger sibling, a built-in friend for life, in the form of her sister, Treasure.
"I might not have been completely honest about yesterday..." Harri tucked a long strand of her dark hair behind an ear. Her eyes looked off to the side before looking up at Archie again only once she had released him. Nodding, Archie moved to his apartment door as Harri followed him while Archie unlocked it.
"Of course, I wanted to celebrate you, the brown-eyed woman reassured Archie, "But Tess has been acting out more and more lately, ever since she found out she was a..." Harri had to take a moment, struggling to say the word out loud. "Y'know, a g-."
"She's a Gray, Harri," Archie replied softly, "It's not a big deal."
"I know, but Mom and Dad are having a really hard time with it, and now Tess is acting like she doesn't know who she is." Harri explained.
________________________________
"I knew she was going to the Haunt last night, and I used your promotion as an excuse to keep an eye on her. I mean, you saw how the Dragons are practically all over that place." Archie watched Harri intently, feeling like he should maybe hold her hand or hug her. Instead, he just awkwardly stood, listening to her while she leaned against the doorway of his apartment.
"Look, I deserved everything you unloaded on me last night, but is there any chance you can come with me back to the club. You seemed to hit it off with that bartender chick, maybe we can use that to find a lead." Harri suggested, "Or you have that friend in the D.A.'s office still, right? Look, Arch, I'm spiralling here, I don't trust the police."
Good call. Archie deadpanned to himself. His experience earlier that day was rightfully still quite fresh in his mind.
"You've seen all the missing posters littering the city. Grays turning up dead with shaved heads, I can't let that be, Treasure." Harri pleaded.
"Look, Harri, I want to help, I really do," Archie replied, "But I don't know how much help I can be."
"Can you call Boz and have him meet us at the Haunt at least?" The woman batted her dark brown eyes at Archie. Any resistance he had instantly melted. "C'mon, it's for Tess, you have to know she was always a little sweet on you."
No, I did not in fact know that.
"Okay, I'm i-" Archie began to answer, only to be interrupted by a loud bark as Marrok suddenly opted to make himself known.
"You got a dog!?" Harri asked, her tone torn between confusion and excitement.
"I think it might have been a drunk decision from last night; the details are a little foggy." Archie lied. "His name is Marrok."
"Marrok, such a handsome boy," Harri replied, approaching the black dog without any semblance of fear and scratching him under his chin. "He's of course, coming too, right?"
Marrok barked again, no doubt to answer Harri's question himself, before Archie slowly nodded.
"Let me call Boz and freshen up." He stated, leaving Harri in the living room with Marrok before searching the bathroom for some Advil. Most of his hangover had subsided, but he wasn't out of the woods yet.
"I'll, uh, drive, I guess." He called, poking his head back out before shutting the bathroom door.
What he wouldn't give for a quiet evening to curl up with a certain book.
In the Awareness, Paloma Torres’ apartment had been spacious and its bay window would let in all the light of the city and beheld the glow of the moon at night. Unfortunately for Eve, it wasn’t the ground floor.
Eve had only the events of the Awareness that had been forced on her; its narrative neither true nor untrue, just a series of images and memories strung along an axis and within it. Memories and images of horrors that she dared not yet speak about or put words out into the real waking and material world. They sat in her skin even now, appalled at what had been revealed to her but as she stepped forward, her mind was quiet. As if everyone inside it was simply observing now. Paloma's horrors had been plain and simple and complex all the same and even now the feelings had not paled or lost their flavour. Eve thought that she could climb the fire escape, and shimmy across each unsafe ledge to reach the window that found itself to open at a particular motion of Paloma’s hand. She’d walk the apartment, find something real there that could speak to and silence the witness marks that had been clawed to her.
She thought that by entering the apartment of Paloma Torres, perhaps a breath would enter and the bones of it all would appear and she’d find truth to her many questions. And she could leave, and she could forget.
She climbed on as the neons and the streetlights flushed and flickered until finally she made it to the edge with the window that she now had the gift to open and so she did, with a dis-quietening ease and then a feeling of derealisation ran cold up her spine and she felt acutely aware that this was a place she’d lived and breathed in before.
She had opened a cupboard door first when she became alert to a sound in the room beside this one, and then of slatted light slipping through the doorway as the front door opened with a creak. She reached to her pocket suddenly grateful she'd thought ahead and armed herself but no sooner had she touched it, ink black poured in from outside and engulfed the light.
The shadow sprawled out and elongated intself in lines until the room became one with the night that hung outside, only a coldly starless sky and an abyss at that. It held an astral quiet. She could not even see own hands or the light of her phone as she pressed at the screen; it had all gone but she did not fear the dark. She turned to face the direction of where she thought it had snaked in from and spoke with a voice into its vortex. “Hello?”
The darkness began to recede just enough that light pooled and outlined her in chalk-like silver. “Eve Raciti?” A man asked. A gun in his hand was pointed right at her. Her eyes widened at that and she took in a sharp breath. There was a confused look upon his face but something in his eyes; his eyes lacked surprise about it all. It was as if pieces of a puzzle were clicking together and as they did he lowered his gun and let the darkness crawl back away, all moving, moving into the fabric of a herringbone trench coat.
As the light re-enveloped the room, a flickering blue light in Eve’s own sleeve crackled away as it was powered up and she steadied her breathing. She released the trigger of the device and eyed closely the man who stood in the doorway now. Her keen eyes tracked him. Had she met this man? She’d remember him, surely. But oh and she did remember him. Paloma did, her memories found his face and his cause. Some Detective. Eve remembered him from somewhere. Elsewhere in the pools of a memory that wasn’t hers, just imprinted to her; his name floated in the abstract, untethered to anything but the sudden collapse between realities as he stood in living flesh before her now.
If she had been mistaken, she could have felt it finally whispered into her ear as a gift. “Dominic Dusk,” she said in response. “Where did you find my name?”
“How have I, a former law officer in Calder City heard of a Raciti?” His words were uttered sardonically into the clearing of the space. Eve felt the weight of the surname and watched as he indicated with his own weapon for her to lower the stun gun. He deliberately showed her he was putting it back into its holster on the way down. As slowly as his hands had unarmed himself, he removed from a smaller pocket a set of keys that flickered in the light as they jangled; a keyring balanced on the tip of his finger. A feather. “Considering I have keys, perhaps you want to tell me why you're here, and how you know my name?”
“Why?” she asked back. “Are you here to arrest me or something? Get your hands on a Raciti?” Her eyes narrowed and her stance relaxed only slightly at the sight of the key and that feather motif swinging beneath it. “She told me to be here. I know why and then I don’t know why. Maybe it was to run into a midnight stranger like yourself.”
“Pah-lease. If I was to arrest you it would be for B and E.” He had rolled his eyes and sighed as he deposited the key back in his pocket. “That is if I didn't want to go accusing you with kidnapping and murder, which is much more impressive.” He scanned the room from its periphery; likely to keep out of the distance of being shocked and thworped. The thing packed a punch.
He stopped his scan, and fixed his eyes squarely upon Eve. “Tell you to come and get rid of the evidence she found before you left her in that alley did she?”
That rattled something in her chest she didn’t like, and it was her words that shot out sharp and electric. “And that would be quite an accusation.
I’m here to help Paloma,” she relented. She would have to make the decision to herself that he was not here to harm or hinder her. She let her own weapon fall into her pocket and began yet again on her search of the apartment. She was here, yes, but she didn’t want to be. She didn’t think she wanted to be. I do.
“She left things behind. Probably for you.” Her fingers moved across furniture, and she directed her attention away from Dusk. As she popped open a drawer, a sharp pain flooded through her head; a stream of images of Dusk from Paloma’s point of view and in the moment, Eve winced and rubbed at her temples, breathing through the ache and the persistent message from Paloma. “You were helping her with something.” It wasn’t a question, but she expected an answer.
He did not answer for some time. Satisfied in some way simply watching her and Eve wondered if he would move from the doorway. “Well, it's kind of what I do,” he said at last before taking one last look inside the room. Then he did, in fact step in. The fabric of his jacket folded around him and she was relieved that the gun was not in his hands anymore. She turned and looked at him, stood there with his hands in his pockets like an idle window shopper. Does he even know what he’s doing?
“So, she told you to find something, who I am, that it was probably for me. She seemed to tell you a lot for someone who, as far as I can tell. Didn't know her.” Dusk arched an eyebrow as he looked at Eve from behind a framed photograph he'd picked up.“Let me guess…” and then she watched as placed his fingers to his temples; almost as she herself had done. A mocking gesture. He remained like that until, in a manner in which he maybe thought he was being humorous, clicked his fingers and pointed at her. “-Psychic?”
Ah. So he’s a moron, then.
She stopped then, snapping her gaze from the inside of drawers over to Dusk. “Worse than that,” she said quietly. Her hands followed the structure of the lining until she had brought them back and could place them upon the front of the drawer. She pushed it closed with a slam in the dark. Fixed to him, she walked steadily in his direction to close their distance. “Do you believe a soul can be possessed by another?” she asked; at his side then, her own face close to his ear, the words trickled to him.
His arms had slackened to his sides and he'd taken them out of his pockets but she had no apprehension as she approached. He didn't seem ready to defend, or offend for that matter. He'd just got them at the ready; the closest motion to a flinch. She wondered what it would take to unnerve him. She had seen no real reaction to the slam, or to her approaching. Though as she finished speaking he recreated some of the distance, appearing to take interest in a nearby stack of books. “Now Miss Raciti, I do prefer to leave the metaphysical questions to the second date.” He turned and graced her with a coy smile.
“However, in the spirit of good faith. I believe in the human soul, or some kind of essence so I suppose with all the other crazy things in this world. It's possible. Now you, how do you know Paloma?”
“Don't flatter yourself,” she remarked, letting him wander to his own investigation. “It's not here,” she said, deliberately ignoring his question as she then stepped out of this room and into another. The music.
She approached into the lounge and living space, finally her eyes met the same window she'd already seen. Floor to ceiling and bordered by sprawling monstera house plants and toward the back of the space an open kitchen. The wall on the left housed the vinyl player and cabinet that had been haunting her and so she approached, crouching down to flick through the records. An intuitive feeling took over and she removed one from the very middle that felt unusually padded. “You're looking in the wrong place,” she called out into the dark.
“I wasn't looking for anything.” A voice called back, before Dusk somehow reappeared from the dark as if from nowhere all over again. “Well. I was. I was looking for an intruder.” She heard him sigh and move into the kitchen, start helping himself in the space like he also knew it. A kettle, a cup, a tin box of tea. Eve watched as he hesitated for only a moment but she kept a close eye on him regardless. “How about a cup of tea? Coffee? Assuming you're not going to kill me of course. You still haven't actually denied being a well dressed hitman.”
“Nope,” Eve said, wagging a finger, while placing the record on the table. “You didn’t know I was intruding anything here. You have her key for what reason, exactly?” As she unfolded the cover, she felt between the slip and there it was – a stack of papers, stapled all together, hidden in the folds of Lou Reed’s Transformer.
All that came from the kitchen for a second was the sound of the kettle boiling, a mug clinking and then cupboards and the fridge being opened and closed and Eve could swear that she heard his nonchalance ruffling the shoulders of his coat into a shrug. “I have her key because she gave me it, and I have a letter giving me permission to be here. You still haven't even told me your association with Paloma.” he sipped the tea while it was piping hot like a maniac, and the scent of the Earl Grey moved and wafted over; blooming behind her senses to pull and tug a memory. The sound of a spoon making circles around ceramic and she thought of her own father in her apartment and she watched as he stirred up their coffee. She watched as her own memory become overlaid with Paloma stirring her tea and taking it to the window; the sound of the silverware being tossed into the sink was like a bell that reverberated and lit up the room in all of its living colour again in Eve's minds eye. A spill of the dream that she could not say for certain was not real.
Eve narrowed her eyes against the tide of Awareness. “You don’t... Actually think I’m a killer, least of all hers now do you? I’m just curious where such a loaded accusation came from.”
“Sometimes to get to the truth you have to get emotional.”
She sighed, annoyed. “I don’t know her because I found her, and when I find people like that- When I’m around people like that–” she paused. “Maybe I’m just good at finding people like that.” She turned, her back to Dusk, and her eyes scanning the window. “Because it’s not like I could be good at anything else,” she added quietly.
“We… Interlinked,” she said, finding a word which might best describe – her way of trying to explain. Paloma had trusted him and even before then, whatever Dusk had seeped in hadn’t felt malevolent. She didn’t feel unsafe with him, not entirely safe nor unsafe. “I… Do that. I interface with death. I saw things.”
Dusk nodded at her over his cup of tea and she waited for his explanation. “I'm not sure what I saw-” he seemed to visibly relax as she told him the truth, at least, and he didn't balk at what she'd said either. It was a disarming reaction but she remained on her guard. “-But I saw something connecting the two of you. I just didn't know what it was.”
There it was, her suspicions answered. “So... You were there and saw me in pain and distress and you saw her body– and, and then. I… I assume you just watched and didn’t help?” She sighed. “Are you sure you’re not a cop?”
He shrugged. “Your knight in shining armour whisked you away before I even knew what was going on. It's not something I've ever experienced before.”
She paced back across the room and slammed the papers down in front of him, it was all notes and clippings, various missing persons reports. “I didn’t kill her.” You have to know that.
He looked at the notes and reports, at first a look of admiration on his face that was then whisked away by a momentary glimpse of sorrow. He sipped at his tea again and Eve watched as the sorrow melted and he cleared whatever the feeling was away with a small cough, misplaced. Eve tilted her head to watch with curiosity as his expression changed while he fanned through the files as he came to a set of what appeared to be aerial photographs that had taken his interest. Maybe he does know what he's doing. Not so likely.
“Are these, did she take these?” She barely had time to answer before he held them up between the two of them and into the light, obscuring his own face behind photos.
“I don’t know that much detail,” she responded, a brow quirked in his direction as he began reviewing the files.
Holding them closer, Dusk appeared to scan them more intently like his mind was at work and reading every detail. “She found a trail.”
She was surprised he hadn't asked her a far more pressing question. “What do you mean a trail?”
He shook his head dragging his attention away from the files, lowering them slightly as at last he met her gaze and she blinked slowly. “Wait a minute," he gave a pause. "If Paloma is in there, in your head, shouldn't you know what she knows?” He featured towards the files. “Couldn't you just explain all this, and what happened to her?”
“That's not how it works, it's… pieces of her.” Eve wrapped her arms around herself and drifted a sidelong stare over the room and from his eyes while the place flickered between dead and alive. “I saw what consumed her at the end, I… I lived it like it was my own life. Flew through her rolling skies. Came upon her like she was myself in a mirror.” Eve stepped sideways from the bench, a hand held up, fingers moving as though touching delicate strands in the air and her eyes closed but she knew the steps of this apartment like the back of her hand. “Maybe she was, maybe I am.” She paused, opening her eyes to look ahead again and out at the city before she turned back to Dusk. “Blood,” His eyes were not dark like the shadows he conjured. They were kind. “They wanted her blood. Again and again-” her voice wavered. “They took her blood to make something perfect. Kept her in a cage. A concrete cage,” the images swam around again and the feelings and she twitched and flinched as if the needle had stabbed her again.
“She was so frightened at the end. So afraid. And maybe I came here to comfort her.”
She heard him mumble something then and wondered if he'd even listened. She heard the rustle of each sheaf of paper as he picked them up, and then the loud and intrusive knocking at the door; violent punctuation that severed her from within the stream of trance and returned her to her own thoughts and to herself.
“CPD Open up!” Dusk flinched; not at the knock, but at the voice and then the files were forced into Eve’s hands as he commanded her to hide with a word before straightening himself and he smiled before the shadows once more dropped from his jacket and cocooned a dimension of black around her.
“Dominic?” The female voice called from the door.
“Hello Lucy,” he breathed out and Eve could hear him pace back to the bench; the cadence of his step against the floorboards was unhurried. “Cup of tea?” From her vantage point, she could see him move and could hear him, but it was akin to watching and listening from behind a wimpled surface of water.
“What the hell are you doing here? And who the hell are you talking too?”
“Oh,” Dusk began again. Eve could swear she heard the smirk that curled at the corner of his mouth and a sparkle in his eye. “I have a letter from Paloma giving me power of attorney, so I was coming just to settle her affairs. Water the plants, that kind of thing.”
The woman barged in; her silhouette all sharp lines and seriousness as she looked around. “Me? Talking?” Dusk started, Eve could see as he turned on his heel. “Nobody really,” he sighed out, “just myself.”
“You’re talking to yourself?” As the woman spoke, she had fixed her attention to Dusk and yet she came so close to the shadow veil that was concealing her where she stood. Eve drew herself further back and held a breath.
“Well yes, I needed some expert advice, so I thought. Who better to ask?”
The woman scoffed and paced away from the shadows then. “I swear Dusk if I find anyone else here-”
As Lucy once more turned her back and made to storm off, through the ripples, Eve sensed Dusk look at her, as if his stare could pierce through it on the very notion that it was his creation and under all of his control. His head tilted and Eve did not need to be told twice. Quiet, quiet she moved. She knew by heart where the troublesome floorboards were and how to avoid them, and under the cloak she moved with an agility that almost reminded her of her ballet, years ago. His head had tilted in the direction of the door; Eve walked beyond the threshold, Dusk’s strange darkness had followed and she stood for a while as both Dominic Dusk and Lucy left. Each of them, a temper that flared but mostly her. Eve gave a sigh of relief which was followed by an amused smirk. The two of them had bickered like divorcees.
He caught up with her outside, clapping his hands together looking remarkably unruffled by the situation, like this was simply another unremarkable evening. “Well. Shall we get a late dinner?”
There was a curious glint in Eve's eye that belied what still roiled within. “Silvio Raciti wouldn't approve of me having dinner with you.” She handed back the files to him. All of them, having realised they were still in her hands; all scrunched and messed up around the edges now. She had helped, she had done all she could for him. She had done all that she could do for Paloma. I have, haven't I?
"Goodbye Dominic Dusk."
_____________________________
Eve had made her way away from Dusk then. Leaving him back there, under the shimmering orange of a streetlamp that coated him in a luminescence that did not suit and set the pattern of his coat to a colour out of his palette; a warmth in the light that set a stark mask of grim shadow about his face. And she, a phantom that blurred into Calder City's gloom and fog.
She watched as even at this hour, traffic moved along the streets and became sucked away by the dark. Eventually, she flagged down a cab, some streets away from where she had left the Detective, some streets away from the strange apartment. Home and unhome. The perspective changed then, it was the streets and buildings the moved and erased into the dark as the cab moved; the city was passing in streaks of light and streaks of dark. The driver was quiet, didn't bother her. Eve supposed he just wanted to get home too, to not have to pick up poor and unfortunate strays like her on the streets this late. It was better than one that talked and talked and talked and talked on.
Eve tried a fragile smile, a small thing that pushed back against a swell in her chest. The weight of a long day and the echo of having tried to help and be useful. In the back of the cab, as the city moved by, Eve cried.
S T . D Y M P H N A ‘ S H O M E S T . D Y M P H N A ‘ S H O M E
F O R W A Y W A R D Y O U T H S F O R W A Y W A R D Y O U T H S
Joanie
“Who the hell are you guys?” Mina demanded, her voice sharp
The street seemed to empty around them as the four figures straightened from their lean against the van. The morning bustle of the Docks faded into the background, replaced by a heavy, watchful silence. Joanie felt Mina begin to stiffen beside her as she spoke, the excitement from moments ago draining from her face as she took in the strangers blocking their path.
Joanie recognised the first two instantly.
Detonator Dane stood at the front, leaning against the van lik#e he owned the street. He had the kind of sharp‑boned, effortless beauty that made people stare without meaning to. Dark hair tied back at the nape, stubble along a strong jaw, eyes bright with a restless excitement that never seemed to settle. His sports jacket hung open over a bare chest, the fabric scorched in places. He continued to roll the metal ball between his fingers.
Beside him stood Cinderjack, broader and heavier, dressed like he had been dragged out bed only ten minutes ago, his blonde mullet an absolute mess. A fitted black T‑shirt clung to his chest and shoulders, hiding the mess of old burns and inked tattoos. The fresh black eye swelling beneath his brow was new. Joanie noticed it instantly. He hadn’t had it at Harborlight. He avoided her gaze, jaw tight. Was it guilt? Shame? Something worse?
The other two were strangers.
One perched on the bonnet of the van, legs swinging casually despite the weight of the hammer resting across her lap. She was small, barely five feet tall, with a compact athletic build that made her movements sharp and fast. Her hair was shaved on one side, the rest dyed a violent red that fell across her cheek. Her grin was wide and mischievous, the kind of smile that belonged to someone who enjoyed chaos far more than she should. The hammer looked almost comically oversized in her hands, but she held it with the ease of someone who had been swinging it since childhood.
Behind her stood a giant of a man. A large Black man, broad‑shouldered and heavyset, with the kind of presence that made the space around him feel smaller. His skin was smooth and dark, his features strong and calm, but his forearms told a different story. They shifted subtly, the surface rippling like wet clay being stirred by an unseen hand. Cracks formed and sealed across his arms whenever he flexed, shedding tiny flecks of dried mud that crumbled to the pavement. The rest of him looked normal, grounded, human. Only his arms betrayed the mutation simmering beneath his skin.
Dane pushed off the van and sauntered forward.
“Relax. We’re not here for a fight.” He pointed at Joanie. “We’re here for her.”
Joanie’s stomach dropped.
Mina stepped closer. “Why would you want her?”
“The Icelander wants a word.”
Trey frowned and raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
Joanie swallowed.
“Caleb’s boss.” She replied quietly. Trey and Mina turned to look at her in unison, confusion crossing their faces.
Dane grinned. “He’s your boss too now.”
Joanie’s throat tightened.
Her eyes flicked to Cinderjack again. He still wouldn’t look at her. She had saved his life. Surely that meant something? Apparently it didn’t, as he wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“Why?” Trey asked.
“Because he saw what she did the other night. Shook his whole club,” Dane said. “You think he didn’t notice?”
Joanie’s breath caught. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Doesn’t matter. He wants you. And when he wants something, we fetch it.”
Trey stepped in front of her. “You’re not taking her.”
Dane merely smiled.
“I was hoping you’d say that.” He turned his head slightly. “Pummel. Mudline. Get her.”
The hammer girl hopped off the bonnet, cracking her knuckles.
The world exploded.
She sprinted first, swinging the oversized hammer in a blur. Trey threw up a bubble so fast it shimmered like glass. The hammer slammed into it with a deep, ringing thud that vibrated through Joanie’s bones. Trey staggered but held.
“Back off!” He shouted.
Dane flicked something from his fingers. A tiny bead, no bigger than a marble, glowing a faint red. It arced lazily through the air, then detonated with a sharp crack that rattled the windows. Trey threw another bubble, catching the blast before it hit them.
“Cute trick,” Dane called. “Let’s see how long you last.”
The giant moved next. He charged, his arms softening into heavy mudlike masses that wrapped around Joanie and Mina’s wrists, pinning them together. The weight dragged Joanie down. Her knees hit the pavement. Panic flared.
“Let go of her!” Mina shouted, struggling.
Joanie felt the familiar pressure rising in her chest. She exhaled.
The ground trembled. A sharp pulse burst from her body. The mudlike grip shattered into clumps that scattered across the street. The giant stumbled back, staring at his cracked hands.
Joanie fell forward, breath shaking.
Mina grabbed her arm. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”
The hammer girl was already back on them. She swung again, forcing Joanie and Mina to duck. Joanie felt the rush of air over her head. Mina kicked out, catching the girl’s shin. She hissed and swung again, closer this time.
Another pulse burst from Joanie’s hands. Smaller, focused. It caught the girl square in the torso and sent her flying back, skidding across the pavement.
“Agnes!” the one known as Mudline shouted. So that was her real name.
He surged forward, his arm liquefying into a muddy fist that shot toward Joanie. She barely dodged, stumbling sideways as the limb splattered against the pavement and reformed. A chunk of brick behind her cracked from the impact.
Mina grabbed Joanie’s sleeve. “Stay with me!”
Before she could reassure her, a rush of heat tore across Joanie’s right side.
Cinderjack lunged, flames racing up his arms. His fist was a ball of fire, aimed straight at her head. Joanie ducked, feeling the heat scorch past her cheek. The last time she had seen those flames had been on the Harborlight stage, aimed at opponents. Seeing them aimed at her now was terrifying.
“Why are you doing this?” she shouted. “I saved your life!”
He hesitated for a moment, as if his guilt was flickering. He still wouldn’t meet her gaze. “You shouldn’t have. It wasn’t yours to save.” He finally said. His voice was angry, although she could hear the fear in it.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“The Icelander decides who lives. Not you. Now I have to prove myself.”
He lunged again.
Joanie ducked. Mina shoved him. He stumbled but caught himself, flames flaring hotter, eyes locked on Joanie like she was the test he had to pass.
Behind them, Agnes was back on her feet. She swung the hammer at Mina’s head. Mina stepped in close, grabbed the handle with both hands, and held on. Joanie was as the veins in her hands glowed white hot. The metal began to soften, the handle sagging. Agnes screamed as the heat melted part of her palm and the skin along her fingers.
“Let go!” she shouted, dropping the hammer.
Then she drove her forehead into Mina’s face. The crack was sickening.
Mina screamed and fell, blood pouring from her nose.
“Mina!” Joanie lunged toward her.
Cinderjack reached Joanie first. His hand closed around her arm. Heat seared through her sleeve. She cried out and swung blindly. Her fist connected with his jaw. It barely moved him.
“You should’ve stayed down,” he growled.
Mudline grabbed Joanie from behind, arms wrapping around her torso, crushing her ribs. She gasped, panic clawing up her throat. She tried to twist free, but his grip only tightened, the mud along his forearms hardening like stone.
“Let go!” She begged between breaths. He didn’t.
Joanie’s breath hitched. Her vision blurred. She looked toward Trey.
He was still holding the line, but barely. Bubble after bubble flickered around him, each one thinner than the last. Dane kept throwing explosives, each bead glowing hotter, brighter, more unstable. Trey’s jaw was clenched. Sweat ran down his temple. His hands trembled. He was shaking under the strain.
He wasn’t going to last.
Joanie felt something inside her crack as her hope slipped away.
The pressure rose in her chest, too fast, too strong, like her whole body was about to tear open. She couldn’t hold it. She couldn’t stop it.
She released it.
The shockwave tore out of her in a single violent burst. The entire street shook. Mudline’s grip shattered instantly. He was thrown backwards, skidding across the pavement. Pummel was knocked off her feet, the remains of her hammer clattering away. Cinderjack staggered, flames guttering as he slammed into the side of the van. The shockwave didn’t stop there.
Windows shattered. Dust rained from the rooftops. The nearest building groaned, its brickwork cracking like ice under a boot.
Joanie stumbled forward, catching herself on her hands. Her lip split as her face impacted the road. She tasted blood.
She looked up to where Trey’s duel with the Detonator was taking place.
Dane was already winding his arm back, a sphere the size of an apple glowing deep red in his palm. He hurled it with all his strength.
The building behind Trey shuddered again, as Joanie realised what she had done. The shockwave had weakened the structure, and Dane’s explosion had now inadvertently finished the job.
The entire top floor began to fall.
“Move!” Trey shouted.
Everyone scattered. She wasn’t paying attention to where the majority of them went, her eyes instead only going to the people who mattered. She was grateful to see Mina scrambled across the pavement to safety, shielding her head with her arms.
Dane on the other hand wasn’t fast enough.
A slab of concrete crashed down onto him, his body disappeared under the rubble in a burst of red splatter.
Joanie stood frozen in place, her limbs not willing her to move as carnage rained down around her. Thankfully, Trey was not in the same state.
He sprinted toward her, grabbed her shoulders, and shoved her with everything he had. She hit the ground hard. A slab of concrete crashed down exactly where she had been standing.
Whilst she was now safe, Trey was in the centre of it all.
“Trey!” She called, panic rising in her voice.
He threw a bubble around himself as rubble landed around him, quickly burying the sphere. Joanie could barely see him inside. He mouthed something. She thought it was her name.
Relief washed over her as she realised he was safe.
Then, right as another chunk of wall began to cover it, the bubble collapsed inward like a soap film popping.
And Trey vanished.
The debris crashed into the empty space where he’d been. Dust billowed. The street shook. Joanie’s scream tore out of her throat.
It must have been gone 2am when they arrived at the yard, Michael Marino’s concrete yard. Just like Luca had said when he'd found her returning to her apartment. He'd been waiting. Missed calls. Something was urgent, and no it wasn't going to wait for the morning no matter how much Eve protested to sleep instead. "What happened?" she'd asked, and he'd given nothing. A big, dumb, nothing that had only made her worry. But there he was, Michael Marino, face down in wet concrete. His phone had bounced just inches from his hand mid call and was weighed upright. Even in the dark, three distinct gunshot wounds could be made out across his back. One of Silvio’s longest running Captains. Luca's captain. Silvio's childhood friend, groomsmen at each other's weddings. Reduced to this. Shot in the night, and Silvio wanted to know who. Not just Silvio, four of his other Captains had come too and one had even brought his pitbull with him.
"He's on antibiotics, Sil," he'd said with a shrug. "Need to keep an eye on him."
"If that mutt fuckin' pisses," Silvio had hissed out through gritted teeth before glancing at the hound. He shook his head when he turned away he saw Eve on her way over, the apprehension in her step, the exhaustion in her eyes. "Where the fuck were you?" he asked. He felt so much taller than her in the dark. "Called you four times."
"I'm sorry. I'm here now," she answered, she'd drawn her arms around herself. He'd asked for her gifts before. Never like this. Never for a body so fresh. Never one of his own, one of the family. Never with witnesses. "What's going on?" she asked, her hands twitching and trembling with the tension; she already knew. There was a smell here that had not struck the others, it seemed. It had not even found its way to the nose of the pitbull but it was thick as syrup; cloying and sweet and rotten. Eve raised a shaky hand to her mouth but it did nothing to filter the air or the sight. The rot coiled and all began to stir like insects in her ribcage.
"I... Don't want to. Something is wrong," she said, quiet and retreating.
"Eve," Silvio said. The other Captains did not look or pay attention, but they were each of them listening to everything. "I need to know who did this, I need to know now. They were gonna bury him in his own yard." He was clouded by a grief she had never known in him; a grief that sat beneath with a cold rage. He spoke some unintelligible curses under his breath. "You're not leaving until I know."
"Please," she whispered.
"I'm not asking you twice." He held a pause, unable to look her in the eye. "I have to tell his wife. I have to tell his daughters."
It took her a moment to realise she wasn’t just going to be able to walk away from this, nor did she want to, when she really pressed herself. She’d grown up with Michael too but she dared not think of it right now. Pushed past how she’d had her first kiss with a neighbouring boy in secret at a family barbecue at Uncle Mikey’s. She'd gone to the movies with his daughters. They'd spent weekends at a lake house together. She could barely think about how his wife was the closest figure she had to a mother of her own and then it just stung that she thought that, and how they weren’t even all that close anyway.
Her gaze passed over the Captains as they stood around and away from the body, none daring to be too close and none daring to catch her eye. Only Eve was given that luxury, to be beside him in death. “Whatever you see,” she whispered in Silvio’s direction, “don't interfere.” Her breath trembled through her teeth and her legs moved before her mind could decide against the course of action, she was pulled there, by a death thread pleading for a witness. Toward the sight of his slaughter she moved, and it was as if she were about to pray and worship beside him. She slipped down to the ground, to her knees. The concrete held shallow pools of his blood now. Her eyes closed in surrender.
Michael’s life was rich.
A childhood of abuse and teenage years of petty crime all came to the surface like watercolour inks dropped into water, to float in the dark pale with Eve. His wife, their wedding. Silvio and Silvio’s late wife, the birth of his first daughter. Special moments, blooming and awakening in melody of colour; then interspersed with the job and the family.
Michael’s life was violent.
So many fights, chasing down debtors when he was younger and had the stamina for it. One such evening, Michael Marino didn’t speak, didn’t scream; he only moved. One strike after the other until the man beneath him no longer made a sound and his own hands were bloodied to his knuckles, one finger crooked slightly where it had met tooth, bone, or both. He waited to confirm a rise and fall of the man’s chest and he tightened his jaw before he walked away. Another memory where he had taken Luca, younger by only a few years or so and handed him a gun. Pointed to another strange, nameless man. Some victim, someone who he claimed deserved it. Michael watched as Luca fumbled and took a shot. It should have taken the man between the eyes, but as the shot broke apart into the air, the round tore his face instead. Brow to cheek with a wet spray as half of his face opened like fruit. He did not fall, but screamed from half a mouth; a horrible, horrible sound. Luca’s grip failed again and the barrel wandered as the man clutched the ruin of his face. The muzzle hovered above the broken face and fired in three more callous shots that echoed infinitely. Eve screamed a silent scream too.
Michael was happy.
His family home was perfect and he smiled and laughed with his wife and made love to her and shared family dinners with his children and invited his friends and their families to events of importance. Attended funerals together. Family but not by blood. Michael also had a string of mistresses over the years and some of them he was violent with; a side to him that did not exist in the walls of his own home and maybe they were his outlet for desires that did not belong within a white picket fence. Eve saw herself much younger too, memorialised in this death thread playing with his daughters just as she herself remembered, and it had been so long since this had happened that it scared her.
Every glimpse of Michael’s life moved until the end where it was too hard to say for it was so sudden and he didn’t even know. The concrete yard was dark and there were sounds and then there was nothing. He'd watched before he locked up far too late, he heard something, and then his eyes thought they saw something. A hand sinking into the concrete. He hadn't poured it. Someone had broken in. He wanted to shout out. Incensed someone would have the audacity to break into the Marino concrete yard but then that was it. Three gunshots again. Clean, didn't miss. Pushed a wheeze out of his lungs and that was it. When he hit the floor and wasn't yet dead his instinct was to call Silvio and the call caught the last of his death rattle and then that was it.
Michael Marino died
His secrets and his life belonged, in their pieces and their colours to Eve now.
That should have been it, Eve should have left the thread and returned but she could no longer feel herself.
Something else, someone else called. Clung to her for witness. One by one and four in total. All at once, pushing their remnants and their dreams, laughter, and pain all swimming up through the concrete blanket under which they had been buried. Four more missing greys, discarded into another concrete cage seeping liquid into their lungs. Their last ragged threads, final desires, and dying embers of hope just before the knife. All crowded into her mind, screaming over one another. She instinctively drew her hands to her ears, despite the fact none of it was really noise and nor could it be heard outside of her head. It was a chorus of agony too crowded for mercy. From the ground, from beneath the concrete they came crawling and crying.
Eve’s spine arched one vertebra at a time and she shuddered back in a cruel and forceful motion as if someone was pulling her strings and folding her backwards over herself. Her eyes shot open moon white as the vision tore into her.
The sound of a voice, disembodied, the same in all four threads, tying them up tight together in a knot.
Her own memories blended with the corruption of the burial ground, the sinking sand. The two worlds bled as one and held her within. On the other side of her vision her waking body had stopped breathing. Tears had pooled and her fingers twitched and fought and her skin turned waxen. Her expression was caught somewhere between torment and the ecstasy of the violence and all the memories of it that had been imprinted upon her in the darkness.
Silvio watched from the sideline, his own hand trembling in the darkness. “Eve?” he asked, breaking the silence with the rasp of his voice.
Harri took a deep breath, watching while Archie moved to the bathroom before she turned around and made her way to towards the couch in the center of the apartment. She flopped down on the sofa, allowing it to cradle her before hanging her head in her hands and running her fingers through her hair. She couldn't believe she was turning to Archie Hardwick, of all people, for help.
It wasn't that she didn't like Archie; they were friends and had been for a very long time, but Archie wasn't exactly someone she would have typically thought of in her hour of need. It's not like Archie to ride in at the eleventh hour and save the day.
Girl.
Okay, perhaps that wasn't entirely true. Archie had come to her rescue more times than Harri could count. Maybe it was the fact that when she pictured a knight in shining armour, the only image of Archie that came to her was him as the squire clumsily running alongside the knight's horse, futilely trying to keep up. Archie was like a kid brother, practically a sibling in every way, and Treasure was actually her sister.
Maybe becoming a Junior Partner was the push that Archie needed to start maturing.
Archie's loft apartment was a modest affair.
Sterile, concrete walls towered from the floor to the high ceilings, giving the Spartan space a void, if not a well-lit appearance. A large accent rug covered the majority of the main living space, doing little to hide the cement floor that sprawled from under it, reaching to each of the four walls.
Situated on the Eastern edge of Milk Street, the Wampanoag Apartment complex was once an industrial space before being gentrified and turned into luxury apartments for about thirty seconds before the operating company went under and the building was slowly bankrolled between affordable and student living to recoup any and all income possible. While the units occupied small footprints, the building's tall rooms allowed for a mezzanine or loft style of unit, increasing living space by nearly fifty percent and giving the Wampanoag a unique draw for mature students and young working professionals.
The building had character, and given that the median age was younger, it was an active building full of life. Hallways often had the sound of music drifting from each unit, while the later hours of the day were filled with young adults excitedly going out for any one of Pointe Bordeaux's numerous nocturnal activities. Harri had crashed at Archie's place more than enough times to know just how much she enjoyed the quaint, out-of-the-way location, even to some degree, in comparison to her own luxury apartment in the Sound.
The last of the day's light shone brightly against the tall, factory-style, frosted windows that remained intact from the original building. The sun fought to penetrate the translucent coating, only ever capable of fully entering through an open window.
Each panel of the towering pane was capable of independent movement, allowing both light and airflow to enter the unit through the massive window frame. It encapsulated the entirety of the eighteen foot celling height, stretching from just about a foot above the floor to approximately an equal distance under the ceiling.
Painted steel girders ran horizontally above the modest kitchenette and small corridor that led away to the enclosed bathroom neatly hidden behind it. Above the metalwork sat the loft, which housed Archie's bed, which was likely the most expensive item in the entire loft.
________________________________
In the time that Harri had known Archie, he had almost always bought secondhand. It had been her experience that Archie had always liked to pick items which, in his own words, looked like they had a story to tell. Despite being thrifted, everything inside his apartment was intentional, from the rug to the couch and apparently even to his new dog, Marrok, whose eyes told Harri of a thousand lifetimes that the mysterious black dog had already lived.
There was one exception, however, Archie's towering bookshelves.
A dominant feature of not only the main living space, but the entire loft, large built-in bookcases that covered the wall opposite the kitchenette, complete with a rail-mounted ladder for each access. Various titles from fiction to non-fiction, from how tos to various dabbles in psychology and religion, all filled the overbrimming bookcase. Despite how many books had been jammed into it, not a single one was out of place or looked to have suffered any form of abuse. Each was treasured, adored and respected.
________________________________
Harri couldn't help but smile as she leaned back into the carefully chosen and worn sofa; it smelled like Archie, and while she'd likely never admit it to him, there was a comfort that came from being around him. There was, after all, a reason they were still friends, and perhaps, if Harri was honest with herself for a second, perhaps there was a reason that she did so often turn to Archie in a crisis. She allowed herself to inhale the faint aroma of Archie's cologne again, hugging a pillow tightly before the strange, black dog jumped up beside her, stomping about in a circle before collapsing against her thigh and flopping its massive head onto her lap.
"You're a funny guy," She stated, scratching the dog on his chin again while continuing to look around. If someone had asked Harri to describe Mark Twain's office, she would have likely shown them a picture of Archie's apartment. Deep, dark chocolatey hardwood dominated the shelves and accent furniture while numerous books were spread across both the coffee tables and the desk, each in the midst of being lovingly enjoyed.
While no expense was spared when it came to the books and his personal work station, everything else was painfully spartan. The kitchen, in particular, was functional, but that was it. There were no signs of any affection given to cooking, no quirky mugs, nor even seemingly any plates or cutlery for guests. The fortress-like walls of the apartment lacked any sort of art or mementos, with the only picture in Harri's immediate view being a small frame kept atop a functional table beside the door.
Harri stood up from the couch, gingerly walking over towards the picture on her tiptoes as though she was sneaking through the room she had clearly been invited to stay in. Picking up the frame, a small smile crept across her glossed lips. It was a picture of her and Archie at their graduation. She was looking straight into the camera, smiling brightly while Archie; Archie was looking only at her.
Harri brushed the back of her fingers against her neck. Suddenly feeling slightly flustered before turning around. The bathroom door was ajar, and Archie had his shirt off. Harri had to stop herself from letting out an audible gasp at the sight of his bare torso. Despite his slender build, she was taken aback by the actual definition of his body. She stifled a small gasp, her eyes staring far longer than she knew she should before Archie suddenly broke the silence.
"Ready to go?" Archie called absently, his eyes looking elsewhere, seemingly unaware of Harri's intrusion before she hastily scampered back to the couch, her eyes meeting Marrok's, who had been watching her the entire time. Her heart felt like it was moving a mile a minute, her pulse quickening as she felt like a schoolgirl who had been caught peeking in the boy's locker room.
The dog looked at her again, his jaw open, giving him the appearance of an ear-to-ear grin while his brow twitched in a way that gave him the appearance of raising a knowing eyebrow towards Harri.
"Yeah, definitely," Harri replied, breaking eye contact with Marrok before composing herself as though she had been sitting on the couch the entire time. There was no way that Archie had seen her looking at him.
She didn't think, at least.
There was no way Archie Hardwick, of all people, could play it that cool if he had thought she was checking him out.
Exiting the bathroom, Archie adjusted his new shirt before grabbing a jacket and awkwardly smiling at Harri. She felt her cheeks threatening to flush further before hurrying out the door with Marrok as Archie locked up behind them.
Once was a man who lived a life so mundane, it could only be true.
_ _ _ _ _ Practically invisible to the world around him, life carries on while he felt perpetually stuck treading water just to keep his head
_ _ afloat. Fortunately for the man, fate had different ideas and intervened with a heavy hand. Pushed into a corner, the man
_ _ was driven to hide amongst dusty shelves and heavy tomes. In the silence, he could hear his name being whispered,
_ _ over and over again, until his hand touched one particular opus. A worn book, bound in leather and tarnished steel. Though
_ _ sealed, it opened for a price, and upon spreading its pages, the man's life was changed forever. _ _ _ _ _ _ Now, he is the Warlock they call...
LOCATION:THE WAMPANOAG APARTMENT COMPLEX - MILK STREET
Archie had stared at his own reflection in the mirror every day for as long as he could remember. He knew every inch of his face like he knew the tale of Alexander Dumas' Musketeers. Archie knew exactly where his grey hairs were, like how he knew the first page Abraham Van Helsing appeared in Stoker's Dracula. But for the first time, Archie was unfamiliar with the eyes that stared back at him.
Normally, he would have chalked it up to tiredness, a long night followed by an ever-expanding day. There was nothing he wanted to do more than go upstairs and collapse into the bed he had saved for over three years to buy. Harri had teased him at one point for having more pillows on the bed than he did, combined between sheets, blankets and the duvet. But no, as he stared, it wasn't tiredness; there was something still beyond the dark circles that hung beneath his green eyes.
There was a glimmer of confidence he had never seen before. A shift in how his spin supported his shoulders, and yet, Archie couldn't help but feel like he should be buried in regret.
The tap began to steam as the water warmed. He splashed it on his face, feeling the heat soothe each and every pore across his cheeks and forehead. Suddenly, his nose crinkled in disgust, an acrid smell polluting his nostrils. His eyes opened wide, and terror flooded his being. He could feel the floorboards of Galloway's shop as a fist came towards him. Words of a language he knew he didn't know flew out of his mouth, conjuring flames from his fingertips as Archie dropped the Dragon's charred corpse to the ground.
The body bags from this morning.
Screams rang in his ears, and dark blurs became clearer as memories seemingly began to unlock from the fog that had haunted his brain for most of the day. The Dragons retreated while Marrok drove them back, diving between gouts of flame and crackling bolts of lightning as the spells freely left Archie's hands until suddenly he collapsed amidst the dropped bodies.
I killed them? They were just men, normal men.
He ran for the toilet, barely reaching it in time to lift the lid and seat as the greasy breakfast with Boz made a surprise reappearance. Hot tears welled in the corner of his eyes before he managed to pull himself off the floor. He couldn't let Harri see him like this, not while Treasure was missing.
Innocent men.
Ripping the shirt off, Archie returned to the mirror, standing bare-chested in front of it as he swore the memories of last night could never be revealed to anyone. They weren't innocent; they couldn't be. The Dragons had attacked him, they had tried to sell him drugs, and he refused. It was self-defence; he had already been released by the police, and the city would be better with a few fewer trafficking gangbangers in it.
This was not his fault.
Archie had to justify it to himself. He couldn't let himself be bogged down by guilt. There just wasn't time for him to wallow. Whatever happened in Galloway's shop last night was between him, Marrok and the dead now. He gripped the edges of the sink tighter. He needed everything to slow down; Archie needed time to think, to read and to study. If this Grimoire was capable of making him commit murder, then he would need to learn to control it.
A noise outside the door reminded Archie of the task at hand, and he hurriedly threw some toothpaste on his brush before cleaning his teeth.
"Ready to go?" He called before grabbing another shirt he had left in the bathroom. He gave it a quick sniff test before throwing it on.
"Yeah, definitely," Came Harri's reply before Archie rushed out, adjusting his shirt before motioning for Marrok to follow as the three left the apartment.
It was already after six in the evening before Archie and Harri made their way out of his apartment and hastened through the building towards his car. It wasn't much; a small sedan more than a few years older than what would have retained any sort of value. It's what had allowed Archie to buy a luxury-branded vehicle, even if most of its luxuries had given up the ghost prior to purchasing. But it was reliable where it counted and could take a beating. Like any young man, Archie would have liked to buy himself a much nicer car, but being an associate wasn't exactly a huge paycheque. Perhaps if he could hold on to his promotion to Junior Partner, a new car would be in his future.
Or you could use mag'ik, idiot.
Or, he could start using mag'ik to solve all of his problems. Responsibility be damned, nothing bad ever came of abusing near-limitless cosmic powers. It's not like the Grimoire, or Galloway cautioned him against using these abilities for personal gain. A twinge of guilt caused Archie to wince before his inner voice even began to scold him.
It's not like you already have a body count.
"I forgot that you drive like my grandma," Harri bemoaned from beside Archie, who was brought back out of autopilot to the actual situation at hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he could have sworn he saw Marrok snicker in the rear-view mirror.
"I-uh,"
"Could you make an exception?" Harri pleaded, "Just this once, for Tess."
"I'll see what I can do," Archie answered before reluctantly pushing down harder on the accelerator and watching the speedometer climb to five miles above the posted limit. An exasperated breath escaped from between Harri's lips, but she didn't complain further, the car falling into an awkward silence as it made its way through the district.
Bosley was already waiting by the time Archie had found parking for his modest sedan. Parking around the corner from the Haunt, Archie and Harri made their way quickly along Milk Street. While most of the day had already elapsed, it was still too early for the club crowd, meaning the neo-industrial bar was practically empty save for a few regulars who were sitting along the bar rail. Even the DJ hadn't finished setting up for the night, Archie observed while he watched the man clad in the theatrical, angular helmet supervising a couple of sound technicians as they ran his cords and set up his station.
"Hey, Stud, didn't think I'd see you again until Saturday," Boz greeted jovially, before allowing his expression to become more solemn. "Harriet, I'm sorry about your sister, but I promise you I'm going to do everything I can to ensure I get her back."
"Thank you, Tom," Harri replied as the two quickly exchanged a side hug. Archie couldn't help but recall Boz's words from this morning, his eyes looking between the pair as they embraced in an obligatory manner, wondering if Boz was playing nice solely for Archie's sake or if there was genuine emotion behind the gesture.
"Alright, Archie, find your bartender friend." Harri ordered as Boz raised an eyebrow at the comment. Archie knew there was no way that Boz missed how Harri's words had practically bristled at the mention of Carmilla.
"What's this about a bartender?" Boz asked excitedly while Harri crossed her arms in front of her. Her eyes wandered around the Haunt, looking anywhere but towards the bar where the dark-haired, caramel-skinned woman in question was currently polishing pint glasses.
"I, uh, hit, er, chatted. No, I, ah, made a friend with the bartender over there, Carmilla." He finally spat out as Boz clapped him on the back. Tom grinned from ear to ear, speaking intentionally loud enough that there was no mistaking that Harri had to have heard every word Boz said.
________________________________
"You dog, she's absolutely gorgeous." Boz applauded, "Atta boy, I knew you had it in you, but word of advice, don't date bartenders. Especially ones that work at the Haunt." He smiled.
"Remind me to only go to the Velvet Room from now on," Harri muttered beneath her breath while Archie scrambled to change the subject.
"I, I think it's important that we-" Archie started before Harri viciously cut him off, spitting venom towards Bosley.
"We're here to find Treasure, not set up Archie with the bimbo bartender, so let's say on subject, please, Thomas."
"Yes, Ma'am," Boz retorted with a mock salute. "Well, Superstar, why don't we go reintroduce ourselves and see if we can't find out something about Miss Huffy's sister?"
"I'm not 'huffy', and you're being insensitive." Harri snapped back. Archie found himself suddenly very torn between his two closest friends. "If you're not actually here to help, then you can leave."
"Harri-"
"Aren't you supposed to be talking to the bartender?" Harri snapped, turning on Archie as he tried to interject. Archie, for the first time in his life, felt his fists curl as Harri turned her venom on him. The hairs on the back of his neck started to bristle while she laid into him.
It wasn't right, it wasn't fair. They were there to help here and Archie of all people treated Treasure with every bit of love and respect that he had for Harri herself.
"ENOUGH!" He barked suddenly.
A hush fell over what few patrons were inside the Haunt at this hour. "We're both here to help you find Treasure, and this bickering isn't accomplishing anything. I'm going to go ask Carmilla if she saw anything last night; you and Boz are going to stay here and make up. Whether you like it or not, Boz has connections through the D.A.'s office that can help, connections we don't have. So yeah, we need him, and I'd like you both to start getting along. Treasure's like a sister to me too, Harri, I know you're stressed, but we're going to find her-"
"Stud, I want to bring her home, but we can't promise-"
"No, Boz." Archie tightened his fist. He could feel the hum of the Grimoire in his pocket. "We're bringing her home." He stated matter-of-factly. The tone of the normally meek, mild-mannered lawyer left no room for argument as he stood his ground. "You're both my closest friends, and I am asking you, and I never ask for anything, to please get along for one night. I hope you both can find some commonality by the time I get back." He added before storming off towards the barrail.
Archie's hands were shaking like a leaf; he had never yelled at Boz before, and for Harri, this was somehow now the second time in twenty-four hours. Never before in his life had he so badly wanted a drink, but the situation wouldn't allow for it as he strode directly towards Carmilla. Checking his breath as he approached, Archie straightened his shirt again before quickly tousling his hair and then combing it with his fingers. Reluctantly satisfied with his appearance being as good as it was going to get, he opened his mouth to address the raven-haired woman, only for her to greet him first.
"I didn't think I'd see you again so soon," Carmilla purred, a smile crossing her glossy, wine-coloured lips as she rested her elbows on the countertop and cradled her head in her hands, looking up at Archie. Perfectly drawn cat eyeliner accented her doe-like dark eyes. Archie was taken aback for a moment, seemingly recalling that the woman had blue-hued violet eyes the night before.
"I mean, I was hoping," She smiled, batting her eyes before continuing, "You look like you could use a drink. Your usual?"
"N-no, thank you," Archie managed to stammer, "I uh, actually need a favour."
"I wouldn't consider that a favour," Carmilla winked, edging herself closer to Archie, who suddenly felt very hot under the collar. She traced a finger along the back of one of his hands, and it felt like an electric current was suddenly running through his body. In his pocket, the Grimoire began to hum intensely against his thigh, sending further currents through his body as Archie tried to focus.
He couldn't deny his attraction to Carmilla. Her confidence, the way she carried herself, and the way she was dressed in a figure-hugging leather corset top paired with a matching pair of skin-tight pants. It left little to the imagination, and perhaps that was why even in the dim lighting of the club, amidst the diffusion of crimson and copper, Archie spotted for the first time the smoky crystal pommel atop an ebony wood rod snugly holstered on the waist-line of the low-rise pants that gave way to a pair of narrow, lace-adored, silk straps that snugly hugged defined hip bones and teased Archie with the prospect of seeing so much more of Carmilla's wardrobe.
His eyes flashed back to the similar object mounted above the counter at Galloway's shop before he suddenly took a step back, his hand moving to his pocket protectively.
"Ha, ha-ha," He laughed nervously, "A-a-actually, it's Harri. Her, uh, her sister was here last night, and she's missing. Would you have seen anything?" Archie asked as Carmilla continued to stare at him like a wolf who had entrapped a deer.
"Do you have a picture?" Carmilla asked, standing up as Archie fumbled for his phone. He cautiously reached for the disguised grimoire, keeping a tight grip on the faux device before pulling it from his pocket, hoping it could produce what he needed.
Do I have a picture of Treasure?
Responding to his need, the grimoire produced an image of Treasure, pulling her visage from his mind's eye rather than the connected cloud like a regular phone would have. Treasure was strikingly similar to Harri in many ways; they were, after all, sisters. But her face took more after her father's, giving her more of an oval face shape compared to Harri's heart-shaped one. Her hair was highlighted blonde, a stark difference from her older sister, but the pair shared the same nose and unmistakable dark eyes. Treasure notably had a beauty mark above her upper lip on the right side of her mouth, something that Archie had always thought was rather cute.
"I serve a lot of people each night, can't say her face stands out," Carmilla answered flatly before standing from the counter. She watched Archie's eyes intently before reaching behind and pulling a suede jacket over her shoulders. Her hands subtly reached behind her and ensured the coat covered her waist.
"A lot of 'pretty' girls come through her, comes with the proximity to the L.H.C."
"The people she was with," Archie started, doing his best to feign ignorance at how Carmilla was using the jacket to hide what Archie could only assume was a 'conduit'. "Uh, the people she was with were likely rowdier; she's been hanging out with a rough crowd."
"Then you'd be better off asking a server," Carmilla replied, seemingly bored with the conversation, while she rubbed her arms, pretending to warm herself.
"Scott Knight was working last night; he's the one standing over there." She added, pointing towards a moderately tall and toned young man with tight dark curls.
"If he recognizes your friend's sister, I can take a look at the cameras, but without a witness, it'd be just like looking for a needle in a haystack." She shrugged, "You should be more careful with that," Carmilla suddenly added, looking at Archie's phone. He froze, his lips opening, but no sound came out as he found himself unable to move.
"Since you lost your last one," Carmilla suddenly smiled, "That's a different phone from last night, and you're holding it so tightly I'm afraid you'll crush it." She teased, a mischievous smile crossing her face as Archie relaxed slightly.
"I can't give you my number if you keep losing your phone, gorgeous."
"R-right, of course," Archie stammered, "I-I'll be right back," He replied before rushing over to Harri and pointing out Scott.
"Carmilla suggested we talk to that server over there, said he was working last night and might have seen Treasure, especially if the people she was with were making a scene."
Harri had initially crossed her arms as Archie had returned. He looked between her and Boz, the tension in the air still palpable. But it didn't appear that they had argued any further while Archie had been talking to Carmilla. Boz offered an apologetic smile as Harri slowly lowered her arms, a slight sigh of relief loosening her shoulders before she responded.
"Thanks, Arch," She said softly, "For what it's worth, it really does look like the bartender is into you."
Archie shook his head.
"Let's not dwell on that right now," Archie replied, still feeling like Carmilla was watching him as his eyes kept picturing the conduit stored on her belt below her lower back.
Her lips are devil-red, and her skin's the colour of mocha
"We've got to get Treasure back before anything happens to her, and it looks like Scott Knight is our best chance." He reiterated, "Did you happen to see who Treasure was with?"
"Yeah," Harri replied, looking one more time at Carmilla and back to Archie, clearly confused about how quickly he had dismissed the beautiful bartender. A small smile crossed her face as Archie focused on Treasure again, and Harri tucked a strand of hair behind her ear before answering further.
"They looked like athletes, Coyotes maybe?" Harri offered as the pair approached Scott.
"Hockey players, the worst." Archie deadpanned.
"Excuse me," Harri started, tapping the young man on the shoulder, "Are you Scott Knight?"
The young man jumped slightly and looked over his shoulder, as if shaken from a stupor. “Oh! Uh…”
"Carmilla, uh, pointed us towards you," Archie added, gesturing back towards the buxom bartender.
“Oh. Sorry, was uh… Stuck in my own head. Yeah, I’m Scott,” he said, turning around to face them fully. He set down the rag he had been using to wipe tables and crossed his arms. He tried to give a friendly smile, but it fell flat on his face. “What can I help you with?”
We're looking for my sister," Harri said, holding up her phone towards Scott, "She was in here last night, but she's gone missing. I think she was with some members of the Calder Coyotes, the hockey team. Did you happen to see her at all? Or see anything really?" She asked.
"I'm Archie, and this is Harri," Archie added before pointing to Bosley, who was waiting for them a couple of paces back. "And that's Boz; he's with the D.A.'s office."
Why'd you feel the need to say that? Now he's not going to talk to you, idiot.
At the mention of Boz's employer, the DJ across the room perked up, locking his eyes onto Boz. Archie caught the glare that the man shot Boz from across the room, watching as the DJ's eyes narrowed, studying Boz as a jaguar would study a deer before pouncing.
A shiver ran down Archie's spine before his attention was brought back to Scott. He was studying the photo on Harri’s phone intently before turning back to her and nodding.
“I’m pretty sure I recognize her. I think her table was one of the ones I served last night. She was really nice… Can’t say the same for the guys she was with.”
"What about the guys?” Harri asked, her curiosity piqued.
“Er, uh, more importantly,” Archie interjected, “Do you, uh, remember what time and approximately what table?” He asked, gesturing broadly across the Haunt.
Scott opened his mouth to reply to Harri, then turned to Archie. Nodding, he pointed over to a booth along the wall with a clear view of the dance floor. “That one. It was probably about six thirty or so when they came in. I had just clocked in like half an hour before I started serving them. They were there for most of the night, different people heading out to the dance floor or heading back to the table when I’d come around every ten minutes or so. She was there most of the time. Really nice, like I said.”
He turned back to Harri. “And like I said, the guys were assholes.”
"Hockey players, the worst," Archie repeated. “Hopefully, that, uh, should be enough for Carmilla to narrow it down on the cameras.”
“Yeah, she should be able to do that for you. If it helps, there was a lot of shouting around one AM near that booth. I saw a girl heading out the side door after that. Pretty sure it was her.”
“I think that’s exactly wh-”
“Thank you so much!” Harri blurted out while lunging forward. Interrupting Archie, she stepped past him and wrapped her arms around Scott in a tight hug.
Scott fumbled slightly before awkwardly patting Harri on the back. “Uh, yeah, no problem. Hope you guys find her.”
Harri released the younger man before the pair rejoined Boz, and the trio made their way over to the barrail. Boz playfully nudged Archie in the ribcage upon approaching Carmilla, finally getting a close-up look at the beauty that had Archie acting bashful and Harri like her thong was in a twist.
________________________________
"Uh, h-hi again," Archie said nervously as he approached Carmilla with Boz and Harri in tow. "We talked to Scott, and he said there was a commotion around 1 AM that led to a girl storming out the side door. Said he never saw her enter again."
Carmilla nodded.
"That I can work with." She smiled, waving for the trio to follow me. "The manager's office is back here. We can take a look at the cameras at that time and see what we can find."
"You know," Carmilla spoke again, turning to look Archie in the eye, "You really should give me your phone so I can put my number in it." She stated, less as a suggestion and more as a demand. Boz's jaw dropped slightly at the woman's forwardness before he looked to Harri, who was doing her best to not show the steam that was threatening to come out of her ears.
"You're enjoying this too much," She muttered out the side of her mouth towards Boz.
"A little," He replied with a wink.
"Do you hear her? She's throwing herself at him like some kind of sl-"
"Carmilla, you're a very forward woman." Boz interjected, cutting Harri off while attempting to rescue Archie as the foursome entered the office.
"If a woman knows what they want, why shouldn't she be?" Camilla retorted, a smirk spreading across crimson lips.
"See, that's the problem with women today, they don't make moves and get upset when others do. It's only until they can't have something, so they realize they want it." She didn't even turn to look at Boz while speaking, her accent thickening the longer she spoke. Archie hadn't noticed it before, but beneath her English were subtleties in her enunciation and intonation that indicated the American tongue was not, in fact, her first. Moving directly across the office, she approached the large display of monitors mounted on the nearby wall, then pushed the desk chair out of her way.
"Unlike me, I know what I want, and I get it." Carmilla stated before ditching her jacket and leaning over the keyboard connected to the security monitors. The back of her corset was neatly cinched with a ribbon that matched her dark lipstick as the boned garment enhanced her already accentuated figure into a picture-perfect hourglass. Leaning downward over the desk onto her elbows, Carmilla arched her back seductively to further illustrate her point, not only to Archie but also to Harri.
Archie felt himself swallow hard, a nervous lump forming in his throat as Carmilla's already cropped corset rose, fully revealing the small of her back and sun-kissed, caramel skin above the waistline of the low-rise leather pants again. The tantalizing temptation of the shimmering, silk straps drew his attention exactly to where he wanted to look, but to Archie's surprise, the conduit from earlier was nowhere to be seen.
Had Carmilla ditched her weapon, or did Galloway have Archie paranoid and seeing threats where there were none? He couldn't say for certain, not with his lack of sleep and rapid transpiring of events in the last twenty-four hours.
"There." Carmilla pointed as Harri took a step closer.
"Yeah, that's definitely Tess." Harri replied, "What's she doing?" She asked, watching her sister on the screen, before she suddenly exited through the side door.
"Do you have any exterior cameras?" Boz asked.
"Getting there, Cowboy." Carmilla replied flatly, "Americans, always so impatient."
The monitors changed to an exterior shot of the Haunt. Treasure was standing outside playing with her vape while leaning against a wall. Suddenly, a black van approached, stopping abruptly before its doors opened, and two men roughly pulled Treasure inside.
"No! no, no, no." Harri's voice quivered as she continued to watch, unable to look away as the black van with the circular emblem departed from the frame.
"Wait," Boz instructed. "Can you roll it back frame by frame?" He asked as Carmilla nodded and began to do so.
"There!" Boz exclaimed as Carmilla paused the video again. "There's a partial plate. I've got contacts in the detective's department who can run that plate. Maybe we'll get a hit."
"That'll take too much time," Harri protested.
"It's the best we've got right now," Boz argued before pulling his cell out of his pocket and heading towards the door to make the call. Archie stared intently at the screen before looking at Harri, who was doing her best not to cry. Boz exchanged a knowing glance with Archie while Archie awkwardly tried to hold Harri, who shrugged off his embrace.
"Yes, hello. I need to speak with Detective Wilcox." Boz's voice echoed behind him while he moved into the hallway. "No, I will not hold; it's regarding the missing persons case. Tell her A.D.A. Thomas Bosley is on the line. I have a partial plate for a vehicle suspected to be involved in the abduction."
Archie looked from Harri back to Boz in the hallway and then to Carmilla, who had propped herself up on her elbows against the desk. He hated feeling helpless. If Harri had given him the night to think things through and work on the Grimoire, then maybe there would have been a chance he could have helped. But as it were, he was just who he had always been.
A loser.
"If there was nothing else," Carmilla commented, "I do have to get back to work, for what it's worth, I do hope you find the girl, though." She added, pausing on her way past Archie. "Also, you're not a loser, and you're already more capable than you think," Carmilla whispered in Archie's ear, her hot breath sending a shiver down his spine.
"Say hi to the dog for me." She called before leaving the office.
"Whether you realize it or not, you're learning to use your familiar. It's the first step any mage makes. Even as we speak, your senses are synchronizing to its own."
Galloway's words echoed in Archie's head. There was something he had to be able to do after all. He moved to let Harri know he was stepping outside, but opted to just awkwardly exit the room, not wanting to be shrugged off again. Passing Boz on the way out, Archie and Boz exchanged a quick nod before Boz tapped him on the shoulder and stopped him.
"Hey, I don't know what your plans are with Carmilla, but uh, be careful." He cautioned, "I can't put my finger on it, but she has a certain je ne said quoi about her." Bosley smiled sadly.
Archie nodded before walking off, leaving Boz, who was anxiously waiting for a call back. If he had been more aware of his surroundings, Tom might have noticed the glaring eyes of Mikołajek Kamiński staring at him from across the room. The artist brought his cellphone out of his pocket, snapping a quick picture of Bosley before lifting the rat-like mask over his head.
Tapping his hand against his thigh, Mikołajek began to compose a melody, a new song come to him, his eyes unwaveringly fixed on Bosley. Memories of the lawyers and city officials who failed his mother, turning his blood red hot.
"If the D.A. is going to poke around, then it's time to show this city just how corrupt its protectors are."
A record scratch filled the Haunt before the bass dropped.
<“Oh sure, he’s not an air conditioner. So now you know all about lifting! I’m taking all of the weight here!”> Qing struggled with the crumpled Little Mountain. He was heavier than he looked.
Together, Qing and Bo Wen got him situated in the back of the van. His blood began pooling on the subfloor. All Qing could think about was how hard it would be to clean after this, probably to keep himself calm.
<”Stay with him, I’ll drive.”> Sliding the van door shut on the other pair whilst Qing’s stunned eyes could only stare back wide-eyed as the metal interior filled his vision.
<”But it’s my van!”> Qing protested, but Bo Wen was already climbing into the driver’s seat. Qing slid, before grabbing a handhold as Bo Wen hit the gas, saving the wounded hero from a blow from falling drywall with his other hand.
Looking at him, Qing Yuan didn’t know exactly what he should be doing that would really do him any good. He looked like Qing might have if the man from the alley was actually worth his salt with a sword.
He had cuts all over, big bruises, broken bones. Part of his chest looked caved in. Qing could at least try to stop the bleeding. There really is a lot of blood filling the van, isn’t there..?
Problem was, the closest thing he had to bandages were the rags he used to cover the floor during paint and other messy jobs. And they were hardly hygienic, let alone sterile. He raised his head to ask his father for suggestions, but was stopped short as he recognised the streets flying by out the front of the van. <”This is not the way to Calder General!”>
<”He is a superhero! They do not do regular hospitals!”> Bo Wen countered. He yanked the wheel and the van made a noise of protest Qing felt in his soul.
<”Then where do you suggest?”> Qing asked, incredulous. He realized he knew the route Bo Wen was taking. <”No. Noooooo. You’re bringing him to the shop!? This is not something we can fix! Once again, he is not an air conditioner! This is beyond duct tape and resin!”>
<”Have faith, Qing Yuan. We will figure something out at home. Maybe the Vanguard will come get him.”> Bo Wen said, as if his faith would keep the Little Mountain from bleeding out in the back of Qing’s work van.
<“Between your driving and his health, my faith doesn’t spread that far! How much blood can you even have in you?!”> Qing Yuan had his hands over the worst of the Little Mountain’s bleeds. His blood was warm but his skin was cold to the touch.
Cold. Ohhh. That’s not a good sign.
The dwindling flame of a candle.
<“Shit.”> < “Is he–”> “Eyes on the road! Let me worry about back here!”>
Breathe in.
Qing’s eyes closed. He dived deep internally. His hands moved as he felt his own body’s energy pool and sluice within, then took control. Diverted the flow.
Breathe out.
His hands aglow, he rested them over the fallen hero’s sunken core. It took a level of concentration beyond his ability to re-open his eyes. He felt certain he sensed a heart beating stronger, and pushed on choosing not to give way to what must have been overconfidence. The glow to his hands faded as he pushed the flow beyond himself and it re-dispersed, finding its level in the form that lay before him.
The next barrier he hit certainly wasn’t overconfidence, and he noticed it wasn’t concentration that was knitting his eyes. The lids started to feel heavy.
That’s not right, I know he’s messed up pretty bad, and I know it’s been a long day but I shouldn’t be–
As Qing slid down beside the fallen hero, his father’s words and a single thought went through his head.
Just because I wanted to buy drywall…
<“Qing Yuan! Your chi!”>
The words fell from Qing’s mouth absent of thought. < “Do not. Crash. mY vAn...”>
Qing drifted away free of the moorings of consciousness, until being shaken awake once more at their destination by a father who couldn’t lift their wounded guest alone.
F L O W S T A T E F L O W S T A T E
The bell chimed, the buzzer sounded, and a pair walked in - a young woman and an old white man. Qing realized in their rush to get the Little Mountain to a bed upstairs, he flipped the sign to ‘CLOSED’ but in his exhaustion had failed to actually lock the door.
“I’m sorry, we’re actually closed.” Qing put on his best smile, half-lidded as the events of the car ride still left him weary, and hoped he hadn’t missed any bloodstains trailing from the door up the stairs.
The woman and the old man did not turn to go. Instead she fixed Qing with a steely gaze.
“Ah, we’d be happy to help you another time but right now we --”
“What have you done with my brother!?” She cut Qing off. She had her hands wrapped in fists, thumbs tucked inside, like she’d never thrown a punch before.
Her brother…? Could this be the Little Mountain’s sister?
Qing put his hands up. “We didn’t hurt him! We just found him in a bad way. We tried to help.”
“And you brought him here instead of to the hospital?”
Qing Yuan cringed. He knew it was a bad idea. He saw Bo Wen at the bottom of the stairs, roused from their guest’s bedside by the commotion and gestured to him. “Ba, that question’s for you.”
The old man put his hand on the woman’s shoulder. “It was probably for the best, Shenden. Everything going on in this town, who knows what kind of farshtinkener got to him. The hospital might not have been safe. Better I can take care of him here.” Qing spotted the leather bag he carried. It was about as stereotypical of a physician’s kit as they come, complete with the ears of a stethoscope hanging out the lip.
“See. Was right! Superheroes don’t do regular hospitals.” He pointed to the doctor.
“It was literally the first thing she asked, Ba, and she’s his family…”
Bo Wen swatted away the criticism from his son like a gnat.
“Where is he?” The woman, Shenden, asked. Each syllable was measured, and her fists were still balled. Qing kept one hand open in passivity, and with the other he pointed to the sky.
“Yes, yes. This way, follow.” Bo Wen bade the pair upstairs with him.
Qing moved to follow the trio, then remembered himself and set to locking up Liu’s Fix-It properly. All three of the locks and the rolling shutters.
By the time he joined them upstairs, Bo Wen managed to convert the hallway outside the Little Mountain’s door into an impromptu waiting room with three mismatched chairs. Shenden sat in the middle, no longer looking ready to punch him or Bo Wen out, instead maintaining a steady focus on the door. Bo Wen stood by, wringing his hands, not in any of the seats he dutifully brought out, making a face that told Qing he was holding down a fit of nervous laughter.
”Ba?”
”There you are! This Qing Yuan, my son. We found your brother together.”
Tactful, Ba. Qing’s brow furrowed at the older man. He then noticed the seating arrangements. Middle. You sneaky old–. He picked the closest seat.
“I’m Shenden.” She nodded to him. “I’m very sorry about earlier. I was a bit panicked.” She said, not looking too much less panicked. Qing would be too, at the sight of her brother.
”Don’t worry about it.” Qing waved her concerns off. ”Where’s the Doctor?” Qing asked, trying to fill the silence. Stupid question.
”Doctor Idell is in with him now.” She answered anyway. “He says my brother doesn’t look good, but a lot better than he expected. He says you two stabilized him. Is one of you a doctor?”
”Only to air conditioners.” Bo Wen said.
”Ba!” Qing chided. ”Not doctors, no…” Qing scratched the back of his neck. How do you even explain chi to a layperson…? “Maybe he must have just got lucky..?” It didn’t even sound convincing to himself as he said it, and when he dared to make eye contact with Shenden he could see it hadn’t been with her either.
”You don’t have to say. Whatever you did, thank you.” Her grace shocked Qing to silence, a rare feat. They had essentially kidnapped her brother off the street, and now she seemed willing to give them carte blanche. Qing supposed it turned out well enough, but…
The silence hung over the hallway for a moment as each turned the day’s events over in their heads. Soft yiddish mutterings passed under the door.
“I’ll bring tea for everyone!” Bo Wen said, seeing his moment to diffuse the tension and disappearing around the corner into the kitchen.
<”Just for our guests, Ba.”> Qing called after him in Wu.
“You speak Shanghainese?” Shenden asked.
“We speak Wu.” Qing flatly replied. Just as the Liu family didn’t care for the North’s ideas to make China a monolithic culture where all regional dialects would give way to Mandarin according to the wishes of the Party, they also held true to their attitudes regarding the notion that their own native dialect was purely for those of ‘the city’ as it was so often colloquially called. Qing more than most.
“It’s okay.” Bo Wen re-entered the room with tea, wide smile across his face. “Qing just… get weird about these kind of thing. He’s a good boy, really.”
”I understand. I can ‘get weird’ about Burmese. It is one of the few things that belongs to us.” Shenden said. ”I have only had the pleasure to study Mandarin, and some Cantonese. My specialty is the South Eastern languages, Thai, Filipino, Vietnamese…”
“Well, it makes sense academically in respect to China. If they don’t speak Cantonese, it's a fair bet they’ll speak Mandarin.” Qing conceded. “So have you got your brother microchipped?”
She smiled sadly, flicking her gaze to the door where her brother fought for his life. “I really should, for all the trouble he gets himself into. He had one of my Dad’s old utility belts, and it sent a distress signal. It used to go to the Vanguard, but he hasn’t used it in so long it defaulted to Dad’s phone.” She fished it out of her purse and showed an ancient flip phone.
“...And anthropologists dusted that thing off and realised it was some kind of a communications device.” He jibed at the age of the phone. “So he went in alone, and got himself…” He trailed off. Had this guy alienated himself so much from everyone, or was he just so hot headed that he jumped in without backup?
If he were honest with himself he could see himself doing both. Because he had in his own past. His own experience just went very differently. He was the one who walked away when it was all done.
Qing yawned openly. His father never missed the opportunity.
“Oooh. You need Qigong in morning. Don’t forget!”
He needn’t have said anything. They never forget, but that wasn’t the point. Before Qing could find a way to stop him, Bo Wen continued, smiling broadly to Shenden.
“Qing and I. Run Qigong every morning before open shop. Moench Park. Very good way start day. Every day. Good for mind. Good for body. You should try some time.” Incredibly cheesy grin accompanying the open invitation.
Qing had not yet discovered a method to manipulate one’s chi, causing spontaneous combustion with only a glare. As evident by the fact that his father was not currently on fire.
Bo Wen instead moved on from the scene of the crime, returning to matters pertaining to her brother.
“Vanguard not with him?”
“Pardon–?” She struggled to follow the sudden rapid change in conversation.
“Brother.” Bo Wen pointed to the door. “Vanguard not with him?”
”Not exactly. Rock quit all this superhero stuff when he was a teenager. I saw him for the first time in a long time at the funeral and… He’s just been spiraling. But I…” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I think this is my fault. I think I told him something I shouldn’t have.”
Qing looked at his father. “I get that. Funerals, and their causes, can do that.” He winced at the clumsiness of his own choice of words. That funeral would have been for her father as well.
“Sorry. About your father as well.” He added.
“We always knew this was a possibility, him being a superhero. We saw so many of his friends go over the years. It just never seemed like something that would happen to him.”
It was a crazy thing to hear in such a matter-of-fact tone. A superhero. As if that were something someone could just decide to be.
Made only more crazy that in this case, the person in question actually unquestionably was one.
The word coming from someone who had long since made her peace with the nature of that being a perfectly reasonable thing for one to be. Over tea.
“Now that he’s gone it feels like the family is shaking itself apart. It figures that The Mountain disappearing would cause an earthquake.” She said, and she laughed, but Qing saw the tear in her eye.
“Is a lot. Time when, family have to really come together or everyone can fall apart. Is good thing that you’re here. Show that important, at time when he most needs.” Bo Wen was clearly getting frustrated that his English was falling short at this time in particular. “Qing like that when happened too. Even when people don’t show appreciation, sometimes just making sure to hold close when people need.”
Don’t do that. That’s not what this is. ‘Trauma bonding’ over dead parents. She’s not– He wanted to scowl at the old man, to tell him to shut up. But it was clearly too sensitive a situation for him to even call his father out.
“So he tried to go and beat the world into making sense himself.” He left no question to it and realised he could have been describing both Rock and himself, after his mother. An affirmation of understanding.
”It’s all he knows. Dad took him in in the first place to show him a better way, but he’s been fighting the whole world since before we ever knew him. We gave him so much love, and sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t enough.”
Qing wanted to ask exactly who ‘we’ was, in this family which was shaking itself apart. But knew he couldn’t plainly ask given the secretive nature of the lifestyle. He knew she’d probably just politely decline to answer because it was too personal, but for some reason he didn’t want to seem ‘stupid’ to her in asking it in the first place.
It was one of the few times he regretted that his father knew more about the lives of these types than he did. He looked across at his father for any sign of clues and only saw him nodding solemnly in understanding to what she had said.
He wanted a problem to fix. But all there was were feelings and hurt.
“Do you know what he was looking into? We found him only a few blocks from our place. If there’s someone or something that can do THAT to someone like your brother, I’d kind of want to know about it.”
Shenden looked at the ground. ”It was his father.”
”We’re ready for you, bubele.” Doctor Idell said, appearing at the door with his surgical mask drawn down. His face was perfectly neutral, no sign of how Shenden’s brother was faring inside. Qing could only hope it was good news, for her sake.
”Coming.” Shenden said, gathering herself. ”Thank you. Thank you both. For the talking and the tea, and the everything else. Wish him luck.” She followed the Doctor, the grief of her face giving way to focus as the door closed behind her.
Qing's brow furrowed with confusion once she had left. Wait... his father? Your father's dead..? Or is this how people in this business "retire"... nobody seeks revenge against a dead man...
R O C K R O C K
Chapter Four
“Be aware of yourself, and accept yourself as you are. That is where your training should begin.” -Takehiko Inoue, Vagabond
"You’ll live to fight, and fight to live, or I will end you myself."
<“Lift with your legs, Qing Yuan!”>
<“Oh sure, he’s not an air conditioner. So now you know all about lifting! I’m taking all of the weight here!”>
"Get up, Rock. You can do this."
<”Qing Yuan! Your chi!”>
"What have you done with my brother!?"
"The Mountain and The Rock never quit."
"Sorry. About your father as well."
"Strike harder, whelp."
"If you hadn’t found him when you did, he’d be dead already."
"Will he make it?"
"If I have anything to say about it…"
"Wherever you go, kiddo, I’ll believe in you."
”Rise and shine, Rock…”
Rock woke to the circling ceiling fan casting a revolving shadow across his face. The room was still and spare, blank walls and no sound but the gentle thrum of the fan and the murmur of the city beyond the walls. He was wrapped in warm sheets, lying on a bed that felt softer than any he’d slept on in a decade. How did he get here?
He remembered the beating, the pain. The Count’s face twisted in disgust as he dragged Rock across the sand. Then nothing. Rock expected the pain to redouble any second now, but all that was left in its place was a dull ache.
“Ah, the nudnik is finally awake.” Rock blinked the sleep out of his eyes and turned to the familiar voice. An old man sat on a chair pulled up to Rock’s bedside, leather bag lain across his lap. He smiled at Rock and his eyes twinkled behind his bifocals.
“Doctor Eye?” It was a face Rock hadn’t seen in a very long time. The last he could recall was Saw’s last battle against Darksaber. Doc Eye was Saw’s de facto physician, though The Mountain rarely needed such a thing. His grey abilities meant he could see and identify people’s ailments better than about any other doctor in Calder City. X-ray vision, telescopic vision, magnetic resonance vision, thermals, and more. When Rock was still a sidekick, Doc Eye was the chief medic of the Vanguard, but looking at him now in his old tweed coat and his bent spectacles, he looked like any other haggard primary care.
“The very same,” Doctor Idell opened one of Rock’s eyes wide and shone his ophthalmoscope.
“Where am I?” Rock tried to piece together more details, but the room was spartan, almost entirely unfurnished. It looked like an unused apartment. He saw Shenden snoozing in the corner, a handmade blanket thrown over her.
“Above a repair shop in Hudson,” Doctor Idell said, concluding his exam. “No brain damage, looks like. Besides what you’ve always had, anyway.” Rock glared at him.
”How did I get here? Doesn’t look like a Vanguard safehouse.”
”A couple kind souls plucked you off the street,” Doctor Idell said. He tucked the last of his equipment into his bag and stowed it under his chair.
”And then you found me from the belt signal?” Rock asked.
“I didn’t. She did.” Doctor Idell nodded at Shenden. “Asked me to come out of my retirement from this farkakte superhero business to make sure you were alright. I could never say no to her. You know, she’s the strongest person I’ve ever met.” Rock snorted.
“Aren’t you doctor to the superheroes? I know you’ve seen plenty stronger.”
“These old eyes have seen a lot. Have learned a lot. For one thing, I’ve seen that strength doesn’t always come from the muscles, shlemiel.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” Rock said. He’d heard enough nonsense like that from Saw and from his Senseis over the years. Esoteric philosophizing about what strength is. No high minded philosophy could explain why he was brutalized and left stuck in this bed.
”How’s about you settle with the kvetching and give an old man a moment to say his piece?” He reached into his bag and produced a lollipop.
”Trying to bribe me with candy? I’m not five, doc.”
”You do act like it. But this is for me, something besides a cigarette I can suck on while dealing with difficult patients,” He said. He unwrapped it and stuck it in, rolling it around his mouth. “Now where was I… Ah! I’m sure you remember how tough Saw was, eh? Pain tolerance like I’ve never seen.”
It was true. It was something beyond his regeneration. Even through the brutal lethwei training before his abilities awakened, the worst of the body conditioning, the microfractures across every bone in his body, he’d push through like nothing happened at all. He could get shot dozens of times and smile about it.
“I can tell you Shenden doesn’t have it. You can always see the hurt in her eyes. And like your old man, she can’t use any painkillers either, her body shoots through them too fast. But still, I’ve had her on my table more times than I can count. A heap of topical griseosporine and I can open her up, let her donate things most people only get one or two of. Through it all she won’t whine or thrash, she just curls her hands up and lets herself cry about it. Then by the time I’ve wiped my ointment off and she’s knit herself up, she’s the one asking me when I’ll be ready to go again.”
Rock looked back at her, snoring softly. He put a hand against the ribs The Count shattered. They were intact, sore, but firm. ”Are you saying she just…?”
Doctor Idell nodded. “You were destroyed. Bad as anyone I’ve ever treated. But with her help, we took a recovery time of six months and shortened it to six hours. Her blood loses its potency the longer it's been out of her, but I was able to IV you two together directly. It did a lot to patch you up, and she was able to donate the parts the blood couldn’t hack. But it sure wiped her out. She’s been sleeping a long while.”
“She didn’t have to,” Rock said. This was his mess. He could get out of it on his own.
“Didn’t she? Her brother nearly kills himself and she’s just supposed to let him wither away? You might have missed it kid, but she’s the one that’s been fighting to hold your family together, you included. She’s never fought in her life but she marched in here ready to tear heads off if that was what it took to get to you.”
”She would never,” Rock said. The Shennie he knew wouldn’t hurt a fly, literally. She always made Rock or Khaing Min deal with the bugs around the house growing up, and insisted they put them in a cup and release them.
”She’d do anything for you,” Doctor Idell said. His tone did not brook disagreement.
”I’d do anything for her,” Rock said. It was Doctor Idell’s turn to snort.
”As long as you don’t have to push your ego down first, right?” Doctor Idell crunched into his lollipop.
”You’re on thin ice, old man.” Rock cautioned.
”That’s another thing about your sister. She’s always kind, to a fault. She’ll welcome anyone into her heart. She’s already gotten some kind of close to the folks running this place. But you? You push everyone away, with all that piss and vinegar. You’re too weak to let anyone get within spitting distance of you.” Doctor Idell tossed the stick of his lollipop into the trash as Rock stewed. What the hell did the old man mean by that? Where did he get off? Rock heard a pair of footsteps coming from somewhere else in the building.
“Ah, here come our hosts. The kid’s a real mensch, and his dad’s one hell of a balebos. Make sure to show them gratitude, sheygets, more than you’ve shown me. I’m going to go fix myself some more of this yuhua tea.” Doctor Idell grabbed a used coffee cup from Rock’s bedside table and excused himself as a pair of Asian men walked in. One was young and lean, with a beard that looked like it hadn’t seen a trim in a few days. The other was a little bigger, rounder, looked like an older version of the first. Father and son, Rock figured. The younger one’s eye held on the blanket his sister was curled up in, or maybe even Shenden herself, for a beat, before returning focus to the now conscious Rock.
“You’re awake. Supervillain hit you with a truck?” The younger newcomer asked, immediately undercutting everything the doctor had said about them.
“Felt like it,” Rock said. He laid back into the pillows and looked up at the ceiling fan. ”Ever think you’re gonna have an easy time and then it blows up in your face?”
“I caught a bullet today and forgot about it. So yes.” He uttered, accompanied with a yawn. Rock sat up and locked his eyes on the young man. Not just some slipshod repairman, was he?
”I might’ve been alright if I was that fast. How did you manage that?” Rock asked. An inkling squirmed at the back of his mind. Something about the way this guy carried himself, the tone of his body.
“No it’s not like that. I’m not… in your ‘field’.” He waved Rock off. “Just… wrong place, wrong time.”
“You don’t catch bullets by being in the wrong place,” Rock said, feeling the edge creep into his voice. He bit the inside of his cheek. He was supposed to be grateful.
“I’d say it’s the only place you catch them. If you’re in the right place, you dodge them. So… agree to disagree.”
”You seem like you get around to a lot of those wrong places,” Rock said. He looked experienced, trained. His hands looked right for it, thick and rough, not the kind you get from doing just anything. They looked like the hands of his senseis, seasoned after decades of striking. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Qing Yuan Liu. Just like the name on the front, Liu’s Fix-It. Well, you weren’t awake when we got you in here, so I can get how you’d miss that.”
”I’m Rock,” Rock said, offering his hand, “but I’m sure Shennie or the Doc already told you that.” When Qing accepted the handshake, Rock pulled it closer, turning it over and examining his fist. “For someone not in my line of work, you sure seem like it. Your knuckles are worn down from it. You fight,” Rock said, a declaration more than a question.
“I didn’t like having to catch a bullet.” Qing glibly replied, half-lidded.
“Who are you, really? The ‘God of Water’?” Rock asked. The pattern followed. Qing clearly had a lot more experience than he was letting on. The flow of his movements, even the way he weaved away from Rock’s questions. He said he could catch bullets. Even The Count had to dodge them. A guy with all that expertise, floating around The Count’s lair just in time to snatch him up? It was too perfect.
“That sounds ambitious. God of Plumbing, maybe. Apprentice to the God of Plumbing, more likely. I’d be happy to let you write my online reviews though, with that attitude.” Qing said. If he was a liar, he was a good one, but Rock didn’t put that past him.
The older man laughed at the thought of Qing being a god. Then laughed some more. Then laughed uncomfortably long until Qing closed his eyes and sighed, weary with everything. Maybe Qing was telling the truth. It didn’t track with The Count’s grandiose explanation that one of his ‘Gods’ would be living with his Dad in a mom-and-pop repair shop.
”Maybe I will. Not every day I get fished out of hell by a couple good samaritans, I can thank you with a review. I’ll make sure to mention you both, Qing Yuan and…?”
“Bo Wen Liu. And it’s my name on the front. That you weren’t awake for. Like Qing said.”
”I’ll remember it,” Rock said, realizing he actually meant it. Most people felt like set dressing to him. He couldn’t recall the names of any of his fellow pupils from his time in Japan. But these two, Qing in particular, had something special about them.
“You pick fight with gods? Lead with face? And things not as easy as thought?”
“Yes, he’s not short on confidence. I think it’s probably part of the lifestyle.”
”I was supposed to be out of this ‘lifestyle’ already,” Rock sighed. ”You know how it is. One last job.”
”Rock has a hard head…” Rock’s head snapped to the corner and saw Shennie was awake, still wrapped up in her blanket, smiling at him softly. “Some days it seems like what will get him killed. Most days it seems like it's what keeps him alive.”
”How long have you been awake?”
“Long enough.”
Qing’s eye again returned to the blanket, and his mouth fell open he turned to the older man, before he thought better of it and chose to say nothing at all. He changed tack and decided there was something more important than whatever was on his mind.
“We’ll just give you some time to talk. Knock sense back into his hard head. Things like that. Ba, downstairs.”
“Thank you both again. I’ll never forget it.”
Bo Wen gave Shenden a wide smile before Qing realised he wasn’t being followed. “Now, Ba.”
As the pair went back down the stairs, Qing’s words floated back into the open door.
“What a nice girl,” Qing said. Rock heard the footsteps stop.
“Not a damn word.” The older man’s laughter faded as the pair descended out of earshot.
”They’re amazing people,” Shenden said. She folded her blanket so it would fit onto her lap and pulled her chair to the other side of Rock’s bed.
”Amazingly odd, Rock said.
”Rock. They saved your life.” She leaned in, punctuated her point with a hard gaze. Rock’s expression didn’t shift.
”Maybe they shouldn’t have,” he said. He saw her heart break a little behind her eyes.
”What are you talking about, Rock?” She worked to keep her tone level, but she couldn’t hack it.
”Maybe if I died down there the Vanguard would have enough reason to come down on him and find proof of what he did.” It might be the only option left to them. The Vanguard would never move on him without something more substantial. The Count swore up and down he hadn’t been Saw’s killer, but what other lead was there?
”Why do you even believe it was him?” She kept the edge of the hurt out of her voice this time, but the question still cut Rock.
”Really, Shenden? Isn’t it obvious? Why even tell me he was in the city if you didn’t think he did it?” Rock snapped. He expected her to recoil, but she just scoffed.
”Because it was the right thing to do. Your biological father shows up to your dad’s funeral, and I’m supposed to keep that from you? I didn’t think you’d go on a tear through the city going after him. I didn’t think you’d wreck Uncle Phone’s store. I didn’t think Ben Knight would be calling me asking why you were beating on his son, and I certainly didn’t think you would go and do this to yourself.” She gestured at him up and down. His injuries were gone, but Rock got the point.
”Well what the hell did you think was gonna happen?” Rock said. Shenden knew him well enough to know this was how he solved problems. The way The Mountain had against his worst enemies. The way The Count did, he realized.
”I thought you might come home and grieve with us. I thought we might all work it out together, as a family. Make right of this.” She reached out and squeezed Rock’s arm. ”All this time, we just wanted you to come home.”
”We? Come on, Shennie. You know as well as I do how pissed Khaing Min and Thiri are. You know how much we fight.” He pulled his arm out of her grasp and rubbed where she touched like it would leave a scar.
”They did a lot of growing up while you were gone. I had hoped you did too.” She held her hand close to herself. It made Rock feel like he had slapped it away.
”It’s not about ‘growing up’. Do you remember that night when we were all at Doc Eye’s?” He offered his hand to her as a silent apology.
Shenden nodded cautiously, put her hand in his. It was one of the nights after Saw’s last fight with Darksaber, lacerated to the bone, hanging on in the way only he could. All his children gathered around, supporting him.
”Do you remember what we all promised him?” He met her eyes, deep and intelligent brown, grasping the memory.
”That we would always be there for him,” she whispered.
”Of everyone who made that promise, who left?” Rock asked.
”You’re a special case Rock, you know that. You had to go and heal on your own terms.” She massaged the back of his hand with her thumb.
”Our siblings don’t see it that way. I don’t see it that way. I thought he had nothing left to teach me, so I left to become stronger, but I couldn’t even manage that. I left, and now he’s dead. I wasn’t there to protect him like he protected us. It’s my fault.” He drew his legs up to his chest.
”He knew the risks, Rock, made sure we all knew them. Is this what all this is about? You can’t face us, you can’t forgive yourself until you catch whoever did this?”
Rock shook his head. He couldn’t. He fought the stinging feeling in his eyes. Shenden bit her lip and thought for a beat.
”I can’t tell you I wouldn’t want to see justice done. But I can tell you it wouldn’t matter to Dad. He died doing what he believed in. All he would want is to see you grow into a good man.”
”I’m trying,” Rock said.
”I know,” Shenden said. She wrapped him in a hug. ”Maybe part of the trying should be making amends. If you really feel you did wrong, you could apologize to Thiri and Khaing Min. I can come, keep them honest. Keep you honest.” Rock looked away.
”I can’t,” he said.
”Maybe you just can’t yet.” Shenden rubbed his back. ”What if you started with something smaller, and worked your way up? Try apologizing to Scott Knight.”
”I…” Rock sighed. ”I can try.”
-Another difficult chapter to write, harder than the funeral for sure, although Hound did help out a heap. It’s difficult to balance emotional storytelling, particularly with dialogue, against possible melodrama. Thankfully I’m emulating comics and manga which are famously melodramatic so it shouldn’t be a huge issue.
-If second characters ever opened up and I had the energy for it (which I won’t), I think I’d be interested in pursuing the Doctor as a secondary PC. I like the idea of fleshing out the verse from the eyes of someone who has seen so much of it, even more than someone like Dusk or Rock. I also liked the idea of a Doctor that did not have a straightforward healing power, but rather something that just made him more effective as a doctor. I floated around faceclaims of all kinds, but I found that an old Jewish guy seemed right for the character and his relationship with Rock. I’m Jewish myself but practically speaking I’m a goyim who wears the hat at Hannukah, so I hope my portrayal is not too overblown.
5x Thank
