#gehenna

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Beckett wouldn't really stand out in a crowd. Brown hair just a bit longer than was currently in vogue, brown jeans, a white denim button-down that wasn't currently buttoned, hiking boots and a backpack nearly large enough to crush a man who tried to put it on at the wrong angle. About the only truly unusual feature were the sunglasses he wore even late at night, an attention-getter he'd never have worn if they hadn't served the very specific purpose of hiding his inhuman eyes from mortal observers. From similar reasons, he wore a pair of gloves to conceal the coarse hair and thick nails that marked his hands, a further legacy of his blood's bestial heritage.

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page 319:

"Beckett," she snarled. Then he blinked. "You look like hell."

Beckett nodded once. His eyes were sunken, his skin pale. He looked as though he hadn't fed in nights. His clothes were disheveled, and he bore the scars of several burns that hadn't quite healed yet. That he'd abandoned his sunglasses somewhere along the way was lost on Cross; she'd only seen him once, and had never known [i]why[/i] he wore the shades at the time. "You're not looking especially shipshape yourself."

All things considered, this cave was the best Beckett could hope for. Still, he felt uneasy. Kapaneus, Cesare[,] and he were hunkered down and safe from the sun for now, only an hour before dawn and a few more nights' walk from Qalat'at Sherqat. Things were going as close to plan as Beckett could hope and some instinct told him that was a bad sign.

The trip from the border had gone as expected. Other than the change in uniforms and languages, the soldiers on one side of the border seemed very much like those on the other, as far as Beckett and his companions were concerned: obstacles to avoid. Unfortunately, that hadn't always been possible—traveling by truck required that they stick to the roads and on three separate occasions, men with very large weapons had flagged them down. At the first two stops, Beckett and his companions had been able to talk themselves through—civilian travel in the region was not actually unusual, and people associated with the reconstruction of local oil pipelines and other pieces of the national infrastructure were doing a brisk, if risky business. A certain amount of US currency also helped relax security precautions.

After several nights of travel, they found themselves briefly stymied by the actual border fence line, which had been rather dramatically beefed up during and after the recent hostilities. Beckett knew he could easily make his way either over or through the concertina wire barriers with ease, and Kapaneus had displayed sufficient strength and resilience that he could probably climb it without getting too sliced up. As Beckett had expected, however, Cesare was going to prove a problem.