Hey, Asshole and The Scene At The Bar

Hey, Asshole

As Tanith as I were walking out of Garland Industries, I think we were both trying not to smile. “Nice piece of negotiation back there. I love seeing a suit go pale and sweaty like that,” Tanith said.

“Well thank you, my dear. Your singularly dangerous mien went a long way towards establishing our criminal credibility.” I was in a good mood. We had a lovely paycheck in our future for what should be a relatively straightforward job. I put on my best posh accent. “I think tonight, we shall dine and carouse like in days of old.” I pulled out my phone, saw another missed call from Talia and knitted my eyebrows. Four calls in the past hour. Something must be up. She’s not the type to try to chase me down for anything unless it’s important. I’d call her when I was in the car.

I swiped my phone’s touch screen to dial Patch.

“Hey asshole! Get over here!”

My conditioned response kicked in and I started to turn, but stopped myself. I didn’t recognize the voice, but I’d know the tone anywhere. My hackles rose and my smile became a thin, flat line. I turned to find the source of my distress.

I saw a slouching Human boy of about eleven hurrying over to man in ill-fitting business casual clothing. Beside him was a woman with a faraway look in her eyes. A look that said she just simply wasn’t there. When the kid got within arm’s reach of the man, the guy grabbed him roughly and shook him. He spoke in a quiet, angry tone. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Clean the shit out of your ears. I told you not to go anywhere.”

“I was just...” the kid stammered.

“I don’t give a fuck what you were ‘just’ doing. We’re not here for you to take in the fucking sights.” The man punctuated his words with rough shakes, his fingers digging into the kid’s arms. The woman avoided looking at them.

It was a scene I knew very, very well.

I went on autopilot. My emotions became so confused and roiling that I felt none of them. I noticed Tanith looking at me expectantly. Not taking my eyes off of the scene, I leaned in her direction. “Restrain him. No blood. Now.” To her credit, she paused for only a fraction of a second before recognizing my seriousness. She slithered ahead and around to come at the man from behind. I walked slowly behind her, my eyes never leaving the son of a bitch.

I heard my own blood rushing through me. It was thundering.

Tanith came up behind the man and pinned him efficiently, slowly wrapping her huge body around him. His look of surprise was like a salve on my soul. I stepped up behind the boy and gently placed my hands on his shoulders. “Excuse me, young man,” I said as I moved him to the side. He yielded and looked up at me, dumbfounded. I tried to give my best attempt at a warm smile. I returned my attention to the man and stepped invasively close to him. I smelled his breath. He used an overabundance of mouthwash. Of course. The same subtle signs of alcoholism...

I stared at him, my face a tense mask of neutrality. He sputtered and started the transition from surprise to anger. “What the fuck...”

My dagger was in the hand I used to press a finger over his lips. I shushed him. I spoke with an even, dangerous tone. “It’s listening time.” I raised my hands to cut a lock of his hair and held it in front of his eyes. “Rejoice. For this is the day you become a decent man.” I pulled the hair back from his face and looked at it contemplatively. “With this hair, I can always touch you. I can see through your eyes. I can... affect you.” I took the moment to send a sharp burst of dark energy through him. He jerked in Tanith’s grip and let out a short bark of pain. “I want you to listen to me and know that what I say is true. I will look into you occasionally. And if I ever see you treat this young man or this woman like a... thing. Ever again. You will regret it. Do you understand me?”

“Hey, who the fuck...”

I sent a bigger, sharper pain into him, cutting him off.

“I don’t require you to speak. I repeat. Do you understand me?” He nodded. “Do you believe me?” He nodded again. Improvising, I took a dollar bill out of my wallet and carefully wrapped the hair in a neat package and held it up in front of his eyes. “Do not test me.”

 I turned around to the woman and boy. She looked terrified. I slipped my dagger back into its scabbard at my belt. I stepped towards her and she backed away, clutching the boy to her. “Don’t,” she said.

“You. You need to know that enough is enough. And if you don’t have the strength to protect yourself, find the strength to protect him,” I said, nodding towards the boy. I knelt to be at eye level with him. There was a mixture of awe, fear, and, I hoped, gratitude. I pulled my card out of my suit jacket’s inner pocket. “This is an anonymous email address. Memorize it. If he strays, tell me.” I tried to think of something encouraging to say. Something that would let him know that being victimized wasn’t his fault. Something that would make the hate and fear in him not take over. No words came. “You have power now.” It was the best I could do. But he took the card and nodded.

I straightened up. “Let him go,” I said to Tanith. She did, and I thought for a moment he might do something stupid. If he had been considering taking action, he thought better of it. “Now. Run along.” I flashed something somewhere between a grin and a grimace. “Enjoy your new life as a better man.”

The family quickly departed as I stared after them.

I turned to Tanith. She was considering me with open worry and surprise. “Are you okay?” she said quietly. I flushed deeply, my sense of self returning. I had just threatened a man on a busy street in broad daylight.

“I need a drink. And we need to get off the street.”

I had forgotten about calling anyone entirely.

We found ourselves in the bar of some chain restaurant. Overpriced drinks and over-enthused wait staff. We sat in the closest thing to a dark corner we could manage, license plates and pictures of baseball players crowding us in with banality. We both ordered whiskeys and sat in silence for a minute. Tanith’s eyes didn't leave me.

She opened her mouth and I interrupted her “Why did you get into this gig?”

She shook her head slightly in surprise. She opened her mouth again, but paused, considering me. “Are you asking me because you want to know or because you want to tell me why you did? Because I’ll tell you if you want to know. But if you really just want to use this as an opportunity to divulge, you’re not really going to listen to what I say, are you?” Gods damn it, she could read me.

“Both. But I do want to hear your story. Plus, I might have to work my way up to mine.”

I’m going to pause the story here. Her and I talked. It was serious and honest. But if I tell you about this now, you’re just going to think it’s some ham-fisted narrative technique to make me relatable. I’ve already established that I’m a bastard. Now would be the time to establish that I’m also sensitive and hurting. Someone you can empathize with. Give you a reason to not set this book down in disgust. It would be, and I hate this word, humanizing. So fucking racist.

If I told this now, it might seem like I was rushing things, but I’m relating the events as they unfolded. Trust me, I’m not impatient to make you like me. That ship’s probably sailed. So I’ll tell you this story later. It’ll be right at the end of the book. A little flashback to that place and time that Seth showed the chinks in his armor. If you really want, you can go read it now. Or you can wait. Or you can skip it entirely, I don’t care. I guess it depends on the kind of person you are.

I’ll tell you this, though. I am Seth Shannon. I don’t use street handles like almost everyone else in this business because I have spent a great deal of time and effort building the reputation of a monster. I am a carefully crafted idea and image, built on lies. Real monsters hide their nature. Only cowards employ the magnitude of bluster and pretense that I do.

People who like Seth Shannon won’t like who I actually am. I speak from experience, because I like Seth Shannon and I don’t like me. That’s why I spend so much time as an empty persona. So if you want to see the man behind the curtain now, later, or never, I give you that choice. Look at all my generosity. But if it were me, I’d wait until the end.

So read on, however you want to read.

That Scene in the Bar

We waited for our drinks to come in silence. The waitress cheerfully asked if we’d like to hear the specials and I was too emotionally tired to be rude to her. She bounced off to another table, leaving a veritable trail of sunshine in the air. Tanith and I both sipped from our glasses.

She stared into her drink and played with the gathering condensation on her glass. She took a breath, let it out, and started talking. “When I was eight, it was the first time my mom tried to kill my dad. We were put into a foster home for a while. Me and my sister, I mean. I don't know if I can blame her really. Not that my dad deserved it, but she was really fucked up. He was always trying to protect her from the world. Even more, he was always trying to protect her from herself. Blamed himself when she went off the deep end. Trying to save their image in front of their ever-shrinking number of friends. Maybe if he’d let her really go nuts and not hold the world at bay, she might have been forced to get help. I don’t know.

“She would just disappear sometimes. He had to work, so I was left in charge when no one else could – or would – help out. So it was me and Corina. Mom would be off some terrible place doing some terrible thing and only come back when she ran out of money. I always hated it when she did. I wanted her to stay gone. But no. She’d come back and start trying to destroy my dad, piece by piece. She’d lay into him with words, and when words weren’t hurting him enough, she’d beat the crap out of him. He only ever tried to restrain her, never struck her in anger. Sometimes, I wish he would have. I think that’s what she wanted.

“She came from a pretty awful family herself, but I only ever heard blurry details when she was hammered.” Tanith raised her glass and toasted me. “To the honesty of bad habits.” She took a big gulp. “So yeah. It was hard to really blame her. She was broken, and broken people, if they can’t find the way to piece themselves together, are bound to pass that shit on.

“But yeah. I was eight when we went to our first foster home. Corina was six. I had to watch out for her. People... abuse the system. Don’t get me wrong, there are some decent people out there. Our last place was with two pretty good people. But by that time, a lot of damage was done. I had to protect Corina, which often meant taking the beatings for two. Somewhere along the way, I learned how to hand them out pretty well, too.

“When I was eighteen, I was able to leave. I got a shitty place nearby so I could still keep watch over Corina. We hung with a rough crowd. Shocker, I know. But she was smart. I kept pushing her. The only time we really fought was when I was trying to mother her, but it’s not like I wanted to. I just wanted her to have an okay life. She got some scholarships and went to college. I tried to make ends meet where I could to make sure she didn't have to drop out because of money. So I took more and more dangerous jobs with that rough crowd. Eventually got a reputation. I could start demanding higher rates. Started working for better clients and broke into corporate gigs. I helped her through college and she got a decent job. Now she’s married to a decent guy and has a couple of little shits that I love to death. But this is what I became to make that happen.”

“Are you okay with it?” I asked quietly.

Her mouth twisted a bit in thought. “Mostly. Hell, I think we’re doing good as much as we are bad. Even if the way we do it is pretty brutal. Like you. I think sometimes, like on the street, you’ll do a good thing. As long as you get to hurt someone in the process.” She finished her drink and slid the glass to the edge of the table to the universally recognized position signaling the desire for a refill. She cleared her throat, maybe a bit self-conscious. “Your turn.”

I sighed. I’d barely touched my drink. Her story was different from mine, but it was familiar. “I think you caught a glimpse of it out there. My mom was a... weak woman. I don’t really remember my dad, but apparently, as soon as he took off, she latched onto the next guy she could find. I think she was the kind of person who would rather be miserable than alone. He became my step-dad. He was a fiend.” I paused, took a sip of my drink, and sniffed. “No, no he wasn’t. He was a pathetic man that took out all of his rage at the world on my mother and I. I have to resist the urge to make him more than he was. But he terrorized me. And she let him.

“Every day was a battlefield, and I was completely unarmed. Everything I said or did was a personal affront to him. And kind of like you said, when the words weren’t enough, fists usually did the trick.

“By the time I was a teenager, I was terrified of everything. I saw everyone as a threat. Deeply, deeply isolated. I couldn’t find anything that made me happy. Like, ever. I led a rich fantasy life, dreaming of power and the freedom it would give me. I hid in myself constantly. ‘In’ was the only place I had left to run.

“One day, when I was fifteen – I’ll never forget this – we were at a friend’s of his place. Him and his friend were getting drunk. I don’t think they’d known each other a long time. My mom was out smoking a cigarette. So his friend, I guess he was just aching to get it out and the booze let him do it, he confessed to being a shitty two-bit hit man. I was fifteen, in this fucking scruffy redneck’s house, and all of a sudden this shit goes down. I’ll always remember it because of the fear in my step-dad’s face. God, that moment. That was it. This dumpy, unwashed Floridian suddenly became an object of terror to my greatest monster.

“Whether I knew it or not, that was what put me on my path. I was already a weird little goth kid reading too much horror and fantasy. But then I put everything in me to becoming something to fear. I read what I could about becoming a Devout. I figured that was my best chance at real power. And who better and more terrifying to serve than the Nameless Ones? I needed to become a bigger monster than all of my own tormentors. So by eighteen, I’d made my deal. Reached them through meditation and Dreaming. Promised them my servitude for the power to protect myself and deal out death as I saw fit.”

I paused. I downed the rest of my drink and considered if I should tell her the rest. The rest was the real hard part. I felt my throat tightening at the mere thought of speaking it. The waitress came by and we ordered another round. We waited. I think Tanith knew I was conflicted.

The waitress brought our drinks and I actually smiled at her. Getting all touchy-feely makes me oddly polite for some reason.

“When I was twenty, I killed him. Made it look like an accident. It was so, so satisfying. For a while.

“Two months later, my mom killed herself.” I tried to find more words, but it had been thirty years. They’d still not come. I pursed my lips and took another gulp of my whiskey.

Tanith reached across the table to put a scaled hand on top of the one that had been unconsciously drumming the wood. “I assume you blame yourself?”

I snorted. “Well, yeah. It’s my fault. I might as well have pulled the trigger.”

Tanith leaned a little more over the table. “You didn’t make her the way she was. You didn’t put the gun to her head. As near as I can tell, you gave her freedom from a tyrant. Despite the fact that you had seen too much and were already worn around the edges, you were still young. And you were still, in your own way, extremely naive. You thought you were helping. How could you know that she had the life that she didn’t know how not to want? Seth. I’m not going to say you did a good thing. But I can’t say you did a bad thing. Not to her, at least.”

I stared into my lap, not taking my hand from under hers. My throat was too tight to talk and it was everything I could do not to start crying in that shitty, loud, boring restaurant. I chewed my lower lip. “Maybe someday I’ll see it that way.”

Back to the Story

So we talked. It was a touching moment between killers. We got drunk. We called Patch to drive us home. He bitched that we were gone basically forever. We went home, I drank some more and passed out. The last thing I remember seeing was the LED on my phone flashing and thinking that I was too drunk and too emotional to deal with the outside world.

United Plumbing Company

[Immediately following "Hope's Head"]

We walked through the front door of the brownstone and into the living room. Pawn looked up from where he was smoking his nip pipe and watching TV. He looked at Patch and then me. His eyes cleared, if only slightly.

“What happened?” he asked, slurring his words.

Patch waved his hands in the air in frustration and walked down the stairs to his basement room.

I chuckled. “Oh, it’s the same old story,” I said, sitting on the black leather couch. “Boy meets girl. Boy accidentally runs over girl with his car. Boy cuts off girl’s head for ritual sacrifice. Boy eludes cops in a daring escape. It was basically Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey in twenty minutes flat.”

Pawn nodded, then the implications of what I just said fully set into his drug-addled brain and he started laughing. “So, typical first date?”

I laughed and settled in for what I’d hoped would be a quiet evening.

I guess here would be a good place to introduce the reprobates that I lived and worked with.

Pawn had been working with me the longest. He was a Tsume Focused, although that term was often laughably inaccurate. When he was on point, though, he could Wreck Shit Up. He stood about a foot shorter than me, but he was really fast, and really, really strong. The only discipline he ever exhibited was to his martial arts, though I often suspected an inner reserve of dedication that he chose to hide behind heavy drug use. He had orange tabby-ish coloring and bright green eyes. In one of our many scrapes, he had lost his tail. He had it replaced with a cybernetic model that he could detach and turn into a thirteen piece rod or whip or whatever the hell he called it.

In addition to working for UPC, he was also in a Japanese biker gang, he called it a bosozoku. Pawn was actually just a title. His gang was organized in a hierarchy based on chess. His full title was Black Pawn Four, but he was aiming higher. I’d met Queen once. A bit older. Hard as nails. Her gaze could cow even me. She did all the real work, as you might have guessed. A badass through and through. She was definitely not a bad connection to have.

Patch was our machinist and one of our resident hackers. He had the full run of the basement, more room even than I had in my own house. When some of the other roommates complained about this, he very convincingly told everyone to shove it up their collective ass because he needed the space to make all of the great shit we kept breaking. No one brought it up again.

He was a Human. He was burly and pale, with dark eyes, hair, and beard. He always had that intense look of someone that was mentally tearing apart and rebuilding whatever it was he was looking at, even when he was looking at you. He was loud and emotional and, despite all of his bluster and insults, he was loyal as a dog.

Our other hacker was also our other Devout. Naz was an incredibly stoic bastard. He was Devoted to Ananzi, but without the sense of whimsy. He was really just in it for the spiders. A Human of West African descent, he was an imperious man, and actually pulled off the super-mysterious thing infuriatingly well. He kept his head clean-shaven, to better show off the six additional black eyes tattooed to his face. His cosmetically and cybernetically enhanced black-within-black eyes showed nothing.

He was the orderly, methodical side of the spider. A builder of patterns and comfortable with endless toil, he operated on the Wire with a precision and elegance that put most coders to shame. His Devout focus was on summoning spider spirits, or taking on the occasional fearsome aspects of the arachnids for himself. I once saw him sprout hideous, ethereal mandibles and bite someone’s arm clean off. I hired him on the spot.

Tanith was a big, sleek, grey Visral. She had a shitload of cybernetics implanted into her, all with the specific goal of beating people’s asses. She was a hell of a brawler. While Pawn was a well-trained - dare I say elegant - fighter, Tanith was pure brute force. Her serpentine body was as amazing at soaking up damage as it was dealing it out. I’d seen her sprout all sorts of nasty metal surprises out of her body – and then put them immediately into someone else’s.

Despite her brutally unsubtle fighting style, she was actually kind of a sweetheart and pretty diplomatic. She acted as the group’s de facto conscience, purely because no one else wanted that Sisyphean job. When I say conscience, she was still a killer, but a bit less blood-thirsty or sociopathic than the rest of us. She was probably the person I trusted most. Lucky her.

Omar was a young Al-Radan. Barely the age of maturity, she’d been trained in some pretty nasty forms of infiltration and assassination. She made up for her diminutive size by being very loud and very crass. She was also a bit of a porn addict, and would sit and watch it while she ate breakfast in the living room. Who does that?

She was the newest addition to the team, and a hell of a sniper. I got the feeling she was trying very hard to lie very low from people who were very dangerous. I always kept an eye on her to see if she was getting extra jittery, if she thought they were closing in. I really didn’t want my lovely home (or me) getting blown up because of politics. Not when there were so many better reasons to incinerate me.

I guess last is Santos, another Human. He was a scruffy-looking ginger in his late twenties, but he still managed boyish good-looks. He was, according to him at least, a “gonzo journalist,” but he didn’t ever send any of his work out to be published. He was a technophobe who used possibly one of the last analog typewriters in the world. As often as he was using it to type, he was using it to bludgeon the “enormous fucking rats” that he believed plagued him.

Santos did a lot of hallucinogens.

He wasn’t cybered up. He hadn’t sold his soul. No great physical skills to speak of. But he was a pretty solid strategist. He certainly thought outside of the box enough, I suppose. And he offered a dissenting opinion from mine. His contrarian ways had probably helped us avoid a lot of danger that I might otherwise have led us into. But I would never tell him that.

That was us. That was United Plumbing Company. We got rid of the shit clogging up your life. The bigger the shit, the bigger the price tag. We mostly worked black ops for the corporations. They paid the best and had the delightfully vicious work that we specialized in. We weren’t picky. One day we could be kidnapping a highly prized asset to be reprogrammed by a psychic for one corporation, the next day we could be murdering the psychic for another. No masters but money. But then again, I guess that made us just like everyone else.

It’s all just business, after all.

Seth's Journal 05

Waiting is the most annoying part of any job. Every second becomes an epoch of boredom tinged with anxiety coating the back of my throat. Having to nurse a beer was no help. I wasn’t immune to the spell I cast, either, so I was getting as irritable as everyone else in the bar.

I would certainly not have chosen this place as a casual haunt. I dig dive bars, but this place was just kind of sad. It had the tang of a place that had lost its glory, and that’s just a bit too depressing. The actual bar was made of real wood imported from Ireland, but it was in horrid shape from systematic neglect. As a Tuatha, I hate to see that happen to an Irish place. I also didn’t appreciate the Fomorian bartender judging me. I was judging him, of course, but the stereotypes between our split race are a bit of a sore spot for me. I don’t mind being spawned of the pretty side of the island, but Fomorians tend to view Tuatha as the weaker side of the family, pisses me off. There’s probably a lot of Fomorian corpses who would tell you I was no pushover, were they able.

I avoided making eye contact with Pawn, who was seated across the bar. I could tell by the set of his shoulders that, despite the fact that he knew the effects of the spell, he, too, was growing more irritable. The bar was getting slowly quieter as people began losing the urge to talk to one another. The bartender was getting on edge. His hardened experience was evident not only from his ability to read his crowd, but also from the impressive collection of weapons displayed behind him. The caked blood told me he favored the shillelagh. Typical.

After the seemingly eternal wait of 48 minutes, our mark entered the bar, slightly behind schedule. I was unimpressed. Mr. Reardon was a smarmy human who looked like he thought he was the blue collar king. His boots were too nice, though. They made a big show of being work boots without the telltale grime of legitimate labor. He had that biker mustache, but he’d probably never ridden a day in his life. He was a pretentious fuck. I know. I can spot one a mile away.

He ordered his beer and attempted to chitchat with the reticent bartender. He gave up and watched the soccer game, which, if our intel was correct, would be the catalyst we needed. He got into it, alternately hurling insults and approbation at the television screen. He wasn’t alone. As the game went on, emotions ran high. There wasn’t much dissent in the bar as to the more worthy team. Good.

Pawn walked over and stood in the small crowd near Reardon, under the implicit pretense of getting a better view. It was obvious Pawn wasn’t welcome. Korea Republic was struggling valiantly against Republic of Ireland, and, while Pawn is Japanese, all the other bar patrons saw was a Tsume. They all look alike, right?

Korea scored and Pawn let out an obnoxious cheer. I channeled more power in my emotional agitation aura while, hands working under the table, I wrapped Pawn and myself with protective energies. Pawn faked a stumble into Reardon, making him spill his beer. Off we go, apparently, I thought to myself.

Reardon swung around, eyes ablaze. “Watch yourself, you fucking gook,” he spat. Pawn’s mechanical tail twitched with agitation, feigning uncertainty.

I stood up. “Yeah, pussy cat. Curiosity ain’t the only thing ever did one of y’all in.” I narrowed my eyes dangerously and I felt the small group grow bold with my words, ready to follow.

Pawn’s green eyes grew with the semblance of fear as he stammered with a thick Asian accent that he does not have. “Hey, guys, I don’t want any trouble,” he said, backing away. A few peacemaker-types gathered behind him to try to calm things down.

“Too late for that now,” I said as I grabbed the lapel of his leather jacket. Right on cue, he decked me and I went down like a cheap whore. He was supposed to pull his punch, but I think my spell might have be working too well.

At that point, the group surged over me and the brawl began. The crowd had gained its momentum, so I dropped my mood-affecting aura and diverted all energies to our protective shields. Pawn put up a good fight, dishing out some punishment and taking every blow with kabuki exaggeration. The bartender was screaming and brandishing a baseball bat, and I saw someone draw a knife. Beautiful. I quickly grabbed a small knife out of my pocket and plunged it into Reardon’s kidney three times. I gave two others in the crowd fairly serious wounds before re-stashing it. I jumped to my feet.

“C’mere, you fuck!” I screamed at Pawn, our signal. He bolted for the door with most of the mob following. I chased him for the few blocks it took for the rest of the crowd to lose their bloodlust. We kept running for a while, weaving a chaotic path through the city, before I whistled sharply. He slowed his pace and I caught up as he called Patch for the pickup.

“Nicely done,” I said as he took the phone from his ear. “I hope that looked natural enough.”

Pawn rubbed his jaw pensively.”We’ll see. Sure felt natural. Wanna get some Thai food on the way home?”

“Oh, I could kill for some Thai. But, knowing my primary income source, I probably just did.”

Introductions all around

Okay. So they say that the writer’s duty is to ensure the communication of ideas if he or she wants to be successful. That means knowing your audience. Since I don’t know my audience, I’m going to try to bring you as up to speed as possible in a very short time. I live in the hideous sprawl of New York City, which has hungrily co-opted a large portion of the tri-state area in recent decades. I also travel to the Astral Realm on the regular, too. I’ve done a lot and seen even more. As such, I am what you might call Cosmopolitan. I’m going to have to assume you are not. You might only have seen a Visral on television. If you’re from some backwoods shithole where only humans congregate, some of this is just going to seem alien to you.

Do try to keep up.

My name is Seth Shannon. I’m a Tuatha elf, the slender, pretty type of elf. My race and our cousins, the Fomorian elves, immigrated from the Astral Realm thousands of years ago, pulled in by the powerful summonings of ancient Celtic magics. The Fomorians are big bastards, hearty and sanguine. We get along, even if we don’t always see eye to eye.

We settled in the British Isles. We were celebrated as wondrous creatures, wise and powerful, attuned to the magical energies of the world. That was until the world started getting all organized with its religions. Then, we started looking an awful lot like abominations at worst or illegal immigrants at best. When we started coming over to America, there were lots of jobs, but “Elves need not apply.”

We are unnatural inhabitants, but there are some other races with more legitimate claims to the land, though don’t ever tell anyone I said that. There are the humans, who breed fast and spread their influence with a desperation that borders on admirable. They vary wildly from  group to group, but they all look alike to me. Some of them are light, some of them are dark, and there are a whole lot of them that think that means something. They are short-lived and deliciously decadent, trying so hard to make the rest of us forget that they came from monkeys. They lost their way with magics for many generations, trying to focus on developing technology, which they perceived to be their best chance at securing dominance over the other races. Magic of all types has come back into fashion in recent decades, and more of these apes than just the odd hermit or religious zealot have taken up wielding the arcane or sacred forces. They outnumber all of the other races combined, so the facilities and accommodations of the world tend to have a very speciesist bias in their favor. As an elf, this doesn’t often bother me, but that’s not true across the board.

There are also the Tsume. Apparently, their fossil records show that they developed from a species of Tiger that existed in Japan some time ago. They dominate the islands of Japan and have spread throughout much of Asia, with their second largest population center being in Indonesia. They are lithe, dangerous people that, well, if you’re into the exotic, are just damned sexy. If humans are shorter than elves, Tsume are shorter still. Humanoid (see? speciesist) felines, they have sharp teeth, nasty claws, long tails, and a variety of fur patterns that developed out of breeding preferences more than any real adaptive developments. They rose to a relatively peaceful co-dominance of their home regions with the humans, the latter tending to revere them as powerful warriors and allies rather than terrifying competition. While there are certainly a number of magic users in their history, they often tend to lean towards Focus as their preferred method of survival. So yeah. Lots of kitty ninjas. Go figure. Make no mistake though, there are many Devout Islamic and Hindu among them, so don’t go assuming that a race is a religion (or lack thereof).

I know from personal experience that the women of the species occasionally go into heat, and the result is pretty spectacular.

I guess next are the Visral. Big snake bastards. Somewhere along the way, snakes looked up and decided they wanted arms or something. And to be huge. So yeah. Huge snake bastards with arms. They call the Amazon their ancestral home, but they can now be found populating pretty much anywhere near the equator, though many enterprising individuals range into colder climates for work or for, you know, culture. (My journeys to the American South have perhaps left a bad taste in my mouth.) They tend to have a solid connection to magic, specifically a lot of Devout. Their cultural connection to the Astral Realm has always been pretty high, especially since so many of them were often worshipped among indigenous humans.

There are also the Ogres. Tallest and broadest of the races, they don’t look too far off from Fomorians (I guess I’m showing my own bias now). They tend to have olive to copperish complexions and pronounced lower tusks. They inhabited a lot of the Americas prior to the colonization. Oddly, they were also found during the colonization of Australia. They use this fact to claim that they have been around since Pangea, like the humans. Fossil records don’t really have a firm case to make yet, but I guess it’s a matter of time.

In the Americas, they were often in bloody competition with the Native Americans. They usually came out on top and were ready allies to the European conquerors. As such, they fared far better than the humans. Probably helped that they are very resistant to disease.

I guess last and least, as far as their stature goes, are the Al Radan. They look a lot like human kids, if they’d been bitten by radioactive meerkats. I guess they average around three and a half feet tall, brownish fur, and an affinity for creating underground complexes. They make their homes in the Middle East and North Eastern Africa, and are probably the most fit beings to inhabit the Sahara. The humans claim Jesus Christ was one of their own, but so do the Al Radan. When you see him on TV, he looks like a white human, but that’s the idea of Jesus made real(ish), rather than the specific dude who lived back then. Assuming he actually did.

They usually divide along cultural and religious lines, siding with sympathetic humans. You can find them in both the Mossad and the PLO, and they tend to be exceptional infiltration experts.

Race relations have never been great, but they have gotten a bit better in recent centuries. With the various groups all eventually realizing that the others weren’t going anywhere, people had to stop killing or enslaving each other if we didn’t want the whole thing to go tits up. Television helped. Seeing a nice Visral family on television or an Al Radan stand-up comedian started to make people realize that we’re all sentient and shit. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” and all that. There will always be racism and tribalism, I guess. Competition for resources will always exist, and if you’re going to share, you usually want to share with someone who looks like you. Such is life.

Okay. So magic. You probably know fuck-all about magic because only the most powerful of spirit or mind can even hope to wield such power, and for some reason, I doubt you are in my class. There are three types, broadly speaking; Focused, Arcane, and Devout.

The Focused use their inner strength of will to radically enhance their physical capabilities. Crazy strong and crazy fast, they are powerhouses. All of that mythic ninja shit you see in movies – that’s them. Jumping up to rooftops, kicking guys’ heads off, running on water, all of that shit is their schtick. I’ve literally seen a Focused Tsume drive her hand through a guy’s chest. Man, she was... well, I guess we’ll get to that later. Apparently, there are some rare few who can channel their Focus into enhancing their mental abilities. The corps go apeshit trying to recruit these bastards for upper management. Can’t say I envy them, because corporate head-hunting is a very literally cut-throat business. I know. I’ve done a few “recruitment drives” myself.

Arcane powers are for the studious types. Years of intense study can bring someone the understanding of the natural forces such that they can be bent or broken by the person who knows the right gestures and chants. Whether you call them mages, wizards, witches, or whatever, that’s them. They rely on their smarts and studies for their power.

Never had the patience for it.

And then there are the Devout. Like me. Sents who have aligned themselves with a god, bargaining for power to do their deity’s bidding and good (hah!) works in the Material Realm. Since the beginning of mass media, the gods have been bidding for more and more power by spreading their influence in our plane. They sit on their asses in the Astral Realm and are fed by our belief. The more followers, the more power. Religion has pretty much outed itself as a pyramid scheme, and it doesn’t matter. Proof has denied faith, so belief is now the currency of power over there. They feed some of it back to us, basically as advertisement. I murder people horribly in the name of the Nameless Ones, (without a touch of fucking irony, thank you very much), and their machinations are advanced while their reputation grows.

Belief is a funny thing. Like I said, mass media changed the game. Saturday morning cartoons ended up being unexpectedly powerful force. No one believes like kids do. All of a sudden, these spirits came into being and with the belief being poured into them every week, they got powerful. As their popularity waned, so did their powers, though. Over there, it’s not uncommon to see a beloved figure from your childhood fallen on hard times. Almost as soon as the trend was noticed, it started getting capitalized on, and no one knows how to do it better than the Japanese. In ATokyo, there is a vast palace ruled by a mouthless white kitten, whose name I dare not say. The cartoons with endless collectible creatures backfired, though. AJapan was quickly overrun by all of these rather volatile creatures. But, in typical enterprising fashion, hunting permits were issued and the populations were brought down to manageable levels.

If you’ve never tried snorting ground Pekemin dust, you really owe it to yourself to do so. You’re in for a fucking treat.

The Abrahamic religions hold the most sway, both here and there. I’m more of a grass roots campaigner, pulling for the little guy. Well, it’s not really little, or a guy in the strictest of terms. I actually follow a pantheon, but have one patron, which I guess is pretty standard. They are dark, and old, and really, really scary. And when I called them the Nameless Ones, I mean it. They have... identifiers of a sort, but not like anything else. You can’t say their names, you can only feel them. He that I serve, his name is like an oil spill in your soul. Like your own boot on the neck of a loved one. The knife in your heart that you know you deserve. He is all that is awful and filthy, a geyser of hate and shame exploding down your throat. It takes a pretty horrible person to be comfortable with this.

So... yeah. Nice to meet you.

My name is Seth, and I’m a fucking monster.

Seth's Journal #34

I’m at the club. Tying one on with a vengeance. Putting a glass to my head and pulling the trigger. It’s been six days since I found Talia’s head in a bag on my doorstep. Feels like three years. Time feels like it’s spinning off its hinge when you’re grieving, but I’m used to that.

I’m Thinking About My Life, and that’s never a good thing. My current thought, inescapable, unrelenting, is Loneliness. I need to be alone. I'm poison and I know it, and being with someone makes me start feeling like I should be accountable for that. I don't like feeling accountable. Problem is, I just get so fucking lonely. Every few years, I start in on someone. Pushing into their life, making them believe me to be redeemable. We both know it's a lie, but without any truth to fall back on, we pick our prettiest lies and stick with them. I tend to choose women as dangerous as me. I try to tell myself that it's because they need to be able to protect themselves from me. Something else tells me that it's because they have such a low life expectancy, and I'd rather them die than reject me.

I really am awful.

Booze. Lots of it. However, even with a controlling interest in the club, there’s a limit to how much Yendri will serve me. The other owners want to make sure I survive, since I’m Mister Moneybags. The music is loud and would be intrusive, but I am so very good at not living in this world. For someone with as many enemies as I have, slipping into dissociative hazes is a serious professional hazard.

I guess that’s why I didn’t even notice someone was talking to me until actual physical contact was made. I try not to jump as someone’s hip bumps into mine. I look at the short woman elbowed up to me and it takes a second for me to remember. Maybe the night is getting better.

Impa was a Focused martial artist. She hits like a truck and is probably as fast as one. Another beautiful badass, who yes, was a very occasional (hopefully not former) lover of mine. I certainly have a type.

I look at her and lean back, facing her full on. She’s about 5’6”, porcelain-skinned, and very angry. She’s a knockout, for a human. The sides of her head are shaved, and her black and wine-red hair slopes down to the side, coming down to her chin. And her eyes... Fuck. Those eyes. Slightly slanted and hungry. Fiercely attentive and sardonic. They burn into you, causing unexpected things to happen in your chest and somewhat more expected things in your pants.

She looks at me and smiles, then turns her head to order a drink. She’s wearing tight-fitting but comfortable black leather clothing. Durable, yet allowing for full range of motion. She’s a professional, dealing a dirty trade. We’ve partnered up before, but I really do try to avoid working with ex-lovers when I can. She’s a killer, and an artful one at that. And she’s playing coy.

“Hi there, Impa. You usually don’t even say ‘Hi’ to me unless you’re between boyfriends,” I say, hopeful.

“I’m in a transitional phase,” she says, picking up her glass of whiskey and taking a large, grateful gulp. She give me a sideways glance and a smirk.

“What happened to this one?” I ask.

“Eh. He isn’t half the badass he pretends to be.”

“None of us are,” I say distantly. She turns and gives me an assessing look. I turn away to drink, uncomfortable. That bordered way too close to honesty.

“What about you?” she asks, finally turning to face me.

“My girl was decapitated a few days ago.” If she’s shocked, she doesn’t show it. “Want to be a part of my grieving process?”

She laughs. It’s throaty and genuine. Oddly not the least bit cruel. “What stage are you at?”

I give her my best feral smile. “Anger.”

“Lucky me. Upstairs?” I nod. We’ve danced this dance before, and we are of a like kind. She’s exactly who I want and what I need right now.

We start walking up the stairs to my private room. One of my demands for sinking so much money into this place was a private bedroom for having sex with random women. I know, I very probably have an unhealthy relationship with sex. But I desperately need validation and I don’t trust a kind word that a person says to me or a charitable act unless I am actively in the process of hurting them.

Like I said. Awful.

We get to the door and I unlock it, motioning her inside. I step in after her and lock the door again, turning on the low lighting. I turn and face her, barely a foot between us. She looks up at me and cocks an eyebrow.  “Well?” she says, challenging me.

My hand shoots to her throat and I squeeze. She pushes up to her tip-toes and I walk her back towards the bed. She lets me. As the backs of her legs bump into the mattress, she knocks my grasping hand off her neck, ducks under my arm and around me, and before I know it, she has me in a choke-hold. With a thought, I extend the cybernetic claws hidden under my nails and dig into the sides of her stomach. Her grip loosens as she gasps and I spin in her grasp.

I grab a fistful of her hair and slam my mouth into hers, the taste of blood trickling into our kiss. With my other hand, I roughly grab her crotch and flip her onto the bed so that she’s lying on her back, her head at my knees. She smile up at me, swinging her arms up and jerking my knees towards her. I spill to the floor, knocking my head against the hardwood. I see white for a second, and when my vision clears, she’s slinking off of the bed, crawling up my body. “You’re getting old, Seth.” She stops when she gets to my belt buckle and starts to undo my pants. She pulls out my cock and nuzzles it, keeping eye contact with me. She slides it into your mouth and it’s like coming home, with all of the comforting and terrifying emotion that sentiment entails.

I grab the sides of her head and start thrusting. In a flash, she’s on her knees beside me with her hand on my throat. “Just fucking lie there, control freak.” I hold my hands up in a surrendering gesture and put them behind my head. She takes me back into her mouth and starts pulling her pants off, the creaking leather giving way to beautiful pale skin. My heart leaps. Well, something leaps.

She enthusiastically sucks on my member, still taking her clothes off. I take off my shirt and try to kick off my pants without interrupting her. I eventually start rocking my hips. She pulls me out of her mouth and sighs. “If you need something to do, try this.” She resumes sucking my cock and swings her body around, planting her wet pussy in my face. I bury my tongue in her, wrapping my arms around her waist to pull her into me. I bring my hands up to cup the cheeks of her perfect ass and dig my metal claws in, drawing blood. She screams around my cock, grabs my scrotum, and digs her own nails in. Like that would deter me. It doesn't deter her, either.

I retract my claws and slide two of my fingers into her. After a few minutes, I feel her convulsing with her first orgasm of the night. I’m bound and determined to make her cum so many times that she forgets her own name. She slumps down onto me, then rolls off gracefully. How she manages such perfect, fluid motion is a wonder. She leans back against the bed. I sit up and lean into her. I grab a fistful of her hair again. “Stick out your tongue,” I say, and she obeys. I move her head to make her lick my face clean of her wetness, but she takes the cue and finishes under her own power.

I stand up and drag her with me. I look at her hard in the eyes. “Tonight, you’re mine.” Her lips twitch in a smile and she nods. “Say it. Say you’re mine.”

“I’m yours.”

“Louder.”

“I’m yours!”

“LOUDER!” I scream in her face.

She screams it back at me and I throw her on the bed. I’m on top of her in a second, pushing her down by the shoulders. I lean down slowly and kiss her softly. I pull back and give her a serious look. “I want you to tell me before you cum. If you’re a good girl, maybe I’ll let you finish.”

“A good girl?” She laughs at me. “You wouldn’t know what to do with her if you could find one.”

I’m not exceptionally athletic in bed. What I lack in vigor, I make up for with cruelty. As a result, I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. But the girls who like me, well, they tend to really like me. Within a few minutes, Impa gasps out that she’s going to cum. I wrap my hands around her throat, thrusting steadily to keep the pace she’s riding with. After a while, she lightly tapes my forearm twice and I let go. The blood and oxygen rush back into her head as she climaxes, intensifying the entire experience. She screams, outdoing the loud music coming from downstairs. I slow my pace while she floats out of the world for a minute and she looks up and me and chuckles.

The rest is a blur of flesh and ever-increasing acts of sadism.

At one point, I realize that my eyes are tearing up. Impa looks up at me, and for just a second, a look of pity flashes in her face. Furious at myself, furious at her, furious at life, I slap her hard. She decks me, and the moment passes in violence and lust.

Later, again, I start getting stuck in my head. Losing the moment. Once again, dissociation starts pulling me out of the world. She looks down on me and senses it. She slaps me hard across the face, hard enough to jar my teeth, but nowhere near as hard as she can hit. “Stay with me, boy.” Pulls me back into the moment sharply.

We fuck angrily, hurting each other as often as pleasuring each other. We fuck angrily, expressing our rage at the walls keeping us from clawing our way into each other. Not because we particularly want each other specifically, we just don’t want to feel so desperately alone.

We fuck like a forest fire, a force of nature burning away the old, leaving the world scarred, empty, and ready for something new.

We open ourselves up and drink each other’s poison, each knowing the other is strong enough to survive it. Strong might be the wrong word. Accustomed. We’re both virulent creatures, inoculated by our suffering and strife and sadness, finally unleashing what we fear to show another, but desperately need to release.

No one fucks like the hopeless.

The morning comes. We’re battered, bruised, and bloody. I feel peace. I know it won’t last, but I am enjoying it while I can. We smoke and don’t talk. We’re still, wrapped in each other’s arms, and to the casual observer, it might even look something like tenderness. We have no genuine attachment to each other, but we have an understanding. A common need that we both know the other shares. That, at least, is enough for right now. We look at each other, strangers, but with a powerful knowledge of each other nonetheless. When she doesn’t know I’m looking, I see her faraway gaze, one that I am deeply familiar with.

We are of a kind. That’s enough.

After a while, I start getting antsy. I sit up and she watches me. “You want me to heal you up?” She nods and relaxes. I chant and slide my hands over her body, using my unholy energies to heal her cuts and bruises. I leave some of the scratches on her back so she'll remember me when she takes a hot shower. That sweet sting of remembrance is too delicious to remove. I leave my own wounds. I want to hurt.

“I think you murdered my cock.” I laugh, starting to get self-conscious and uncomfortable and resorting to humor. She gives that throaty chuckle again. Damn it, I could be with her.

“I always forget just how good sex is with you. No one fucks like the self-hating.” Yeah. I could be with her.

“Sexual skill is my one redeeming quality,” I say, feeling the walls build back up.

“’Redeeming’ isn’t a word I would associate with anything we just did.” She winks at me and looks at me seriously. She looks like she’s about to say something, then thinks better of it.

Probably for the best.

She gets dressed quickly, fixing her hair in the large mirror. “I’ll see you later, old man.” She stops at the door and turns around. “Take care of yourself, Seth. If you need a hand, give me a call. I mean it. Some people hate your guts less than you do.” She shuts the door behind her and I’m a goddamned wreck.

Seth's Journal #70

I pass Greed without the feeling of being watched this time. I pass Wrath, the crowd sounding slightly less enthusiastic than they did before my performance. I pass the dance club level of Pride, where people in their finest, most extravagant costumes posture to the beat of industrial music. I pass the quiet level of Envy where people gossip savagely. I reach the bottom level of Sloth and the sweet lavender smell greets me.

I check in with the desk and tell them that I only wish to stay for an hour. The gentleman behind the counter escorts me to a plush chair and taps the screen on the side of it. I sit and settle myself. Within moments, a lovely Tsume girl lightly places her hand on my arm. I smile, genuinely pleased to see her. She offers the opium pipe and I pull deeply. The taste alone calms me, preceding the slow encroachment of beautiful apathy.

The Tsume girl says nothing. She lifts the pipe to my mouth every time I think I want another taste with the precision of a psychic. Maybe she is one. I want to ask her, but it would break the fragile surface tension of this blissful oblivion. Time… passes…

Far too soon, my time is up. The Tsume girl runs her fingers across my cheek and kisses my forehead, as gentle a wakeup call as possible. She looks apologetic that my time is over. I know it’s fake, but all good customer service is. I appreciate the attempt and slowly get out of the chair, unsteady on my feet. I walk back to the stairs on unsure legs and become immediately intimidated. I am amazingly intoxicated. Sadly and with little enthusiasm, I say a prayer to remove the toxins from my system. My mind clears. I’m sad to let that particular high go away, but I feel… good. It’s been a while since I’ve felt so at peace. What’s going to fuck it up?

I ascend the stairs and pass Envy. From behind me, I hear a muffled voice. “Sir, may I have a moment of your time?” “Fuck,” I say under my breath.

I turn and see what must be an Astral creature of some sort. It, maybe she, looks like light given shape, wearing a low-cut, vibrant purple ball gown and partial gasmask. It seems to float, as if underwater. It’s not holding a weapon. That’s a start.

“Sure,” I say cautiously. It, she, whatever, motions me to join her in Envy. She walks ahead of me. I’m not sure if that’s a good sign. Either she expects no trouble or is confident in her ability to overpower me. Astral creatures set me on edge; you never know what you’re dealing with.

She floats to a high booth and sits gracefully. My eyes dart to scan who may be watching. Everyone is, of course. My least favorite level of this club…

I sit, genuinely curious. I’m trying like hell to hold on to my good mood, but I feel like its time is short. “So. What do you want?” I say impatiently, feeling like my efforts to relax have gone to waste.

The creature meets my eyes. It looks almost perfectly Human, but made of a soft, pale blue light. When I focus on her, I notice more details. Though uniform of color, I can see the irises and pupils in her eyes somehow. Her hair floats on unfelt breezes.

“I am Alcyone, of the Pleiades. The constellation, not the Greek mythological figures. It gets confusing sometimes. You Material beings are such prolific believers, there are myriad parallel entities.” Her voice sounds like the tinkling of windchimes, despite being obscured by her mask.

“You’re a star?” I ask, eloquent as ever. “So you’re all about light and love and happiness and shit, right?” I lean back into the booth, unimpressed.

Her brows furrow. “As a star, I emit the light and heat that allow for life to exist, yes. That is not what I am ‘about.’ I consume and destroy and create anew is absolute chaos to sustain myself. I am a being of infinite hunger, my purpose to live and, to do so, I feed eternally. The light and heat I create are waste products.” She levels her gaze at me. “I do not wish to be judged merely by my… excrement any more than you Material beings would.”

“Well, some of us deserve no less.” I sound glib, but my initial impression was wrong. Maybe we do have something in common. “Fair enough. What do you want from me?”

She leans forward to show an ample amount of cleavage (I think?), and speaks as quietly as her breathing apparatus will allow. “What else? I have a job for you.”

Seth's Journal #69

I’m getting antsy. That’s not good. My crazy starts acting up when I get antsy. I feel it sitting in the back of my throat, a tightness in my chest. A pressure inside that demands action, preferably of the destructive kind. I need to do something without foresight, without thought of consequences. When I get this way, it’s best if I just do something stupid in a proactive way, in a controlled environment. If not, I’m going to get stupid when it counts, and that may just cost me everything.

I walk downstairs through the empty house and lament, again, my sudden disappearance of comrades. They were pretty good about helping me get into something chaotic, and just as good as helping me get out of it. I’m on my own in a minefield of a city, with a powerful need for craziness.

I hesitate when I pull out of the garage, not sure which way to go. I sigh, realize it doesn’t matter, and turn left. The left-hand path will lead me astray, and that’s where I’m headed.

I hit the club. It’s a good place to start, or at least get loosened up. I get some Ketamine and find a cute girl to share with. I get her free drinks, and the bartender fulfills his contractual obligation to speak to me in front of ladies as if I am a god. We step into my private room, really a closet off the downstairs bar with a couch in it. She seems grateful for the opportunity to suck my dick. It amazes and disgusts me how easily manipulated people are. I get her another drink afterwards and move on. I won’t find what I’m looking for here. Plus it’s a bad idea to shit in your nest.

I get on my bike, on my way to being a danger to myself. That’s a start. Idling, I cast a protection spell on myself to take the brunt of anything that may happen for a while. I tear off into traffic, causing bedlam. It’s not enough.

I drive to Sin. The first floor is Gluttony, and I start pouring alcohol into myself. I grab a handful of cheesecake, stuff some into my mouth, then wipe the rest off on a passing servant. She takes it meekly. Wise decision on her part.

I walk the spiral staircase that circles the club downward to Lust. I’m still spent from earlier, but I can still have fun. I disrobe quickly in the foyer and walk into the wide, open view. Powerful incense mostly covers the smell of dozens of sweaty bodies pouring over each other. I wind my way through the maze of beds, almost all of them full, towards the bondage corner. More than a few hands reach out to beckon me to join, but I’m completely uninterested. For now.

I see people manacled to the wall, being flogged, caned, and teased. I scan the masochists to see who is wearing a ball-gag. Finding one, I cast a quick spell to enrage her sadist. His blood boils, and his flogging becomes cruel and brutal, and she can’t say her safe-word. I cast the spell on the other sadists, bringing their punishment to a fever pitch, pushing their partners past their limits. Masochists sicken me. There is too much pain in this world to go seeking it out. They deserve a real measure of pain, one that they have no say in. I walk to the foyer and redress. The smell of blood urges me onward. It’s time to visit Wrath.

I continue down the staircase. I hear the roaring of the crowd, a call for violence that resonates with the screaming inside of me. I pass the casino Greed, the level above Wrath. They surround the railing, watching the floor below and betting on the fights.

The smell of sweat and tang of fear greet me at Wrath. The crush of bodies trying to get close to the combatants calms me for some reason. I register myself for a fight and tell the oily-looking fuck behind the barred window to give me something magical because I won’t pull my punches. He looks me over, obviously put off by my slender frame. Idiot.

I wait my turn. I couldn’t care less about the other fights. I let my mind be overtaken by the din, find my center, knowing that soon I will break something. I almost don’t hear my name called.

I step into the circle painted on the floor. The crowd has gotten quieter, unimpressed. I slide my leather coat off and limber my shoulders. Black leather vest, pants, and boots, pale skin, tattoos… They’re obviously thinking I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into, poor little fashion victim. Fuck ‘em.

A heavily-cybered Ogre steps in. He’d have been big and scary without his cyberarms and, judging by the model, the blades hidden within. He plays to the crowd and they cheer for him by name. I blink and shift my gaze to the Astral realm. He isn’t magical. He must have pissed someone off. I smile, my red eyes hopefully conveying masked fear that I don’t feel. I get into what looks like an amateur’s fighting stance. I’ll throw a little misdirection so I can savor the moment when his confidence turns to fear. It won’t be long.

I silently begin to pray. My inner turmoil begins to coalesce. I become a weapon of hate and death. I’m going to have to stop back at Lust before I leave…

Somewhere beyond the crowd, a koto player begins to strike the chords that will accompany the battle. It’s on.

The big bastard starts running. I swipe a clawed hand through the air and his eyes explode. His hands instinctively go to his face and I sprint forward. He stops, his legs widespread. As I pounce between them I send out a supernaturally powerful kick, breaking his tibia and fibula. He drops to a knee as I roll into a standing position. I walk the edge of the crowd, staring at the crippled Ogre, a razor smile across my lips. I walk softly, quietly. I pull a dime out of my pocket and throw it at him. The moment it leaves my fingers, I’m running again.

The dime hits him in the chest and his head turns as I’d hoped. I put one foot on his outstretched, injured leg and jump. All my momentum transfers to my knee, then to his jaw. I hear bone snap. As my leap takes me over his body, his hands close around my ankle. I knew it was a risky move. C’est la vie.

He allows my jump to take me to the limits of his reach before he swings me at the ground. The guy’s over twice my size, so he makes it seem effortless. My head crashes onto the floor, my teeth breaking the skin of my lips. I taste my blood and smile. My eyes turn black. He drags me across the floor in an arc and lets me go. As I slide across the ring, he unsheathes the blades in his mechanical arms. Too little, too late. I take my ritual dagger out of its thigh holster. It is tiny by comparison. It doesn’t matter. Nothing will save him.

I drink in the moment of impending victory, the savage lust of murder. I am his pain. I am his fear. I am his end.

I begin running at him, screaming. He turns to the sound of my voice and prepares for my assault. I fling my dagger into his left shoulder and duck to his right. He responds to an attacker that isn’t there. I come from behind, on the opposite side. I jump up and put him in a sleeper hold, wrapping my legs around his waist. My arms are almost too short to fit around his massive neck, but my strength is greater. Black, crackling mist begins to rise from me as unholy energy flows through my muscles. I put my face close to his so I can experience his death more intimately. My ear pressed against the side of his head, I can hear his jaw move as he gawps for breath. He flails, bouncing his swords off of the ethereal shield around me. He grows weak from lack of oxygen and slowly kneels.

I shush him to sleep.

I pull my dagger out of him and stand. I pick up my coat and ignore the crowd as I wander out, feeling refreshed and calm for the first time in weeks. I walk up the stairs, feeling a slight discomfort as I pass Greed. Someone in there has more than a passing interest in me. I shrug it off and continue onward. Back to Lust. I make my rounds after casting a spell to protect me from diseases- one of the side perks of being a Devout. It’s a blur of flesh and sensation, and provides the release I need. Time to relax further down the spiral. I head to Sloth.

Seth's Journal #65

I really feel like I’m running out of options. I need to lay low for a bit and clear my head. Time to call in a favor I don’t like to abuse. These people are too important to me to lose.

I slip my DASI over my eyes and look at my hand to verify my fingerprints. I scroll through my contacts list. It’s depressing to see how many people I can’t call anymore. I tap my finger in the air over his name and hear the call initiate.

“Holy shit, long time, no hear. How’ve you been, man?” I hear actual joy in Finn’s voice and, for just a second, I think I might cry from relief.

“Eh, I’ve been better,” I say as a cautious smile hits my lips.

“Cheery as always, I see,” he chuckles. “When you gonna come visit us? You know there’s always a drink ready for you at our table.” I love Viking hospitality.

“Actually, that’s kind of why I called. I was hoping maybe I could come by and hang out for a day or so. I kinda need to clear my head.”

“Dude, anytime.”

“How about in a couple of hours?” I’m not used to feeling so sheepish. I don’t like it.

“Absolutely. There isn’t, uh, gonna be anyone raiding my house looking for you, is there?”

“I hope not. I got an anonymous toll pass, and I think I’m free of trackers, so we should be good.”

“Cool,” he says to my relief. “I wouldn’t say you couldn’t come regardless, I just like to be prepared.” I can hear him smiling. He’s always smiling.

“Thanks. Hey, uh, you’re not going to shoot me are you?”

He laughs. “I wasn’t planning on it, why?”

I sigh. “It’s, uh, it’s been a long day.”

He laughs again. “See you in a couple of hours, man. Arnora will freak out.”

“Thanks, Finn.” I hang up.

I pack a small bag and lock my DASI into my helmet. This is going to be a long ride, with a lot of time to think. I’m not looking forward to it. I wait until dark and get on my bike. I try to shake the feeling that something is going to prevent me from going.

 I escape the city unhindered.

After a couple of hours, I pass to the north of Philly. I start seeing more trees than buildings. Even through the taste of oil on the road, I can smell nature. Because it’s different, it’s good. It signifies a true change in environment, one I desperately need.

Another hour and I’m pulling off of the turnpike, headed south. Actual farmland. I always forget that it exists so close to the city. My GPS is turned off for security, but I don’t need it. I know these roads well.

I pull into their driveway and turn my bike off. The quiet is alien, deafening. I stand up and almost tip over. My ass is numb from three hours of riding. I stretch and grab my bag. Finn is waiting for me up on his deck, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. Damn, it’s good to see him.

“What’s up, motherfucker!” He drains his glass and moves to meet me as I walk up the wooden stairs. He’s a Fomorian, so he’s a huge bastard, and his hug crushes me. Once again, irrational tears almost erupt. I’m such a little bitch.

He holds me away from him and slaps my face affectionately. “Good to see you, prick. I’m sure you want a smoke, but we’re doing that outside now,” he says with a roll of his eyes. Clearly this is Arnora’s idea. I set my bag down on a table and light one up.

“What do you want, blueberry, black currant, peppermint…”

“Peppermint, please. That shit is divine.” It’s nice to visit the owners of one of the country’s largest meaderies.

He steps inside for a minute and I take a deep breath. The stress is already leaving me. I lean on the railing and take a long drag off of my cigarette, the distant lights of houses sparkling through the trees. Finn rejoins me with a wine goblet for each of us. We clink glasses.

“To the Two Ravens, my safe port in the worst of storms.”

His concerned eye assesses me for a moment before he smiles and drinks. “Well, we wouldn’t have been able to do all of this without you.” He obviously wants to ask what’s going on with me, but he’s letting me get to it in my own time. “You are getting your checks from us, right? I mean, I assume if you weren’t, you wouldn't just let it go.”

“Yes, I am. And every quarter I’m grateful that I had the good sense to invest in your ludicrous notion of going legit. I mean, didn’t you give up an eye for the black ops biz?”

Finn laughs. “Yeah, well, Odin still favors me. And gods know Loki still watches over Arnora. Speaking of which, I think she’s back from the apiary.” We watch as a car pulls into the driveway below. One of the most adorable Tuatha girls I’ve ever met jumps out of it and runs up the stairs, squealing. She jumps on me and hugs me with her arms and legs. She plants a kiss on my forehead and leans back, all smiles. Her platinum blonde hair smells of orange blossom honey.

“How ya doin’ Sexcorpse?!?” she says in her high voice. Her old nickname for me amuses her as much as ever. She drops back down to the deck, fully a foot shorter than me.

“I’m doing great, babydoll.” I smile.

“You’re a shitty liar,” she says as she walks past me to kiss Finn on the cheek.

“I’m a great liar, you just know me too well.”

“Fair enough. Let’s go inside, I’m freezing. I put a roast on when Asshole told me you were coming,” she says as she slaps Finn on the ass. We follow her into their kitchen, where the smell of real, home-cooked food is intoxicating. She puts down her bag and immediately starts putting food on plates for us.

“So what’d you do this time?” she asks, blunt as the baseball bats she used to wield. I hear Finn sigh a little, and I can’t help but snicker.

“It’s a long story, honey.”

We sit and eat. I talk, they listen. Finn is mostly quiet. After finishing her food, Arnora starts baking cookies. She punctuates my story with good-natured  but serious insults after each of my spectacular fuck-ups. I finish my tale of woe and quiet comes over us. They both want to give me advice, but neither know where to begin.

“Well, you’re welcome to stay here for as long as you need,” Finn says. I know there’s a time limit, but it’s good of him to say.

We fall into the old routine. Every time we see each other, we can’t help but reminisce about our days in black ops together. Even the shitty times, the narrow escapes and the friends lost, they’re better with alcohol and embellishment. All the while, their affectionate bickering is accompanying the conversations like a familiar dance.

Arnora gets up to go to the fridge. “What are you drinking, Asshole?” she asks Finn.

“Vanilla Lemon.”

“Good, that’s the one I poisoned,” she says, pulling out the bottle to refill our glasses.

“Gods, I hope so…” Finn says with mock exasperation, running his hands through his long brown hair.

It’s amazing how I can love two people so much and be so intensely jealous of them. I really am a piece of work.

“It’s getting late, man. You look like shit. Get some sleep where you don’t have to worry about getting shot in your bed.” He stands up and claps his large hand on my shoulder and walks down the hall to their bedroom.

“Here, eat more cookies,” Anora says, offering me a plate.

“I think I’m good, hon.”

“Eat a fucking cookie!” she says, with her serious face.

I feign fear and take another cookie. The girl once broke two of my ribs, so I don’t have to feign too hard.

“It’s good to see you, Seth. You should really visit more.” She takes my bag to the guest room and wishes me goodnight.

I wish I could, but I know eventually I’d fuck things up. And they are too important for that.