by Lou Paduano
“No.” His voice was low. Calm. It infuriated her. “It was the most reckless. That’s why you chose it.”
It was the same lesson she sat through with the Harpy the previous year and the So’la the year before that. It was the same argument but the results remained the same.
“Four women, Mentor,” she answered. “Four women that won’t be home with their families. Four was enough.”
Mentor fell silent, pausing. He nodded. “I don’t disagree with the sentiment.”
“Says the hermit from the sewers.” Her eyes fell down to her feet, her cheeks turning slightly red from the outburst.
“To the kettle. Yes.” His grin matched her own, but quickly faded at the sight of the small pile of ashes in the center of the alley. “Four was too many. But you almost became five. Do you know why?”
Her hand slammed back against the wall. Her knuckles continued to sting from her pummeling of the golden-skinned god and she immediately regretted the action. She turned away from Mentor, detesting the sentiment of his words. Years she spent learning from him, years spent in the dark beneath the city, waiting for the day she could walk among the rest of Portents. Twenty-two years old and she remained separated from the city she protected. His choice, never her own.
“This stopped being fun years ago. These lessons.”
“Because you choose to ignore them,” Mentor replied, his voice pleading to be heard. He moved closer to her but she continued to step away from his comforting hand. “Because you feel you know better. Because—”
“Because I did it on my own. Without you.” Her voice echoed through the alley in anger. “The answer to your question. But I wasn’t alone. Not here. Not anywhere in this city.”
Neither of them spoke. Neither of them knew if this was a compliment or a condemnation for Mentor’s actions over the years. Neither wanted to figure it out any further. There was more to it, though. The shared feeling that his presence would end, or had already done so. It was something she had wrestled with since his arrival in her life at the orphanage. It remained every moment of every day, that feeling that their time together would end. The feeling of darkness returning to her life. It stemmed from the aches running the length of his right leg to his lower back. He was getting old and there was still so much she needed to know, so much to be shared between them. He moved in close, his hands resting on her shoulders. Still she looked away but his words needed to be said, if not heard.
“You are the Greystone, Soriya. In more than name.” He smirked, beaming pride upon her, though she failed to notice in her anger. “You have a responsibility to more than your own needs. Your own desires. That is not what we—”
“I know,” she replied, pulling away slightly. She gazed up at him with large brown eyes—the eyes of that four-year-old girl still hidden within the brown orbs. “I know all of it. I am trying to be more. To be what you want me to be.”
Mentor crouched over the remnants of the god, gritting his teeth at the creaking in his knees. “It shouldn’t have happened. None of it,” he said.
Soriya stepped closer to him. It was the one point where they could both agree. Escapes were rare but when they occurred, they turned bad. The problem was that they should never occur. Anteros was not meant to be in the city, was not meant to be anywhere near the earthly plane of existence, but somehow swooped in under the radar, taking the lives of four women before they were able to act.
Mentor spoke of the same thoughts that ran through Soriya’s mind. “Anteros should not have been able to cross the Bypass on his own. The balance has tipped.”
It always came down to balance. Darkness and light. Right and wrong. Balance was the center of Mentor’s universe so it was the center of Soriya’s as well. Everything made sense when balance was taken into account. Everything followed rules.
Except when it didn’t. Then everything went straight to hell. Real quick.
“Something has changed,” both said at the same moment.
They were both aware of the dull hum of an engine at the mouth of the alley. They both heard the slight slam of the passenger side door and the sound of sneakers sliding against the pavement. Neither knew how much was overheard but both turned at the voice that called out to them. The voice of Detective Greg Loren.
“You could say that.”
Chapter Ten
Three Months Earlier
Few people roamed the halls of the station the night of Loren’s last shift. Even fewer said goodbye. Not that it mattered. All that could have been said had been long before the moment Loren closed his office door for the last time. Well wishes were plentiful for months after Beth’s death. Food prepared. Friends visited. Eventually it all faded away. Calls were no longer answered. Greetings no longer exchanged. The sandy brown hue of his eyes darkened to the world for a long time.
Then the bottom dropped. Friends turned to colleagues turned to strangers. His obsession clouded his work. His anger took him the rest of the way. Ruiz finally pulled him aside. Then Loren realized he needed more. He needed to leave.
With Beth’s case file, a parting gift from Ruiz, tucked securely under his arm, Loren felt the handle click as the door closed shut. He twisted it twice to make sure it stuck. He swore there was someone always leaving it open when he arrived in the morning yet he continued to double check his own handiwork. Not that it mattered any longer. He slipped the key off his chain and let it slide back into the lock. He left it there, his gun and badge secure within the desk drawer at the center of the office. He did not want to see Ruiz. He wanted to slip away without saying goodbye to his one true friend.
They said their peace months earlier. Loren was lost in another case, another murder, another something to take his mind off what remained of his life. He closed it, hoping it would help. It failed. He followed up on it, only to learn the perp had walked. Lost evidence. Misplaced reports. An error on his part, one he would never make. Without call, without approval, Loren found the colleague working against him. A man the department had censured and demoted on more than one occasion. Standish. He could have turned it over to Ruiz at that point.
He didn’t.
Standish ended up with a broken arm and a concussion.
That was the end for Loren, pushing the rest of the department out of his corner. While justified, the downright inhumanity he displayed on a daily basis was enough to warrant Ruiz’s interference. It was enough for Loren too. Time off, a couple different therapy groups and Loren started to remember a time that life didn’t hurt as much. Where there wasn’t as much anger in the world. He needed it again. To see the light away from the darkness. Seeing Ruiz only added to the plain and simple fact that he couldn’t do that in Portents. He couldn’t do that around Ruiz.
Pratchett stepped out of the elevator at the far end of the hall on the second floor. He poked and prodded a young man into the hall toward the holding cells. The young man’s hands were secured behind his back. He scurried along the hallway, his body continually threatening to topple forward in a face plant with the tile floor below due to his pants wrapped tightly around his ankles. The polka dot boxer briefs concealed his unmentionables. Loren was grateful.
The tall officer snickered, nudging the punk along the hall. He towered over the man who looked more like a boy the closer he came into Loren’s view. No older than twenty. Tattoos lined his right arm. Loren recognized the spider dangling from its web adorned on his bicep from a gang that had infected the north of the city.
“Friend of yours, Pratchett?” Loren asked when they passed. Near the stable at the center of the floor, heads were slowly rising from desks at the sight of the young man.
Pratchett smiled, the same childlike grin he always shared with Loren’s sense of humor. “Found him tied to the post outside the stoop. Freaking note around his neck like a present from Santa.”
Pratchett handed Loren the note. A single line was scrawled on a small piece of cardboard with a string attached to the top to fit around the man�
��s neck. The marker lines were thick and black. It read: Felt like parking my stolen cars here for a while. No room in the garage.
Loren smiled. Not the cleverest of messages but the point was clear. He handed the note back to Pratchett. “I’d ask Santa for something else next year.”
Pratchett laughed. “No kidding.”
Loren gave a nod and made his way down the hall. He stepped past the elevators for the stairwell adjacent and knocked the door open. Even with his back to him, Loren felt Pratchett’s curious stare at his turn toward the parking garage. The towering officer, however, made no comment and no movement to inquire further, leaving the departing detective in peace.
The parking garage was vacant except for the glistening vehicles shining in the moonlight. Loren slipped his hands into the pockets of his jacket and held it tight against his body. Through the leather he could feel the small pack of gum he kept in the right breast pocket. He fought the urge to retrieve a stick, not wanting to hear the soft clicking to match his shoes on the concrete. Winter was passing quickly, and though it had been mild in terms of snowfall, the cold chill of night was bitter against his skin. Echoes followed his every step for the ledge overlooking Evans Avenue and the downtown district. The Rath Building, named after the founder of the city William Rath. He had settled the area with hundreds of wayward souls in the early 1890s—or so the plaque under his statue in front of the building read. The Rath, or “Wrath” as it was called, was the office of the Central Precinct for the Portents Police Department. The city was made up of twelve districts with twelve precincts but Central oversaw them all. Most knew it as “lucky thirteen” when it came to precincts but still it remained the envy of most officers. Ruiz believed it was the idea of being able to work within the same building as the commissioner, a man rarely seen and heard fewer and fewer times each year. For Loren it was never about the politics. For him, the draw of working at the Central Precinct was the view.
The ledge of the parking garage was only feet from ground level. It was the only type of ledge Loren felt comfortable near since Beth’s fall. It was peaceful at the spot he always picked, a long view of Evans Avenue and Heaven’s Gate Park. A row of streetlamps shone on the snowy remnants of winter, no longer quite white in color. The look was deceiving and he knew it.
It was time to leave. Long past time. It still felt right, even with the beauty of the city stretched before him. This was never his city. It was hers. It belonged to Beth. Not him. He merely survived it, though he rarely saw the last four years that way. They were empty moments filled with more regrets than his entire life held. Regrets and mistakes.
The quiet of the garage settled over him for a long time though he knew he was not alone. Even in the darkness, he felt her watching over him, waiting to make her presence known. When he was tired of his own thoughts, he ended the quiet, his eyes still watching the dim lights of streetlamps in the park.
“You need to stop beating people up and leaving them on our doorstep,” he said to the darkness.
Soriya Greystone stepped out of the shadows. “Tell them to stop stealing cars from old ladies and I’ll be glad to stop. Not your doorstop anymore anyway.”
She sat on the ledge beside him, looking him over. She wore a light cape coat that matched her skin over the same blouse and jean combination he had seen her wear dozens of times before, though every time it seemed unique where his own wardrobe seemed drab and uninspired. It was the confidence behind the clothes or the uncaring attitude that said, Who gives a damn what I’m wearing. Her hair lay flat upon her shoulders and upper back, her legs dangling from the ledge. She looked so young even in the shadows that covered most of her small frame. Too young for the life she had led. Her eyes were wide but he refused to meet them.
“Don’t,” he said, still looking out into the city.
“Don’t what?” she asked, her voice rising. “Don’t talk you out of it? Don’t try to get you to stay? I wouldn’t know how. She died, Loren. You didn’t have to follow her.”
“I tried. I tried real hard to believe I could move on. That I could get up in the morning, put on the badge, and do the job. Hell, to do your job too or whatever the hell it is you call it. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t see that guy in the mirror anymore. The one that saw hope, that saw light, because there isn’t any. Not anymore. That guy died with her.”
They fell silent, looking away from each other. The experiences they shared, the losses they carried, bound them in a way no one else could have possibly understood. Loss was all they felt when together. Loren needed to feel something else. Anything else.
A small smile broke across Soriya’s face. “Do you remember the first time we did this?” she asked.
He nodded. “You mean the first time you dropped off a present at the precinct to get my attention? Yeah. I remember.”
It was right after Beth’s death. The Kindly Killings proceeded while Loren lost his way in grief. Days turned into weeks. For a time Loren thought the two were connected, that maybe he came closer than he realized to solving the case. The smile on Beth’s lips. Her joy at taking the image of Loren’s face with her when she passed seemed to line up with the killer’s methods. Ruiz didn’t see it that way. No one did. They were busy trying to catch a killer and console a friend, though they were unsuccessful at both.
Then Soriya intervened.
On a night much warmer, Loren stepped out of the precinct to go home to an empty apartment only to find a man hogtied on the front steps of the building. His mouth was stretched into a smile with a note pinned into his chest, not his shirt since he wore nothing other than a pair of socks and some stretched out underwear. Little droplets of blood stuck to where the pin met flesh but still the man did not whimper in pain. The note read: I smile at killing nice people. Please lock me away and throw away the key. Sincerely, Mr. Kindly, AKA Douchebag Scum.
The handwriting was the same used on the man Pratchett found. The knots on his bindings were a match. It wasn’t until he took the man to holding that a call came in directing him to the parking garage.
Soriya was more elaborate back in the day, doing her best to make a first impression on him.
When he finally made it to the parking garage to meet her, after dozens of questions from everyone he saw in the halls of the Rath Building, she simply smiled from the shadows. There was no discussion. No requests were made that night. Nothing but a quiet nod of understanding. A new and true friend watching his back.
They shared that moment whenever they could. Loren needed it, a little notch in the “win” column. Soriya solved the case that lorded over him for months. The Kindly Killer was nothing more than a greeter at a local department store chain. He handed out coupons and smiled at the rude customers. Those he took offense to, he followed closely after his shift and ended their lives. Rudeness was their sin. Loren definitely needed the win.
The two of them relived the moment the same as they had relived so many others. The start of their time together, a time that turned out to be one of the few highlights of Loren’s final years in Portents. It just wasn’t enough to keep him from leaving.
“When?” Soriya asked after a long silence.
“Train leaves tomorrow,” replied Loren, solemnly. “I’ll come back for my things once everything settles down.”
Soriya hopped off the ledge and moved away from Loren. His eyes followed her.
“Greg,” she said, turning back. She never used his first name. Not even in anger. “It won’t bring her back.”
“I know,” he answered.
Her eyes pleaded. “Then why go? Why now?”
Loren knew the answer. He knew it the moment he reached the decision to leave. He looked to his friend and partner of the last four years with hope in his eyes.
“I’m hoping it brings me back.”
Loren stood at the mouth of the alleyway. Behind him, the patrol car’s engine whirred. Pratchett sat in the driver’s seat listening to the loose belt whipping under the hood.
He was Loren’s babysitter and chauffeur for the night. His eyes looked back and forth at the street in front of him, glancing from time to time at Loren out of concern.
“Loren?” Soriya called to him. There was disbelief in her voice, as if there was a chance he wasn’t standing before her. He smirked at hearing her voice, causing her own bloodied lips to spread wide. Mentor stepped between them.
“Detective,” the old man said coldly.
Loren ventured deeper into the alley. Mentor moved aside, letting the detective look over the area. His eyes caught Mentor’s deep grays. Soriya did her best to keep the two of them apart, the reason becoming clear every time they met.
“Always a pleasure, Mentor,” Loren said. He noticed the small pile of ashes in the center of the alley. “Do I want to know about the ashes? No. I’ll go ahead and answer that myself. No, I do not want to know about the ashes.”
He turned to Soriya and mouthed a hello to her. His gaze rose to the deep black of the sky and then back down on the young woman leaning against the wall of the alley.
“I told Ruiz. Follow the lightning on a clear night in Portents and find trouble. And trouble’s off-putting uncle.”
Soriya stepped over to him, holding back the urge to reach out and touch his arm to confirm his existence. “You came back.”
“It wasn’t exactly by choice.” His words stung and he regretted them. Soriya watched Mentor’s disapproving glances from the far side of the alley.
“Oh.”
“We have work to do, Detective.” Mentor started for the mouth of the alley, motioning for his ward to follow. “If you’ll—”
“You’re going to want to see what I have to show you,” Loren called after them. He moved for the car and opened the back passenger door. Mentor held back but Soriya looked with curiosity. She moved for the car without hesitation. As she ducked in, her eyes washed over Loren. She was inspecting him, searching for answers he didn’t have and probably never would. Was he different? He didn’t know. Neither of them did. But something had changed. Loren waited a long moment after she was seated in the back then called out to the skeptical old man. He refused to join them until Loren spoke once more, each word proving his sincerity.