He doesn’t believe there will be a time she rises, is killed, and rises no more.
He knows with a certainty down in the marrow of his bones that she will, at some point, seduce or destroy her Watcher. And when that happens, she will carve the Organization up into bloody gobbets of flesh, and laugh. He knows that the black fire of her will is an endless, ancient inferno that no Farm has any hope of smothering. She will escape. And when she does, she will come for him.
Until then he waits, walking the circle, trying to keep the tree alive.
’Til the Sun is in the Sky
Rob Pegler
Emma hated taking the train. She didn’t like the crowds on the platforms or the closeness in the carriages, but her car had broken down and, already behind in her rent, she couldn’t afford to take it to a garage. So she stood apart from the people on the platform, staying in the shadows where the floodlights didn’t reach, and when the train arrived she chose the emptiest carriage and walked straight to the back.
There was a young man on the train, sitting a few rows away, facing towards her. He had dark skin and green eyes and carried a canvas satchel. He looked like a student, probably on his way home from a late lecture. Emma thought she’d seen him before, but wasn’t sure. It had been three years since she’d dropped out.
As she sat down they made eye contact, and he smiled. She almost reciprocated, but checked herself and lowered her eyes. When she looked up again he was staring out the window.
Emma chided herself. She could still smile at people, couldn’t she? It was said of some people that their smile could light up a room, but Emma’s grandfather had always told her she lit up the room even when she wasn’t smiling. She had a bright, open face with big brown eyes, and smiling had always come naturally to her.
She seldom smiled these days. She was always afraid the fangs would show.
She knew that was silly. The glamour that masked her true appearance was a simple thing to maintain, so simple she hardly thought about it. But if she got distracted, could the illusion slip? And how effective was it? Enough to stand up to a casual glance, or could it fool someone who was really looking?
She disembarked twenty minutes later. The young man looked up as she passed, and she offered a tentative half-smile without showing her teeth. He didn’t smile back.
It was a ten-minute walk to the shop, through a bad area. Most of Roseburg was a “bad area” these days, but this didn’t worry Emma—she was strong enough to lift a box of food cans heavier than herself, not that she ever did so in sight of her boss. Her reflexes and senses were sharper too. She doubted any mugger or rapist would be able to overpower her, assuming he could catch her. She ignored the bouncers lurking in the strip club doorway, and the rowdy youths catcalling across the street. Her attention was on the train timetable in her hand. She finished work at five a.m., and the return train was at five-sixteen. She had to be home before six. Sunrise was at six-twelve.
The shop wasn’t much, even for this neighborhood. It was a rundown corner store with bars on the windows and narrow aisles to cram in extra stock. Emma walked in through the front, giving Mr. Michieka a half-hearted wave as she passed the counter. He smiled, nicotine-stained teeth in an ebony face, but didn’t attempt conversation. Emma had been working for him for eighteen months, but they never spoke more than was necessary. Mr. Michieka was quite the talker, but in time he’d come to accept her terseness. It certainly didn’t get in the way of her work. She showed up on time, she was polite to the customers and she didn’t steal anything, which was all he cared about.
If only he knew. Once upon a time she would have talked his ears off. She’d been shushed in movie theatres and lived on the phone. These days, she didn’t even own one.
Putting away her bag and coat—she avoided looking at the mirror in the back room—Emma returned to the counter so the old man could talk her through the shift change. He would depart in half an hour, leaving her alone until his wife came in at five. Emma knew Mr. Michieka worried about her—he’d been robbed three times, and injured once—and often suggested that she work the day shift while he switched to nights. She’d always told him nights suited her better, not that she could say why. She was fairly certain she could handle a robber, and suspected a bullet wouldn’t do her any harm. She’d never put either to the test.
Mr. Michieka soon left with a smile and wave, pulling on his jacket as he went. Emma waited until the rattle of his engine faded away down the street, then settled behind the counter and reached for a magazine.
She was nineteen when it happened. It was her third year at Rose County, sharing a house off-campus while studying for a marketing degree. It was after a particularly dense flurry of assignments that Emma, her housemates and two girls from her class had hit the nightclubs along Sundown, on the east side of the river. The night was a blur of loud music and sweaty dance floors and ridiculous cocktails, until Megan had called it a night, and Siobhan had gotten sick in the restroom. Emma told them she’d be home later, as she and Georgia—her sole remaining companion—wanted to check out one more club.
After fifteen minutes in the place—a grimy little establishment at the far end of the strip—Emma decided that her housemates had the right idea. Georgia was busy being chatted up by the barman, and wasn’t concerned when Emma told her she was going to look for a cab.
She found one easily enough. There was a taxi rank just down the street, with two cabs waiting. One of them had its back door open, which Emma thought was odd, even as she climbed in. The driver was a lean individual with a shaved head, who kept his eyes on the road and didn’t offer any conversation. Emma didn’t mind, since she was half-drunk and too tired to chat. She sat back with her eyes closed, watching the insides of her eyelids glow red as the streetlights slid by.
It was only when the streetlights ended that she realized something was wrong. She opened her eyes on boarded-up shop fronts and chain link fences, and knew the taxi was nowhere near where it should have been. She didn’t even recognize the neighborhood they were in—it looked like one of the decaying industrial areas on the south side of town, in the opposite direction to where she’d asked to go. She leaned forward to ask the driver where the hell he was taking her, and his elbow lashed out and struck her in the forehead.
She was thrown back into the seat, feeling like she’d been hit with a baseball bat. Through the screaming pain in her head she felt the taxi stop sharply, and then the driver was scrambling over the seat and grabbing her arms and dragging her underneath him. She screamed and kicked as hard as she could but he was so strong, pinning her to the seat, and she could do nothing but thrash and cry and plead as he grabbed her by the hair. He dragged her head to one side, and she heard herself scream as his teeth sunk into the soft white flesh of her neck.
He dumped her in an empty lot, on a clump of dying grass. He didn’t even bother to conceal her. One more dead body in the backblocks of Roseburg wasn’t going to cause much of a fuss…
Except he’d been careless—she wasn’t quite dead.
Toby’s feet hit the ground hard, cheap trainers scrambling on loose gravel. He almost fell, but managed to dig in and run, kicking up dust as he went.
They’d been right behind him a moment ago, before he’d gone up the side of the cargo container. They’d probably have to go around, and he could lose himself in the labyrinth of boxes before they caught up. If he stayed well ahead, he could be over the north fence and into the scrubland beyond.
He’d made it to the gap at the end of the container before he saw one—the female in the brown coat—coming around the corner at the far end. Toby darted around the corner, down a narrow gap between the looming steel boxes. He heard her running after him, the bare soles of her feet scraping the gravel as she came. How did she run like that with no shoes?
He couldn’t see the man. Left behind? Not likely. He’d be flanking, maybe coming around in the van. The containers stretched for another fifteen meters, then a straight run to the fence. T
oby had to get clear before the woman got a bead on his back. He’d seen how well she could shoot.
His gasping breath came back at him from both sides, condensed by the closeness of the containers. He was almost in the open now. Dropping his head, he put on an extra burst of speed. He was at a full sprint when the man—a tall figure in a black pea coat and dark cargo pants—stepped around the corner and swung a metal baseball bat at shin height. Pain exploded through both legs as Toby’s feet left the ground. He experienced a moment of awkward weightlessness, then he hit the gravel face-first and did a cheese-grater slide that carried him nearly six feet and took half the skin from his left cheek.
He was spitting teeth when a powerful hand caught his ankle, dragging him back the other way.
There was a microwave in back, which Mr. Michieka used to cook burritos when his wife wasn’t there. No telling what he’d say if he’d known Emma was using it to heat blood. She kept a bottle in her bag, wrapped in the scarf she never wore. Roseburg was a town where such things could be found, if you looked in the right places. A furtive conversation with a barman had led to a meeting with a greasy individual in a tenement doorway, and money had changed hands. Since then, for a hefty but manageable fee, two bottles arrived on her doorstep every other night. She’d been told it came from an abattoir down in Farwater, but wasn’t sure this was true. As long as she didn’t have to go out and get it herself, she didn’t care.
Draining her mug, she washed it in the sink, ran her fingers about her lips and chin to check for stray drops, and returned to the counter.
A car was pulling up outside, a Mercedes. That wasn’t unusual—the slumlords hereabouts often came by in expensive cars. Glancing through the window, she saw a young man at the wheel, cropped blonde hair and an expensive leather jacket. A girl alighted from the passenger side—tall and slender, long legs and tanned skin, wearing a red cocktail dress under a black coat. She tottered into the shop on four-inch burgundy heels, barely sparing Emma a glance as she searched around the shelves before heading for the chiller.
Approaching the counter, she laid down a bottle of spring water and a bag of chocolate almonds. “And a pack of Blue Royals, please.”
Emma pulled a soft pack from behind the counter, placing it beside the other items. “That all?”
“Emma?”
Emma looked up, startled. The girl was staring at her with smoky blue eyes, a stunned look on her pretty face, lean and tanned and surrounded by dark shoulder-length hair. “Georgia…?” she whispered.
Georgia’s face split into a wide grin. “Holy shit!” she laughed. “It is you!”
“I dunno nuffing,” said Toby.
Gabriel Pope crouched in front of him, arms resting over his knees. He was young, but tall and solid, with the look of a man who’d been there, and back. His baseball bat—silver plating over ash—rested on the ground beside him. “Sure,” he replied.
Toby winced, his legs twitching. He was slumped against one side of a container, dark greasy blood trickling down his mottled grey face. He was fairly certain both of his shinbones were broken.
“Who you running for these days, Toby?” The question came from Meliad, leaning against the container, hands in the pockets of her coat. Her green-brown hair, tinged gold by the yellow lights along the fence, was tied back into a long ponytail.
“Don’ run for nobuddy,” he spat through jagged yellow teeth. “I fends for meself.”
Mel smiled, not unkindly. “C’mon, Toby. Can’t be a ghoul in his town without doing somebody’s laundry.”
“The clans aren’t big on unemployed minions,” Gabe added. He was unbuttoning his pea coat.
Toby’s yellow eyes glimmered in the shadows. “I does a little work, maybe. So whut?”
“Who for?”
“Ain’t sayin’.”
With an impatient sigh, Gabe glanced up at Mel. She gave a little shrug.
Gabe hitched his coat open. Toby caught a glimpse of a complicated leather harness underneath, all straps and buckles, hung with dangerous-looking objects. He saw the handle of a revolver, the blunt ends of smoothly carved stakes, a glint of stray light on metal. Toby tried to play it cool, but this was Gabriel Pope he was dealing with. Word got around, and the undead didn’t tend to exaggerate.
Gabe pulled something from his coat. It was round and flat, about five inches across, and made from pale plastic. Toby shrank back against the container. “Whut you doin’?” he hissed.
Turning the object over, Gabe flipped a small catch. The lid popped open, revealing a flat, empty compartment inside. Finally recognizing the object, Toby grinned. “You gon’ do me makeup?”
“Not exactly.” Grabbing a handful of greasy hair, Gabe shoved the ghoul back against the container. With his other hand, he turned the compact around and pushed it into Toby’s face. There was a small, circular mirror inside the lid.
Toby screamed, a high-pitched squeal, like a pig being roasted alive. He kicked and thrashed and clawed at steel and gravel, but his eyes stayed fixed on the mirror, unable to look away. Mel went a little pale, but didn’t change her posture.
When Toby’s squeals lowered to a ragged mewling sound, Gabe let him go. Toby curled up against the container, yellow eyes flashing, and winced as his face drew even more gaunt and ashen than before. Gabe snapped the compact closed, leaning back on his heels. “Want another look?” he asked.
“Who you running for, Tobe?” Mel asked again.
“I… I…” Toby squirmed. “Sleet! I runs for Sleet!”
Gabe cast a questioning glance at Mel.
“Danson Sleet,” she said immediately. “Runs a chain of nightclubs along the north coast. Three in town.”
“Freelancer?”
“Yeah, but he’s protected by the Uvyadayasvet Clan,” Mel replied. “Sleet and his partner specialize in exports.”
Gabe’s eyes narrowed, staring at the ghoul cowering in front of him. “Exports.”
“I don’ do nuffing!” Toby insisted. “Jus’ messages! Mr. Sleet sez go see the Orlokov boys, tell ’em he got a shipment! I tells ’em. Shipment good to go!”
Gabe raised the compact, still closed, and Toby cringed.
“Where?”
It was a long moment before Emma could say anything. Swallowing hard, the best she could manage was, “Oh… hi.”
“What are you doing here?” Georgia exclaimed. She leaned forward over the counter, and for an awful moment Emma thought she might try to hug her. Mr. Michieka’s wife had taken her arm once, and commented on how cold her skin was.
“I’m, um…working,” she shrugged, quietly moving back.
Georgia frowned. “Here?”
Emma looked down. “Yeah, well…pays the rent.”
“Yeah, but…” Georgia shrugged. “When you stopped coming to class, we all figured you were just taking a break. You didn’t go back?”
“Uh…no. I didn’t.” Emma started scanning the things on the counter, avoiding Georgia’s eyes. “So what are you up to?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Oh, I’m working at Novus,” said Georgia. “I was at their Sundry office for a year. I moved back last March.” She seemed at a loss. “You…ever see any of the others? Megan got married.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I was a bridesmaid. She wanted to ask you too, but…nobody had your number, so…”
Emma kept her eyes on the register, wishing she’d never asked. She glanced at the car outside, where Georgia’s companion had climbed out and was leaning against the door to light a cigarette. He was good-looking, short blonde hair, stylishly dressed in dark jeans and a sleek leather jacket.
Georgia followed her gaze, and smiled. “Oh, yeah. That’s Reese.”
“Your boyfriend?” Emma asked.
Georgia glanced out at the man, her mouth hitching into a wry grin. “Kinda-sorta.”
Emma gave her a questioning look.
“I just met him online. He’s taking me to his club. You know th
e Damascus? He’s part-owner.”
Emma’s eyes were back on the man, the cigarette lighter illuminating his face. There was something about him, the way he carried himself…
“Are you sure he’s…?”
“What?”
“You sure you can trust him?”
Georgia dropped her head and laughed. “Don’t worry, mum. I’ve got a whistle.”
Emma almost smiled. “Yeah, sorry. Um, twenty-two fifty.”
She could feel Georgia’s eyes on her as she swiped her card and punched the keypad. Georgia had changed in three years—her hair was shorter and darker, her clothes more expensive. This was nothing compared to how Emma had changed, even if she was the one who hadn’t aged. She no longer wore makeup (why bother?) and her hair hung loose around her face, the better to hide behind. Her clothes were simple and practical, mostly bought at thrift stores. She imagined she looked like a charity case.
As the receipt printed, Georgia asked, “Got your phone on you?”
“Uh…it’s in the back.”
“Oh. Well…” Georgia took the receipt and grabbed the pen chained to the counter. “Here’s mine.” She jotted down ten digits on the back. “Give me a call. We’ll go out sometime.”
Emma hesitated, then took the slip of paper. “Yeah. Sure.”
Georgia picked up her purchases. “See you round.”
Emma waved with the receipt. She watched as Georgia walked out to the car, popping a sweet into her mouth. She smiled as Reese opened the door for her, and rewarded him with a chocolate almond. He closed the door behind her, eyed the sweet with distaste, and tossed it into the gutter. As he opened the driver’s door he glanced back at the shop, and Emma caught the gleam of one crimson eye…
The slip of paper fluttered to the floor. She was around the counter in a flash, running for the door, but the Mercedes’ tires dug in as she tore it open and the car was squealing away down the street even as she rushed onto the pavement, screaming Georgia’s name. The taillights vanished around the corner down the block.
Both Barrels of Monster Hunter Legends (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 1) Page 18