viskarenvisla's Literary Swamp

All the Strains are Cursed - comes with the name, y’know? Enkindled hearts were softened by their own fire, easy for ‘em to fall for their own Prey. Behexxed like me? Shiyit…bad luck we bring to others snaps back on us at some point, like a broken spring; probly why I’m cornered by you nasty little pockmark-predators. Yusuf, weren’t no different from any other Enkindled, and that was how he got himself fucked up…

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The next three days passed in flashes of white-hot euphoria.

Rust-red sorrow.

APOCALYPSE-BLACK FUCKING RAGE.

…and a gunmetal grey quiet that dragged on for eternity.  

The moments leading to my dissolution were sweet as swan-song. Would you believe me if I told you I'd wanted to kiss her from the moment I saw her? I'm for real. Vera Estrada rolling up on me in that shitty bathroom… 

The way she put a gun to my back was a beautiful thing. 

Like Aphrodite herself got a cholita makeover and channeled her brother Ares.

The bathroom’s klaxon-color lit her up like a sin I couldn’t quit, that I’d never pray away.

That pin-straight hair, shimmer-glinting like it was still wet...

Her full lips with their silk-soft kiss hiding a maw full of daggers...  

Those mile-long legs. Her firm fuckin' tits. 

Fuck man, that callipygian ass . 

All of it together and everything and I hadn't been able to evict her from my damn mind since the day I met her...it was a ravishing disguise. 

A portrait of dangerous beauty graffitied over a canvas of wolf teeth and .45 calibers.

Her kiss had been sweet as milk and honey, and like Sisera, my reward for dropping my guard was a bloody death; at least she'd left my face intact, but the theft of my voice?

I might as well have died, as if she too had hammered a tent peg into my temple.

Fitting end...I'd countered her straightforward aggression with my own silver-tongue, black-silk bullshit, all smarm and charm. I saw how it wormed its way into her brain when I'd brushed past, and like a serpent, I let it coil around her judgment when Galen and I sang to her. 

She'd been Prey like any other, and the history of my kind was spattered with these kinds of stories like arterial blood sprayed across vellum.

Here's what happened to me over the next three days.

I woke up, slung over Galen's shoulder like a sack of broken meat and bones.

First instinct: struggle...an effort sabotaged by the sheer amount of blood I'd lost from the shredded void where my jugular had been.

"Quit yer fuckin' squirmin' you damned jackass," came Galen's voice from somewhere nearby – he gave my ear a rough flick, nail going –tnk– against my piercings. "Not like I enjoy sayin' I told you so for runnin' off after that danger-quim, but Yusuf..." He paused long enough to get a strong one-handed grip on the fire-escape ladder. "I told you so, you dumbass."

Second instinct: argue...once again, I was denied. Nothing but a rasping hiss escaped the ruination of my throat, what little gore remained in my body drooling from my fangs.

"Yusuf...nnfph...you're...heavy, ya damn fatass, just...shut yer trap...can't even talk, daft fool..." Galen complained as he threaded his way down the fire escape. "What'd you do? Tip your head back, push the gun right up against your neck? Stupid to call a Night Howler's bluff. Stupider to enjoy it."

I did not enjoy it, I lied to myself. 

It was hard to hear through the pain - yes, cuz of the blood-drained muscles, my utterly fucked neck, but also the pain of being silenced. Never, even when I was at my sickest during my mortal years, had I been denied my voice.

Thus my third instinct: wallow. Y’know, at least I did that pretty good, cuz there wasn't fuckall else I could do. 

Galen was right, I'd been an S-tier idiot for rushing out like that after finding Randy all beat up and scrawled on. I'd taken the bait, passions inflamed by her violation of my Mortal, my arcade manager. 

I was, for sure, a daft fucking fool like he’d said, but that meant nothing against the prospect of seeing her again in the flesh – like pitting yourself against someone you gotta beat. 

Someone you gotta fuck.

"Why the hell'd you even go after her alone? You barely bullshat your way out last time she had a piece on you." He cursed in that calm tone that let me know he was well and truly pissed with me. "I swear the metal in your dick is a south pole magnet to north pole crazy..."

Was that it?

Did I have that disorder, of constantly falling for the craziest and most dangerous among us? Was it one of those things that would go away if I got her under me, thighs opened, nails dragging down my back?

"Least you didn't fuck her...we're not ready for a shootin' war with the Crows. You know this."

There went the idea of fucking the obsession away.

Fourth instinct - well, more of a lifelong constant - was to feel guilty. I’d let my cock do the thinking, following the shape of her like she was a beacon, and I was a sailor in her storm-tossed sea, I smelled her above the brine of my sorrow - hot blood and iron-duty, hit my mind like a crossbow bolt.

Galen hit the bottom of the ladder, greased up like a sweaty hog. Fuckin’ gross, dude-sweat…made me think of that doodle I did of that pig. I chuckled, bereft of voice.

The pain went nova; illuminated the world like –

Baton Rouge. On the night of its Doom.

The Mortals were blind to it – the Moon’s tendrils slid through their ears by its Curse-laden song, stabbing behind their eyes and blinding them to the truth. Those of us already Accursed, we had no choice but to see it: the crystal spikes, curving outward from buildings. Hard as horn, vein-pulsing, a sacred blasphemy.

The serene stillness reminded me of Chicago, midnight in deep winter; shattered by the shrike-shriek of the Lunar Strain.

I knew the silver glow, argent particles floating before my eyes weren’t real - just a flood of Selenosis through my veins keeping me conscious…Sarkic Lymph, dissolving carcinomas that grew from the knitting of my flesh…Colloidal Thymosol, keeping on the edge of a Killing Frenzy, last-ditch resort if another predator came for my blood.

My body was a meta-chem meat-reactor, running full-bore to keep me alive.

It did nothing to stop the visions.

Galen’s reflection in the rearview was moon-warped, like wax softened by silver candlelight. A fanged mouth had opened in his forehead, gibbering wordless blasphemy. His main mouth - the one above his chin - was griping. “ – gotta scale everything back…shit man, we might have to abandon the fuckin’ Point if they come at us. Two of us can handle an assault, but just me? Mizrah.”

He turned to face me at a SILVER red light. “This is bad ol’ buddy.” His pupils split into three.

Yeah. I knew. Cracked me to the core with shame.

I’m sorry I mouthed, the words a hollow whisper…it tormented me to be like this.

Galen just shook his head in disappointment and kept driving. Didn’t look like we were homeward bound.

She got stuck in my head…couldn’t evict her, man.

I imagined him asking ‘why’.

Why.

You all fuckin’ saw her, didn’t you? Those eyes, like ice glaring through cabernet sauvignon. You saw the shape of her hips with that seductive flare; a woman shaped like a scimitar whose blade I couldn’t help but caress, even as my fingers sliced away.

The heat of her breath; her soft tongue, hard-candy sweet. Those long fingers, tangled in my hair, working my belt open.

Vera said I’d cursed her with my song, got her brain playing my face and voice on loop. She had it backwards, you fucking get it now?!

She was my curse.

Only Celais had anchored herself in my thoughts like that, but she was a demigod in her own astral plane…a goddess who never climbed down from her mountain, I could but howl my love to her from below.

Vera was down here with me in the steaming dark; she could look me in the eye, separated by a bridge and a strip of polluted seawater…daring me to cross.

She was an enemy by any measure; the enforcer of another pack, literally another man’s girl. She’d almost taken me the fuck out…but I could feel her, and I wanted more.

More.

Ever fucking MORE.

I felt the shape of her, lain across my skin - like the muzzle flame of her revolver had been nuclear fire, flashing her silhouette over my body. I could remember the bare impression of her ribcage under my palms; my fingertips tingled from where they’d traced the shape of her breasts. Close, but not claiming. Not yet.

I wrongly assumed G was heading back to our crib.

We drove South, grinding through night-traffic until we reached the docks. Harbors jutted into the wine-dark water, like the broken teeth of a giant.

The fuck is this? I wanted to ask as he hauled me out of the back seat, carrying me through a warehouse door. Salt-stinking air…the groan of shipping liners in the distance.

Galen dumped me inside an empty shipping container. "Whoop..." he winced as my head clanged against the container's wall. "Ah well, not like you're exactly usin' anything in that skull of yers."

Dickhead.

We stared each other down like wolves in a corrugated cage.

He dipped out, and returned with a plastic bucket and two gallon-jugs of water.

No fucking way.

“Yes way,” Galen grunted, reading the disbelief in my eyes like graffiti sprayed on a corpse. “What, you think you’re just gonna bleed all over our place? Shit no boy, you got a gaper.” 

Galen unscrewed the cap of a water jug, tilted my head back with the kind of care he’d show a wounded bird or rabbit. Lukewarm water (fucker couldn’t even get refrigerated?) crawled down my tongue. Couldn’t swallow, muscles of my throat were shot.

Gravity and peristalsis did the hard work. I felt like a fucking infant.

“You’re gonna be laid up for a while Mizrah, and you know what that means?” He capped the jug, pushing it into my hands, “means I gotta pick up your slack, so don’t go glarin’ at me with those bitchy lil’ eyes.

Galen dipped out for a second and returned with a sleeping bag (wrong climate for that shit) and a half-used roll of paper towel. “Here. We’re not fuckin’ Ferals.” He ripped off a piece and hunkered down at my side.

“Now you listen here, not like you got much choice.” Galen blotted my forehead like he was some kinda nursemaid…his eyes were normal, no forehead-maw chanting sickness. I’ll be checkin’ on you throughout the day, keeping it random. We don’t need some jacked-up Hisser or overenthusiastic Nachten noticing a pattern and following me, finding you, and eating your liver.”

Bastard, I gummed my teeth at him.

He wasn’t wrong of course.

It wasn’t some Prey-beast I had to worry about; left unsaid were the Feral Brood, as we called ‘em. Ferals didn’t respect territory, whether it was turf or people. They saw any sort of weakness as a chance to get in, make Unchained like us suffer. I’d seen how depraved they could get when they caught one of us alone.

Deep-digging fangs and claws, tearing their brands into our flesh…leaving us stinking of violation, defiling with stinking seed and juices. Some Unchained never came back from that sort of thing, some of them didn’t even want to.

I’d sooner blow my own brains out.

Mortals in their endless hunt for the moral high ground might try to offer pity, or laws to undo that sort of barbarism.

Down here in the Jungle? There’s no such modern piety…just power, fear, and hunger.

“Rest up you idiot. I’ll catch something and bring it back for you to choke down tonight.” He slapped my shoulder with a meaty –thud–, then closed the container and locked it.

Leaving me in darkness.

Shit.

I’ll tell you something. I wasn’t afraid of Ferals or other Accursed Beasts finding me in here. Nah…I was wondering:

What would Vera think if she saw me like this?

Crippled. Broken. Wheezing like exhausted prey.

I mean let’s be real, she was the reason I was here. She’d pulled the trigger – why was I so hung up on her?

Wasn’t the first time I’d had my throat torn out – this was the worst though. It’d take at least a week for the tissue to close; the bare seal over my jugular vein was nothing but muscle, stretched tight like overtuned guitar string.

This was going to be a long fuckin’ week.

Hours passed.

I lost my fucking mind after the third.

Lightless…Soundless…nothing got through the walls of this MIG welded prison. A fever ran through my veins, buoyed by the Thymosol keeping my heart beating and my mind spinning. It cast phantasms against the walls, ghosts of the past putting on a show.

“Remember that night we went bowling?”

Angel’s voice came from where he sat cross-legged across from me. It had this wise-guy cadence. You could picture him, leaning against a wall, snapping a finger like a bit character from Grease . “Struck you out good cuz you took my advice.”

You always talked too much Angel. Look where it got you. Ghosts didn’t need to hear your voice, not when they climbed outta your head.

“You always trusted too quick.” He raised a finger, tsking at me, other hand cradling his severed head in his lap. “This loco fuckin’ plan of yours, ain’t gonna work the way you think.”

The fuck you mean, headless douchebag?

“It’s gonna be someone you trust who fucks you over…karma man. Morgan said you were the most gullible of Celais’ little harem.”

“Shut up man. I fucked your girl—wait, her name’s Morgan?”

Asshole.

We glared at each other across the darkened steel box, ghost-on-wolf.

So that’s how you think it is? You think Vera and the Crows pecked out my eyes by tearing out my throat?

You’ve always sucked at seeing the forest, just barking at the trees. Hear that end coming for you buddy?

He held his head up from his lap, jaws hanging open and slack as he howled; it turned my marrow to glass, crystalized my blood. 

Stop that, I demanded, growling voiceless and impotent.

He didn’t.

Angel just kept screaming and yowling, his voice distorted by echoes from beyond the caul of death.

SHUT UP!

The War-Form exploded from my body in a sudden wave of impossible violence and heat – shoulders broad as two men side by side, covered with black fur, claws like butcher knives. I threw myself upon him, ripping him into ectoplasmic tatters. When he was gone I didn’t stop, just raged against the walls of my prison.

I tore at the walls, dented them outward, just raged until time disintegrated.

BLACKNESS.

HOWLING.

A CAGE.

I came to lying on my side, cheek pressed against the dirty floor.

Couldn’t hear my voice, or anything besides the gory air rustling uselessly between my teeth.

I whisper-crooned the words to nobody:

‘Atzmat einai la-mashma ha-yeri, Motzi’ah kol sha’agah, Ach bin rega mithalefet ba-ye’ush, Ha-kol avur mei shechi b’toch siyut, Mitga’aga’at mikol ha-lev…’

Doubt you’ve ever heard that one. I didn’t write it, heard it on my buddy’s PS3 while he was playing some game whose name I couldn’t remember, but whose words I couldn’t forget.

Let me tell you what it means:

Closing my eyes to the sound of gunfire. Uttering a howl. In a flash—I fall into despair. All for the one who lives inside a nightmare. Missing you with my entire heart…

Celais.

Fucking hell I missed her.

Have you ever longed for someone so badly, their absence becomes a phantom limb? You remember their heat against you, feeling it bleed away forever.

I wondered if Galen missed her like that. It wasn’t something we ever talked about – never directly. When we spoke of her it was with awe, like acolytes at her bladed altar.

Did he vent his heart’s blood for her, from the space left by her absence? 

Even with Vera’s hard movements, her casual brutality taking up space in my frontal lobe, Celais was constantly there. I could see her, feel her, dancing onstage against my mind’s-eye. Her hair followed her like a burning contrail…her saber, a steel comet.

No matter the partner in her deadly dance, her smile was perfect – a gorgeous monster unleashed upon the world.

I failed you. I confessed to her phantasm, pushing up to sit on my knees, head bowed in self-admonition.

The hallucination of her joined me on my knees, coiled like a fiery asp. Despite towering over us all by her sheer power, she insisted on being eye-to-eye with me. Knife-sharp, hot as the heavens, her gaze pierced into my skull.

SHOW ME, she commanded.

I understood.

I didn’t scream. I couldn’t, not as I was now. My talons flensed the left side of my chest, ripping it open, peeling the skin like rind, slashing the muscle open. Blood poured down my flanks, staining the floor with stinking copper.

My heart thundered behind the cage of my ribs – a gore-stained hawk desperate to break its osseous prison.

Do you see it my love? Look what she did to me, Celais. Her name is written in bullet holes over my soul. She dragged me down to the bottom of her silver pyramid, just to kiss me and pull the trigger. 

How can I betray her?

Celais reached out – a vision, a memory, a Curse – and stabbed her fingers past the bone, her claws sliding into my heart. She tore it down the middle, my death-scream howling forth from the ruptured meat, black as our Banner.

YOU ARE THE ONE! She roared in sacred silence, fingertips of her left hand searing into my jaw like red-hot iron.

I’m not strong enough! I’ve failed you, I can’t hurt her!

DO IT FOR THE UNDYING GLORY, YUSUF.

DO IT FOR US.

SAVE HER.

Save her.

Reality began jump-skipping from there, like a VHS pulled from a fire – grainy flashes of colorless euphoria, choke-sputtering pain, blackouts where time felt dilated unto infinity.

I mercifully forgot those initial hours of that first night, chained up in that claustrophobic steel coffin Galen had locked me in. The guy was a merciless cunt on a good day, but I must have been just that pathetic since he hauled my sorry ass home. The next thing I remembered was roaming my apartment like a tiger in a cage.

That bile-fever still reigned supreme, cooking my flesh from within; Selenosis flooding my bloodstream kept my jaw working, grinding my teeth together and chewing the inside of my cheek like gristle. My pupils were black dots in the coal-dark of my gaze.

Any reasonable Turnskin would have been laying low, down for the count…maybe curled up in the closet under a pile of clothes heavy with their own scent for comfort. I should have let the metavolis in my ensorcelled meat scab shut my throat from within, but I couldn’t stop moving. Couldn’t rest.

I had to pace, had to get the fuck out of this apartment, otherwise I’d rip my heart open again, burst into Frenzy and rampage through the Red Light District – blasting Vera’s name in arterial spray across neon-lit glass. 

Nothing’s ever fuckin’ easy is it.

I won’t deny it. The better part of me, the part that wasn’t entirely monstrous, it wanted to entwine myself with her. It was the part that wanted to feel her hold me close, demanding every inch of my strength; I wanted to claim her, to mark her as mine the way Mateo had…panting in my arms, groaning my name with carnal adoration.

Then again…I thirsted for retribution. The lust and admiration, they twisted into a triple helix with a need for vengeance. 

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate her. Quite the opposite, I didn’t begrudge her…I’d practically invited her aggression. Might as well have bow-wrapped the large-caliber round she’d put through me.

This was about cred.

Understand this: cred isn’t just a flex for Accursed Beings. It’s real, literal power. A glittering Tithe Altar? Having your Hunts whispered by Prey with fear and awe? The Curse hears you, it imbues you with Force. By that logic’s flipside, a broken rep dulls your claws, makes your Imprecations fizzle like wet gunpowder.

Worse yet, Galen and I were bound by mutual strength - the intertwined crowns that were our calling card were again, quite literal. My glory was his; the fear he provoked made me all the deadlier. Fucking up like this, it dragged him down.

Galen was more than just my best friend, he was my brother-in-arms; the covenant we’d forged beneath blood-blackened-banners was thicker than the water of any womb. Where Vera devastated my flesh, she’d also shot-up Galen’s street cred.

That was my failure though, I didn’t blame her. That, in a way, made it all the harder; if I could hate her, if I could hunger for recompense out of spite, I could spill her into the Red Rock River.

But I didn’t hate her, not even slightly.

Even burning up from within I didn’t want to turn my teeth to her throat…I wanted to make her love me, because then it’d be safe for me to love her back.

Pretty fucked, huh?

Still. I couldn’t let her think I was weak. I couldn’t let Galen think I was unreliable, or let Celais see the mess I’d made. If she saw me, enervated by my Enkindled heart, I was afraid she’d cast me aside.

Replace me.

I needed to Hunt. I needed to dig my talons into the Jungle, to rip a monstrous skull from the concrete foliage to mount on the Altar – I needed to feast on writhing, Curse-soaked guts. The eldritch might that emanated from the demon-moon above was a feedback loop that empowered me for cleaving to my nature, not hiding from it.

The problem: we didn’t have a chymist, not yet. Alkhestry might have provided a quick way out of my sorry state, but neither of us had picked it up. The Hunt was my only option.

Galen was outside, probably pouting over the situation I’d put us in or finding a near-suicide mission to guilttrip me into…nobody here to keep me chained to the radiator like a sick dog. 

I pressed a thick wad of cotton gauze against the pit in my neck, slapped it in place with medical tape. Didn’t stop it from throbbing in time with my pulse. Threw on a jacket of black leather with steel-studded lapels and shoulders. It was overkill in the oppressive Ashland humidity, but I was shivering like a junkie in detox. 

I sprayed Galen’s Axe all over my body, enough to hide the reek of blood, weakness, shame …nipped his skinning knife too, slid it carefully in my belt. Out the door, descending into the Point’s ozone-stinking night-streets, making my way to the center of the island.

Penn’s Point wasn’t the Riviera with its glitter-glam. No high-class hookers eyeing Johns through pink cocktails. It was a place of shitty dives and strip joints with guttering lightbulbs. Everyone knew the gentlemen’s clubs and bars moonlighted as brothels; a quick blowjob behind a dumpster, a sweaty fuck after a strip tease.

Where there the money flowed, the sex followed, and where there was illicit sex?

You’d find Hissers stalking.

Fucking Werecats…Hissers, makes sense right? Piss-yellow eyes, piss-poor etiquette…cruel like hyenas. They were dangerous enough to rank just below Werewolves, arrogant enough to think they were royalty until leashed. Every Hisser slain or Enthralled made the world a better place.

Just ask Tanner. A good guy, absolutely undeserving of what they’d done to him. He’d never walk through this life the same again.

Even the shit Vera had pulled with Randy paled in comparison; yeah she’d beat him down, dislocated his shoulder, yeah Randy would need some help with the trauma (I’d throw him some extra cash to pay for therapy if he ever trusted me again).

A Hisser would have done so much worse, like Vlad-fuckin’-Tepes levels of cruelty. I’d seen what those things did to people. Men castrated and hung from light poles like screaming decorations…mothers bawling themselves blind over the half-gnawed remains of their children, shit there was one time with a baby…

Fuck, man.

Wasn’t like I was Hunting to save the Mortals.

That shit though?

It had no place in the Jungle, no place even in this unjust world.

One reality stutter later and I was stalking like a jaguar, shoulders braced in anticipation for the crimson blitz of violence. Made me think of the fangs gracing Vera’s jaw, flashing white in the dingy light (so fucking sexy / so fucking disrespectful). Another Turnskin would have recognized the threat bleeding through every step, even with the near-perfect disguise afforded by this Human form.

The rain came down like bullets; each drop might have left a welt against my skin if not for my leather. Great camouflage; even with the stink of wounded wolf I was just another ghost in the night. Hissers, Skitterlings, Nachten – only way they’d notice if they got within biting distance. Too late for ‘em by then.

Corothers Way slashed across the Point like a knife mark, narrow stretch of road branching off the big thoroughfares like Baxter and Colombia. Funneled you straight into the booze-and-cum reeking heart of the Point.

It glistened like the head of a canker.

Purple-piped signage imitated the Riviera as best as it could – only made the browns and grays seem dirtier. One of those signs buzzed its name in curlicue print: 𝒴𝒶𝓋𝑜𝓃𝓃𝒶'𝓈 – never been. Strip clubs were bottom-shelf, even for someone like me. Even out here though, I could smell it, the unmistakable musk-reek of Hissers. 

Smelled like hate-sex and open sores.

Yavonna’s interior felt its decor was pulled from a thrift shop on the outskirts of Hell’s Second Circle. Girls threw away their dignity into the firepit of their clients’ lust, using the ashes to pay rent and soothe addictions. The rancid concrete floor crackled stickily with each step, while chrome-framed sports car photos recalled simpler times without the pain of self-awareness. They were interspersed with vintage porn, some of which was illustrated in that swoop-sleaze style Galen called ‘Boomer Hentai’. 

My tongue tracked along the dry roof of my mouth. The Curse jangled in my skull like a dinner bell.

So…who would I feast on tonight?

Was it the pale girl with cornflower hair on stage, someone’s daughter twisted around a pole like an unstrung marionette? Green thong, dead eyes, greenbacks drifting near her feet.

What about the bartender? We locked eyes, he and I; nothing. Out of place with his pinstripe vest, gold nose-ring chained to his earring…but otherwise disinterested. If he was Prey, he was clearly bored with it.

Ah. Then I saw her.

Skin dark as teak. A snow white bikini top, a shimmering skirt so short it didn’t even count. The way she walked, that predator’s gait…fuck, it made my mouth water. She watched the John she followed into the back with Hate in her slitted eyes – not the shale-gray resentment hookers had for their clients. Something far purer, driving her forward like the Hunt drove me.

That one.

Waiting was a bitch. Worst part of the Hunt. You’d think a guy with appetites like mine could be entertained in this debauched pit – not so easy. The Hunt predated deviance and was heavy with the weight of urgency. Sat down close enough to keep at the edge of the Prey’s scent, far enough to spook the humans. 

They were edgy under the presence-weight of two Turnskins, even if they didn’t know it. The Curse was corrosive, a malevolent entropy. It made their bones ring, something in the lizard brain that reminded them of the misfortune we brought, but over millennia it’d atrophied.

I pretended to sip at a beer. The struggle to force down water was bad enough, carbonated pilsner would be Hell. My turned in on itself, wrung with hunger – I ignored it as best as I could.

I could have grabbed any of these Humans – man or woman, stockbroker or street sweeper. Didn’t matter, when their eyes reflected in mine I’d have ‘em hooked by the soul, and I’d just drag them outside where I could feel their pulse break against my teeth.

Chomp. Rip. Spray.

We’d tasted that forbidden ambrosia before, Galen and I – twice. I wasn’t desperate now that I’d stoop again to man-eating, not when the Prey was within a fang’s breadth. 

The lights skelter-blinked above, purple and black strobing over sweaty flesh . A new girl took the stage, her face a mask of cracked self-respect as she curled around the pole.

Ten minutes. That’s how long I waited, according to a clock on the wall shaped like a pair of tits.

The John came stumbling out, broke-gaited and limping. Shirt half-tucked, doughy skin blotchy with fear. I smelled blood and trauma on him, jaws trembling in fear.

She was standing in the mouth of the hallway, like a knife hammered out of shadows and sex. A bead of cum trickled down the corner of her mouth – her tongue caught it like whipped cream. Satisfied with whatever cruelty she’d inflicted on him.

I knew then: her skull would shine white and proud on my Tithe Altar, and her heart’s blood would gush sweetly between my fangs.

______________________________________________________________

The garden of my woes overflowed with problems, spilling forth unattended into the orderly, if barren estate of my life. 

Lasciviously pink purslane danced in bands across the courtyard of my mind, as Tessa waltzed gracefully through my thoughts…I could practically taste her, right on the tip of my tongue.

A black bramble of fear spiderwebbed outward from mildew-ringed puddles of rainwater…my stalker’s blank visage stared up at me from the puddle…not a reflection, but somehow omnipresent in the water.

A tangled, dead oak tree that had once flowered proudly among the pillars of my identity mouldered and turned stony. Once colorful Khamdoan prayer flags were stamped with black bile that read ‘POSITION TERMINATED’.

As if those three blights weren’t bad enough, there loomed a fourth complexity in my life I’d yet to solve, one quite different from the other three. It was the Bascom Ridge Suspension Bridge problem; a conundrum that should not have kept me up as it did but it was just in the way; there was a poetic relevance to it.

Let me explain.

Professor Paz had randomly assigned a group project to the entire Control Systems class, and I ended up with Bohen Sautner and Milly Long; the former was singularly focused on his future career with the NBA (yeah good luck pal) and, due to his position on the college’s lucrative basketball team, he was generally allowed to coast by. Milly Long did her part of the project with a certain lackluster haste, so while it was done, I’d probably have to make sure it wasn’t garbage.

For my own part, I had to design a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller; in common English, that’s a control device that responds to external change. In the case of the bridge, that means gusts of wind and the kinds of waves that we see in Dade County…Or that made traversing the different Abbacies perilous in Khamrungsa. 

Didn’t take a genius to see how that would have been useful for me.

There was always the temptation to give in to despair, cut my losses, drop out and go work in carpentry…but how soulless that felt. That in turn makes me feel entitled; if I hadn’t gotten lucky and had Rachel to help me get here, my choices would be scarce. 

My best friend Aryn, for instance, wasn’t so lucky; she was playing it safe with loans to go to the tech college and become a phlebotomist, just so she could have some income in this price gouge-singularity of a town.

Speaking of, my phone made a quiet blip as she pinged me; I was thankful for a distraction from Kp over Ki.

<blockquote> `Aryn: bruv are you still in the library designing a video game controller`</blockquote>

As was usually the case she found my plight amusing; she’d heard me whining about it, interspersed with my own equivocations concerning Tessa…should I make a move? Should I wait for her to make a move? Would she even make a move? ‘Why oh why did her pantherine form dance across the backs of my eyes as if seared there by a darkening flame?’ I would ask Aryn, prompting her to gag.

<blockquote>`Ascher: yes I am, it doesn’t have nearly enough buttons. whut do you want`

`Aryn: some of that kosher bussy, boi 🍆💍 ur gunna be ma strawberry 🍓`

`Ascher: 😐`

</blockquote>

Christ. I didn’t even know that word existed until she exposed me to it with her…eccentric taste in comics and pornography. I didn’t even know how she got a hold of that stuff, the university system was strict about checking our online activities.

I knew what she was bothering me for, of course…the four of us - me, Aryn, Karl and Vicky - had a YouTube channel with a few thousand subscribers, hardcore fans of our ‘ghost hunting’ show. I caught it all on camera when we went into abandoned factories, moldering houses and sealed-off university wings to catch paranormal activity. 

Some of it was even real.

<blockquote>`Ascher: bro i can’t come i know you’re going to ask me`

`Aryn: ascher can you not be a little bitch? We suck at this when you don’t come, karl’s pantaloons are still brown cuz of possum-poltergeist`

`Ascher: 👻🐭 is this just part of an elaborate plot to get me in your bed to lay some cable? All you gotta do is ask boo 👄`

`Aryn: 🤮 why did i ever show you that episode, now you’re laying cable everywhere man; in bed, in your car. dude come on it’s our season finale, we’ll stay up late and wait for your slowness`</blockquote>

It was a kind offer, but I intended to be here until midnight at least. I glanced at the corner of my laptop’s monitor…already half past 9. I had a long way to go and found myself chained to the seemingly impossible conundrum of the derivative term in my equation…again, in layman’s terms, I have to build a mechanism that moves the suspension cables of a bridge to compensate for the environment so it doesn’t collapse. 

The derivative was the part that predicts what will happen in the future, so the cables don’t overcompensate and snap like dental floss.

I was always a mediocre hand at math, and dealing with the added distortion of choppy wind, waves and simulated traffic gurgling over my bridge was making my life difficult. Differential calculus in particular was not my strong suit, even if Linear Algebra was. 

All of it was abstract as a color’s flavor.

I really didn’t want to disappoint them but I had to wonder…was this me being ‘incredibly weak’, or just caring about my friends’ safety and happiness?

<blockquote>`Ascher: if i finish by midnight ill tell you but don’t go without me, you’ll get possessed and it will get weird.`

`Aryn: what if the ghost is a hot chick? if you come back to my place it’ll be like you’re with two chicks at once, or if the ghost is a hot dude it’ll be awesome for me having two dudes inside me 🥵🌶️`</blockquote>

Ah. That was one of the reasons she wanted me to come out tonight. 

The exact texture of my friendship with Aryn was a complex tapestry that went back to when we were five years old in the same shitty foster care hovel. She and I have been through a lot together; I actually lost my v-card to her (she lost hers to that douchebag Kyle Burgmann with the Lamborghini) and…we definitely mess around when neither of us is seeing anyone. I’d recently broken up with Nieve Chen (a curious ache that lingered in spite of its bitter ending) and Aryn and I had already dallied a few times.

Sometimes I wondered why I didn’t just date her, and remembered it’d be…weird. 

Weirder than fucking her. I could use the relief and closeness, though.

<blockquote>`Ascher: if im done at midnight ill come with you guys and if im not i can still come over tonight and relieve you of your tension`

`Aryn: mmmm good 👅 I could use a nice deep massage, you get places most folks can’t`</blockquote>

Flattery always worked, frankly…I could already feel a stirring in my loins as I pictured joining Aryn in her bed, her dark thighs smooth and mostly exposed in the shorts she slept in. She had a voracious appetite to match mine; there was that at least. 

Still…she wasn’t the object of my desires. That person, in fact, was sitting three tables down, diligently working on her own project.

My thoughts drifted from Aryn like a flock of birds abandoning an electric pole, drawn toward the dawn…laying eyes upon her felt like the sun cresting over the stormy horizon of my heart. How could I describe someone like Tessa? Everytime I tried it felt inadequate. 

She’d strung little wildflowers on green tendrils amidst her horns; it made her appear as if drawn from a Bouguereau painting. The delicate lines of her face were relaxed, wearing a cupid’s bow smile as she bobbed her head to whatever was playing in her earbuds.

Tessa had been catching me staring more often, and when I felt the whiskey-warmth of her gaze track toward me I looked away lamely, pretending I was glancing at my phone…and when I dared sneak a peek back I made contact with her eyes. 

My breath caught, lips parting like I already had some excuse lined up.

She was wearing a lacy, low-cut black tank top that proudly displayed the ripe fullness of her bosom; I could see the impression of her nipple rings pressing against the fabric, infinitely tempting. A little necklace of pink and blue blossoms dangled around her shoulders, golden pinpricks of light rising from gently waving stamens. To my complete surprise Tessa smiled warmly at me, and - 

- in my mind I was suddenly transported to a tan prominence of rock overlooking an unknown sea The Gulf of Antalya. Her curled dark tresses whipped against my face as we stared into each other’s eyes. The heat was oppressive but dry, and her Aegean-tan skin was sheened with only a light gleam of perspiration. “Nothing in all Seleukeia, in Thrakesia or Dyrrachion can match your radiance,” I tell her -

…that didn’t feel like my usual imaginative meanderings. What was that…?

While I was staring blankly at my computer screen, I heard the rhythmic thnk-thnk-thnk-thnk of Tessa’s hooves, and when I looked up she was sashaying away toward the back of the library. A shimmery, almost weightless skirt of silver drifted around her toned legs; her shins sported short brown fur and ended in cloven hooves. 

She looked once more at me over her shoulder, as if to check that I was still staring. 

Which I was.

I thought about Doctor al-Rashi’s advice, to ‘seize the bull by the horns’ which had an uncomfortably suggestive air. Still…the underlying meaning was significant. 

That impulse you get when you’re about to do something really risky and crazy snuck up on me, you know? That sort of free-wind spirit that has your eyes blown wide open while you’re doing something insane like, jumping off a roof into a pool, or starting a fight you can’t win, or chasing a girl who was WAY out of your league.

I got up and followed her.

There was something about the chase - no, not the chase, the totally-not-creepy approach - that already felt romantic. She wandered back toward the reference stacks, where the shadows drew long and illumination bloomed from dim 1980s desk lamps. I felt like I was following her through a place that was at once an enchanted forest, but also the school library.

I meant it quite literally.

Vines and ivy twisted among the bookshelves, disappearing up into the ceiling, curled around glowing blue stones. I saw bizarre, long-limbed figures crawling amidst them, little dibbuks or something with oversized noses and pointed ears on unknowable missions. 

A…troll? Was it a troll? Something big and brutal-jawed with beady black eyes and sloped shoulders leans forward to pick through painting catalogues, mumbling unintelligibly to the crow-feathered girl scanning a QR code.

I ignored them, following the gentle percussion of Tessa’s shod hooves around another stack. I reached one of those towering walls of tomes the library curates but few people seem to stumble across. Their age could be measured in triple digits, and a slender iron ladder on wheels was required to reach up to the higher levels…how was that not a bold-faced defiance of OSHA?

Lanterns hung from the ceiling, limning her in pale light as she stood on one of those ladders a few meters above me. 

I was engrossed by the sight of her, and I will not pretend like I’m a man of decency…I dared an errant peek under her skirt and felt my breath hitch at the sight of that bright purple thong gracing her hips; I could see the swell of her sex pressed against the fabric, the shape of bulbous labia beneath. 

Quickly shifting my attention from between her thighs to something less obviously perverse, I cleared my throat to get her attention.

Grab the bull by the horns.

She favored me a glance downward.

“Hey Tessa. Hope I’m not…catching you at a bad time?” I hazarded; god that sounded lame.

To my surprise she smiled again and the sun blazed triumphant in my chest. “Hi Ascher, not at all, I was just…oh it doesn’t matter. Let me come down to you.” My eyes followed the side-to-side sway of her hips as she climbed down, of her callipygian perfection…god that ass. 

Once she’d come down to my league level, she seated herself on the fifth step easily, crossing her legs and leaning backward. “What’s on your mind, hm?”

That Hellenic accent of hers; a lilting roll of her ‘r’s, a rhythm foreign on this side of the pond…it did things to me, just as much as the valley of her cleavage.

“I’m actually having a pretty tough time with Paz’s assignment,” I chuckled self-consciously…wracking my mind for the right words. “You know, the bridge thing.” 

The bridge thing, Ascher. Nice.

“Yes, I know, the ‘bridge thing’.” Her eyes gleamed golden-orange as her smile widened, stifling a little giggle like she found my outward stupidity endearing. “What’s getting you down?” Tessa’s fingers danced along the silver chain hanging around her neck, a nail tracing lightly over the shape of her collarbone.

I wondered what it would feel like against my lips.

“I got stuck with making the PID controller - ”

“ - ah, so they dumped the hard part on you, Ascher - ”

“ - precisely, and honestly I just can’t get it right. I’m using the formula Paz gave us but it just doesn’t work. Every time I run the sim, the bridge starts oscillating and wobbles like a…I dunno, like a seizing horse. It overcompensates and goes down in the mud. Paz never taught us how to deal with the derivative.”

The last part was an excuse to try and banish my growing sense of dumbness, the feeling that I was just shaming myself in front of the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen over some throwaway differential calc that anyone could do -

“That’s the hardest part,” she pointed out.

Oh.

“...it’s like trying to use math to predict the future based on a panic attack. Everything just starts spiraling, it all gets jammed together and I can’t make sense of it,” I continued, handing her my cellphone - I’d taken a photo of my simulation. Everything she did was graceful, even the way her fingers closed one by one around my Samsung reminded me of a blooming rose viewed in reverse.

“Giving me your phone so freely…wonder if there are some naughty pictures on here,” she mused. Normally this sort of thing wouldn’t phase me but she had my cheeks brighter than a raspberry, and I knew she could see it.

“None that you’ll find.” I tried to sound real cool, and it must have worked; Tessa pushed a string of wildflowers back into her dark hair and pursed her lips with a little ‘ooo’. She handed my Samsung back and pushed off where she was seated, her smiling face inches from mine.

Butterflies and moths fluttered rampant in my belly; she hooked a finger in my belt loop - a shockingly erotic motion that made me bite the inside of my cheek - and tugged me after her. “Come on Ascher. I’m gonna show you why I’m a better teacher than Paz.”

“That’s not hard,” I quipped, drawn along like a moon in her orbit.

I wasn’t oblivious; it was clear as the light from one of those blue rocks that she was flirting with me…but didn’t she flirt with everyone? Had to remind myself that I saw her go home with Liam on Saturday, caught her making out with Jun on Sunday, and last night she and Tara were dancing up on each other at Crucible. 

For her, flirtation was as natural as a sparrow’s flight, her lingua franca; it shouldn’t have felt special because it wasn’t, but it did…like when a celebrity took notice of one of her fans for the first time.

Tessa touched everyone like that (so I presumed) - fingers dancing over chests, her laughter tickling their lips - but the way she did it with me made my heart pound. It made me feel special even though I knew I wasn’t, and I found it as tantalizing as it was humiliating.

“Sooo. We breaking into Paz’s classroom, hacking his computer and making off with an answer key?” I fell in at her side as we left the library; my fingers sought something to grab onto, unsure of what to do with themselves. They wanted to crawl around her waist and pull her closer…they wanted to brush through her hair…they wanted to brush along her jawline, her breath against my lips.

I shoved my hand in my pocket.

“No, silly. That’s cheating…think of this as foreplay.” I almost bit the tip of my tongue off. Foreplay. How does she get this comfortable this fast?

Her hands were clasped behind her back as she strode at my side…ever accompanied by the quiet ‘clp-clop-clp-clop’ of her hooves. “Besides we’re going to Grafton Hall, I wanna show you something cool that gets my point across, yes?” Grafton was only a couple buildings down. The sun had already started its descent Californi-way, so our path was lit by black-hooded street lamps. A spider the size of a squirrel skittered out from under one, watching us peevishly; a tiny green tie hung around its…well, its neck-equivalent. “[Stay away from my lamp!]” it groused. 

I noticed Tessa glance its way dismissively.

I couldn’t find words at that moment, just because of that subtle motion…I’d seen the uh, the creatures interact with each other, like the fox with the blue dresser. I’d never witnessed a person even respond to the things I saw all around me, constantly. 

What did it mean? Was I just hallucinating? Certainly wouldn’t be the first time I’d made a bigger deal over something trifling…

“Ascher?” she asked after a bit - oh god I’d just been staring off, walking silently at her side.

“I was just thinking, our passcards don’t get us into Grafton after 5pm.” Phew, quick recovery.

“Mmm, but I TA with Hunjadi, so I got…” She held up an empty hand, closed her fingers, and opened them again. A little brass key gleamed in her palm.

“This. Just in case she’s too lazy to close up after dinner.”

Impressive sleight-of-hand…I’d seen a lot wilder shit in my time, but this floored me. Probably just the giggle-hots on my part.

“How’d you do that? Where were you hiding it?” I had to ask.

She stopped at the ugly, rusty side door leading into the brick fortress that was Grafton Hall, her expression serious as stone. “I was hiding it in my ass.” She stared me down, unsmiling for a second before bursting out into laughter at her own joke.

What an incredible dichotomy of a woman.

Like a figure from a Gentileschi painting, given elegant life, all soft golds and bronzes…then she cracked an ass-joke (no pun intended). Her laugh was a swaying song that reminded me of a wandering river; raw yet gentle, wild but dignified. 

The two of us stood there, laughing like idiots - that kind where you’re bent forward, tears threatening at the corners of our eyes. Wasn’t even a joke, just…a wildcard moment from Tessa.

I’d never expected anything like that from her, and it only made me fall deeper into her golden spiral.

Then I remembered: I wasn’t hers. She had many lovers to choose from, certainly higher caliber than me. That was what made me cling to the side of the gyre, kept me from drowning.

Even so, my imagination awakened uninvited, and painted a picture where I tugged the door shut behind with a squeaky-clang; in the dark I’d press her against a wall and hear her gasping smile; our lips would meet, fierce and hungry, my hand would slide up her bare thigh to take her hip and press my arousal between her legs -

- the door made a k-thunk as I pulled it shut behind me, leaning my back against it and watching her clop ahead of me…watched her ass sway with each step, which wasn’t helping me control an unwelcome erection. My hands were firmly shoved in my pockets, holding it down against my thigh and trying to look chill as I followed her.

Grafton’s first floor had the characteristic 1970s ugliness of a proper university. The linoleum floor’s color reminded me of gruel mixed with caulk, and glass panels on the walls displayed student projects. 

A pair of gnome-like creatures whose red flesh reminded me of lacquer were maneuvering a gurney through the hallway; a humanoid shape underneath a black tarp twitched, an arm falling to hang off the side of the gurney. Looked like it was made of porcelain; it waved at me as I went by.

We stopped at a door that looked like every other one, and when she cracked the lock we walked into a high-ceilinged room filled with machines I vaguely recognized. The reek of soldering flux hung cloying herein and a trio of big lathes squatted against the wall. Each one cost…well, probably as much as I was paying for my (now questionable) degree. 

Lightbulbs set in grated hangings cast dim illumination from on high, buzzing like insects on a summer night.

“Ever been in here?” she asked playfully, leaning against a bench with a five-axis vice connected to a power supply. Her fingers danced across it affectionately, like a favored musical instrument.

“Not before you invited me in, I don’t think welding is a consideration for my major.” I couldn’t help but pick up a rubber mallet, turning it in my hand idly…just so they could have something to do besides resisting reaching out to touch her.

“You should come hang out sometime Ascher.” Tessa reached out and curled her fingers around the mallet, gently dragging her nails over my knuckles. “Seriously, we do more than just fuck around with blowtorches.” For me that moment was electrical; I wanted so badly to believe that she was showing interest in me but I’ve seen those eyes before, and they weren’t just for me.

I was nothing special to her.

I think she saw the sadness in my smile. I’m pretty shit at hiding my emotions, and there arose this questioning look in her eyes. She was going to ask me what the matter was, I could tell. 

Master of evasion that I was, I turned my attention to the vice. “What’s this thing do?” I let her take the role of teacher again, slid it over her pretty, bared shoulders like a cardigan.

She was too smart to just be distracted, but she let me play my game and wore the professor’s role gracefully. “It’s a vibration testing vice…it’s more or less the real world version of the PIC sim. Look…” there was something so surreal about watching a satyr work a vice like this - you only ever saw paintings of them cavorting, drinking, chasing nymphs. 

Here was one, hallucinated into existence before me, selecting two bars of mild steel that she clamped in.

“This one here on the left,” she began, tightening that section of the vice and adding some bolt-clamps, “is rigidly clenched.” Tessa pulled her lips back with a little smirk. “It’s never good if it’s too tight, is it.” She winked, swinging the mallet in her fingers to the beat of my throbbing heart. “This one’s got some give to it, now…”

She reached out, her fingers on my arm. “Go and ahead, ooo…wow, you work out, don’t you…” Tessa’s attention seemed fully on my bicep, testing it with her strong fingers. 

At the risk of sounding like an addle-brained jock, yes I went to the gym rather obsessively; I’d had this silly vision in my head of arriving in Khamdo in peak condition. Now I just went to focus on something besides the gulf of my future. 

Her attention made me want to giggle stupidly, but I restrained that impulse and grinned stupidly instead. She returned it, like the sun sparkling on a lake, her eyes almost glowing that amber light…and I foolishly wondered if that was for me alone.

“Hit them with the mallet,” she finally suggested, dragging her nails down amidst the crags and lines of definition in my arm before letting go. 

I carefully tapped the steel bar bolted into the machine; it rang sweetly.

“See how it sings? Pleasant, beautiful even, yes? That’s how it tricks you…now.” She gestured at the other bar, almost giddy. That one I struck, and it gave a dull -clank-. “This one tells the unappealing truth, you’ll see.”

Tessa bent forward to plug the vice into the wall-outlet; I couldn’t help myself, staring at the backs of her thighs, disappearing under that shimmery silver dress…the shape of her comely ass was a fixture against my vision - I was literally unable to pull my eyes from it - and she slowly straightened. All the muscles in her back, her legs, they moved under her skin, the flowers strung through her horns glinting like stars in the low-lit chamber.

“Just watch…it won’t take long.” She slid a finger along a black knob, turning it to the right so that the machine vibrated violently. The two metal rods became a blur. 

For a bit we just watched; I sat on a three-leg stool, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees. I was intensely aware of her presence at my side, radiating warmth and an unseen light that eroded my better judgment like a puddle draining into cracked earth.

I wanted to press her against the table behind me and kiss her with chaotic passion, lips crashing against each other without order.

I wanted to push her to sit in one of the stools, slide her skirt up, pull down her panties, and show her what I can do with my tongue.

I wanted to tell her that I’ve been into her from the very first time I saw her, that I loved her horns, her glowing eyes, her hooves. I’d never told one of them - you know, the…Otherfolk, I guess - that I could see the horns, or the fire, or the tree-trunk arms.

I didn’t do any of those things because I had propriety, and of course an unhealthy fear of rejection. 

“So. Who’re those girls I see you with all the time?” Tessa asked casually, never taking her eyes from the noisy vice.

The question caught me off guard; anytime she showed any interest in me did, I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it. “Aryn? Or Vicky?” Those were the first two that came to mind; I didn’t really talk to or see Neave Chen anymore…a sore spot in my heart I steadfastly ignored

“Porque no los dos?” she quipped, turning to gently brush some dust off my shoulder, fingers lingering for a moment, thumbing ash gently from my chin…the gesture was so casual, like something Aryn would do yet utterly unlike her straightforward tomboy-energy.

“Oh they’re just buddies, Aryn has been my friend since we were little and Vicky lived in the room above me Freshman year, so we kinda cliqued up I guess. Get drunk together enough times and it’s kinda inevitable.” No need to tell her I was probably going to end up in Aryn’s bed tonight.

“Mmm. So. You’re single?”

I was. At least, that’s how Aryn and I saw it, our bedroom antics aside.

It would have been easy to just say ‘yep!’ but me being me, I had to stop and overthink it…I knew I was staring at the vice, probably looked like I was ignoring her or hadn’t caught the question like a dolt.

Was she just curious for curiosity’s sake?

Was she interested in making me part of her little man-harem?

Or…against all odds…was she actually interested in me? This stunning, otherworldly woman of my (clearly disturbed) dreams asking me something so…casual. 

I opened my mouth to answer -

-SNAP!-

I felt it like a thunderclap through my shoes.

I watched as the metal bar she’d bolted down tightly broken down the middle, while its partner kept on trembling. “See Ascher…” Tessa unplugged the vice, presenting the broken steel. “Rigidity and too much control, you’ll see how the steel snaps…but this one didn’t, did it.” She laid the solid ingot in my right hand, as if to assure me it was real.

I thought about it for a bit, relating it back to my simulation. It made me think of the bridge, of its struts and supports bolted tightly down, shearing in the wind just the broken steel bar.

All those little disturbances and oscillations, it felt like herding cats; eventually one would get free, then all the others would make their escape and the whole structure fell apart. “So…I think what you’re saying is by trying to control all the variables, I’m overcompensating.”

“You’re overcompensating.” I was suddenly quite aware of her entering my space again, and my eyes met hers - a mistake, as the power of speech seemed to leave me. Her fingers found the hem of my T-shirt, tugging downward on it lightly. “You’re being too careful.” She was close enough that I could feel her breath against my chin.

Seize the bull by the horns.

I watched her eyes flutter just a little as I drew close; I couldn’t hear anything but her breathing, the scrape of her flats against the concrete. Her lips barely brushed mine and just like that a hundred million flowers bloomed in my heart.

Lightning raced from the tip of my tongue down through my chest, striking my loins.

Desire and wanton need clawed at me as my palm found the smooth, tan skin of her waist.

My thoughts became a jumble of simplistic impulse, of wordless erotic imagery. Unadulterated, simple joy.

Ferals used to control Penn's Point y'know...pft there's that pigeon-stare of disbelief. Yes you dumb pups, used to be Abathor and his slimy brood'd step from the edge of their turf in those swamps outside of West Dalton. They'd swim like sharks along a current of their making, crawl onto the shore, terrorize whoever their big daddy monster told 'em to...that's one reason the Point changed hands so many times – just a natural magnet for war I guess. Heh...give you three guesses what Vera was bringin' to the Point that night...

Doomed to be a killer

Since I came out the nutsac

I'm in a murderous mindstate

With a heart full of terror

I see the devil in the mirror

BUCK BUCK, Lights out...

I bobbed my head for a bit to Ice Cube barking rage into my ear. Dipped my finger in the jar of war paint.

Had to lean pretty close to the mirror to get the white jagged lines just right around my lips...never was much one for makeup, ‘cept maybe some eyeliner, bit of red on my lips when they weren’t hot with blood. Tonight though...ivory jaguar fangs, stylized but simple along my jaws.

That shit spoke to me, ¿entiendes? Jaguar Knights were long dead, their heads stuck on pikes by Cortés five centuries ago, but war…hell, long as there were Mortals, there’d be war. Used to be, the Knights, they dragged doomed fools off the battlefield, got their hearts ripped out to keep the sun rising day by day.

That big cat still crept through conflict like a symbol; even a stupid fuckin' gringo like Yusuf Mizrah could understand what it meant when I came at him wearing fangs. I'd leave 'im alive...probably...but I wasn't rolling up on Penn’s Point to take prisoners tonight.

‘Cause your body is exposed to the midnight mist,

All you weak motherfuckers give my ring a kiss.

A black stripe under each eye. Hair tied back undera blood red bandana. I held up Big Ben – a burnished blue S&W Model 25. Loaded with fat .45 ACPs. I flicked the cylinder, gave him a spin...I loved that sound, a rapid click-clack that sang different when loaded up with six man-stoppers. If I had anything to say about it - and I had everything to say - at least one of these would bust open Yusuf Mizrah.

Head. Guts. Maybe I’d blast his fuckin’ dick off, just to make a point. Didn't matter where, motherfucker would regrow it, but he'd get the message I shoulda given him the first time I walked up in his turf. 

Yusuf Mizrah was that pea under my pillows, fuckin’ up my good night’s sleep. Asshole thought he was special, like he could get away with shit. "Don't wanna take me seriously, pretty-boy puto? Last mistake you make." It wouldn’t be, of course, he'd live to fuck up another day unless I decided to put more than two .45s through his skull -

I can't .

...the fuck ? 

Like a voice in my head that was mine, but wasn't...like my conscience decided to choose the worst time to make her debut appearance.

Wasn't like me to hesitate before dropping bodies; nah, fuck that shit. If I needed, I'd shove the barrel right behind his teeth, kissin' up against the roof, pull the trigger and -

I can't.

"Qué chingados is that shit?!" I shouted, fangs ripping bloody from my gums. I screamed at the weak fuckin' bitch in my head who thought I was better than this. I wasn't better. There was no fuckin’ better, no worse —

This life was a zero sum game. You win, you live another day, you take home the prize.

You lose?

I slowly brought the pistol up, pressed the barrel to my temple, staring myself down in the mirror. "Buck buck. Lights out."

I was a bad fuckin' bitch with a big cat's killing grin, black ink-shadow around my eyes...looked good too. Navy blue sports bra, utilitarian and sleek, but it showed enough cleavage to keep Yusuf’s eyes wandering. Levis faded from too many trips through the laundry, they rode low and tight on my hips.

Wanted him to see who he was messin' with – take a nice long look.

Cuz real talk, I liked when he looked. More than when Mateo, Jo or Diana checked me out. Couldn’t admit it, not out loud, barely even in my brain-meat.

This bullshit contradiction rattled my skull – one minute I wanted him to smash me til I screamed, the next minute I wanted to blast him til he was dead – no doubt about it, some Enkindled curse. Got me all fucked up, hormonal catalysts weren’t doing shit. Never been in this kinda dumbass situation, my heart screaming wide-jawed for blood and my lower belly tense and coiled like a snake, calling for him.

Only violence could unravel this kind of twisted shit.

Violence solved all problems; war was good for absolutely everything.

I snapped the safety, slid Big Ben into my waistband…cold steel kept me on my toes. Civvies could gawp all scared but I didn’t give a fuck. Uncle Sam himself gave me the go-ahead, Louisiana state law said I could open-carry all I wanted. Didn't need no clerk’s permit.

You'd be hard pressed to find someone in the Riviera who wasn't strapped or rolling with someone who was. It was just that kind of town. So was Penn's Point, but Mizrah? Galen? Too arrogant. Yusuf was from tulip-blue Chicago, wasn't used to how we did things down here in the Land of Traitors.

Out the door of my mama's house – passed down to me when the liver disease took her. Wasn’t much to flex about, low-slung bungalow with a white picket fence and yard. Unlike other slobs in my neck of town who were lucky to score a family-dwelling home this deep in-town, I kept it clean. No vehicle-corpses bleeding oil on the grass. No overgrown, ratty-ass yard like a field of untrimmed pubes. Hell...I even kept up that rusty-eaten old jungle gym me and my hermanita beat to shit when we were kids.

I kept my ride at home – just a thirty minute walk through the neon-blazing streets, sidewalks thick with civvies getting lit and thieves taking their due. The Crimson glow colored my white hoody red as maraschino cherries, red as organ blood...made me think of the light in that bathroom at Temple Hall (not to mention it smelled a bit like piss out here too).

I popped a marb from a red box in my pocket, slid it between my lips...tonguing the filter slowly, rolling it between my sharp teeth and tasting the bitter war paint. My thoughts drifted back to when I first got a load of that prettyboy hijo de puta ...

Lotta Firstbloods couldn't tolerate big-ass, rowdy crowds of Mortals. Sensory overload or whatever – too much paranoia around Prey that could suddenly turn on us, wipe us all off the face of the Earth. Lucky me, us Night Howlers weren’t so easily shook.

Yeah, I loved a room full of easily spooked mortals as much as the next Turnskin, but I wasn’t chasing no 'undying glory' .

I threw down a quick but heavy imprecation – the Humans would see exactly who they expected to see – and I juked past security, Jo’s 9mm hugging my hip. I wasn’t exactly looking to start shit, cuz you didn’t bring a Glock 17 if you were serious about dropping a Therid. Bleeding Yusuf out though, that wasn’t the game plan when I followed him into that rank-as-sin bathroom.

Not gonna lie, there’s something dirty about jumping a dude while he’s taking a piss. Honest as I’m standing, I really considered it, watching him piss into that concrete ditch. Honorable, cool-headed thing to do would have been to just wait for him to finish, zip up, then have my words with him. 

Thing is, I’d heard about Yusuf Mizrah. A disciple of Celais Song wasn’t gonna look at me seriously if he didn’t know I could take him out. I’d stick his ass in checkmate first, then we could hash it out.

I whispered that same imprecation against him and his brain cloaked me against his eyes. He glanced right past me, smirking all confident even he thought he was alone. He zipped up (and yeah, I had to resist the urge to check what he was workin’ with). I slid behind him while he was washing his hands, and good on ‘im. I’d probably have just gunned him down on principle if he hadn’t.

I stabbed the barrel up against his kidney. Squeezing off a bullet there meant he'd bleed like a stuck pig, fucked for his little show…not to mention it’d hurt like a burning bitch to fix the pulped meat I’d leave him with. 

“Just take my wallet before you start to regret this," and ooo he sounded real pissy. Even all angry like that, I could feel its baritone thrum working its bullshit magic.

This wasn't the time to act like some fucking fool girl with a hard clit and a headful of jitters.

Nah like, I probably overcompensated when I snatched the back of his neck and slammed his princely face right against the bathroom countertop. Rattled his teeth, bruised his cheekbone. "Don't even think about trying shit, I'll cap you before your show. You wouldn't like that,” I warned him, a quiet threat…bit too close to a purr for my liking. I dug my fingers into a pressure point, real mean, just to remind him who was holding the cards.

Son of a bitch wasn’t fazed for shit. 

He cranked his head to look at me from where I had him bitch-bent on the sink–motherfucker was smirking. “You’re Vera Estrada, aren’t you.” 

I kept my mouth shut but the quiet was louder than any answer. 

“Heard you had some balls on you, didn't think you'd just come kicking into my turf like this,” he chuckled in this…dumb fuckin’ Yankee accent all cocksure.

Goddamn if I wasn’t flattered.

I leaned my elbows up against the Baxter Bridge railing, watching yachts churn the oily water. Their wakes smeared rougey lights across the Red Rock River...looked like a river of gore, pouring into the Gulf's hungry maw. I bet there was some hidden meaning there, but fuck if I could figure it out.

My first big mistake? Not hitting him from the get go. I’m not talking kissing his face against the countertop, I mean something real . Blowing his kidney out, for example…or at the least pistol whipping his teeth into his mouth. Wouldn’t be smiling all cute and shit then. Yeah...that's what I'd do this time when I got to him. No words, just let the pistol do the talking. 

"Can I do it?" I asked aloud, grinning at my distorted reflection like a fuckin’ lunatic...looked like some goofy bitch, neon-lit all red like I was blushing, smiling like a dumb-ass girl at one of his concerts. That's what his Enkindled bullshit did to me. 

"Kinda the first question aint' it. Just how *deep* are those little bitch-claws of his sunk?" 

My reflection mirrored my lips, like she was asking the question. 

I wracked my brain, hunting for what he did to make me hesitate...

"Can I look at you?"

It wasn’t like he came at me all hard like, 'bitch show your face if you're gonna roll up on me', or all 'look me in the eye'. His voice was soft, a bit husky like he was clowning around. Not like he had lead ready to punch through him.

“The fuck – bro.” I moved my hand up his back to grab his hair, my traitor fingers wandering over the crags of his sinews threaded on his spine. He wasn’t supposed to be acting all coy and shit. “I’m not here to play with you – ”

“Well I wanna know what you look like, and then I’ll talk."

I balked just a bit, caught like a buzzard hovering in the thermal of his voice. 

“Come on,” he purred all mischievous and unshaken, “we’re both just running through different parts of the Jungle…least you can do is look me eye-to-eye if you’re gonna roll up in my turf.” 

Damn him...even in this piss-and-shit stinkin' bathroom I could smell him, and he smelled good. Too good for his own good.

His voice wrapped around me like smoke, and I found myself wondering what the harm was…yeah, you know, I wanted him to have a look, see just who the fuck he was messing with. 

I thought he’d size me up, maybe sneer at me like a real tough guy.

Yusuf Mizrah, trouble maker, kin-killer, an annoyingly handsome threat (even if my own pack was too damn blind to see it)...

He drank me in like I was stunning. Even with the Glock staring down his belly, ready to rip holes in his guts, son of a bitch made me feel beautiful.

I hated that shit. 

I fuckin’ rejected it. 

I loved it , even as I was setting myself up for the hurt.

The male gaze wasn’t exactly what got me off. Not most of the time anyway. Jo used to tell me my eyes were a sacred darkness; Mateo loved my hair, called it a ‘black silk waterfall’ - only poetic thing he ever said. Diana was all about my tits, said they were nice and perky–but Yusuf’s eyes crawled over my everything, hooked on all my best parts.

I stuck my lower lip out like I was getting bored, hooded my gaze to kill the light in my eyes. My belly did this flutter-kick when his stare dropped to the space between my neck and hips. It made me remember the slick heat between my thighs–Mateo and I had gone at it earlier, he was still hot in me. Wasn’t something I’d normally even register.

This time I felt desired. Real sexy. I knew he could smell my packmate in me, didn’t know he’d look at me like he wanted to push Mateo’s cum deeper in…I tried not to think of his own, mingling together in me. Fucker could tell I was thinkin’ something, grinning all snide like that at me. Something about his eyes on me, got my palms all sweaty.

Yusuf was a fine bastard and he knew it. He wasn’t as big, not as thick in the chest as Mateo but those six feet still stacked like the protag of an action movie. Nice hair too. Looked like he’d gotten a fade and let it grow just enough for those black bristles curl a bit in the humidity. I remembered how it felt under my fingers, soft and sharp, springing back into place.

Had to say somethin’, elsewise I’d start gawping like a fangless groupie. "You tryin’ some Enkindled staring-contest shit to mesmerize me, bonitillo?” He didn’t answer…can’t lie, I was staring at his abs, wondering if I could find a reason to throw hands with him, find an excuse to drag my nails over them.

Then he said it: “Nah…pretty sure you already got me all spiral-eyed. Might wanna gun me down first before it gets complicated.”

It was a hokey fuckin’ line, and it made my heart's season change from slow-thawing winter to dew-slicked Spring.

Summer heat burned in my chest, putting steel in my step as I stalked across Baxter Bridge, keeping my eyes peeled for turf warnings.

Spotted one right from the get-go…motherfuckers were serious. One of the red-painted cross struts on the bridge had been tagged with a pair of interlinked blue crowns. Decent graffiti. Weren’t just a claim.

It was a challenge facing my own territory, like they were beckoning us to stroll into the Point and find out just who ran the show. If they’d had their roots dug in here the bridge would have been warded; runes filled with Accursed Blood, emitting a psychic scream only we could hear…like a dog whistle carved outta asphalt. Would made my ears bleed, and they’d come running, loaded for bear.

None of that though. The only sound was traffic and Penn’s Point crumbling before me…place was basically a shit-filled ditch compared to the Riviera. It was one of those districts you shunned unless you had business you couldn’t avoid – like Ashland’s outskirts, riddled with nothin’ but car dealerships and meth dens. Here across the bridge, it was all foundries and warehouses, stinking of soldering flux and sun-cooked tin roofs roasted the air.

Sweaty workers whose jobs hadn’t been sent off to China, Mexico or New Sarmatia took their anemic paychecks into brownstone wannabes. Their facades were coal-stained and rain-worn.

I bet ya’ll think I’m paranoid about the so-called ‘Kings of Midnight’...just two of em, nothing against an established pack of four, right?

Well those two bastards had cleaned out the bratva , those unaligned perdedores squatting at that arcade – hell I heard they killed Big Belly, giant-ass Spider-Ogre living on top of the train station.

Two guys pulled that off in three nights.

You think a force like that was gonna just stop there?

Obviously not. They were more than just a danger to our pride; the Kings of Midnight were a pair of knives pointed at our throats and hearts. I wish Mateo would pull his skull outta his ass and take ‘em seriously.

He’d been slipping, ever since he started cozying up with the Fangs. Probably had it in his hollow head that they’d protect us.

It was like he’d forgotten how we took the Riviera by our own damned selves with nobody at our backs.

The faint stink of someone smoking a clove nearby brought Yusuf’s visage flashing before my eyes - dragged my thoughts back to that bathroom…

“Look at you. El rey de su pinche cuchitril. Bet you feel real big.”

Yeah…look at that bastard grin, you know he was feeling like he was nine feet tall. “Been wondering since I crossed the bridge, started dodging trash, this got something to do with the shit you and your skinny-ass boyfriend stirred up in Baton Rouge? Draggin’ darkness to our doorstep?”

Saw how that pushed his buttons. Baton Rouge was a fuckin’ disaster. It’d never been a paradise, even if it’d flown Apex colors.

Now the Jungle there was a moon-blasted ruin, packed with moon-blasted, freakshow Wolves. Black Banner fingerprints all over, caught silver-handed.

Shoulda been humiliating for ‘em, but nothing ever dented their confidence.

Sure enough – “No, it doesn’t.” Rolled right off his back, barely seemed to care. "But you know same as I do – there ain't a lotta people who could survive something like that. So...like you said."

He posed for me, cocky as hell like he was on camera. “Here we are.”

Made me feel like a background extra, not the queen-bitch of the Riviera who’d spilled liters of blood from man and monsters claiming this place.

“For now,” I agreed, invading his space and jamming the tip of Jo’s Glock under his chin–had him looking serious for a hot second, 9mm would blow out his brainstem and even we didn’t recover easily from that. 

“But I want you to understand something, fuckin’ pendejo. If you fuck with my people, if you so much as hum your little songs up in my territory, we'll take everything you have. All of it."

“Think you can take everything I'm bringing, huh?” Fucker didn’t even blink.

Didn’t even flinch.

Sounded like he was inviting me for a roll in his sheets, and I ain’t gonna lie: it was pretty hot. Too hot.

Enough that I let him push the pistol away slow and easy, breaking down my last shield against him.

"Think you can take me?" he dared to ask.

This -fucking guy-. "Me cago en todo, cabrón…" I hissed through my teeth, like I was exhaling burning propane. “They said you were a fucking talker, didn’t know you for a playful fool.”

Then again, I was the one holding the pistol slack by my side…so you tell me:

Who was the fuckin’ fool here exactly?

At that point I'd lost. 

Tried to sound tough, like I wasn't bitin’ what he was sellin’ but he'd hooked me through the lip. I coulda salvaged it by leaving right there. Coulda saved my pride. 

But I was just a blue bottle by then, buzzin’ loud and talking trash while his poison melted me from the inside.

That night the killing blow came from three angles at once.

First – he invited me to stay and watch him and Galen and play. Simple thing, like he was needling a knifepoint between my ribs.

Second – he did this…thing. Strode past me all confident, absent fear, brushed his shoulder against mine…felt his hip pass against my own. Didn’t even look at me, casual as Saturday. I knew it was a calculated move, bastardo probably overlaid a dweomer to make sure I wouldn’t forget how it made me hot and bothered.

Third – the actual killing blow itself, it came from that stage.

God. Fucking. Damn.

I’ve been to a hundred shows - from boy bands with my sister to badasses spittin’ bars, DJs famous and obscure. I’ve ever had guys serenading me at my window, and I’m telling you nothing coulda prepped me for that.

They weren’t just kings.

They were fuckin’ Tyrants.

They roared their edicts into a mic; shredded an apocalypse from bass and guitar; that drum was a thousand grenades blowing the world to bits. 

Galen and Mizrah were the tyrants of our hearts, and nobody in that audience could resist them.

I dipped after the third song. Played like I was bored and had better shit to do, but the truth of it? If I stayed under Yusuf’s fiery stare, Galen’s razored grin, I’d be doomed. 

Worse than I was now.

“I’m ripping that little snare of yours apart with my teeth,” I growled at the river, as if Yusuf was sneering up at me from the water. "Gonna make you beg me not to kill you this time...gonna make you *cry* like a scared little bitch."

Cuz there was no way I'd want him after that. Right? 

I could do this. 

I’d break him. 

I’d free myself. 

I'd click him off like a light-switch when I pulled the trigger, and just like that I'd be back in the dark.

Alone among my pack.

Walking blind in the dark where nobody could watch me fall.

That was better.

…right?

I crossed the bridge…immediately the change hit me, like stepping off the plane in another country (I’d never actually left the States but a girl could imagine). 

The skyscrapers of the Riviera, clawing at the clouds for more , ever more, tumbled down into coal-stained brick carcasses…grungy warehouses with tin-roofs that heated up in the sun like a flat iron…

The air weighed more here.

It was thick with the final breaths of the murdered; whether they got stabbed in alleyway muggings gone wrong, or bled out slow in the jaws of industry, ghost-echoes of their death-screams polluted the smoggy air.

It didn’t fit Mizrah, didn’t fit Galen. 

They were joy-drunk intruders – laughing, rocking out on stage – in a place made for hard-nosed bastards raised on a diet of gravel and disappointment. 

That was part of why I clocked them as a threat from the get-go; they were dynamic in the bustling dust-stasis of Penn’s Point. The Red Crows? Blind. 

Too busy squabbling with each other, puttin’ on this useless show of strength.

We were wounded lions arguing over who got the prettiest spot at the watering hole – the Midnight Kings were jackals. Already circling. Waitin’ for us to fall asleep.

I shoved my hands deep in my pockets and walked to DoomKnight’s.

About thirty minutes later.

"It's nothin' personal ese...nothin' you did." I explained myself, cool as steel as I shoved him into the alleyway. 

He stumbled over his own feet, arms flailing like a baby bird tossed from its nest. Slammed hard into the pavement with a wet –smack–. Watched him with neutral disgust…weak Mortal prey. 

He didn’t deserve this.

I ripped his pink and black tie-dye shirt at the collar hauling him around, and his jeans shorts were slipping down his waist. Briefs and buttcrack for all to see. Didn’t know his name, didn’t need to.

Didn’t matter. Wasn’t like I kept a list of all the people I’d mugged, back when that was my game. Fatass rolled over on his knees. "Wait wait PLEASE! Stop, here!" he held his thin wallet out in front of himself like a shield as much as an offering. 

Under the surface, beneath the snarling beast I’d become years ago, I felt a twinge of regret. Reflexive, like reacting to a punch.

Don’t engage it. Don’t think about it.

Just do it.

I dug my fingers into his ripped collar, hauling back with a clenched fist–

–CRACK–

"NgghgHAAAAAGGGGH!”

The sound of his nose breaking was louder than it should have been. He covered his mouth as blood gushed down his chin. My middle knuckle ached as I drew back again.

Don’t think about it, Vera.

Punched him again. Right eye. Hard enough to make it swell shut, if not break his orbit.

A second punch, to the other eye, tears mixing with blood and snot. It smelled coppery and hot against the ashen air. He flailed and babbled, scrambling back and begging for mercy.

Don’t think.

He never hit me back once, never even tried. Just screamed. Bled. Sobbed. Tried to crawl away.

It's just business.

I hauled him up onto his knee, and this time he struggled; not enough to stop me wrenchin’ his arm behind his back.

I twisted, the joint popped free from socket and he made an animal sound of agony; his head shot back, hitting my sternum. Yeah it hurt, but he’d be fine, just pop it back into socket, weren’t like it was broken. I dared to look down at this man I was brutalizing.

Thinning hair yanked back in a greasy ponytail…didn’t look a day past 30. Fat and weak from a life of indolence and shitty food.

Couldn’t help but wonder who he was…who was I tormenting? Was he lonely? Did he have people depending on him? Anyone waiting at home?

*If Yusuf hadn't fucked with me, I wouldn't be making this guy pay for it.*

… Liar.

I spent a good minute boxing him on the ground, kicking him in the ribs. “Why?! What did I do?!” he begged through the tears, the blood, the mucous. I didn’t have a good answer for him, so I just kept swinging.

Didn’t pop no organs. Didn’t crack no bones – pretty sure I bruised his ribs though.

By the time I was finished with him, he was bent forward over himself on his knees. Holding his guts, his chest…crying like a little bitch. Normally I’d spit in disgust, watching a grown man bawl his eyes out.

Now though? I just hated myself.

Shit I mean, look at that. I was glad he couldn’t see my face when I bent down and undid my bandana, wiping the blood from his eyes. He crunched in on himself, inhaling wetly, bracing for more.

“Shh. I’m almost done, I promise man. This ain’t your fault,” I assured him. I lifted the back of his shirt, slid a sharpie from my pocket and wrote in thick, jagged letters:

MEET ME AT THE TALLEST SPOT IN YOUR TURF CABRÓN 

WEAR SOMETHING YOU DON'T MIND BLEEDING ON

Finished it up, quick and clean. Then I hauled his broken ass to the doorway of DoomKnight’s. “Brace your head…chin against your chest,” I instructed in a softer voice than anyone ever heard, and threw him down the stairs like a swollen bag of trash.

Didn’t want no broken neck. Wasn’t that kind of monster yet.

I even slid a hundy in his back pocket before I tossed him.

Later.

I was sitting on the edge of DeFleur Tower. Hardly a tower – just an ugly brick shithole that stood a bit taller than its busted-ass siblings. My elbow was propped on my knee. In my head I was flipping through how this would go down, over and over.

Would he try to fight me? Show me the muscle he’d used on the wolves who’d owned that arcade?

No way he’d ambush me. Wasn’t his self-righteous, big bullshit style.

Bet he’d try talkin’.

Bet he’d try softenin’ me up with that silver tongued bullshit.

Wasn’t gonna be like last time, no no. I was gonna lay it out for him, straight and simple, let him in on how reality worked. I’d bury it home in his body with a .45 ACP round, so deep he’d carry my words to the worms.

I slid the revolver into my palm, popped the cylinder, spun it…that ratcheting click was a promise, and its rhythm cracked through me.

Reminded me of –

– Galen hammering the drums, fast as a machine gun, strobe lights flaring like muzzle flashes; saw him staring me down in the audience, hungry like a hawk leering at a rattlesnake. I hungered back, but to be taken into the sky and torn by him.

I felt...special.

Mizrah, a boot stomping down on a skull-shaped amp, fingers dancing across strings and fretboard till his guitar was screaming like a war-goddess, howling for more…never taking his eyes off of me.

Even when he screamed into the mic and–

"Vera." His voice clove the air behind me…baritone sharp as a skinning knife.

I slid my tongue over the ivory sharpness of my fangs. Snapped the cylinder home with a –CLACK– of threat.

Here’s where we end whatever the fuck you did to me, cabrón.

"Real shit hole you got here, Mizrah. Can't say it brings me joy bein’ back." I rose slowly, iron dangling in my hand as I turned to face him. Steeling my heart against his...fucking radiance.

It was starting to rain again, made that bristle-black hair of his shine. 

He'd stopped about twenty feet away; close enough that I could get lost in the details, far enough I couldn't just claw them away. 

He had this white wife beater strainin’ against his carved chest, leather jacket hanging open against the evening warmth. Had his hands in his pockets, like he didn’t even give a fuck what I was doing. 

“Pretty sure I know what brought you here.” His smirk buried itself in his words. 

Motherfucker.

"Coulda just called. Didn't need to get medieval with Randy. Poor bastard," the music of his voice dropping into a rough growl.

"You know fuckin’ well why I did," I countered, closing the space between us. Slow, deliberate.

The Night Howler in me was thirsty for his fear, but he offered none. 

Not even a drop.

"Why?" He asked, tipping his chin upward at me, easy challenge.

Shoulda been pissed, acting like I hadn’t just kicked down his door and dragged his guy through hell. That shit shoulda been humiliating.

"Three reasons." I ticked them off with the barrel of the gun, circling him like fresh Prey. 

"First, y'all just parked your Therid asses in my backyard, didn't even invite us over for a barbeque. Poor fuckin’ form." He turned with me, never let me get at his back. Smart boy. 

"Second, you got a rep. You're Black Banner, War's the only language you assholes speak."

"Guilty on both fronts I guess,” Yusuf slid a box of cloves from his jacket, bit one between his teeth, “but you know the rules of the game, baby."

Baby. What. The. Fuck.

"Third," my voice softened against my will, betraying me, "cuz of whatever trick you pulled on me." 

I completed my circuit, popping the cylinder again - had to fight to keep my hands from going ‘round his neck, or trailing down his chest.

I watched the cherry of his clove glow like a hot pearl, reflected by his eyes. Smoke curled around him, ghostly. Watching me, glancing at the gun like it meant nothing. 

Lazy.

Cool.

Dangerous.

“Dunno what you're talking about. All I did was talk you outta making a mess of my show and got you to watch us.” Bastard winked at me. “You liked it too, don't lie." 

Winking at me now? Shit, winking at me?! Hijo de puta .

“You think this shit is just fun and games, dontchu.” I tightened my fingers around the revolver’s handle. "Just think you can kick the door down, kill whatever you want. Shred, get drunk, fuck all over the corpse."

“Not like anyone took the trouble to write down the Laws of the Hunt. Even if they were, who’d gonna be the cops? You miserable Apex fuckers?” He ashed his cigarette…wasn’t even talking harsh. No smugness, no mocking or judging me.

He pitied me. 

Stillness hung between us.

I moved first. 

Slammed my knee up into his gut, bent him double with a grunt. 

Flipped the pistol – came swinging down with the grip to dent his skull, but Mizrah shot in and slammed me against the brick roof access. 

He got his hands around my wrists, pinning them above my head against the brick. We bared our fangs, growling like beasts, ready to tear flesh.

" FUCK you," I snapped my teeth, barely missing his lips. "You think the Jungle's just some fuckin' stage for prettyboys like you and Galen play your little songs, swing your fuckin’ dicks?"

"Better Jungle than yours,” he snapped back, voice raw with anger for the first time, “you think it's a fuckin' cage . You’re like a coyote in a zoo.” 

I wanted to bite his lips off / to kiss him, so fucking badly.

My claws dug into his wrist, hooked a heel behind his; tripped him hard, cracked his skull against the roof. 

I straddled him before he could recover – the revolver’s barrel stabbed against his forehead. "It ain't about fun and games,” I spat in his face, “it's about what we gotta do!"

"And how the fuck is that workin’ out for you, huh?!" he shouted at me, pretty even when he was bleeding.

It was terrible. I was broken. Isolated.

"The Riviera is ours,” I barked back but it sounded weak. I drilled the barrel harder against his skull, like it’d give truth to my words. “Best turf in all Ashland.” 

I bent forward, sneering and scenting him. “I smell the sweat soaked into your skin...stink like you been sleeping on couches and beds that weren't yours. You playin' somebody's hoe before you got a hold of the Point, Mizrah?"

Didn’t expect to hurt him, but it did. Clear as fuckin’ day…his eye twitched. Teeth clenched, like he was battling the breaking impulse.

No.

Don't look at me like that. 

You're supposed to look pissed.

"I liked you being there." 

No. 

There it was, the fuckin' trick again – when he said that I started feeling . 

Not the usual anger, the old jealousy you can’t taste after months of eating it. Inside my chest a tightening pressure grew, and that jaguar-grimace flowed away like oil down a gutter. 

"Shut the fuck up," I tried to snarl at him, but it was fragile. Small.

"After you left in the middle of Operation Thunderfist - "

"Yusuf that’s such a stupid fuckin’ name - "

"Galen's idea, don’t tell him. Look, after you left, G didn't stop asking about you...'who was that bad hottie in the audience?' and like, 'you get her number you pig?' and I had to endure him getting up my ass about it 'til I told him who you were...gave me an even harder time after." 

Prettyboy was an actor, clearly - I refused to believe any of it. Not even when his rough voice got all quiet, made me feel warm in the night rain.

I jerked his collar, jostling him roughly. "Don't you fuck with me man," I pleaded, more than I demanded.

"You came at me from that stinking darkness,” he rasped, “like a stiletto with my name burned across the blade. You didn't cut me yet, but I'm still bleeding. Right here." He tapped at his heart twice.

Who...the fuck said shit like this? 

Was he following a script ? Was that just how musicians rolled? 

It was so...lame. Just this uncreative tripe.

It melted me like whipped cream on a summer day.

"If you're gonna do me, just do it," he dared. 

Yusuf closed his eyes and let his arms fall down to his side.

I wanted to shoot him in the head, end it here / I wanted to kiss him, tumble down the spiral.

I let go of his collar. 

My hand grew a mind of its own, traced my fingertips along the stubble of his cheek...beautiful bastard. Something forbidden.

"I oughta," I clapped low-pitch chains around my words, hauling back at the emotions threatening to carve free of my chest. 

"You've gone and ruined things for me...think I'm the one who crawled from the dark to stab you, hijo de puta . Whatever imprecation you pulled on me...you've made it so I can't think straight. Fucked up my humours." 

Dug your teeth into my heart.

" That’s what you think is going on? That your juices are outta whack?" I didn't even realize I'd pulled the gun from his forehead until he was dragging the barrel down to point at his heart...calling my bluff, damn psycho. 

Then he dropped a nuke on me.

"I've been on fire for you since you came to Temple Hall." 

Who the fuck said shit like that? What kind of kumbaya singin’, granola-munchin’ dipshit was open like that? 

I hated it / I loved it.

I couldn't even put words to what was happening to me. 

The emotional intensity was like…a twenty-car pileup behind my ribs. A solar flare arcing behind my eyes. The gush of hot blood in my mouth from a jugular bite. 

"You're a liar ." The accusation sounded more like I was begging for him to stop. Tendrils of my hair brushed his jawline. 

"You're talkin' like you've got something loving and kind in your heart, but Firstbloods ain't like that. Black Banners ain't like that, you're bringing war to my doorstep. I know you are."

"The irony is that you don't even think peace is real .” I don’t think I’d ever seen a man speak so earnest. “Every step you take, every word outta your mouth since you first saw me has been an invitation to fight. Here we are, though. You've had this gun trained on me cuz you're waiting for me to say it first." 

His fingers crawled over the back of my hand, holding the revolver.

No, no, NO .

"Vera," he began, his fire-ringed eyes so black I could drown in them. "I know you got Pack. I know Mateo is your man.” 

“But I want you."

"No," I prayed. I shook my head, like I could somehow rattle his words back out my ears like I’d never heard them.

I ignored the fact that I was straddling him against the rooftop, that I’d stopped fighting him, was leaning into him. He was winning again.

I shoulda pulled the trigger.

"I want you badly ," he repeated, a whispered promise of sin. 

And when he pressed his palm against my side, slid it up my ribs...I arced into it. The sound that escaped my throat wasn’t right - a sound of surrender as my body went slack for him. I was needy.

I was weak .

I didn't stop him, couldn't as he pushed up into a sitting position, my knees on either side of his hips.

I hated him. 

I adored him.

He made me feel good and he wasn’t supposed to. He was seeing me, fighting him and pushing back, and he only ever came back with open arms.

What did he even see past the threats, past the ugly thing of concrete and steel that these streets, that the Jungle had made me?

I knew I’d lost when hope took root in my heart.

"Damn you," I cursed him as our lips crashed together.

I broke open. 

Shattered like a discarded liquor bottle.

And all the light and rage and hate streamed out from my chest, leaving me an empty vessel to be filled with...

Joy.

Serenity.

The feeling of being wanted .

His lips were soft…they shouldn’t have been. Not on a war-hardened prince of the stage like Yusuf Mizrah. His tongue tasted like that clove I’d knocked from his mouth after I tripped him and what the holy hell –

There was a little steel stud through the tip of his tongue.

A slick, dirty thought wormed in: how that metal would feel against my breasts, between my thighs.

He wasn't supposed to make me feel this.

I felt his other hand, nails dragging down my back, finding the flare of my waist–I gyrated against him without even thinking, felt his cock hardening.

The want came like one of them Hurricanes with the lady names; its howling moan drowned out Mateo's grousing, Jo's doubt, Diana's barbs.

He wasn't supposed to drown out the sadness.

My hands weren’t mine no more; my nails snagged in the cotton of his wife beater as I gave in and traced the shape of his torso…like one of them Greek muscle breastplates. He smelled like leather, sweat, need . Too good for this world, too good for me.

My fingers were already working to undo his fly.

He wasn't supposed to make me want him like nobody before.

I broke the kiss reluctantly, breathing against his mouth, desperate. "Yusuf Mizrah..."

"Vera Estrada," he breathed back, his gaze stripped clean of cock-ass arrogance...just a beautiful phoenix of a man, burning me alive in the dark.

No.

I grabbed the gun.

Pressed it against his throat.

Pulled the trigger.

BLAM

The muzzle flash seared my vision for a moment. When it cleared…he was staring up at me–wide eyed with disbelief. 

A great gory hole smoked where his jugular was blasted open. His life was gushing out over the rooftop. Yusuf choked. 

Gasped in his own blood. 

He reached a shaking hand up to claw my eyes out ...it reached my mouth, stroked my lips feather soft. It fell away.

I stayed straddling him, knelt over the ruination of this beautiful man.

Watching the red flow of his pulse grow weaker, his tawny skin get pale.

I did it.

…I felt...

Nothing.

No satisfaction, triumph or liberation.

There was just a space in my chest, torn open and emptied of him, of a weak little fucking girl’s nameless hope.

And you know what the fuck I did?

I kissed him one last time. Tasted his blood.

I left him there. 

This time I didn't cry like I did with my back turned to Mateo. This time though, felt like I'd killed something beautiful before it'd even had a chance to breathe.

The Night Was Mine. 

But it felt so terribly empty now.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"So...you're not going to stick me in an institution, or tell the school I'm not fit for study, right?"

"No. I'm not going to do those things unless you tell me you're going to hurt someone or yourself...don't go getting any ideas."

"I'm not going to hurt anyone," I assured him.

The university psychologist wasn't exactly the kind of person I pictured when I made the appointment. I thought Shams al-Rashi would be a tweedly little fellow with a bushy moustache and a balding pate, scribing my madness on a notepad and reclining in a very specific kind of red armchair. I was right about the moustache, totally spot on actually - glorious, if I was being perfectly honest. Black, striped with white, it curled up at the ends under his hawk-beak nose. Doctor al-Rashi's face reminded me of a tall, blunt crystal struck from the earth and given form, as well as a perpetual glower. He was wearing a dark green blazer, piped with red...cheaply made, but his vermilion tie looked like hand-woven silk. 

His head was on fire; just the top, a nimbus of orange and white, replacing his hair.

"Then Mister Razansky I can promise you the whole point of this venture is to find constructive solutions that work for you and protect your academic performance." Instead of a little moleskine notebook or a boring notepad, a wafer-thin tablet glowed on the table before him. He twirled a stylus between his fingers. Shams wasn't sitting either, but instead standing at a podium while I reclined. I think some people would find it imposing or intimidating, but it felt like he was taking me seriously...no chance for him to zone out listening to my bullshit. 

I appreciated that sort of focus; if you’re gonna do a job, you damn well oughta do it right. "So..." he gestured to me with white-hot fingertips (how did he keep from burning everything?), "let's start basic. Have you ever seen a counselor before?"

"No. I never thought I'd need one, I never thought there'd be much of a point," I admitted cautiously. This was a big step for me, the notion of talking to someone who wasn’t Arryn was akin to joining a new religion. It was something you did with a quizzical heart, but a little apple-core of hope hidden away, all the same.

Movement outside the window was perpetually distracting for me; a few wild herons had landed outside at the edge of a green pond ringed with palm trees and ferns...glorious creatures. Beyond them, a trio of...women, I think, cavorted in the water; their skin was a mottled greenish color like a frog's, their hair like tendrils of swamp mandrake dangling down their spines. They looked to be quarreling over an eel.

Good lord…I still had no idea what they were. I glanced at Shams, at some girls on the basketball team passing by; were they seeing this shit?

The weirdness made my stomach twist. I remembered how one of those mandrake women had snatched a dog from its leash…just pulled it down under the water, turned it all bubbling and red with froth. Did they ever snatch people like that?

He dutifully recorded notes on his tablet, holding the pen from the end like a priest scribing a text. "Mmm. As men we are often told by other men to seek solace in our own strength, but only a strength they approve of; women often tell us to express, but in many cases they mean to express what they want to hear."

"The lady who raised me was pretty good letting me say my piece, but yeah she works for the Army...'strength comes from within', that kind of person." I never told Rachel about stuff like Doctor al-Rashi's partial state of immolation, or the frog-women bickering over the eel. Or about Tessa. "I guess this is different from what other people come in for."

"You'd be surprised at what I've heard," he assured me with cool sobriety. I could feel his eyes, like two little pinpoints of heat, tracing the shape of my eyes, the set of my facial muscles; reflexively oppositional, I tightened the screws on my poker face. I was a perfectly controlled feelings-machine; he’d see what I wanted him to see. 

Speaking of: "How would you describe your emotional state right now, sitting on that couch?"

Exhausted. Skittish. Low-scale aroused, almost all the time…something’s wrong with me.

"It's a comfortable couch," I demurred, patting the dark red cushion with a nod of approval. "I'm happy with the couch. I'm feeling stressed and unsure about my future, and tired." I swallowed dryly, watching him watching me; it felt like we were sizing each other up for a duel (and with what weapons, I wondered? He looked like a saber-and-shield type of guy, I was more of a pistols at dawn fellow).

"And...?" he gestured for me to continue…experienced shrink like him knew I’d be holding back.

"And, I'm...kinda scared, I guess. I feel like I'm being watched and followed." That part wasn’t easy to admit; how do you tell a stranger you’re afraid of something?

Doctor al-Rashi paused his scrawling, an eyebrow cropping up dramatically - weren't shrinks supposed to mask their responses?

"Do you feel unsafe?" he queried, setting the stylus down.

"I'm not sure." The admission came with some reticence because it sounded dull. "I feel a little...transgressed." And I did. Ashland was the kind of place where people talked, and because people were all about themselves, that talk could come back and bite you real fast. Real city of jackals.

"Is that what's been weighing most on your mind, or is there something else?" When he moved it sort of reminded me of fire passing between torches; a gait that at-once flickered yet also seemed to float. He poured a pot of spicy smelling, earthy tea and offered it to me on a coaster...I took some and sipped it out of politeness; piping hot, enough to scald the roof of my mouth and make my eyes water. Good tea though.

"Nngh...well, I guess there's kind of a lot going on." I paused to take a fake sip...how much would I reveal? He assured me he wasn't going to recommend me for institutionalization or take action unless I was a threat to myself or others, but when would he make that judgment? We'd keep it mundane, for now. "So, if you follow the news, President Parker sent out that EO that the International Humanitarian Reconstruction Bureau is losing its funding."

"It sounds like his style of slash-and-burn, yes." Doctor al-Rashi's eyes tracked one of the custodial staff outside; Alvarez, I think was his name. He was pulling one of those mini-dumpsters on wheels, filled with broken-up pieces of wood and a shattered toilet. Did the Doctor see his tree-trunk arms, as I did? Literal columns of knotted wood, groaning as he worked?

"Yeah, so...I was on the IHRB Post-College Entry Program and just got confirmed to ship out to Khamrungsa next July." I hazarded another sip of this tea...perhaps the burning sensation heightened the bite of the spices. Physical pain and tribulation usually helped me ignore internal discord, part of my unhealthy exercise compulsion.

The school psychologist tugged gently on the tip of his moustache, nodding along for me to proceed. "I presume to withhold congratulations...?" Gosh what a character…he reminded me a bit of the guy who played Saladin in that Ridley Scott movie about the Crusade - all weathered and hawkish, no-nonsense as sandstone.

I liked his dry humor, it was soothing in a way. "Ssso yeah, International Humanitarian Response Bureau got all its funding wiped with that executive order, so..." Still…putting those words out there, even leaving them half formed, it was another slow thrust of the dagger-of-night into my chest. 99% of the country wouldn’t have even heard of the IHRB, just another department lost to the Parker Purges. For me it was like my life had ended before it’d even begun.

"Ah. So a great elephant has stepped in your path." I blinked up at him and saw his lip curl upward in a wry smile.

The two of us shared a low chuckle...I liked the symbolism, Parker won thanks to GOP voters here in sunny Louisiana. This state was a caricature of itself in so many ways; I grew up in Seattle, a polar opposite of the Bayou State with its cross-clutching piety mingling with neon-pink debauchery.

"Yep. Don't really see a way around it.” Award for understatement of the century goes to Ascher Razansky. I was fucked, to put it bluntly.

My gaze drifted from the doctor back out the window, watching a stormfront rolling in from the South...it seemed like it'd been storming constantly, like Dade County was constantly under hurricane watch. The haze of near-summer heat lingered around ninety degrees daily, humid as a harlot’s palm. It was only the sterile zephyr of modern HVAC and the anticipation of nightfall that kept us out-of-staters in-state, otherwise this swamp wouldn’t be liveable.

"Such are the wages of good will, Mister Razansky...but I'll spare you the philosophy unless you wish to get into it." Another jotting of notes; I watched a fruit fly jump from a bowl of ripe bananas and mangos to float near his hair. It went up in a tiny puff of orange light and smoke.

So the fire is real - how the hell isn’t he igniting everything around him?

"I dunno Doctor, I barely squeezed a B out of Zakin's intro class...so yeah, there's an elephant in my path. There's also..." I stopped and shifted uncomfortably, the armchair feeling oppressive quite suddenly. There it was, that survival instinct that knocked on my temple, reminding me: Don’t air your dirty laundry, Ascher.

"Okay, you've probably heard this one before. Five guys walk with me into a bar. We all see this really hot girl I like, and I ask them if she's single. They all answer 'yeah, she's Andrew's / Liam's / Jun's / Tara's / Vahn's girl'." I gazed at him flatly, expecting another wry chuckle but he instead gives me a look that hovers between patriarchal disapproval and avuncular pity.

"How does that affect your perception of yourself as a man, Ascher? Do you pine for her, or is she out of your reach?" he went straight for the throat on that one; yowch. I actually felt it, like a hot blade prodding against my jugular. Mean son of a bitch. I struggled for a moment to keep my cool at the directness of his questioning, reminding myself this was his job.

"It's not great,” I understated my sense of smallness. “I don't know. I think she sees me...I've caught her staring at me a couple of times, but she's always with someone else." 

That was only half of it of course. This girl I was heart throbbing over, what would he say if I told him she had graceful, curling horns like a ram? What if I told him those long legs of hers, sleek as satin, ended in a goat’s cloven hooves? Would he walk back on his promise not to institutionalize me if I told him her eyes glowed heliotrope at night? 

"Hmm. A Triple Alliance of Troubles," he notes, adjusting a pair of brass wire glasses on his bent nose...how did they not melt? "Pursuit by an unknown dread...uncertain future...complex desire."

"Oh my," I quipped. We both shared an understated chuckle at that.

"Let us return to this sensation you have of being watched or chased, Mister Razansky." He sipped from his own mug of scalding tea; I watched with fascination as steam rose from the place where his moustache made contact with the liquid, hissing like a subdued adder. "When do you feel like this? Is there a particular environment? Is it when you're alone, or..."

I usually consider what I say before I say it, and I know to some people that's given the impression that I can be a little slow...not true of course, I'm as sharp as the next mattock. Doctor al-Rashi appears patient on the outside, but he has a few tells that signal to me that he's chomping at the bit; that must be a challenge in this job. He plucks the edge of his teacup with a fingernail, worrying a small crack; his gaze continually flits out to the stormfront rolling in from the shoreline, like he's checking for something in the clouds; the halo of flame standing in for his hair flickers between orange and blue.

I know he didn’t mean it, but these questions reminded me of that uncomfortable time when I was eight years old. The doctor explained just why he was going to ask me to turn my head and cough; it took about two hours for me to do so, I was a pretty stubborn kid. “I guess like, when I’m…y’know. Having sex, or like, taking care of myself.” At least he didn’t make it any weirder by keeping his eyes on his tablet, clinical and detached as a bunsen burner.

"I got some friends who are like...y'know, they're into urban exploration and ghost wrangling - "

"Ghost wrangling," he repeats, glancing at me from above his frames like he wasn't sure I'd actually used those words...not the first time I've gotten that kind of response. I don’t blame him, even I think it’s rather silly.

Even if I do see some stuff that scars the backs of my eyes; I’m thankful my friends don’t notice.

"Yeah like, hunting for paranormal activity." I palm my Samsung and play a video I took from March. It shows Vicky and Karl (two of my fellow wranglers) walking ahead down an ugly, bare concrete maintenance tunnel. It’s barely lit by guttering bulbs hanging from the ceiling, puddles of dirty water disturbed by Vicky's converses. 

The bushy braids on either side of her head sweep voluminously as she swivels her neck side to side, thrusting the EVP box in front of her like a holy talisman. She was dramatically interrogating the spirit of Jack Croix, who was supposedly lynched here back in the 1800s - are you angry at our intrusion? Give us a sign!

"I see...do you feel like you are being stalked when you are…wrangling ghosts with your friends?" Ahh there it is. Right, Mr. Shams you think I’m a crazy person. I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.

I’m not crazy.

"Not just then...it depends on the neighborhood, and the building I think...like the old bomb factory on Krome, or the Sunset Mall." Were things like him aware of how they looked? Nobody else I’d met would have noticed the massive, avian shapes battling with thunder strikes in the approaching clouds. Did the doctor know he was on fire? Would he be like this tomorrow? Would he see the strange, yellowed doorways that slid up from the ground in the Mall, opening to cavernous spaces that couldn't exist in Dade County? 

A smirk crosses his face as he takes his notes - no...just a lick of plasma playing over his facial hair. "Have you ever gotten a glimpse of your pursuer?"

The question prompts a shivering chill to run up my spine, as if one of those mandrake-women from the pond had slid their claws up the back of my neck…no. Well, not entirely ‘no’. "I think so," I volunteer, always cautious and deliberate in speech.  "Usually I don't see anything, but like...a couple times I caught something at my periphery, but it just kinda slithered behind a wall and…" I make an effusive gesture with my fingers and mouth poof. 

"Sometimes I feel like there's someone right behind me, like they could reach out and poke me between the ribs but when I turn around there's nothing there, just this smell."

He glances up from his notes, clearly waiting for me to proceed. His eyes are devoid of judgment. "When I was little there was this old Chinese guy I lived next to, and he'd use linseed oil to treat these big panes of dark silk...apparently it made it waterproof, don't ask me. He'd hang them up on lines and I could smell them whenever I passed, not a loud smell. Sometimes when I'm feeling watched I can smell tamarind, maybe like...something kinda musky, like the stuff Miss Vang wears in her hair."

"You do not seem overly concerned for your safety," he points out; the statement makes me bristle, because suddenly he’s starting to hit close to home again, like with that question about my view of my manhood or whatever.

"What makes you say that?" I ask diplomatically, reminding myself that, asshole or no, I came into this office willingly and he was doing his job like he saw fit.

"You have not expressed fear. Unease perhaps, but you seem more preoccupied by the object of your affections than your little voyeur." The way he stood there, tall and straight as a torch...his gaze rarely left me, and he rarely smiled; it brought back memories of Temple services with Rachel. Rabbi Krovil had watched me like that, and they almost looked alike but for the fact that Krovil's head wasn't perpetually aflame.

Krovil's lower body had been that of a snake, I recalled. Nobody ever commented.

I wonder why he called it a ‘little voyeur’.

"Ascher," his voice yanked me back from my musings. "Do you feel as if you understand your place in this world?"

Alright, now I was starting to really regret coming here, he was getting into personal questions that didn’t really have any bearing on the issue at hand - handling my stress, which we hadn’t even gotten to, and it had already been fifteen damn minutes of this pressure cooker interrogation. To make matters worse, for this to be of any purpose, I have to answer honestly:

“No," I admit. "Ever since my program got cut I feel like I don't know what I'm doing with myself, or if this major is even useful...it's not like anyone's putting up anything of use."

"There's always need for civil engineers," he pointed out, but it felt more like a test, like he was prodding me forward to see how I’d respond.

"Any guy with a CEM can put up wiring for new condos on Alton," I countered, unable to keep the irritation from our voice as we circled around the gaping void of purpose in my life, a basket in which I'd thrown all my eggs only to find the bottom sheared away. "Those will be bought up by people with too much money, they don't need me. Nobody needs me here, Shams."

"You put too little stock in the depth of your own character, Mister Razansky," the doctor stated sharply - it felt like a particularly loud crackle from a campfire. "There is more to you than whatever you saw yourself doing in Khamrungsa; a man is not a tool shaped for one purpose, but an evolving force that shapes itself and the world around it...and if you truly feel your destiny can only be found in the Kham Mountains, there's more than one way to scale a cliff. You are as a man standing at a gorge with only a rickety rope bridge to see you across." He drew my attention to a picture of…a tropical canyon, green with a rushing river, spanned by what could barely be called a bridge. “I crossed that thing everyday to go to school, boy. I know what it’s like. If there’s a way across you take it.”

I didn't bother to hide my skepticism. Khamdo was a tropical mountain basin, choked with jungles and impassable rock-faces. It had never been governed by a single entity until the disastrous 1st Republic, and there was almost no modern transit infrastructure. The few forms of entry were jealously protected by any number of militias and rebel groups...and my own character? Shams may have been a psychologist but he didn't know who I was. 

He didn't know how useless I was without this direction in life.

"Let's circle back around," he tapped a few times on his tablet which made a curious -whirrup- sound, and pulled a stool up to sit before me, steepling his smoldering fingers. "I want to address these things first with the remaining time we have, and make sure we have somewhere to jump off from the next time you see me - I already scheduled you to meet with me Monday after Control Systems."

He what? But before I could press him on invading my schedule he bowled over me.

"Mister Razansky, you are being a leaf in the wind...a salmon swept out to sea." He took his glasses off, and his irises quite literally ignited, burning out of their sockets as he polished his lenses. "A mouse in a maze, one might even say."

I weathered the animal metaphors with stony quiet, trying my best not to bristle like a hedgehog - dammit, no I was doing it now. "...are you saying - "

"Yes. I am. You are being incredibly weak."

---

“Mother-FUCKER.” The rock skipped across the water, slashing the scummy surface three times before disappearing beneath the pond’s mucky depths. One of the Mandrake women glanced up from where she was busily braiding her sister’s hair and sniffed at me as if I’d disturbed her peace.

Would she even understand me if I talked to her, or was she just another dumb animal?

Childish outbursts like that were usually beneath me, but Doctor al-Rashi had given me the fourth degree - here I thought I was going to get some professional advice, not to get flayed like a heretic in a dungeon. What would Tessa think if she saw me get worked over like that?

I sat down heavily at the edge of the pond and huffed through my teeth, feeling the last rays of the sun’s vengeful stare disappearing behind tonight’s thunderstorm. In the midst of Shams’ excoriation of my character in the guise of counseling was one truth that was just…painfully dismaying. The fact that it pissed me off proved how accurately his critique struck.

I could have just got home to get ready for tonight - we were going to check out the Villa Romana in Boca Raton later, heard some chilling stuff about it - but I stayed for a bit…one thing I’d learned at age seventeen, people see anger from a tall man and feel a reflexive fear. I needed to work it out first, it wouldn’t be considerate to go dragging it through a crowd.

A fox emerged from a patch of cinnamon ferns walking on its hind-legs, its glossy red coat patched in places by what looked like thatch. It held a mason jar filled with glowing worms in its paws, clutching it without concern for anatomical possibility. It wore a lime-green chiffon around its throat, three rings pierced through its right ear.

What the fuck, came the initial reaction to the weirdness of it all; I’d been seeing things like this for over fourteen years and it never felt normal. There was always some grotesque, otherworldly pageantry to it, and I always asked myself: am I really seeing this shit?

“You know the worst part of it,” I began, looking directly at the fox and catching it off guard as it unscrewed the top of the mason jar, nearly dropping it from its scabbling paws, “he’s right about everything, and even though that’s not what makes him an asshole, it’s his delivery that makes him an asshole.”

The little red canid gawped at me, like it couldn’t believe I was speaking to it. It quickly drew its eyes away from me, as if by ignoring me I’d somehow be unable to see it, but I wasn’t deterred from venting - what did it matter? Most people would just see an imposing dark haired man ranting to himself at the water’s edge and leave me be, and if the fox was a figment of my imagination then…what did it matter?

“So apparently I’m the coward because I’m not just turning and throwing my chest out at whatever’s creeping on me and saying ‘hey you, fuck off!’, cuz that’s what you do with a potential ax murderer, right?” I scoffed, watching the fox carefully fasten the glowing worm on a slender line and hook - it give a quiet ‘skreee!’ of pain. “And you know what he had the audacity to tell me? Here, and I quote: ‘you are an almost two meters tall man and a compulsive exerciser, surely you can stand before some scuttling shadow.’” I made sure to frame the last two words in air-quotes that the fox regarded with dry disbelief, as if to ask why on earth are you talking to me?

“‘My boy if you keep behaving like a ferret in flight you’ll eventually be prey for hawks.’ I’ve never heard so many animal metaphors in forty five minutes…sorry.” That was rude of me, I glanced apologetically at the fox who was watching me warily from the corner of its eyes. It wrinkled its nose at my gaze, like it didn’t want to be seen.

“Then, okay, here’s where he gets real audacious. Just bear with me here - get it?” I smirked wryly, leaning back on my palms and staring up at the rapidly darkening sky. “Bear? Cuz you’re a fox - ah…probably not…so, he said about Tessa, this guy clearly thinks he’s some sort of Cassanova who wrote the 1950s Punjab version of How to Not Die Alone. He was like, ‘a woman like that does not reveal herself to you, does not allow you to witness her heavy gaze without intent. That gaze hooks you, it gives her power over you - why do you let it? Why do you not seize the bull by the horns and take charge?’”

I sighed with the sort of weighty drama I reserved for Arryn. The fox had dropped the line in the water, waiting with fraying patience and weathering my venting admirably; it must have been a figment of my imagination in that case. “He asked if I really desired her, since I hadn’t yet made a move and the answer is god yes…” 

I fell back onto the grass and let my thoughts wander to her. Tess Diyonis was the most enchanting woman I’d ever seen in my whole life, beyond what I could have imagined. Her hair was the same red as copper warmed by the sun, as the outer edges of a bonfire in whose light I basked. “She has these cheeks that get really round and rosy when she laughs, and when she laughs it’s like…the opening lines of a jazz show, all smoky and honey flavored.” It made my chest thrum, it made my loins ache. The fox scoffed, rolling its eyes as I waxed poetic; I didn’t give a damn.

“Her body…fffuck…sorry if this is TMI but I don’t think I have ever seen a nicer pair of breasts in my whole life, I kid you not my friend, they’re solid 10s. Furthermore,” I held a finger up, covering the last corona-edge of the sun, “she has gold rings through her nipples.” That fact alone…it made my eyes roll backward. So fucking hot. I’d never been with a girl that had those, and they were…tempting, to put it mildly.

I glanced at my vulpine companion, watching him haul backward, as if he’d hooked something, clenching his sharp little teeth and straining hard. “She also has horns. And goat legs. Let’s not forget that part, and you know that shouldn’t be sexy, it should be weird but it’s not. She’s actually in my Control Systems class so I have no choice but to check her out at all possible opportunities.” She was intensely distracting; I had to record the lectures since I zoned out watching her move through the lab, dancing between equipment like a whirlwind of self-contained, exultant chaos.

“That,” I punctuated the word dramatically by slapping my fist into my palm, “is why I can’t just waltz up to her and say…” a flippant gesture, watching the fox struggle with its catch, “hey babe, you wanna grab a drink? Who says that kind of thing and just makes it work?”

I knew she wasn’t just some dumb Panhandler who’d ended up at Ashland-U…Tessa was the kind of girl who’d end up going places. I didn’t really know much about her, I already felt kind of like…outclassed, like she was a girl far outside my league.

I watched the fox growl and struggle, digging its heels into the grassy banks of the pond and slide toward the water. Feeling only briefly foolish and hoping nobody was watching, I moved to grab the line as well, pulling the catch toward the surface…weird, it didn’t seem to struggle so much as simply weigh a great deal.

“He makes everything sound so easy, like ‘hey just get up and go do it’,” I continued to complain as the fox barked first in outrage as my intrusion, then gave a low chortle of appreciation as we made progress hauling something large and oblong to the surface…how deep was this pond? “So, I had a job lined up that got cancelled, basically screwed up my post-grad plans, and he’s all ‘Ascher, Khamrungsa sits upon a mountain range. It is not going anywhere because it is incapable of movement, it is simply waiting for you to scale it…you lost your easy way in is all, is that enough to unman you?”

Unman me. What. The. Hell. That word had slid between my ribs like a stiletto, twisting and tearing…brutal. Insulting.

I’d actually gotten up to storm from his office at that point, but he’d been brazen enough to put his hand on the doorknob, pinning me in the heat of his gaze again - and that close, I could definitely feel the heat. “He made one good point though…” I had to admit, watching with some curiosity as we dragged what appeared to be an antique, bright blue dresser from the water. It stood up on its own accord…strikingly blue. Hypnotically, potently sky blue, the blue of liberation.

Huh. It looked familiar; vertigo and deja vu danced at the edge of my senses, like they always did when I encountered the Otherworld, or whatever this was.

Why did that color blue hit so hard, like a message?

“If I don’t make my own purpose, someone is going to make it for me, and it’ll be for their benefit.” I watched the fox sidle past me and test the drawers and handles; it was sealed with a combination lock, one which the little canine with its ostentatious scarf was expertly spinning. “Don’t you think?”

-click-

The padlock fell away. I should have looked away, but as was so often the case with the Otherworld, it was like an exquisite catastrophe I couldn’t look away from.

The dresser’s doors sprung open with a violent clatter, revealing a vast, sylvan landscape beyond, filled with flowers of strange colors I couldn’t put words to. Mountains that looked as if they’d been melted up from the ground stabbed upward in the distance, clawing at a sky dotted with floating islands of mossy rock and crystal. A massive crater stood in the center of it all, smouldering with sinuous blue light.

The fox looked at me once again, narrowed its eyes and cocked its head. “[Carpe noctum, frater,]” it rumbled at me in a voice as deep as a sousaphone, before it stepped through the dresser doors. They slammed shut, catapulting the azure furniture back into the water.

“Dunno how you fuckin’ weirdo kids do things, but for most of us normal monsters, Pack is everything. Ain’t nobody I love more, nobody I hate more. Some packs keep their bonds through shared greed; some through a Conspiracy like the Apex or those whacky Moon Reclaimers. Some of ‘em fall back on romance, and those’re the tightest packs…but they’re also the ones most like to rip apart when things don’t go right…”

______________________________________________________________

High noon in hell.

Four irons all leveled my way. Four dead men staring down their doom…if that was my goal. Wished it was. 

Not a brave among them. I watched them go through three stages of ‘oh shit’: first, gawping disbelief. Then scarlet-cheeked outrage. Finally their choler fizzled, turned to fear and settled in their bellies like mercury. Three of ‘em got that look like they just realized they were Prey; one of ‘em looked like he’s keeping his nerve.

That one. That’s the one to watch.

Their fear was like a shot of adrenaline to the jugular; I wanted nothing more than to take the form of dread and destruction, paint their den with crimson glory . But that wasn’t the play here; I was ripping open the belly of the beast for the Red Crows.

Snagging stacks of cash I couldn’t care less about. Blood money we couldn’t even wash clean. 

Might as well have some fun with it.

“Did knocking fall out of style, Vera? Maybe calling , I dunno, just throwin’ it out there.” Gotta give it to Zhang Wei. For staring down the literal wolf at his threshold, he sure kept his cool. He had this blocky party-boss look, meaty face and red jowls. Shitty combover to hide a bald spot. Seated under a tacky gold statue of the Buddha gordito, they were juxtaposed like polar opposites.

Serenity and self-denial looming large over violence and avarice. One a fairy tale. One all too real.

“Ain’t no reason I’d knock when I’m comin’ into my house,” I reminded him casually. Same venom I’d spat in Mizrah’s face; worked like a charm on these Mortals. Patched a guitar-shaped hole in my ego. “Go on. Take a guess why I’m here - hell, make it a hundred and fifty thousand guesses. You’ll get it eventually.”

Zhang Ping, Wei’s cousin, looked like one of those Peking opera masks my girl Neave Li from high school kept hanging in her dad’s house. All crimson and dramatic, like someone spat in his tea. Stank of fear. He’d gelled his hair into a stiff plateau of a bleached blonde. “You never came to pick up!”

“The fuck? You think I’m some Kegtown landlord barking’ at you for the motherfuckin’ rent?” I grabbed the right side of the table, flipped it into the air so it sailed end on end and landed with a crash of scattered cash and guns, broken glass against an aquarium built into the wall.

Aw shit…hadn’t thought about the fishies.

My bad little guys.

Zhang Yao, bedraggled like a scarecrow in an ill-fitted suit, was staring between us in disbelief. Probly never seen anyone outside the Triads smacktalk them before. “ Lǎobǎn, nǐ méi jiāole bǎohù fèi? ”

“ Dāngrán jiāole, wǒ zài jiāo, bì zuǐ ” Wei barked back. “Yao,” he shifted like someone lifting a boulder, pulling a key from his back pocket. “Get down to the safe, grab a hundred and fifty large - ”

“Hundred eighty,” I cut him off casually.

“But we agreed on - ”

“Chargin’ your disrespectful ass $10k more each day you let go by without paying up.” I laid it out for them like it was common practice, checking my nails casually…wishing they were wet with blood. Like getting a manicure in your Prey’s pulsing meat. 

I was watchin’ the one…y’know, the one who was barely fazed. Didn’t react beyond a little smirk as he gazed at the ground near my feet. I didn’t like that one bit.

Yao scampered away out a red-painted door like he couldn’t wait to be gone.

“Ain’t like you to miss a payday Wei…hell that could be your nickname. Payday Wei.” He was sitting on this office chair with wheels; for all the 20th century glamour around me, his seat looked like it was rescued from a dumpster. 

I stomped my right foot between his thighs, inches from his jewels; he blanched like a tomato tossed in a pot of boiling water. “Care to tell the class why you done fucked up?” Gave a push, sent his chair rolling back toward the VIP bar.

His authority was tarred with these guys…I loved breaking these kinds of men. Without their goons, they were just like any other meat.

Then came unexpected defiance, right from where it shoulda been expected.

“It’s cuz we ain’t payin’ you no more,” that unafraid prick buzzed at me in a low and unpleasant voice. 

Felt my jaw twitch and for a blessed moment forget all about the mission, all about Mizrah or Mateo. Weren’t just about the dollar now.

Kept my mouth shut for a bit. I sized up the guy who wasn't cowed. Kinda skinny like Yao but didn’t cringe like a beaten coyote; younger punk, probably just made it to 20. Thin little ‘stache under his nose, messy hair…looked a bit like Stephen Chow. His suit had that cheap-but-still-expensive look and actually fit him. 

I wanted to stain it red.

You’re not here to kill. You’re to collect. Cool down.

That internal-compass voice was getting real quiet lately.

Breath in through my nose…out all careful-like. “Coulda sworn you just said you weren’t payin’ us no more.” Hadn’t raised my voice this whole time…didn’t need to, wouldn’t do nothin’ if I did. All of us had dads that hollered at us when we were little, so…I just walked past him, hopping the bar and perusing their top shelf. “That’s what you said, right?”

“It’s what I said…surprised you didn’t get the memo from Diana.” I won’t lie, it set me off the way he name dropped my packmate while lighting a menthol. I could splatterhouse all of ‘em, throw their bodies all ripped apart like piñatas among the casino-goers.

Collect. Not kill.

“Memo doesn’t mean shit if it weren’t written and signed by me,” I pulled down a bottle from their top shelf…something all gaudy and yellow, couldn't read the brand. 

“Written and signed by Mateo,” he shrugged, plucking his menthol from his lips. Smiling at me, fearless.

“Fang, quit starting shit - ” Wei began but at this point I'd heard enough and cut him off with a sharp motion. Forgot the mission, might as well have never existed with this revelation.

Didn't show it but inside I’d already snapped like a rubber band stretched between two mountain peaks. “Mm-hmm.” I feigned disinterest and poured a finger of baijiu , swirling it around in the shot glass to disinfect it…courtesy in recognition of his fool bravery. “Don't change the fact that you're late on your payment.”

Fang leaned his head back and spread his lips over yellowing teeth. “Well then, whichever one of his girls your boss ends up sending next, guess she better come collect on time.”

Aww damn that was cute.

Real cute. 

Fuck the mission, fuck Mateo and Diana and Yusuf.

Gonna paint them teeth red boy.

“Who'd you say this guy was, Wei?” I queried, tossing the liquor on the floor dismissively; never unlocked my eyes from the cute-talker.

“Xiao-Fang is my daughter’s - ”

“I'm just a humble scholar of reality,” Xiao-Fang breathed among a cloud of cigarette smoke, utterly unafraid…maybe instinct-deaf. “And reality asked me a good question, and that was ‘why are you paying out the nose to this two-bit two-man op?’”

Two-man. Not four man, not two man two woman. That sorta shit didn't set me off like it did the girls on University Row. 

Normally. 

“Good question.” I stared him down…fuck the mission, fuck Mateo, fuck Yusuf. “Why indeed?”

White noise filled my head, keeping rhythm with my pulse.

3.

I heard Zhang Yao scrabbling from the back with his jangling keys…saw him trying to close the door real quiet behind him, holding a duffel bag that stank of ill-gotten gains.

2.

Wei and Ping were standing, one of ‘em shouting something about standing down, ‘bout not letting the blood rush to our heads.

1.

Yusuf's face pressed behind my eyes, his voice against my throat before disappearing into the haze of red: do it.  

I clenched my fist around the shot glass just right, broke it into long shards that fell from my bleeding fingers…’cept for one. 

I stabbed it forward under Fang’s navel, red blooming from the wound and staining his shirt as the cigarette fell from his lips. 

Grabbed his hair to keep him from bending forward, ripped the shard upward with a sound of splitting cloth and skin. He screamed his teeth crimson, eyes scrunching shut in the expression of ultimate pain.

“ Glh-YAAAAAAGGGHHH!” And I let him go to fall forward on his knees as his suit bulged holding in his guts…looked like a fucked up pregnant guy, stinking of coppery offal. The sight made me laugh mirthlessly, squatting on my heels next to him.

“Was gonna say you got some guts man.” I tossed the shard against his forehead with a -tnk-.

“FANG! SHIT, FANG!” Wei wailed and ran over to where his comrade was quivering and broken, trying not to move. He reached out for the wounded man, hesitating and unsure what to do…hell what could you do for something like that but let ‘em bleed out or get an ambulance?

“That’s why you pay.” I felt satisfaction unfurl itself within my chest, like floating on a magic serotonin carpet. The way they submitted, their piss-stank fear, the weight of the duffel bag I plucked from Yao’s fingers as he gaped in horror.

Zhang Wei looked up at me with an expression reminiscent of a defeated toad…hatred seethed behind his eyes, almost halted my carpet ride.

Those were the eyes of someone who was chastised for now but wouldn't forget this. Those were eyes that quietly promise comeuppance that may not have been worth the $180k in my hand; what a fuckin’ buzz kill.

Felt Wei’s eyes on my back as I walked free, a wolf slinking among the casino crowds. They were none the wiser, sweating their gold into the Triads’ bloody mouth.

It was only later on, back on my turf, that I learned Fang was Zhang Wei's sister's boyfriend…and in their world that may as well have meant son-in-law.

Lemme set the scene for you…offer a little snapshot into the fucked up dysfunction of the Red Crows. 

Picture me standing at the base of our tithe altar - we keep ours in a Jumbotron. The Corsairs still played out of Fenmoore Stadium; its ‘official’ name is something dumb-as-shit like ‘American Mutual Home Insurance Stadium’...Nobody called it that unless they wanted to get shanked. The altar was hidden yet in plain sight, hanging from the stadium’s ceiling. 

Yeah yeah, symbolism’s clumsy, but I thought it was pretty badass.

“The fuck was I supposed to do? The fuck would any y'all have done in my position?” Explaining myself like that…not badass.

“You were supposed to come with us to the Pelican,” groused Mateo, like someone had pissed in his soup. He’d somehow squeezed his frame into this navy blue blazer that looked absurd across those bulwark shoulders.

“This shit could’ve worked itself out or, y’know, waited a day for one of us to come.” Joaquin, rail-thin stick of a man in contrast to Mateo, was busily draping a gold silk ribbon at the base of the altar…symbol of their - sorry, our - newfound bond with the Fangs. I hated it, all gaudy and out of place, like trussing up a side of beef in a pretty dress.

“Now, even assuming Sanjiao don't try to gun us down on sight,” Jo continued, snubbing the tip of his long nose with a thumb, “they're gonna be looking for ways to save face with your skin.”

“So if they do, I'll kick down Kuang’s door and put a hole in his head,” I waved it off dismissively as I opened the duffel bag, carefully splitting the cash into four stacks; one for each of us. “Probably end up doing it alone anyway.”

It was a pathetic deflection. Joaquin was right of course.

“Coulda handled it cleanly if you’d just it chill another three days.” Diana sounded bored, always sounded bored, like she was counting teeth on the trophy rack. Wish she would take somethin’ seriously that weren’t one of her little games.

“If you'd told me you were going after Zhang I could have sent someone with you,” Mateo complained as he shook out his hair. He'd gelled it up, like someone trying to style a lion's mane. “Vera we built this as a unit; you’re gonna stop fucking off out there and starting shit.”

I didn't say anything, stacking the greenbacks around our nameplates, joining the other millions and millions just sitting here, useless as tinsel. Fucker was making me seethe, and just after I'd gotten the red rage under control.

Mateo was still saying something but I tuned him out, keeping my eyes on the tithe altar. Every pack that’s worth anything’s got one; seeing it as a trophy rack is like seeing the house for the hood, you know what I mean? It’s a place where our duality looms large.

Public, in that you showed it off so bloods in the next turf know you’re bad; private, cuz you didn’t wanna let nobody too close. Joaquin had hooked all these cameras up to the mega-stack of screens so we could show off the tithe on the Jumbotron itself…real clutch.

A locus of joy, where the best Hunts were preserved so you could almost relive them; a graveyard, a memorial, a stack of cenotaphs. We’ve all lost something.

The flag of our unity; but here and now, the banner of our divisions.

“Vera? Yo, Earth to Vera,” Jo called to me. I pretended not to notice, zipping closed the empty duffel.

“You remember when Diana shot that raggedy-ass lion-skin in the head?” I pointed a black painted nail at a monstrous felid skull, mounted on the central pole that looked like a giant coat rack.

That broke their momentum; whatever Mateo was bitching about, however Jo planned to pull me back in. 

Diana’s gaze followed where I pointed; she smirked with this wan vibe, girl almost never smiled. None of us did anymore. “Jo doesn’t, do you. Fucker blinded you good.” 

“I guess,” the skinny chymist conceded. He looked all suspicious toward Mateo. “Got me on a cheap shot, you were distracting me, swinging your pistol around and scarin’ them to shit.”

For a second there was the tension of a laugh, snaking its way through the pack but it was stillborn on arrival. Felt like they were watching me now, not just taking swings at me at least.

At the right part of the altar stood a small pillar, and on top Mateo had affixed a greenstone bowl. It was piled with pure gold coins, and I dug my fingers into them to lift out twin handfuls. “Joaquin you scored this…probly the best trade you ever came up with. Seized that moment good, thought you were full of shit when you insisted on caging that Myrmidon.”

Wrestling that Scarab-Shifter into submission had been a nightmare; big fuckin’ monster impaled me on its horn, flew with me right off the ground…just kept me up close so I could fuck it up at least, ‘til it went down.

“We only knew about those nomads cuz you caught on to ‘em Vera. Only knew they were carrying a fucking chest of gold cuz you somehow got one of ‘em drunk.” Mateo’s voice was softer than I could remember; he was praising me. Shit, that would’ve made my day a few months ago, now it just…dunno. Like rain rolling down a windshield. 

Still, he helped prove my point.

I pinched a coin, clenched it between my teeth, let my tongue work over the ridged edge. Gold blocked Selenosis and Black Choler uptake…helped us keep our cool.

“I’m guessing you’re steering us toward a point,” Diana sounded bored like she always did…wish she’d just show some interest.

“I am,” I barked, louder than I meant; fuck, thought I had that under control, didn’t like watching Diana shrink back. “My point is when we’re working as a unit then we’re taking skulls, roping in el oro , we’re fuckin’ Apex. Now we’re all flung the fuck apart.”

“That’s cuz you’re not with us when we do something you don’t wanna, you won’t even meet us halfway,” Mateo fucking whined - no…no he wasn’t whining, shit I was looking at him that way again. “You were the only one who was AWOL tonight, and don’t think the others didn’t notice.”

“I’m a quarter of this pack Mateo, does my opinion not count for shit?” I kept a tight rein on my voice…couldn’t let the storm show, couldn’t let the tears running down the back of my throat crack me. “I’m out there keeping these lowlife fuckin’ pimps, these coke dealers and organ-thieves in line…And look at you,” I gestured with a flick of my wrist at Diana’s little black dress. “Dressed up like you’re the pack hoe, hangin’ on their arms like their bitch trophy.”

Her eyes flashed white-hot, locked on me, never left…expected her to get pissed but she was just staring. “Say it again. I’ll eat your fucking teeth.”

“Jesus you two, CHILL,” Mateo barked…we still stared each other down.

Joaquin approached, holding a conciliatory hand out for my shoulder. Felt like it was made of termites, made my fuckin’ skin crawl like never before. “Vera, babe, that ain’t at all what he’s trying to say, you’re putting words in his mouth - ”

“I’m tellin’ you, you can’t spend none of this shit if the whole neighborhood’s shaking its chains,” I pressed, pushing his touch away. “Them Kapuae keep it in line cuz I’m the one who killed that mutation they were spreading. The Sanjiao - cabrón you weren’t there, you didn’t hear ‘em.”

Mateo’s eyes hooded in irritation. “Zhang talks a bit game - ”

“That little pendejito I gutted, he said they weren’t paying our ‘two-bit two-man’ crew no more.” I let the gold coins slip through the fingers to make a point, clinking back into the bowl. 

Mateo and Jo didn’t look at me, tight with tension like something was up, but Diana…

“Wasn’t your job anymore Vera. Thought you got the memo.”

It was like someone had slipped dry ice in my blood. Smoke floated behind my eyes, froze my heart.

“Diana what the fuck?!” Mateo hissed as Joaquin groaned, pressing his fingers to his temples.

That’s how I knew. Their shock wasn’t at what she said; it was that she’d said it out loud.

Like they’d been in on it the whole time.

That sedition was the sort of thing that made a girl like me - the sort of bitch who dissected a hardened criminal for looking at me wrong - stop outta tune like a busted piano.

I saw red through the dry smoke.

3.

I moved across the floor toward her; Mateo got in my way but I kicked out his heel, sending him down with a -THUD-.

2.

Jo said something, tryied to call me back; couldn’t even hear him through the noise in my head, could only see Diana’s smirk.

1.

Do it, she mouthed at me, a smirk tugging her lips upward…

Yusuf’s fanged smile spread charming and white in my imagination.

I really shoulda just marched back to Penn’s Point and shot him. 

Funny thing, thinking ‘bout his face made me not wanna pull Diana’s larynx out her neck, cuz with the anger redirected at Yusuf?

There was just sadness at what the Red Crows had become.

So I didn’t spill her all over the Jumbotron’s floor, even though I coulda. I just walked outta there with their eyes on my back, silence heavy as a crypt door slamming shut.

I climbed down to ground level, hoofed it out of the stadium. When I was sure nobody could hear - or more like when I couldn’t keep it in - I bit down on my sleeve and howled my rage. My betrayal. The sorrow carved my heart out, worse than anything I coulda done to Fang. 

By the time I was done I was bent forward, hands on my knees. Tears were hot in the corners of my eyes, stinging something hard.

I angrily ground my forearm against them, sniffing and stalking out the stadium door into the hot dark. I actually can’t remember the last time I felt so alone. Just like the last time I’d stormed out, none of them came after me…just let me back out there into the into the night like I was off the fucking wall.

Took a moment to get control of my breathing…found that pillar of steel I’d built my identity around. I’m strong. I’m brave. I don’t cry. I rule this place.

I climbed a hill, stadium at my back, overlooking the downward slope toward the Red Rock River. Rose-bright, heliotrope hot. Curved neon lighting shot up the sides of wanna-be skyscrapers like glowing varicose veins. The Rivieria sang its urban cacophony like a whore drunk on her own magnificence; bulging around the edges with depravity and gold, teetering on quivering legs, she laughingly insisted she could take more, ever more.

She was beautiful. Our territory, I mean - we’d fought for her, and against the odds we’d taken the Riviera from a deeply-embedded coven of our kind. They’d been all addle-fucked by something they called Asmodeus - I don’t believe for a second demons are real, but if you were gonna find people who did, it’d be in this den of sin. Father Carlos used to get real stormy about the Riviera back when my folks made me go to church, that’s how me and my boy Pesca knew it was the place to be.

Rest in peace, Pesca.

It used to feel like it was mine - like how I used to look at my pop’s backyard, or my abuela’s spare bedroom, just…a whole district. Everyone knew you didn’t fuck with the Red Crows, not unless you wanted your door kicked open and your insides on the outside. Like so many outfits though, now we were goin’ big, felt like we were losing this place. 

My home.

My family.

I loved them so much…Diana, shit I couldn’t believe we’d come to this. She and I used to hang around her place, lazy mornings spent on her balcony, surveying and shit-talking all we saw. Used to paint her nails, brush her hair. I kissed her all open and shameless on the streets so people could see and be jealous.

Jo…we used to do a lot of drugs together but I never let that shit take over my life - he was a functional addict, still meant he fucked up a lot though. Looking back on the partying we got in, all the crazy drunk-stoned-blitzed sex we had in the back of the SUV (the one he’d slung off for meth-precursors)...all that was gone.

Mateo. Oh Mateo…once that man had been el rey de mi corazón . That crown had rusted away, flaking onto his shoulders and leaving him nothing more than an angry, self-conscious fool. He and I Hunted and killed long before Jo and Diana. God-damn, we punched above our weight. Now we just…punched each other.

I used to really believe, back last Spring, that we could get past this. Any relationship has ups and downs. Whether friends from when your moms got together to gossip, soldiers you fought alongside, or Pack you loved more than anyone. More than anything. Now though, I wondered…could it even be fixed, or was our operation doomed?

I found myself turning my eyes Southward where the river flowed out into the Gulf. That was where Baxter Avenue crossed into Penn’s Point. It was an unbeautiful little place, lust-soaked-light giving way to grimy dark broken by the occasional patch of illumination…the place had never even been worth my attention, not until Yusuf and Galen. 

This time I didn’t fight it, I let the thoughts run on their own accord. Their visages sprang into my head, clearer than my granny’s face…I pictured them palling around like stupid guys in that way I actually loved to watch. I wondered if they were partying, if they were chasing Prey, or if they’d taken someone lucky to bed. Maybe that betrayal, the one festering in my heart, had led me to my own pack’s deception.

My brain lingered on Galen and Yusuf, much as I wanted to ignore them. No lying…I knew I’d be thinking about one (or even both) of ‘em next time (if) I fucked Mateo or Jo, so…the idea of taking one of ‘em between the sheets didn’t hold the same relish as it used to. Even Diana, I just…

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I wondered out loud. 

“Nothing’s wrong with you Vera,” Mateo guttered. No cap: I almost jumped out of my skin at his unexpected appearance. I wheeled on him, reaching by instinct for an iron I hadn’t brought; didn’t relax when my thoughts caught up with my reflexes.

“The hell you know,” I grumbled, dropping my eyes down to his feet so I didn’t have to look him in the eye…so he wouldn’t catch the flash of my own treasonous thoughts. Started a brushfire in my mind, burning the Kings of Midnights’ icons away.

“I know things are changing.” He’d changed out of his suit and was wearing little more than a wife beater and slacks…lumbering toward me like the Hulk.

A pelt of black chest hair disappeared beneath it; I dully recalled once how I loved running my fingers through it. Used to be that I’d slide my palm up that chest…not this time. I was pissed; mostly hurt though. How could he? 

“I know they’re changing. They’re changing for the worse, Mateo.” I felt like a hypocrite for being mad at him, even though all that treason was locked up in my head; nobody knew but Yusuf, probably Galen by this point. “Why the hell’d you do this to me? Why couldn’t you even have the balls to tell me?” Never yelled at him, not my pack, even if I was wounded worse than I could remember.

“We meant to.” Mateo sounded sheepish like a twelve year old who’d got caught in some bullshit. “Didn’t think you’d go after the Sanjiao like you did…didn’t think Diana would shoot her mouth off like that. Don’t know why she did other than being pissed off at you for calling her a hoe.”

He was trying to be funny; probably nothing could make me laugh right now. “So you let Diana take the wheel of the bus you threw me under. Like it’d make it clean or somethin’. Guess you think you’re spot on cuz of what I did to Fang.”

“You gutted him like a pig, you want a medal for that?” Mateo scoffed.

“The motherfucker called me your girl . He acted completely unafraid of us - Mateo, how the hell did someone like that make it past Jo?” Joaquin vetted the Sanjiao’s new membership; I did the same for the Eagles, Mateo had his claws sunk into the Bratva. “This is what I’m talking about man, all of ya’ll are so focused on trying to climb up the Fangs’ collective ass, shit’s falling apart down here. Man you saw…I can’t do this shit alone.” My voice softened as I watched the tangle in his eyes grow sad.

“Just be with us.” Mateo never said please, not like he really meant it, but I could see this was as close to him asking me nice as he could get…fuck he was trying. “Let this shit go for just a bit. Help us gain some real glory.” 

He almost had me hooked, and then:

“Just get over yourself a bit.”

He had to fuck it up like he always does. Get over myself a bit? What. The FUCK.

“Mateo Cardenza,” I began real calm, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Let me get real crystal clear witchu…you listening?” I asked to make sure he was listening, and I could already see the impatience, the annoyance in his eyes like he thought I was the irrational one. Only drove me forward.

“Vera just quit - ” but I cut him off with a sharp motion, like I was chopping sinew.

“First, ya’ll can go ahead and keep doing your thing with the Fangs, with the Pentacle, but I’m not kowtowing to another pack, Apex be damned. Second, I’m gonna whip this territory together while you’re fuckin’ off; the rats, the bats, the gators, I’ll keep ‘em in line. I’ll collect fees from the Eagles, the Sanjiao, the Bratva since you fuckin’ that up too I bet.”

“That’s not how this works,” Mateo growled, and for the first time I saw the threat of violence in his eyes as I defied an authority I’d never truly accepted. “I’m Alpha. You either challenge me for it, or you do what you’re told.”

“Third.” I held up three fingers and got real close, my voice seething like magma in a caldera. “These streets are mine . The blood flowin’ through all those veins out there, all those millions of pound of meat, they’re mine .”

“It ain’t yours if you’re alone,” the Rabid threatened, the wolf’s growl overlaying his voice, but I wasn’t afraid of him. I wasn’t afraid of anybody but myself.

“The Night is Mine,” I punctuated the statement with a snap of my fangs, close to his lips.

I left him there, watching me go.

Kept hoping he’d follow, show me cared. Never did, not once.

At the bottom of the hill I stood at the glowing crimson archway on Baxter and Dubrovnik…felt like a gateway to another world; if I crossed it, I’d be truly alone, even if they never kicked me out.

I crossed it.

I walked down my streets, hands in my pockets, queen of all I surveyed.

And I cried.

______________________________________________________________

“Ain’t nothin’ sadder than a lone wolf…’cept you lame little fucking bullies, bet ya’ll’d stab each other’s kidneys for a Bubblr - okay, okay, you can put the gun down. A lone wolf, that’s someone just askin’ to lose that freedom we Unchained bleed and die for; there’s all sorts of awful things out there that’d love to stab some puppet strings into those little brains of yours…least they would if you little fucks had brains - ”

Chapter 1: Incredible Weakness

"So...you're not going to stick me in an institution, or tell the school I'm not fit for study, right?"

"No. I'm not going to do those things unless you tell me you're going to hurt someone or yourself...don't go getting any ideas."

"I'm not going to hurt anyone," I assured him.

The university psychologist wasn't exactly the kind of person I pictured when I made the appointment. I thought Shams al-Rashi would be a tweedly little fellow with a bushy moustache and a balding pate, scribing my madness on a notepad and reclining in a very specific kind of red armchair. I was right about the moustache, totally spot on actually - glorious, if I was being perfectly honest. Black, striped with white, it curled up at the ends under his hawk-beak nose. Doctor al-Rashi's face reminded me of a tall, blunt crystal struck from the earth and given form, as well as a perpetual glower. He was wearing a dark green blazer, piped with red...cheaply made, but his vermilion tie looked like hand-woven silk. 

His head was on fire; just the top, a nimbus of orange and white, replacing his hair.

"Then Mister Razansky I can promise you the whole point of this venture is to find constructive solutions that work for you and protect your academic performance." Instead of a little moleskine notebook or a boring notepad, a wafer-thin tablet glowed on the table before him. He twirled a stylus between his fingers. Shams wasn't sitting either, but instead standing at a podium while I reclined. I think some people would find it imposing or intimidating, but it felt like he was taking me seriously...no chance for him to zone out listening to my bullshit. 

I appreciated that sort of focus; if you’re gonna do a job, you damn well oughta do it right.. "So..." he gestured to me with white-hot fingertips (how did he keep from burning everything?), "let's start basic. Have you ever seen a counselor before?"

"No. I never thought I'd need one, I never thought there'd be much of a point," I admitted cautiously. This was a big step for me, the notion of talking to someone who wasn’t Arryn was akin to joining a new religion. It was something you did with a quizzical heart, but a little apple-core of hope hidden away, all the same.

Movement outside the window was perpetually distracting for me; a few wild herons had landed outside at the edge of a green pond ringed with palm trees and ferns...glorious creatures. Beyond them, a trio of...women, I think, cavorted in the water; their skin was a mottled greenish color like a frog's, their hair like tendrils of swamp mandrake dangling down their spines. They looked to be quarreling over an eel.

Good lord…I still had no idea what they were. I glanced at Shams, at some girls on the basketball team passing by; were they seeing this shit?

The weirdness made my stomach twist. I remembered how one of those mandrake women had snatched a dog from its leash…just pulled it down under the water, turned it all bubbling and red with froth. Did they ever snatch people like that?

He dutifully recorded notes on his tablet, holding the pen from the end like a priest scribing a text. "Mmm. As men we are often told by other men to seek solace in our own strength, but only a strength they approve of; women often tell us to express, but in many cases they mean to express what they want to hear."

"The lady who raised me was pretty good letting me say my piece, but yeah she works for the Army...'strength comes from within', that kind of person." I never told Rachel about stuff like Doctor al-Rashi's partial state of immolation, or the frog-women bickering over the eel. Or about Tessa. "I guess this is different from what other people come in for."

"You'd be surprised at what I've heard," he assured me with cool sobriety. I could feel his eyes, like two little pinpoints of heat, tracing the shape of my eyes, the set of my facial muscles; reflexively oppositional, I tightened the screws on my poker face. I was a perfectly controlled feelings-machine; he’d see what I wanted him to see. 

Speaking of: "How would you describe your emotional state right now, sitting on that couch?"

Exhausted. Skittish. Low-scale aroused, almost all the time…something’s wrong with me.

"It's a comfortable couch," I demured, patting the dark red cushion with a nod of approval. "I'm happy with the couch. I'm feeling stressed and unsure about my future, and tired." I swallowed dryly, watching him watching me; it felt like we were sizing each other up for a duel (and with what weapons, I wondered? He looked like a saber-and-shield type of guy, I was more of a pistols at dawn fellow).

"And...?" he gestured for me to continue…experienced shrink like him knew I’d be holding back.

"And, I'm...kinda scared, I guess. I feel like I'm being watched and followed." That part wasn’t easy to admit; how do you tell a stranger you’re afraid of something?

Doctor al-Rashi paused his scrawling, an eyebrow cropping up dramatically - weren't shrinks supposed to mask their responses?

"Do you feel unsafe?" he queried, setting the stylus down.

"I'm not sure." The admission came with some reticence because it sounded dull. "I feel a little...transgressed." And I did. Miami was the kind of place where people talked, and because people were all about themselves, that talk could come back and bite you real fast. Real city of jackals.

"Is that what's been weighing most on your mind, or is there something else?" When he moved it sort of reminded me of fire passing between torches; a gait that at-once flickered yet also seemed to float. He poured a pot of spicy smelling, earthy tea and offered it to me on a coaster...I took some and sipped it out of politeness; piping hot, enough to scald the roof of my mouth and make my eyes water. Good tea though.

"Nngh...well, I guess there's kind of a lot going on." I paused to take a fake sip...how much would I reveal? He assured me he wasn't going to recommend me for institutionalization or take action unless I was a threat to myself or others, but when would he make that judgment? We'd keep it mundane, for now. "So, if you follow the news, President Parker sent out that EO that the International Humanitarian Reconstruction Bureau is losing its funding."

"It sounds like his style of slash-and-burn, yes." Doctor al-Rashi's eyes tracked one of the custodial staff outside; Alvarez, I think was his name. He was pulling one of those mini-dumpsters on wheels, filled with broken-up pieces of wood and a shattered toilet. Did the Doctor see his tree-trunk arms, as I did? Literal columns of knotted wood, groaning as he pulled his load?

"Yeah so...I was on the IHRB Post-College Entry Program and just got confirmed to ship out to Khamrungsa next July." I hazarded another sip of this tea...perhaps the burning sensation heightened the bite of the spices. Physical pain and tribulation usually helped me ignore internal discord, part of my unhealthy exercise compulsion.

The school psychologist tugged gently on the tip of his moustache, nodding along for me to proceed. "I presume to withhold congratulations...?" Gosh what a character…he reminded me a bit of the guy who played Saladin in that Ridley Scott movie about the Crusade - all weathered and hawkish, no-nonsense as sandstone.

I liked his dry humor, it was soothing in a way. "Ssso yeah, International Humanitarian Response Bureau got all its funding wiped with that executive order, so..." Still…putting those words out there, even leaving them half formed, it was another slow thrust of the dagger-of-night into my chest. 99% of the country wouldn’t have even heard of the IHRB, just another department lost to the Parker Purges. For me it was like my life had ended before it’d even begun.

"Ah. So a great elephant has stepped in your path." I blinked up at him and saw his lip curl upward in a wry smile.

The two of us shared a low chuckle...I liked the symbolism, Parker won thanks to GOP voters here in sunny Florida. This state was a caricature of itself in so many ways; I grew up in Seattle, a polar opposite of the Sunshine State with its cross-clutching piety mingling with neon-pink debauchery.

"Yep. Don't really see a way around it.” Award for understatement of the century goes to Ascher Razansky. I was fucked, to put it bluntly.

My gaze drifted from the doctor back out the window, watching a stormfront rolling in from the South...it seemed like it'd been storming constantly, like Dade County was constantly under hurricane watch. The haze of near-summer heat lingered around ninety degrees daily, humid as a harlot’s palm. It was only the sterile zephyr of modern HVAC and the anticipation of nightfall that kept us out-of-staters in-state, otherwise this swamp wouldn’t be liveable.

"Such are the wages of good will, Mister Razansky...but I'll spare you the philosophy unless you wish to get into it." Another jotting of notes; I watched a fruit fly jump from a bowl of ripe bananas and mangos to float near his hair. It went up in a tiny puff of orange light and smoke.

So the fire is real - how the hell isn’t he igniting everything around him?

"I dunno Doctor, I barely squeezed a B out of Zakin's intro class...so yeah, there's an elephant in my path. There's also..." I stopped and shifted uncomfortably, the armchair feeling oppressive quite suddenly. There it was, that survival instinct that knocked on my temple, reminding me: Don’t air your dirty laundry, Ascher.

"Okay, you've probably heard this one before. Five guys walk with me into a bar. We all see this really hot girl I like, and I ask them if she's single. They all answer 'yeah, she's Andrew's / Liam's / Jun's / Tara's / Vahn's girl'." I gazed at him flatly, expecting another wry chuckle but he instead gives me a look that hovers between patriarchal disapproval and avuncular pity.

"How does that affect your perception of yourself as a man, Ascher? Do you pine for her, or is she out of your reach?" he went straight for the throat on that one; yowch. I actually felt it, like a hot blade prodding against my jugular. Mean son of a bitch. I struggled for a moment to keep my cool at the directness of his questioning, reminding myself this was his job.

"It's not great,” I understated my sense of smallness. “I don't know. I think she sees me...I've caught her staring at me a couple of times, but she's always with someone else." 

That was only half of it of course. This girl I was heart throbbing over, what would he say if I told him she had graceful, curling horns like a ram? What if I told him those long legs of hers, sleek as satin, ended in a goat’s cloven hooves? Would he walk back on his promise not to institutionalize me if I told him her eyes glowed heliotrope at night? 

"Hmm. A Triple Alliance of Troubles," he notes, adjusting a pair of brass wire glasses on his bent nose...how did they not melt? "Pursuit by an unknown dread...uncertain future...complex desire."

"Oh my," I quipped. We both shared an understated chuckle at that.

"Let us return to this sensation you have of being watched or chased, Mister Razansky." He sipped from his own mug of scalding tea; I watched with fascination as steam rose from the place where his moustache made contact with the liquid, hissing like a subdued adder. "When do you feel like this? Is there a particular environment? Is it when you're alone, or..."

I usually consider what I say before I say it, and I know to some people that's given the impression that I can be a little slow...not true of course, I'm as sharp as the next mattock. Doctor al-Rashi appears patient on the outside, but he has a few tells that signal to me that he's chomping at the bit; that must be a challenge in this job. He plucks the edge of his teacup with a fingernail, worrying a small crack; his gaze continually flits out to the stormfront rolling in from the shoreline, like he's checking for something in the clouds; the halo of flame standing in for his hair flickers between orange and blue.

I know he didn’t mean it, but these questions reminded me of that uncomfortable time when I was eight years old. The doctor explained just why he was going to ask me to turn my head and cough; it took about two hours for me to do so, I was a pretty stubborn kid. “I guess like, when I’m…y’know. Having sex, or like, taking care of myself.” At least he didn’t make it any weirder by keeping his eyes on his tablet, clinical and detached as a bunsen burner.

"I got some friends who are like...y'know, they're into urban exploration and ghost wrangling - "

"Ghost wrangling," he repeats, glancing at me from above his frames like he wasn't sure I'd actually used those words...not the first time I've gotten that kind of response. I don’t blame him, even I think it’s rather silly.

Even if I do see some stuff that scars the backs of my eyes; I’m thankful my friends don’t notice.

"Yeah like, hunting for paranormal activity." I palm my Samsung and play a video I took from March. It shows Vicky and Karl (two of my fellow wranglers) walking ahead down an ugly, bare concrete maintenance tunnel. It’s barely lit by guttering bulbs hanging from the ceiling, puddles of dirty water disturbed by Vicky's converses. 

The bushy braids on either side of her head sweep voluminously as she swivels her neck side to side, thrusting the EVP box in front of her like a holy talisman. She was dramatically interrogating the spirit of Jack Croix, who was supposedly lynched here back in the 1800s - are you angry at our intrusion? Give us a sign!

"I see...do you feel like you are being stalked when you are…wrangling ghosts with your friends?" Ahh there it is…right, Mr. Shams you think I’m a crazy person. I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.

I’m not crazy.

"Not just then...it depends on the neighborhood, and the building I think...like the old bomb factory on Krome, or the Sunset Mall." Were things like him aware of how they looked? Nobody else I’d met would have noticed the massive, avian shapes battling with thunder strikes in the approaching clouds. Did the doctor know he was on fire? Would he be like this tomorrow? Would he see the strange, yellowed doorways that slid up from the ground in the Mall, opening to cavernous spaces that couldn't exist in Dade County? 

A smirk crosses his face as he takes his notes - no...just a lick of plasma playing over his facial hair. "Have you ever gotten a glimpse of your pursuer?"

The question prompts a shivering chill to run up my spine, as if one of those mandrake-women from the pond had slid their claws up the back of my neck…no. Well, not entirely ‘no’. "I think so," I volunteer, always cautious and deliberate in speech.  "Usually I don't see anything, but like...a couple times I caught something at my periphery, but it just kinda slithered behind a wall and…" I make an effusive gesture with my fingers and mouth poof. 

"Sometimes I feel like there's someone right behind me, like they could reach out and poke me between the ribs but when I turn around there's nothing there, just this smell."

He glances up from his notes, clearly waiting for me to proceed. His eyes are devoid of judgment. "When I was little there was this old Chinese guy I lived next to, and he'd use linseed oil to treat these big panes of dark silk...apparently it made it waterproof, don't ask me. He'd hang them up on lines and I could smell them whenever I passed, not a loud smell. Sometimes when I'm feeling watched I can smell tamarind, maybe like...something kinda musky, like the stuff Miss Vang wears in her hair."

"You do not seem overly concerned for your safety," he points out; the statement makes me bristle, because suddenly he’s starting to hit close to home again, like with that question about my view of my manhood or whatever.

"What makes you say that?" I ask diplomatically, reminding myself that, asshole or no, I came into this office willingly and he was doing his job like he saw fit.

"You have not expressed fear. Unease perhaps, but you seem more preoccupied by the object of your affections than your little voyeur." The way he stood there, tall and straight as a torch...his gaze rarely left me, and he rarely smiled; it brought back memories of Temple services with Rachel. Rabbi Krovil had watched me like that, and they almost looked alike but for the fact that Krovil's head wasn't perpetually aflame.

Krovil's lower body had been that of a snake, I recalled. Nobody ever commented.

I wonder why he called it a ‘little voyeur’.

"Ascher," his voice yanked me back from my musings. "Do you feel as if you understand your place in this world?"

Alright, now I was starting to really regret coming here, he was getting into personal questions that didn’t really have any bearing on the issue at hand - handling my stress, which we hadn’t even gotten to, and it had already been fifteen damn minutes of this pressure cooker interrogation. To make matters worse, for this to be of any purpose, I have to answer honestly:

“No," I admit. "Ever since my program got cut I feel like I don't know what I'm doing with myself, or if this major is even useful...it's not like anyone's putting up anything of use."

"There's always need for civil engineers," he pointed out, but it felt more like a test, like he was prodding me forward to see how I’d respond.

"Any guy with a CEM can put up wiring for new condos on Alton," I countered, unable to keep the irritation from our voice as we circled around the gaping void of purpose in my life, a basket in which I'd thrown all my eggs only to find the bottom sheared away. "Those will be bought up by people with too much money, they don't need me. Nobody needs me here, Shams."

"You put too little stock in the depth of your own character, Mister Razansky," the doctor stated sharply - it felt like a particularly loud crackle from a campfire. "There is more to you than whatever you saw yourself doing in Khamrungsa; a man is not a tool shaped for one purpose, but an evolving force that shapes itself and the world around it...and if you truly feel your destiny can only be found in the Kham Mountains, there's more than one way to scale a cliff. You are as a man standing at a gorge with only a rickety rope bridge to see you across." He drew my attention to a picture of…a tropical canyon, green with a rushing river, spanned by what could barely be called a bridge. “I crossed that thing everyday to go to school, boy. I know what it’s like. If there’s a way across you take it.”

I didn't bother to hide my skepticism. Khamdo was a tropical mountain basin, choked with jungles and impassable rock-faces. It had never been governed by a single entity until the disastrous 1st Republic, and there was almost no modern transit infrastructure. The few forms of entry were jealously protected by any number of militias and rebel groups...and my own character? Shams may have been a psychologist but he didn't know who I was. 

He didn't know how useless I was without this direction in life.

"Let's circle back around," he tapped a few times on his tablet which made a curious -whirrup- sound, and pulled a stool up to sit before me, steepling his smoldering fingers. "I want to address these things first with the remaining time we have, and make sure we have somewhere to jump off from the next time you see me - I already scheduled you to meet with me Monday after Control Systems."

He what? But before I could press him on invading my schedule he bowled over me.

"Mister Razansky, you are being a leaf in the wind...a salmon swept out to sea." He took his glasses off, and his irises quite literally ignited, burning out of their sockets as he polished his lenses. "A mouse in a maze, one might even say."

I weathered the animal metaphors with stony quiet, trying my best not to bristle like a hedgehog - dammit, no I was doing it now. "...are you saying - "

"Yes. I am. You are being incredibly weak."

---

“Mother-FUCKER.” The rock skipped across the water, slashing the scummy surface three times before disappearing beneath the pond’s mucky depths. One of the Mandrake women glanced up from where she was busily braiding her sister’s hair and sniffed at me as if I’d disturbed her peace.

Would she even understand me if I talked to her, or was she just another dumb animal?

Childish outbursts like that were usually beneath me, but Doctor al-Rashi had given me the fourth degree - here I thought I was going to get some professional advice, not to get flayed like a heretic in a dungeon. What would Tessa think if she saw me get worked over like that?

I sat down heavily at the edge of the pond and huffed through my teeth, feeling the last rays of the sun’s vengeful stare disappearing behind tonight’s thunderstorm. In the midst of Shams’ excoriation of my character in the guise of counseling was one truth that was just…painfully dismaying. The fact that it pissed me off proved how accurately his critique struck.

I could have just got home to get ready for tonight - we were going to check out the Villa Romana in Boca Raton later, heard some chilling stuff about it - but I stayed for a bit…one thing I’d learned at age seventeen, people see anger from a tall man and feel a reflexive fear. I needed to work it out first, it wouldn’t be considerate to go dragging it through a crowd.

A fox emerged from a patch of cinnamon ferns walking on its hind-legs, its glossy red coat patched in places by what looked like thatch. It held a mason jar filled with glowing worms in its paws, clutching it without concern for anatomical possibility. It wore a lime-green chiffon around its throat, three rings pierced through its right ear.

What the fuck, came the initial reaction to the weirdness of it all; I’d been seeing things like this for over fourteen years and it never felt normal. There was always some grotesque, otherworldly pageantry to it, and I always asked myself: am I really seeing this shit?

“You know the worst part of it,” I began, looking directly at the fox and catching it off guard as it unscrewed the top of the mason jar, nearly dropping it from its scabbling paws, “he’s right about everything, and even though that’s not what makes him an asshole, it’s his delivery that makes him an asshole.”

The little red canid gawped at me, like it couldn’t believe I was speaking to it. It quickly drew its eyes away from me, as if by ignoring me I’d somehow be unable to see it, but I wasn’t deterred from venting - what did it matter? Most people would just see an imposing dark haired man ranting to himself at the water’s edge and leave me be, and if the fox was a figment of my imagination then…what did it matter?

“So apparently I’m the coward because I’m not just turning and throwing my chest out at whatever’s creeping on me and saying ‘hey you, fuck off!’, cuz that’s what you do with a potential ax murderer, right?” I scoffed, watching the fox carefully fasten the glowing worm on a slender line and hook - it give a quiet ‘skreee!’ of pain. “And you know what he had the audacity to tell me? Here, and I quote: ‘you are an almost two meters tall man and a compulsive exerciser, surely you can stand before some scuttling shadow.’” I made sure to frame the last two words in air-quotes that the fox regarded with dry disbelief, as if to ask why on earth are you talking to me?

“‘My boy if you keep behaving like a ferret in flight you’ll eventually be prey for hawks.’ I’ve never heard so many animal metaphors in forty five minutes…sorry.” That was rude of me, I glanced apologetically at the fox who was watching me warily from the corner of its eyes. It wrinkled its nose at my gaze, like it didn’t want to be seen.

“Then, okay, here’s where he gets real audacious. Just bear with me here - get it?” I smirked wryly, leaning back on my palms and staring up at the rapidly darkening sky. “Bear? Cuz you’re a fox - ah…probably not…so, he said about Tessa, this guy clearly thinks he’s some sort of Cassanova who wrote the 1950s Punjab version of How to Not Die Alone. He was like, ‘a woman like that does not reveal herself to you, does not allow you to witness her heavy gaze without intent. That gaze hooks you, it gives her power over you - why do you let it? Why do you not seize the bull by the horns and take charge?’”

I sighed with the sort of weighty drama I reserved for Arryn. The fox had dropped the line in the water, waiting with fraying patience and weathering my venting admirably; it must have been a figment of my imagination in that case. “He asked if I really desired her, since I hadn’t yet made a move and the answer is god yes…” 

I fell back onto the grass and let my thoughts wander to her. Tess Diyonis was the most enchanting woman I’d ever seen in my whole life, beyond what I could have imagined. Her hair was the same red as copper warmed by the sun, as the outer edges of a bonfire in whose light I basked. “She has these cheeks that get really round and rosy when she laughs, and when she laughs it’s like…the opening lines of a jazz show, all smoky and honey flavored.” It made my chest thrum, it made my loins ache. The fox scoffed, rolling its eyes as I waxed poetic; I didn’t give a damn.

“Her body…fffuck…sorry if this is TMI but I don’t think I have ever seen a nicer pair of breasts in my whole life, I kid you not my friend, they’re solid 10s. Furthermore,” I held a finger up, covering the last corona-edge of the sun, “she has gold rings through her nipples.” That fact alone…it made my eyes roll backward. So fucking hot. I’d never been with a girl that had those, and they were…tempting, to put it mildly.

I glanced at my vulpine companion, watching him haul backward, as if he’d hooked something, clenching his sharp little teeth and straining hard. “She also has horns. And goat legs. Let’s not forget that part, and you know that shouldn’t be sexy, it should be weird but it’s not. She’s actually in my Control Systems class so I have no choice but to check her out at all possible opportunities.” She was intensely distracting; I had to record the lectures since I zoned out watching her move through the lab, dancing between equipment like a whirlwind of self-contained, exultant chaos.

“That,” I punctuated the word dramatically by slapping my fist into my palm, “is why I can’t just waltz up to her and say…” a flippant gesture, watching the fox struggle with its catch, “hey babe, you wanna grab a drink? Who says that kind of thing and just makes it work?”

I knew she wasn’t just some dumb Panhandler who’d ended up at Miami-U…Tessa was the kind of girl who’d end up going places. I didn’t really know much about her, I already felt kind of like…outclassed, like she was a girl far outside my league.

I watched the fox growl and struggle, digging its heels into the grassy banks of the pond and slide toward the water. Feeling only briefly foolish and hoping nobody was watching, I moved to grab the line as well, pulling the catch toward the surface…weird, it didn’t seem to struggle so much as simply weigh a great deal.

“He makes everything sound so easy, like ‘hey just get up and go do it’,” I continued to complain as the fox barked first in outrage as my intrusion, then gave a low chortle of appreciation as we made progress hauling something large and oblong to the surface…how deep was this pond? “So, I had a job lined up that got cancelled, basically screwed up my post-grad plans, and he’s all ‘Ascher, Khamrungsa sits upon a mountain range. It is not going anywhere because it is incapable of movement, it is simply waiting for you to scale it…you lost your easy way in is all, is that enough to unman you?”

Unman me. What. The. Hell. That word had slid between my ribs like a stiletto, twisting and tearing…brutal. Insulting.

I’d actually gotten up to storm from his office at that point, but he’d been brazen enough to put his hand on the doorknob, pinning me in the heat of his gaze again - and that close, I could definitely feel the heat. “He made one good point though…” I had to admit, watching with some curiosity as we dragged what appeared to be an antique, bright blue dresser from the water. It stood up on its own accord…strikingly blue. Hypnotically, potently sky blue, the blue of liberation.

Huh. It looked familiar; vertigo and deja vu danced at the edge of my senses, like they always did when I encountered the Otherworld, or whatever this was.

Why did that color blue hit so hard, like a message?

“If I don’t make my own purpose, someone is going to make it for me, and it’ll be for their benefit.” I watched the fox sidle past me and test the drawers and handles; it was sealed with a combination lock, one which the little canine with its ostentatious scarf was expertly spinning. “Don’t you think?”

-click-

The padlock fell away. I should have looked away, but as was so often the case with the Otherworld, it was like an exquisite catastrophe I couldn’t look away from.

The dresser’s doors sprung open with a violent clatter, revealing a vast, sylvan landscape beyond, filled with flowers of strange colors I couldn’t put words to. Mountains that looked as if they’d been melted up from the ground stabbed upward in the distance, clawing at a sky dotted with floating islands of mossy rock and crystal. A massive crater stood in the center of it all, smouldering with sinuous blue light.

The fox looked at me once again, narrowing its eyes and cocking its head. “[Carpe noctum, frater,]” it rumbled at me in a voice as deep as a sousaphone, before it stepped through the dresser doors. They slammed shut, catapulting the azure furniture back into the water.