“Hands where I can see them,” I barked and pointed my weapon at the two men. Both stood back a step from James and held their hands in the air.
So docile. So compliant.
Something wasn’t right. Why could I smell the stench of a witch? Witches only possessed women and they rarely traveled without a host. But the scent was eye-watering, indisputable.
I scanned the area, letting my instincts pick up anything of interest: oil slick on the floor, burned rubber scent near the garage, urine, red paint… none if it relevant to the puzzle unfolding in front of me.
“Get that shit out of his arm,” I ordered.
One man—stocky and with a procession of metal studs down each ear—pulled out the half-depleted syringe and leered at me.
The other man glared from his square face and shoved his hands into his trench coat pockets. Potential concealed weapon, my instincts warned. The man stepped closer to the boy, never taking his beady eyes from me. His movements were smooth and agile, like a cat’s.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Trench Coat said.
“Shut up. Hands behind your head. What did you put in the boy?” I inched closer.
Trench Coat ignored me. I stepped forward and aimed the gun at his face, but a groan from the boy turned my head.
That moment of distraction was all that was needed for someone to knock the gun from my hand. When I looked back, a fist met my face, and I reeled to the floor. The fuck?
I’d never in my life been this sloppy. I was faster and stronger than any fighter I’d faced—it was part of my ability, my advantage in the Game.
I took a moment to gather myself, but when I did, I unleashed the devil inside.
I launched at Earrings and rained punch after punch down on him. Left to the face, right to the rib, a jab in the throat. Precise, well timed and effective. I could’ve disabled him quicker with two fingers to his eyes but I enjoyed this—making him hurt. The man’s face morphed into a bloody mess.
I realized I’d spent too long on him when I caught a blow to the left kidney from Trench Coat followed with another hit to my side. My body screamed in pain with every intake of breath. I fished for a knife in my boot and rounded on Trench Coat, plunging the blade deep into his shoulder. I released the handle.
He flinched, stepped back, but then came at me again. In a flash, a second knife was in my hand and I threw. It embedded in his other shoulder.
Not good enough. He charged.
Fine, that’s how it’s going to be. No more dicking around. A swift jab to the throat dropped him, choking and clutching his neck. I popped him in the sternum for good measure. A clear crack resounded.
He wasn’t getting up anytime soon.
I pulled my knife from his shoulder and wiped it on his coat. My ribs ached as I straightened, and my fingers splintered in pain. Earrings had fallen in a heap. I nudged him with my foot. Heartbeat still strong. He’d be fine.
As I turned away, a curious marking on Earring’s skin showed beneath his dislodged shirt. Purple, pink, swirls of dark blue and an unmistakable network of black lines spread across the epidermis.
Thunder rumbled outside, and lightning sparked into the room from the high windows, casting shadows across the face of my victim. I sliced his shirt from his chest downwards. A star-map.
Player.
“Shit.” It pointed to Ursa Constellation—Roo’s father’s territory. What the fuck does that bastard have going on here? I considered plunging the knife into the man’s heart, ending his Game. Two weeks ago, before I’d met Roo, that’s what I would’ve done.
My instincts whispered: Kill, rage, protect.
But I held back. Instead, I checked on James. I crouched down and listened to his heartbeat. It fluttered as one would expect a heart in strain to do.
I secured the man’s hands with some cable ties I found nearby and then slapped him in the face. Hard.
“Wake up.”
“Wha—” The man’s eyes fluttered open. He tried to lash out with his hands, but they were tied.
“It’s just you and me, bro.” I flipped the knife in front of his face. “What are your plans with Urser? What are you doing to the boy?”
The man sulked. “I ain’t telling you nuthin’.”
“Wrong answer.” I cracked his jaw with the hilt of my knife.
The man spat blood. I leaned forward and frowned at the sharp change in breath odor. “What was in the vial?”
“Our salvation.”
“And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I rapped the hilt of my knife on the man’s forehead.
“The darkness will no longer be lost in the shadows of the night.” The man bit down and foam mixed with blood, dribbled from the corner of his mouth. The nutty smell grew stronger. Cyanide. “Hoc est bellum,” he gurgled, then died.
“Idiot.” I flung my knife across the room. Jesus-fucking-Christ—why would he do that? Why spend years training at The Ludus, learning to play the Game, only to leave it prematurely? Surely his actions weren’t enough to score him an evolutionary advantage when he returned to the Empire. He’d most likely return to his natural body as less of a man than he was before. It made little sense. Prematurely removing yourself from the Game lost you points. The Universe didn’t like quitters and punished them for it. So why would he do that?
Why indeed? A mocking voice popped into my head.
But the cyanide, the dark vial, and the Urser House connection. I shook my head at the evidence. Something was definitely awry.
Important enough to die for.
Trench Coat had curled into a fetal position. He wheezed. As did James. I had a choice to make. Take out my grievance on the misguided Player, or help James. After restraining the enemy with some discarded cable ties, I jimmied the man’s three cyanide caps from his teeth with the tip of a knife and pocketed them. I’d send Jed around later with a team to collect Trench Coat and interrogate him further.
James’s frail body weighed next to nothing in my arms as I carried him to the car. Draped over my arms like a rag doll, the boy had stopped stirring. Rain had started to fall again, its fresh scent welcome after the stench of the warehouse. I reached the car and placed the boy on the back seat. The pungent smell of witch lingered. I sniffed, testing.
It came from James.
James twitched.
Lightning sparked. The burst of light revealed foreign movement over James’s skin. It rippled, lumpy, like something swam underneath. Seconds later thunder crashed.
One disaster at a time, I thought and drove at break-neck speed towards my office. The boy was failing. Expiring. Who knew what had been injected? James wasn’t a Player, he wouldn’t wake in Purgatory to have his soul transported back to the Empire. He would dissolve into the earth’s atmosphere, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Forgotten.
Marc
I walked through the streets of London, a little shell-shocked. I had no idea how to handle Jacine. While I wanted answers about the darkness bollocks she touted, I didn’t have the nerve to return without a solid plan. She was a hard woman to refuse. One needed nerves of steel when dealing with the Goddess of Love, especially one such as myself, with a yearning for the blasted emotion.
And why did I keep thinking of Little Red? Sure, she was a smashing piece of ass, but I didn’t trust her, so why did I want to be near her? Why did I crave her? I’d already visited the hunter’s physician three times this week, and according to him, nothing was wrong. But I felt hot and bothered. Perhaps I was coming down with something. I wiped my forehead, checking my temperature. That’s what the Simons did, wasn’t it? Check for a fever?
But I wasn’t a Simon. I was a god. The god-of-the-in-between. Blimey, gods didn’t get sick.
“Fucking bollocks,” I muttered as I walked past a newsstand.
An old geezer sorting out the listings gasped at my words. I began to apologize—or curse again, I hadn’t decided—but stopped short at the sight of a magazine behind him
on the rack. A woman’s kind eyes smiled from a middle-aged face, generic in its simplicity. Next to her in bold typography was: Eve—Witches: the Light Against the Dark.
“You’d better close that trap, young man. It’s a new age—no use fighting it. Next thing you know, there’ll be aliens coming out of the closet.”
I clamped my mouth closed, swiped the magazine off the rack and started walking as I flipped to the feature.
“Oi! You gonna pay for that?” the old man shouted.
“What’s that?” I pointed at an undetermined spot in the cloudy sky and stepped through the dimensions, finding myself a nice spot across the park to peruse the story.
“Bollocks.”
I stared down at my empty hands. The magazine hadn’t traveled with me. I bloody forgot it wasn’t organic and couldn’t traverse through space with me. I glanced back to the newsstand and saw it lying on the grass in tattered pieces, the old man ambling over to retrieve it.
I shook my head at my bungle. Almost as amateur as a Player. I must be in a state.
Start again.
I changed my appearance to the suave James Bond type I’d concocted through many experiments with the ladies. Then I pulled the atoms in the air together around me to form an illustrious-construct which clothed myself in respectable attire—a three piece suit and a newsboy style cap. I approached the stand again.
“How goes it, good sir?” I said in my best serious voice as I approached. I loved playing games with Simons.
“Bloody youth of today,” the old man grumbled.
“Entitled sods, the lot of them, ey?” I made an action of pulling something out of my expensive looking fake jacket and held out my hand to the man. It was nothing, of course, but the old man saw what I wanted him to see: a ten pound note. “I’ll take the one with the witch, thank you. It’s a new age, after all, no sense fighting it.”
The old man’s jaw dropped. He handed me the magazine, and I chuckled.
“Keep the change,” I said and walked away with my head firmly between two pages.
So she was in town.
The witch was in town headlining a conference that promoted the cooperation between witches and humans. I only had to wait a few days, then I’d be able to ask the miscreant herself about the history of my mate, Cash. Little Red said Eve was the one who’d cursed his soul, splitting it into three all those years ago. But why? And how could Eve think she was the solution to the darkness? She was the darkness! Those bloody whores of evolution—feeding on humans like parasites—imperfect and bastardized carbon copies of Seraphim souls… My brows tightened. Still, I couldn’t help wonder about the coincidence in terminology. The Light Against the Dark. Too similar to the scourge of darkness released by the Prince all those years ago. It was the sole reason the Queen had quarantined the infected to this planet. It only became a game afterward to appease the bickering territories grieved to have lost their dignitaries to the conflict.
I sat down hard on a park bench. My weary body sagged in the seat. This game—this world—it was getting to me. I loved the Simons, but after thousands of years, I was tired.
I wanted out.
Jacine’s offer flooded my mind, and I momentarily gave into the desire to take her up on it.
But, no. No matter how much I wanted out, I was loyal. I would never create another soul just to give myself a break and I would never betray Sephie even if she was slowly fading and forgetting me. That made it worse. How could you turn your back on a friend who needed your help the most?
Flicking the pages of Eve’s interview backwards and forwards, I pondered about what witches had to gain by a partnership with the humans. Was it just about the symbiotic relationship, or was there something more? Perhaps they were joining the fight to get back to paradise, uniting against a common enemy. There had been a witch working in cahoots with Urser after all. She could be the first of many.
What was it the Simons said on those little black boxes with moving pictures? I’d caught a bit of a show the last time I shacked up with a girl after the football.
What was that show? What were those words?
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I threw the magazine in the trash can next to me and paced up and down the path as something far more disturbing occurred to me.
I couldn’t remember Eve.
She was supposed to be an ancient and powerful witch—the first of her kind. I’d been around on this planet since the beginning, but that was so long ago that my memory had warped. The circumstances surrounding the day the hunter blocked all traitorous Seraphim from the Empire was equally hard to grasp. I was sure Cash and I were friends. Colleagues. Soldiers on the same side at the very least. We’d both given up everything to serve the Queen. The last thing I remembered on that day was Sephie screaming, Kill them all, before I took her back home.
But that was ancient history. And living for tens of thousands of years made the simple task of pulling a specific memory from my brain’s internal archive tremendously difficult. It wasn’t uncommon amongst the oldest of us. After all, if you remembered everything, you’d go barmy.
Right. That does it then. I needed to get back to the London Ludus and see what the sexy secretary had discovered, maybe even ask her out for a quick how’s your mother. I also needed to make a trip to Purgatory, collect the souls and return them to the Empire. Then of course, Sephie needed to be apprised of the brewing unrest on this planet.
But before all that, though, I needed to uncover some truths about myself.
“Time to see the Librarian,” I decided.
Cash
My leading witch-hunting business filled an entire ten floor office building in the heart of Houston. The administration was on the ground two levels, a gymnasium in the middle, with research and medical at the top. My facility was government sanctioned, which gave me extra political clout. But that wasn’t why I was successful.
Ask me to find something and I could. Anything.
But ask me to fix somebody and I was useless.
Maybe I should’ve let Roo stay. Her abilities spanned beyond that of a witch and would have been useful. I’d seen her do something to one of her friends back in Australia. What was his name? Alvin. That was it. A witch had hexed him, and he was dying. But Roo had incubated a remedy within herself, then sent it into the boy and commanded his body to fix itself. Her power mastered biology—it was incredible. The cure had resulted in a man with bigger musculature and physique than before. He’d morphed from a pudgy nobody into someone built and fighting fit. It was better than a miracle.
Maybe she could heal the boy. James didn’t deserve what was happening to him, whatever it was.
I’d called ahead to let the office know I was coming. The nurse I had on retainer greeted me with a gurney as I rushed through the front doors, James in my arms. I placed the boy onto it and we went straight up to the surgery at the top level. When we arrived, James was lifted onto a hard operating table at the center of the room.
“Where’s Bertram?” I asked.
“On his way in. What was the drug?” asked Miranda, the new nurse, as she flashed a light into his eyes. Upon seeing the nefarious ripple under James’s skin, she flinched, jumping back. “What the hell was that?”
“That’s why he’s here and not the hospital,” I said to the portly woman. “I’m not sure what was injected, but it’s clear it’s doing something to him.”
“It was injected,” she mused. “So perhaps it’s not contagious, but, still, we can’t be certain. We need to set up a quarantine.” She had a sharp nose and a severe ponytail, maybe thirty years old. From the yellow stains around her left fingers, a smoker. Human too.
I didn’t like trusting sensitive paranormal information to someone who couldn’t follow her own health advice. She would have signed a non-disclosure statement as well as being generously paid, so it was unlikely she’d go spilling the beans about my clandestine world. But still, if this was the kind of hiring
that had gone on while I was away in Australia, perhaps ending my vessel’s life wasn’t such a good idea.
A whimper came from James and his head shook from side to side as though he were having a bad dream. Miranda moved to retrieve a syringe filled with a sedative. I leaned closer to James. Some instinct had me trying to uncover something with my inspection, and for some reason, I thought if I was right up close, I’d discover it. But when my eyes were in line with his, a hand span away, he opened them and stared into my soul.
“James, we’re going to help you,” I said and placed my palm firmly on his shoulder.
He blinked, and I noticed a black film coating the edges of his eyes. A sick feeling rolled inside. So much like a witch, yet, it was impossible.
“James?” I asked. “Can you hear me? It’s Cash. Do you remember me?”
A growl rumbled from Jame’s throat. “You took something from my room.”
“What was it, James?”
He bared his teeth. “I want it back.”
Then he thrashed about, fingernails sharp as claws as they slashed for me. I pulled back, narrowly missing injury. When Miranda drew close, he went for her too. I held the boy down while she injected him. Within seconds, he relaxed, closed his eyes, and sighed before going still.
Miranda gathered herself and fussed with the plastic gloves on her hands. “Wow. Whatever he’s taken, that’s some drug. Did you get a sample?”
I paused. “No.”
Miranda pursed her lips, eyes condescending over the newly adhered surgical mask. “Then it will take longer for us to figure out how to help him and whether this is contagious.”
“I know that,” I snapped. “I’ll send for a team to canvas and clean the site. There may be another witness who can provide clues.” I hated being wrong. I should’ve taken the empty syringe, but I hadn’t. “James smells like a witch. Something isn’t right. It’s not possible for a witch to be in a male body.”
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