by Gage Lee
“Who are you?” he gasped, his heavy French accent making the English words almost unintelligible. “How did you get in here?”
“Albert, I need you to relax,” I said. “I’ve been sent here because you’ve been a very naughty boy. My bosses say you’ve been telling stories you shouldn’t have to people you definitely should not be seen with.”
Recognition blossomed in Albert’s eyes. His jowly face and paunch told me he wasn’t much of a fighter, so I wasn’t surprised when he whirled around to fumble with the chain in a futile effort to escape.
Before he could open the door, I grabbed him by the back of his coat and used a bit of jinsei to boost my strength. I flung him across the room to the couch, which broke when his not inconsiderable weight hit it at speed.
Albert’s short legs churned the air as he tried to right himself. Flustered, he attempted to roll over and regain his feet that way. When that succeeded in tangling him in his cloak, he gave up and lay still.
My Eclipse nature recognized prey when it saw it. The temptation to strike the fool down and savage his core was almost too great to resist. I watched Albert pant and gasp, tangled in his coat like a fish in a net, and I struggled to force the darkness down into its cage.
I was glad Albert couldn’t see me. By the time the urge finally passed, I was shaking and soaked with sweat. It took me several cleansing breaths before I trusted myself to speak again.
“I want you to understand that my employers don’t want you dead,” I told him as I sat on the edge of the coffee table in front of his battered couch. “But we need a promise from you, Albert.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He finally wormed free of his coat and managed to take a semi-dignified seat on the broken couch. “I’m only an auditor. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Ah, but you have,” I said. “I’m going to cut to the chase so you’ll know that lying to me is a waste of your time and mine. You have been selling important information to the heretics. They’ve been using that data to coordinate their attacks against the Grand Design.”
Albert deflated and sank back into himself with every word out of my mouth. Now that his secret was in the open, he was broken.
“It’s not like that,” he said. “We’re trying to save the Grand Design from itself. There’s something much worse coming.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’re the hero here, Albert?” I said. “That seems unlikely, don’t you think?”
“I’m no one,” Albert said again. “I give my handler the information he asks for. They use it to stop the real threats.”
It was time to get serious with Albert. He didn’t seem to be getting the message.
I punched him, hard, in the stomach.
The auditor was no fighter and wasn’t prepared for the sudden blow. He doubled over, retching, his face red, back heaving up and down as he tried to keep his dinner where it belonged. His breath panted in and out of his lungs in asthmatic wheezes, and the bald spot on top of his head turned the color of a maraschino cherry.
Hitting Albert made me feel dirty. I’d hurt my share of people, but most of them had been trying to hurt me at the same time. Albert, on the other hand, wasn’t a threat. Hitting him felt a lot like slapping a child. There was no honor in that attack. I held very still for a moment and reminded myself that even dishonorable actions can lead to an honorable outcome. My mission wasn’t about hurting Albert, it was about stopping a far more dangerous threat to Empyreal society.
“Listen,” he gasped, flopping back onto the couch. “I don’t know who sent you, but you have to believe me. There’s something out there. Something coming. My handler tells me the Grand Design didn’t account for this. We’re the only ones who can stop it.”
I felt an uncomfortable twinge of sympathy for Albert. He and I were both little fish in a very big pond, and only the carp in the waters below us had plumbed its depths. Maybe Albert believed he was on the side of angels. His handler could have told him anything at all to make him believe that.
“You’re hurting people, Albert,” I said. “Do you understand that?
Albert’s eyes flickered to something behind me. His jowls quivered, and he raised both hands defensively. It was a rookie move, and I’d seen it dozens of times before in the arena. The poor guy really thought I would look behind me so he could make a break for it. Albert was a terrible bluffer.
Unfortunately for me, he wasn’t bluffing.
I heard the whistle of something heavy tearing through the air just before it slammed across my shoulders. The force of the blow drove me forward, off the coffee table, and I caught myself with a hand against Albert’s squishy stomach.
He coughed and gasped as I forced the air out of his lungs for the second time that night and shoved both his hands into my chest. It wasn’t a strong blow, but it was enough to knock me off balance after I’d already been stunned by what felt like a lead pipe to the back.
Knowing there was an opponent behind me, I rolled on my shoulder and popped back up to my feet near the end of the couch in front of the entertainment center and its little TV.
Albert’s rescuer was about my height, slender, and also dressed all in black. They wielded a pair of black tonfa, and their core glowed brightly with sacred energy.
“Don’t make this hard,” I said. “I just need to have a little chat with Albert, then I’ll be on my way.”
“Just leave,” Albert pleaded. “No one has to get hurt.”
Albert was wrong. I couldn’t leave without making sure he understood how important it was that he stop providing the heretics with intelligence. The fact that he had a mysterious bodyguard willing to fight for him made that a much, much harder sell. The only way to make my point now was to put a serious hurt on the bodyguard.
Or kill him. That’s what the dark urge really wanted, and its siren song was getting harder and harder to resist.
The tonfa-wielding fighter circled around the couch, weapons at the ready. He rotated the twin clubs around their offset handles so the end of one of the weapons jutted out from his fist while the other one ran along the outside of his forearm. That configuration gave him an easy way to attack and block while still protecting his hands and arms.
Albert’s living room wasn’t very big. I took one step back from the approaching fighter, and the backs of my knees were up against the auditor’s entertainment center.
The bodyguard saw I had no room to maneuver and rushed me.
I grabbed the small flat screen television off its stand and ripped it loose from the power and cable lines attached to its back. In the same motion, I hurled the rectangular missile overhand at the tonfa fighter’s face.
My attacker’s left hand flashed out, and the tonfa along his forearm bashed the small television aside. The screen shattered, chunks of plastic broke free of the frame, and the whole mess slammed into the wall on the far side of the living room.
While my opponent battered the television into submission, I summoned my fusion blade and went to work.
My first stroke sheared the man’s offensive tonfa off just above his knuckles. The severed end of the wooden club spun away and clattered across the kitchen’s linoleum floor. At the end of that strike, I reversed the angle of my attack and swept the butt end of my weapon across my opponent’s masked jaw.
The maneuver staggered my enemy and sent him backpedaling across the room. His shoulder slammed into the sliding door that let out onto Albert’s balcony and sent a lightning storm of cracks racing through the glass. My opponent’s core flared with a burst of jinsei that flashed out through his body’s channels, restoring his strength and dulling the pain I’d inflicted. He swung his tonfa out to extend the club past the end of his fist, and lunged toward me with a series of short, sharp strikes.
There was no room for me to retreat. I deflected the rain of blows with quick parries from my fusion blade. Without more room to maneuver, though, I couldn’t mount an offense. My blade’s lon
g handle and blade eventually proved my undoing. The weapon was too unwieldy to deal with the close-in fighting favored by my foe, and a series of jabs from his right fist slipped past my defenses and struck me in the gut. The blows were hard enough to hurt and distract me from a tonfa strike that caught me in the shoulder with enough force to push my defenses aside.
My foe saw his chance and pushed jinsei from his core into his tonfa. Scrivenings along the weapon’s length blazed with blinding golden light. A similar glow surrounded my opponent’s hand as he swung another punch toward my gut. His tonfa swooped for my head at the same instant.
Both of those attacks held enough sacred energy to cause serious damage if they landed, and I had no way to block both of them from my current position. One of the blows would land, and I was sure it would take me out of the fight.
My Eclipse nature raged at this horrible turn of events and demanded to be let off the leash. It didn’t care if I was injured. The dark urge would push my wounded body past its limits just to take its revenge. If I let it go, my attacker would definitely be dead.
And I’d be in the hospital, or worse. Neither of those were good options.
But my opponent had made a terrible mistake. His aura was flooded with aspects and jinsei he’d used to power his attacks.
Just like Rafael had used against me in the duel.
My Thief’s Shield technique snapped into place at the last possible instant. My unified aura, serpents, and core embraced the attacks. A terrible hunger washed out of me, stripping the aspects from my foe and draining the jinsei from their core.
My attacker went down to one knee, and his weapon fell from his nerveless fingers. His head sagged and his breath came in labored, hitching gasps. He was seconds from death. All I had to do was let it happen.
“Don’t kill her,” Albert begged. “Please.”
Her?
“Shut up, Albert,” the woman said, her words more than a little slurred. “Don’t tell him anything.”
The dark urge wanted me to end this, once and for all. It would be so easy to take the last bit of sacred energy from her core and channels. Maybe I should be an assassin. That would be the surest way to stop the heretics. Dead terrorists aren’t nearly as much trouble as living ones.
My reflection glared at me from a shard of the broken television screen. My eyes were black, tarry pits surrounded by flickers of eldritch fire. A black, shadowy smudge surrounded me, and my hair stirred in an unseen breeze. The bones of my skull seemed too sharp against my pale face. A cruel smile twisted my lips.
“No.” I tore my connection to the woman apart. I wouldn’t become the monster I’d just seen in the glass. The separation stabbed through my core like a dagger. It felt like I was cutting myself in half, but it was better than how I’d feel if I turned into a murderer. “Get up.”
The woman stood, slowly and shakily, her hands above her head. Her core was nearly empty, and she had almost no sacred energy left in her channels. It was amazing she hadn’t passed out, let alone that she could stand up. There was no way she could hope to attack me.
Still, I kept my blade’s tip aimed directly at the center of her chest. If she made a move, she’d regret it.
“Listen up, both of you,” I said. “Whatever you think you’re doing with the heretics, it stops today. You aren’t to talk to any of them. Don’t look at them, don’t give them any information, and don’t tell them I was here tonight. Because if you do, I’m coming back, Albert. Clearly, whatever security they’ve given you can’t stop me. Keep that in mind.”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” the portly man pleaded. He stood up, hands behind his head, his voice wavering and afraid. “We’re not heretics. We’re trying to stop a threat no one else understands. Tell me who you are, tell me who sent you. I can give you proof. I can show your bosses that this threat is real. We could use your help.”
For a moment, my conviction wavered. What if this threat Albert kept babbling about was the Locust Court? If he had proof of another invasion, I needed it. I could use it to convince the Elders that we needed to make sure nothing came through the horizon.
No. The elders knew more than this pathetic fool. Whatever he believed, he wasn’t right. If I revealed myself to them, the heretics would use that information to come after me and my friends. I’d be lucky to survive the week.
“That’s enough talk, Albert,” I said with a weary sigh.
His rescuer decided to take her chances. She lunged at me with her hands clenched into fists.
My Eclipse nature demanded vengeance for her stupidity. My head filled with flashes of blood and torn bodies, broken bones and shattered skulls. It wanted to empty her core in a single gulp, then hurl her body through the window.
And I almost gave in to it. The Eclipse way would have been easier, more final, than what I thought was right. Kill your foes, and they won’t ever have the chance to raise a fist against you again. It made sense, especially in a war against terrorists.
But I wasn’t a murderer. I choked back on the rage and anger, shoved the dark urge as far down as I could, and ignored the pain that caused my core. Every time I pushed back against the Eclipse nature, it hurt worse, like I was tearing myself apart.
My internal struggle had cost me a precious second, and my opponent had almost reached me. She threw a wild punch that glanced off my shoulder, then fell back into a sloppy defensive crouch.
I caught her square in the center of the face with a punch and felt something crunch under my fist. She staggered back, then fell hard on her tailbone. She grunted and collapsed onto her back.
Albert ran for the door, huffing and puffing, his arms and legs pumping for all they were worth.
Which, as it turned out, wasn’t very much.
I intercepted him in the middle of the living room floor and swept his legs out from underneath him. He landed on his right shoulder, hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs again. Before he could right himself, I unleashed a quick flurry of punches to his back and midsection. He grunted with each blow and curled in on himself like a dead spider.
“Nod if you understand me,” I said to Albert. “You’re done dealing with the heretics. You won’t give them any more information. If you do, I’ll come back.”
Albert nodded vigorously, his face smeared with spit and snot. I felt a little sick to my stomach at the sight of him and pushed that way down deep. These people were terrorists. The woman would’ve killed me if she’d had a chance. Albert had already killed plenty of people with what he’d told the heretics. He deserved what he got.
I repeated that again and again as I left his apartment and stepped through the portal waiting for me outside his door.
The Kiss
HAGAR AND THE ELDERS were beyond happy when I spilled the details, minus my new technique, of how I’d dealt with Albert and his unexpected bodyguard. If I’d felt uneasy about beating up an old man and his bodyguard, those feelings were banished by the praise heaped on me by my clan.
“Shame your handler didn’t know about the bodyguard,” Claude said to me just before they left, drawing a blush to Hagar’s cheeks. “I had my doubts about you, kid, but you’re all right. Stick with us, and we’ll save the damned world even if it doesn’t want to be saved.”
“Language,” Hirani called from the other side of the portal she’d opened in my kitchen.
“Right,” Claude said, a faint blush visible through his bushy sideburns. “Be seeing you, Jace.”
“Wait,” I almost shouted. “My mother—”
Hirani gave me a small, sad smile and crossed the room to stroke the back of my cheek with her left hand. A wave of warmth and calm spread through me at her touch. It was obviously a jinsei trick, and I didn’t care even a little. That simple gesture had made me feel good, down to my bones.
“We’re looking for her,” the elder said with a sincerity that touched me. Her eyes were misty with unshed tears, and her lips trembled as she spoke. “I, too, have lost on
es I loved in this cold, dark world. I promise you we are doing everything we can with the resources we have available. When we find your mother, I will personally deliver the good news.”
“Time,” Elder Sanrin said drily. “Hirani is right, Jace. Finding your mother is a priority for us. For now, though, we must leave. I’m afraid we’re on a very tight schedule these days.”
“Hang in there, kid,” Claude said as he stepped through Hirani’s portal. “If anyone can find your mother, it’s Brand. I’ll kick his ass if he doesn’t.”
“Soon,” Hirani promised, and followed Claude and Sanrin through the portal.
The glowing gateway vanished.
Hagar surprised me by throwing her arms around my neck and squeezing me tight. She clung to me for a long moment, her shoulders shaking slightly. With a start, I realized she was crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, my voice muffled in the ruff of her Mohawk.
“I should have known,” she said shakily. “I was overconfident and didn’t think the guard routes would change. I should have anticipated it, I should have—”
“Hey, hey,” I said, rubbing my handler’s shoulders. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”
“But—”
“Stop.” I held Hagar at arm’s length, my hands on her shoulders. “You did everything you could. Focus on what we’re going to do, not what’s already happened.”
“Thank you.” Hagar blotted her tears on the dark sleeve of her robe. “I’m still new at this job. It’s been hard, but you’re the best field agent I could have hoped for.”
“You’re new?” I chuckled and felt my cheeks blush at her praise. “You can’t be as new as me. We’ll learn together, though, right?”
“I’ll do better,” she promised. “I want you to know you can trust me.”
“If anyone had told me last year that we’d be having this conversation...” I said with a grin. “The world is a weird place.”
Hagar laughed and shook her head.
“You really are doing the right thing here,” she said. “I know it can be confusing, and you feel like you’re in the dark most of the time. But you’ve got a gift, Jace. Let us help you use it.”