“You’re not losing me.” Though she didn’t need to say any more for him to understand, he added, “What are you trying to say?”
“Don’t make me.” Her gaze implored him. “I’ve never been good at this shit.” She gripped his hand tighter. Russ had never seen her cry, yet her lower eyelids glistened against the fulgurating flame from across the bar. “Please. Please just say yes.”
For a moment, he imagined the life he often did with her, one where the gods unbelievably made her feel for him the way he did for her. It almost made sense, caused his heart to flutter, made his palms sweat, excited him like waking up from a good dream still fresh on his mind. Until Lillie came along. Then all that washed away for her.
“I,” he said, then he nodded, sure of his words. “I love you. Think I always have.” He loosened his hand from around hers. “Lillie helped me realize that, as strange as it sounds—I couldn’t have known if it weren’t for her. I see you and—I mean, come on, you’re my best friend. I don’t want to lose that. We won’t.”
Russ let her go. “But I’m with Lillie now. And I can’t let myself be with you if I’d regret not being with her.” He shook his head. “Couldn’t do that to either of us.”
No emotion betrayed Kendra’s face.
Russ finished: “I’m sorry.”
Kendra leaned back, pulled her robe back onto her shoulder, and wrapped her cloak around herself. “You don’t have to apologize. I knew in the back of my mind it was a long shot, but I had to hope.” She sniffed. “Sometimes shit just doesn’t work out.” Though she hid her emotions well when she wanted to, her smile couldn’t hide her anguish from him. “At least I can say I tried.”
‘We spoke about nothing for another quarter-hour, after which Kendra said she needed to go. It embarrassed her, and that killed me. I know what it’s like—she should know. But how could she expect me to wait for her, especially after all she’d told me? And now a shadow hangs over my mind of a life I came dangerously close to having. Confusion. Sadness. Anger. Lillie, if you ever read this, I didn’t mean to keep it from you. I just didn’t know how to tell you.’
His device buzzed, and he read the reply from Kendra. ‘Whatever,’ she wrote, and in a message that arrived seconds later: ‘If you think it’s best.’ Another arrived a few minutes after that. ‘It’s a little crazy, what we’re doing, right? We could die tomorrow.’
Russ set his tablet on the nightstand next to his bed and stood. He ordered a vegetable stir fry and ate, after which he showered and put on a fresh change of linen garments.
The soul stone Lillie had given him found its way to his hands while he read from The Word of Karli at the desk across from his bed. A dull needle pricked at his mind, and he waited for the seconds to pass.
He didn’t meditate that night, his thoughts perturbed by Kendra, D’niqa, the dirty woman, and a cave.
1
The years had given Russ, in part, what he wanted: anonymity and seclusion. So he felt personally affronted by a knock at his door that stirred him from his reading early the next morning. The day’s light crept into the room through a sliver of flowing curtain behind him as his feet skidded the carpet in quiet scuffs. He answered.
Against the door’s frame leaned a woman, dark of eye and the same of hair, which she’d pulled into a messy bun that hung off the top of her head. Her dress had slid too far up her legs for modesty, she held a martini carelessly between the fingers of her right hand, and she seemed all-too-happy to see Russ.
“Hello, my little pint,” she said, her speech slurred. She fell forward, and Russ stepped aside so that she stumbled into his room and crashed onto his still-made bed. A splash of her drink spilled onto the comforter. “Did you make the bed?”
“No. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Isn’t that the truth.” She drained the rest of her martini, then smiled at him. “Dint do much sleepin last night, either, if ya catch my meaning. Guess you’re the lucky fucker who gets to rob me of the last of my night.”
Russ didn’t move, remained quiet as she eyed him.
Her gaze fluttered around the room, and she gasped and hiccupped at the same time when she saw his armor. “Woah! A Karlian? Is Karhaal paying for me tonight?” A canny grin slanted her mouth, and she kissed her index finger. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell nobody.” She raised her glass to her mouth. When nothing poured from it, a displeased pout covered her face, and she tossed the vessel behind her. It landed near the far wall with a crack. “Come on, then,” she said, and she leaned back on the bed. “Get what you ordered.”
Russ kept his voice plain. “I can assure you I ordered nothing.”
“Right, right.” She again kissed her finger. “Our little secret.”
“Grace!” another woman said. She stopped outside Russ’s open door. Her hair glowed a golden blonde the same as her dress, and her gray eyes cast a dour gaze that passed between Russ and her friend—work associate, perhaps.
“I told you,” Grace said to her friend as the latter stepped inside. “Found the room without you, didn’t I? This guy’s—this guy’s from Karhaal. A Karlian or somethin, right?”
When the other got close enough, Grace groped for her neck and pulled their faces together. They kissed—a sloppy thing where the drunk girl thrusted far too much tongue into the other’s mouth.
The blonde pushed them apart, but Grace pulled them together again. “Listen,” the blonde said against her lips. “You didn’t find the right room. There are no more clients tonight. You’re a little too drunk, baby.”
Grace looked up at her friend with sullen eyes, like a child who wouldn’t understand. The liner on her left eye had run down her cheek. “So—no—you mean I don’t get to fuck a Karlian?” Distress cracked her face, and she fell to her side across the comforter and cried.
“Grace, come on,” the blonde said, trying to grab her.
“No.” Grace batted her friend away, talking through sobs. “I just wanna sleep.”
The blonde got a hold on her friend and pulled her upright. She held Grace’s right hand in hers. “You can sleep when we get home. Can you just make it home?”
Grace pouted and wiped her face with her free hand, smudging her makeup more. She nodded. “Maybe. If we get churretos.”
“Then come on.” The blonde pulled Grace’s right arm across her shoulders. They walked past Russ. “Sorry about her.”
“Nothin done,” Russ said.
On their way out the door, Grace giggled to her friend. “Hey, he looks familiar. In a cute”—she hiccupped—“kind of way.”
“Grace,” said the blonde. Her voice stabbed through the quiet outside. “Shut the fuck up.”
The door closed. Silence, if not peace, returned to the room, but a laugh crept into the back of Russ’s mind that ran away when he focused on it: Heh, heh, heh.
‘Meet at Rhine’s,’ he wrote in a message to Grenn and Willa after he’d equipped his armor. ‘Need to go over a few points.’ He pressed send, grabbed Uniquity, and left the room.
While he checked out, the clerk behind the counter made no inclination of recognition, hardly said a thing other than, “Thank you, Mr. Geno. I hope you enjoyed your stay,” and, “The breakfast is complimentary for our guests,” when Russ asked about it.
Russ sat at a booth—having requested a table for three—in the restaurant off Rhine’s lobby called The Sullen Goat, alone, feeling absolutely conspicuous. It might have been where he and Kendra intended to go that day, or perhaps his thoughts from the night before still hung over him as his mind bled one day into the next, but his time hadn’t been so disheveled since before he figured out his meditations. A nagging ticked at his mind, pushed it toward untethered excitement and obscenity.
“A coffee,” he said when a waiter asked him his drink order. Russ watched her head for the entresol to take the order of a couple who sat at a table above him. They looked ragged, like they’d been up all night—her hair tousled, his face painted by dark circles under h
is eyes, and their clothes wrinkled.
By the sound of his steps and Xenia’s whistling parlance, Russ heard Grenn come inside a few minutes later. The young man sat in the seat across from him just as the waiter returned with Russ’s drink—a mug three-quarters full of a swirling tan-colored liquid.
“Thanks,” Russ said. As he raised the cup to his lips, he looked at Grenn, who stared at him with an open-mouthed smile, eyes wide.
The young Karlian spoke in a whisper: “Russell-fucking-Hollowman.”
“You’ve seen me before, Grenn.” His voice still sounded strange.
“Yeah, through that monocle, but I’m sittin here”—Grenn caught Xenia and held her over his right eye—“and now it’s my own eyes.” Xenia chirped and tugged herself from Grenn’s fingers. He laughed and intoned a quick whistle that Xenia returned as she giggled at an inaudible pitch.
Another waiter passed. “Excuse me,” said Grenn.
She stopped and regarded him. A smart smile replaced her surprise. “What can I do for ya, darlin?”
“I’ll start with a coffee like he’s got,” Grenn said. “And can we get a plate of crisp bacon?”
“O’ course.”
Grenn’s gaze switched between her and Russ a few times.
She caught on and asked of Russ, “Can I get you anything?”
“No, coffee’s fine for now.” Russ took a sip from his cup. Not even a hint of bitterness.
When she didn’t take notice of what affected Grenn, he said, “That’s Russell Hollowman.”
“Woah.” She passed a raking glance over Russ. “Cool.”
Grenn watched her leave, unimpressed by her.
“Don’t think she knows who I am,” said Russ.
“Well she should.” Grenn watched her for a few more seconds, then he shrugged. “From what I understand, you’ve gotta have connections to get a room here. Did Karhaal call ahead for you?”
Russ shook his head. “Kendra recommended it, so it’s where I stayed. Walked right in.”
“Kendra,” Grenn said. He tapped on the table. “Now there was a looker. How do ya know her?”
“She’s an old friend.”
“Didn’t look old to me.”
Russ huffed. “No, she didn’t.”
Willa joined them. She plunked onto the booth’s edge next to Grenn, who jumped when she did.
“Goddess,” he said.
“Move over.” She nudged him until he shifted further into the booth, then she looked at Russ, the same as she had Trent. “What’s up?”
Russ swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “Yeah, let’s get right to it, then. There’s a change of itinerary as far the investigations go.”
“More than yesterday?” Grenn asked.
“Yesterday?” Willa frowned. “What happened yesterday?”
“Russ gave me”—
“The witch,” Russ said. “An old friend of mine has already been investigating a few things around town.” Russ spoke to Willa. “I know what the Undertaker told you, how you were both assigned to certain tasks, but things are different—worse—than we thought. There are concerns you’ll need to make the Order aware of if today doesn’t go right.”
“Goddess,” said Grenn, “is it that serious?”
“You know it. There’s a hive. Kendra knows where it is. We think the Beast serves this master I saw on my farm, this D’niqa.”
“How?” Willa asked. “H—how could a master have gotten that far without us knowing?”
“It’s not simple. This Beast is a new breed, somethin we’ve not seen before. It was trying to find somethin here in town, then it spoke to Kendra when she chased it a long way away.”
“She talked to it?” Grenn said.
Another! Russ heard her yell. He nodded. “The Beast turned into a woman when Kendra tracked it to the forest up in New Winstone. I’ve seen what she describes.”
Willa looked troubled. “You have? Huh. Sounds like the Beast is alreh—already handled, then.”
“No. We’re going to where Kendra tracked it, to hopefully find the hive.” Russ watched Willa watch him. “And we want you to come with us.”
“What?” Grenn and Willa said together. They each cast an annoyed glance at the other.
“If we’re gonna face trouble, I’m takin one of you with me,” Russ said. “I won’t be letting your talents go to waste.”
“And it’s gonna be Willa?” said Grenn. “Is it because she said I’ll get you killed?”
Russ shook his head, but before he could respond, Grenn hurried on.
“Tell him it’s not true,” he implored the girl next to him.
Willa held up her hands. “Who am I to go against the word of the Goddess?”
“That’s not it, Grenn,” said Russ. “She’s a trained demonologist, and we don’t know what we’ll be dealing with there.”
“And I’ll just stay here,” Grenn said, evidently displeased, “doing gods-know-what.”
“Makes it easy then, dunnit? If anything happens to us”—
“What in the hells do ya mean if something happens to you? You’re gonna make it back.”
Russ wanted nothing more, but War had proven an unsure companion.
Grenn huffed. “You can trust me. When you make it back, there’ll be another grand adventure for Russell Hollowman to add to the annals of his achievements. And I’ll be here, chasing women or whatever the fuck I do. I checked in on the Lich, by the way. She wouldn’t even answer the door, nothing.”
“Not surprising,” Russ said. “She’s probably gonna move soon with us pokin around.”
Willa chewed on her lower lip. “I don’t like it.”
“Me neither,” Grenn said.
“Not you.” She turned her attention to Russ. “The authorities I spoke to insisted the Beast was nothing to worry about. ‘A colleh—collective delusion,’ they said. I mean, one of them even told me they’d narrowed down the story’s origin to a thirteen-year-old boy in the Upper City.”
“I know a gumshoe who would say they’re incompetent,” Russ said.
“That much is obvious,” said Willa, her voice flat. “But I don’t like us running off without the Order—did you at least make them aware of what we’re doing?”
“I don’t need to make the Order aware of a dickeybird. My personal counsel has guided my intentions. Informing others of such things would needlessly complicate them.”
“That’s what I don’t like.”
“Part o’ the job. You don’t always have to like what you’re told. Sometimes, you just have to follow orders.” Russ waited and added, “So long as they don’t grind too hard against your conscience.”
“We both know that’s not what I’m getting at,” Willa said. “You’re smart enough to know it’s not.”
Russ felt an easy familiarity with the Priest who sat across from him, as though they’d both shared a bond he couldn’t remember, and he couldn’t decide if it made him anxious or caused him a modicum of peace. It reminded him of the relationship he had come to have with his secret-keeper. She and Kendra will get along just fine, he thought.
“I need to make sure I can get done what needs done without Manifeld or the Undertaker trying to butt in,” he said. “Do ya understand? They don’t want in my business anyway. Sent me away without so much as a ‘fuck you.’”
“That’s not true. Madam Undertaker’s hands were tied.”
“And mine aren’t.” Russ couldn’t think of how to say what he needed without offending Grenn, so he spoke his thoughts plainly. “Nothin’s gonna happen in the city, and you’ll waste your talents just sitting here waitin for a demon to show up that’s never going to. If you want to investigate the Beast like leadership assigned you to, then this is how you do it. Kendra and I need help—you’ve proven you’re more than capable.”
“Your flattery won’t find purchase with me,” Willa said, though her ears had perked up against Russ’s words. Her cats-eye pupils oscillated as she measured his talk.
>
“I’ll go with him if you don’t want to,” Grenn suggested.
“Of course I’m going. I’m just—I’m just loyal to the Undertaker. She—she’s been good to me.”
“I expect you to be,” Russ said, “but the Undertaker is loyal to me if she believes what I say. The training wheels are comin off”—
“Hey,” said Willa. Her face morphed in distaste at the idea.
—“for both of you. Grenn, you’ve been on your own for a while now, but this is different. The Order has gotten lax. Everyone’s gotten used to the Peace, but many of us still remember, fought. As far as I know, that’s an advantage we’ve never had before. You both are gonna have to make hard choices. Believe me, this isn’t one of ‘em.”
Willa waited three second after he finished. “I think you’re right. Just, formally, I’d prefer it if the Undertaker knew. That’s all.”
“Understandable and noted”—
“I always knew there was something weird about you, Russ,” Grenn said.
“Ya did”—
“This weird pumpkin guy coming around, asking questions about the Order, always silently judging everyone. When I was a recruit, my friends and I had these crazy theories about what had happened to you—like aliens, maybe the ground opened and swallowed you whole, that you had died and the Order wanted to cover it up for whatever reason. Little did we know, you were there the whole gods-damned time.
“Now I’ve been asking myself since we left Keep, ‘How did I let this happen?’ And the only answer I’ve been able to give myself, the only consolation I might steal from the last couple years, is that it’s easy to miss what’s literally right in front of you if you stop looking for it.”
“Huh,” Willa said. “Sounds like you’re almost onto something.”
The smile didn’t fade from Grenn’s face. “No. I just think people spend so long looking for—whatever—that they wouldn’t know what to do if they ever got it.”
Russ stared at Grenn for a few seconds. It must have been one of those rare bits of knowledge that took a while to ripen, but once it did, the person keeping it knew. “You’re fine, Grenn. Do good.” He swigged the last of his coffee and scooted toward the end of the booth.
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