If you want anyone to pay attention to what youâre saying, you really shouldnât have one of those little swingy ballbearing things that go clack-clack-clack on your desk; itâs just asking for everyone to mentally check out and to physically check in to ballsville.
Vyper thinks Wraith probably didnât even pick it out herself. It seems so âMo, go get me something that a big tough-guy businesslady would have on her deskâ, and Wraith is a tough-guy business lady, Vyper supposes. Technically. If the business is running books, killing people, and getting out looking like you didnât kill people. âTechnicallyâ is one of Wraithâs favorite words/excuses/general concepts. But Wraith, Wraith wouldnât say it like that though, the âMoâ thing. Sheâd probably say something like âMaurice, go get me something⌠indiscreet.â Vyperâs pretty sure of that. She hangs around Wraith so much, sheâs confident that her internal impersonation matches the genuine article a good eighty-three percent of the time.
Hangs around maybe a bit too much. Like now, when the schmuck in a suit (not a Wall Street suit, a Wraith kinda suit, a we-all-bring-potatoes-to-the-same-potluck-wink-wink kinda suit) (and yeah Vyper knows the difference now, yeesh this is bad) has been going on and on about some bad deal or another for hours now. Or an hour thatâs felt like hours. Clack-clack-clack go the ballbearings. Man, Vyper shoulda never fished for this job. Part of her had thought it was never really gonna happen, had taken that first ânoâ at face value and only kept at it because sheâd really needed work post-clink. And thought sheâd be good at it. Which she is! When it doesnât involve standing around looking intimidating (NOT bored, V! Not bored! Stand up straighter!) and involves actually going around muscling losers and slinging knives. The part of her that settled into pessimistic acceptance was absolutely blindsided when her personal strategy of âneedle until they caveâ actually paid off.
âPaid offâ in the loosest terms. Even Wraith is looking bored now, which is how you know shitâs making watching paint dry look like a fight at the Bear Pit. Bored bored, not just âI donât want you to think youâre anywhere on my level, so Iâm gonna act like none of this bothers meâ, but like she needs a whiskey snifter just to stay awake. Vyper can tell she wants this guy would just beat it so she can go back to work, and she can tell because Wraithâs stopped listening enough to notice Vyperâs playing with her desk-doohickey. The ever-iconic âstop touching that so help me godâ look rolls Vyperâs way, of which sheâs very familiar. Itâs not venom filled the way it could be, though. Vyperâs hung around long enough to know that too, can see a layer underneath everything Wraith does that wasnât there when Vyper first took the job. Of what, exactly, she canât say.
Vyper slinks to the interloperâs side of the room, acting like she was totally going to anyway, yawning as she does. Throwing in a big stretch too.
It works. Everyone thinks sheâs totally casual, suit guyâs not even paying attention to her. But, oh, whoops, right, sheâs supposed to be paid attention to, because sheâs the intimidation factor. Oh well. Sheâll catch them looking again soon and really give âem the stink eye.
If she remembers. Already her mind is drifting again, looking at the posters on the walls, the plans for the Empire State Wraith has framed. Usually shows those off to guests, claims her money propped that thing up. Might even be true. Vyperâs moll has a lot of fingers in a lot of pies.
Vyperâs moll has a lot of everything in a lot of everywhere. Sheâs the sort of person who commands a room, who relies on indiscretion yet falls back showmanship when the hour demands. Who hides her eyes with a swanky hat, yet whose shoulderpads take up the whole damn office. Who, now that the unwelcome bozo is done with their spiel, is addressing the room at large, doing that aforementioned show-stealing. Just an absolute bombshell, a real, bona fide star. Her eyes alive in a way Vyperâs never seen on any other dame, not even the showgirl Vyper once blew in the back of a theater, talking about how any day her name was going be in lights. Itâs the sort of thing that stills tapping claws, ceases all fussing. Every single person feels like Wraith is talking just to them.
Except Vyper, who knows better.
Inexplicable calm washes over her. Everythingâs a little more bearable now, and she periscopes everyone engrossed by Wraithâs speech, her rallying of the troops, something something weâre not being pushed out of our city. Inviting this guy was just a pretense, probably. A springboard. Itâs working. Wraithâs two other bodyguards, her second, her ground woman; they all look to her, enthralled.
They all look at her, and no oneâs looking at suit guy anymore, rustling in the inner pocket of their jacket.
Itâs a gun. Vyper knows itâs a gun, they way you know to shape your tongue in your mouth to say âheyâ before you even know youâre doing it. She knows in the way sheâs already thinking somebodyâs gonna stop it before theyâre going to shoot her even completes. Wraith doesnât get gunned down in her own casino. It doesnât happen. Thatâs not the way the story goes.
But nobodyâs looking. Vyper knows that too, that for someone to stop it they have to notice it, and because all these things are happening in her mind before the snub-nose is even out of the breast pocket, she can come to the more accurate conclusion: Wraith is about to die without even seeing it coming. Itâs going to go off, and the worldâs not going to have a Wraith in it anymore.
Itâs Vyper. Vyperâs gotta be the one to do the thing. The thing that stops this. Stop a gun, from when youâre standing behind a person with a gun. Which isnât something you can do. Not really.
She strikes.
Sinks in her fangs, done this enough times to know what happens next. Knows it so well itâs a little out of body, watching the gangster twist, fail to fire because thereâs a hundred-ninety pounds of gorgon slamming into their body. All that slamming, and, crucially, the bite, diving in between their trapezius and omohyoid, plunging in with six-inch fangs that deliver paralyzing agent right where it counts.
The paralyzing agentâs kind of besides the point, though. It takes at least three seconds to be picked up by the body, and in a gunfight, three seconds might as well be a lifetime.
Because, to bite, you have to get in close.
Back to chest, so that when they turn to try and throw her off, thereâs nowhere to go, and they only twist in closer to her, putting their arm and most importantly their gun right up against her. Hey! Itâs a gun thatâs no longer pointed at Wraith!
Instead, itâs a gun thatâs now wedged between their bodies. And the thing about guns â guns in general, but especially guns you plan on shooting anyway â is:
They go off.
Vyper shrivels. Her whole weight falls onto the assassin as her midsection obliterates in the point blank blast, slumping forward and, conviniently enough, eliminating any chance of them freeing the gun and waving it at Wraith again.
Sheâs not standing under her own power anymore, but her jaw doesnât care. Itâs built to bite, to penetrate, and to withstand the three seconds of thrashing it takes for the venom to do its work; whether thatâs the preyâs thrashing or Vyperâs, evolution forgot to make the distinction. So sheâs there, not letting go, her eyes rolling back in her head as the room explodes into screams and bursts of magic, the red inside her flying out her back and hitting the opposite wall.
Sheâs a pretty slim lady. Slim enough that she really canât afford to have whole chunks of her body blasted away, and one shot right where it counts make her realize is oh. this is the last one, huh?
Purple telekinetics grab the mobster out from under her, flinging them into the opposite wall. The glass frame of the Empire State building shatters into a thousand fragments of stardust. Vyperâs jaw wrenches, a terrible pain sliding from her pterygoid right down her neck.
Doesnât that suck? Doesnât that just fucking beat all? That she just lost most of her organs, but the ripped-out fang hurts worse than anything else.
Without the human supporting her weight, she collapses onto Wraithâs meticulously clean office floor. Or, she assumes she does. Itâs the logical missing moment between when sheâs standing toothless and when sheâs next lying on her back, looking at a terrifying Wraith holding her by the shoulders.
Terrifying, not because sheâs furious â which she is, screaming at her bodyguards, saying get the fucking lazareth or so help me youâre going to wind up under six layers of concrete and how did they smuggle that in here, we check, we fucking check every one of these fuckers â but because she is terrified. Itâs a completely incongruous look on her. Her film-coated eyes are blown wide, almost in mockery, like sheâs parodying a person who actually âgets scaredâ because thatâs the only way Vyperâs mind can square what sheâs looking at. Square the complete and abject horror as she whips off her jacket and presses it to Vyperâs wound. Heh, good luck with that, sweetheart. Thereâs more of Vyper on the carpet behind her than there is held down by the compress.
âWhy did you do that?â Wraith hollers.
ââŚWhy did I do that?â Vyper lisps.
Even if no one says it, anyone can take an educated guess that Vyper only took this gig because she thought it would be easy. Yeah itâs a âbodyguardâ job, and thatâs got a suicidal implication to it, but Vyper wasnât actually planning on doing the. Yâknow. Messy part of that. She was planning to coast, and when the going got tough, beat town like she always does. Stupid Wraith, suckering her in like this.
âCanât believe you told me to do that,â Vyper says. Tries not to notice how her voice is getting weaker.
âI didnât tell you to do jack shit!â
âYeah, but you were standing there all âooo Iâm Wraith, I canât get shot, Iâm too⌠itâs gotta notâŚââ
The sentence trails off. Wraithâs reply does too, though thatâs because Vyperâs going again, slinking into the black between moments, where this time she wonât come back from. She can tell the general tone though, more screams for the lazareth. The doc that isnât going to make it in time.
*
Sheâs awake in a part of Houdiniâs Shackles sheâs never seen before. Not really waking up, just sort of awake, sitting propped up on something comfy but not so comfy that sheâd not rather just be laying down. What jackass let her recover from a gutshot sitting up? Sheâs woken up half-dead in enough dumpsters to know that recouping horizontally is perfectly fine, thank you very much, probably some human who doesnât know how much tender loving care a gorgonâs neck needs when unconscious. Or Krill, whoâs in the chair across from her, reading a book.
Oh hey, Krillâs here.
She should ask where Mo is. First question that should spring to mind, seeinâ a Krill without a Mo, an Abbot without a Costello.
Instead what croaks its way out of a parched and aching throat is, âWhereâs Wraith?â
Krill lifts his eyes. Sets down his pen, because he wasnât actually reading, was writing something, journal maybe. Vyperâs never seen him do that before. Her mind is wandering, something heavenly but sense-scrambling flowing through her veins. She manages to push through âsolo Krillâ thoughts of thatâs weird. is that weird? maybe thatâs not weird. to land back on her question. Whereâs Wraith? Why isnât she here? She was here just a moment ago.
âI can go get her,â Krill says.
Which. Doesnât answer the question. Vyper doesnât want him to go get her, she wants her to be here, to not be that last echoing after-image of herself, repeating, no, no donât you do this, donât you do this, asshole. To immediately dispel Wraith and replace it with a real one.
To have been by Vyperâs side the whole time.
âWhereâd she go?â Why isnât she here?
âOn a constitutional.â Itâs hard to tell if thatâs a joke, Krillâs voice swimming in the morphine â it must be morphine, Vyper hasnât had a good hit of this stuff in ages â and floating somewhere between annoyed and uninterested. âSheâs quite upset you took a bullet for her.â
âOh. Yeah?â
âIn a rare moment of irationality, considering thatâs your job.â Ok, that one was definitely annoyed.
âI didnât mean to,â Vyper says instinctively.
âDidnât mean to?â
âIt was uh. An accident.â
âAh, so you flung yourself upon an assassin, bit through three layers of clothing, and placed your mortal body between a gun and its target purely through a string of clumsy missteps?â
âNo I-â She swallows. Her voice isnât feeling much better. Worse even. Itâs hard to talk about the missing tooth. âI just- it had to happen, you know?â
âCertainly it could have happened without you disarming a Red Familiar in the most inefficient way possible? Knocking the gun out of their hand, for example? Perhaps then you could have kept the undue effect you have on Wraith to a reasonable minimum.â
âWhat uhâŚwhat do you mean?â
âAfter Casilda took over keeping you alive,â Krill says, âWraith stood up, walked over to your victim, and shot them for the entirety of her magazine.â
âOh.â
âVery gruesome. Muzzle flashing. Twitching. It went on for ages.â
That certainly didnât sound like her. Wraith didnât use a full clip when half would do, and took care to never let the other guy think he could get under her skin. Everything about her was measured, from the cut of her suit to the way she leaned against her desk. It was a form of control, showing temperance, even when you had the resources to waste.
âDidnât even question âem?â Vyper asks.
âNo.â Krill leans forward. âI think you should consider what you do to Wraith, next time you pull something like that.â
âNext time I get shot?â
âI will go get her.â Krill slips his pen into the spine of his journal.
Vyper gets out a few more choice words before he hops off the chair and lopes out of the room, into the bowels of wherever the hell in the Casino theyâve posted her up in. The unfamiliarity hits her strong the moment sheâs alone. It brings on the nausea, or maybe thatâs lifting the blanket because holy shit is there a lot of gauze there, more gauze that should be possible. Seriously the gauze-to-Vyper ratio is off the charts; she tries not to pass out. Fails. When she wakes Wraith is standing over her.
âGood work out there,â Wraith says flatly.
âUh yeah, yeah no problem,â Vyper says. Regaining life. Fixating on Wraith, whoâs here, whoâs safe, whoâs come to see her. âBut uhâŚout where?â
âIn the office. Showed backbone. Wish more of my people had that kind of initiative.â
âOh. Uh. Thatâs me. You can always count on V to get a job done. Especially when you pay up front.â
Her mouth is running on its own. Forget Wraith coming to replace the echo, she canât connect this woman standing in front of her to anything thatâs come before. Wraithâs last words to her were furious, was that the truth? Is this? What was all that about losing her shit when Vyper beefed it?
Vyper wants to ask. Wants to know if, when Wraith was begging her to stay with her, she really meant it. Wants to ask why, when Wraith held her folded jacket against Vyper so hard the blood soaked up the fabric to her elbows, sheâd used her human hands. Theyâre tucked back in her pockets now. As if they never left.
Vyper wants to ask. Opens her still incredibly dry mouth. The morphine beats her down.
Or the morphine is an excuse, when Wraithâs carefully neutral face sheds doubt on whether anything Vyper thought she saw was actually there.
âNice bonus coming your way,â Wraith says with a turn, a spare hand waved in Vyperâs direction, focus already elsewhere âRest up. Iâll tell Casilda to bring you some water. You sound like shit.â
âThanks,â Vyper says. âYeah, great.â
Wraithâs gone before the second âthanksâ makes it past Vyperâs lips.













