He gave the secret knock then stood back and waited, pulling the kerchief he’d stolen tight about his head.
It was only a matter of seconds before he saw a shadow behind the grill, set at head-height in the door.
“Who comes disturbin’ us at this late hour?”
“Alright, Bonkers.”
“Eh?”
“Come on, Bonkers. It’s me.”
“Oh, Lethal! You look ill, man. Where you been?”
“You going to let me in, Bonkers?”
“You gotta say the password, Lethal.”
Lodus sighed. “If you can tell it’s me, what point’s the password?”
“Boss’s rules, you know how it is. Ain’t nothin’ gets past him.”
Fair enough. Bonkers Brell wasn’t wrong, for once.
“Myrielle white?”
“Password’s changed.”
“But it’s not supposed to change till Moonday! It’s not Moonday, is it?”
“We had them magisters in the area, didn’t we? Oh, hang on…”
The latches were released, the door swung aside, and Bonkers dipped his balding head in acknowledgement as Lodus entered.
The reception area was a small bar, complete with leather seats, tables and benches. There were fewer than a dozen people here at this hour, which for many Mundians would be well past bed time – but, for those in Lodus’s line of business, this was the middle of the working-day. Most of his colleagues would be out doing their part to fill the guild’s coffers and line their pockets, picking off their marks while they slumbered. If you were careful about where you entered their body with your knife, you wouldn’t even have to wake them up. Easy money.
Behind the bar was Lady Litania, second-in-charge of the guild. She wasn’t a real lady, of course, but that was what they called her, as a symbol of their respect. She had to be in her fifties given the way her dark hair had greyed, receded, but her brown skin was still uncreased, her eyes still flashed with the keenness of a far more youthful woman.
She’d killed plenty of women and children in her time. You could see it in the curl of her lip, sense it in the slightly-detached air about her. She didn’t care about anything, unless it brought her immediate pleasure or the funds to procure such. Her indulgence of choice was wane, and she was clearly under the effects right now – you could tell from the way she wasn’t stabbing people indiscriminately and screaming in a rage.
Lodus had seen her at all hours of the morning, afternoon and night – there was never a time she hadn’t just had some of the magical herb. Except that one time. That very stabby, very screamy time when Lodus had been roped into dropping not one, not two, but three bodies in the Blackrush – and he hadn’t even been the only one heading back and forth with a blood-drenched wheelbarrow that night.
“Where’ve you been, boy?” she asked him immediately, stepping through the already-lifted flap at the end of the bar and coming around to approach him. Her tight leather clothing revealed her stringy thinness, and she probably had way more knives concealed on her person than he did. “You go missing when the magisters arrive, and now – ach, boy, are you sick?”
She’d had a hand half-reaching out as if to tear the kerchief from around his head, grasp him roughly by the hair or ear – but when she saw the state of his (literally) soiled clothing, his blood-drained, almost greyish skin, she dropped her arm.
Muttering filled the room.
“I don’t want any of you to go crazy here, okay?” Lodus looked around until he saw the face of the small-framed, blond-haired Dirk Danten, and met his friend’s eyes.
“No one’s going crazy,” Lady Litania said quietly.
“Something happened to me. Something bad. Sort of.”
Dirk sat back in his chair, putting down the cards he’d been holding in his hand. “What in the Twelve Hells, Lethal? Take that thing off your dropping head and –“
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Lodus removed the bandanna, revealing the glimmering hair, letting the lantern-light fall on his slightly-adjusted features.
“Mortiforn,” Dirk breathed, looking him right in the (what he assumed were) purple eyes.
“’What in Twelve Hells?’” Lady hissed. “You mean the shadowland!”
Lodus glanced at her as she flexed the muscles of her forearms, sending a stiletto-blade shooting from beneath her leather bracers and into each hand –
He could’ve moved aside or disarmed her, he was sure. But he wanted to let her try it. It could make things go more smoothly, here.
The weapons hadn’t even fully-emerged from her cuffs as she lunged forwards, gripping the handles and stabbing him in the heart and the throat.
Her aim was true; the neck was an easy target, and she’d got the tip of her other knife right through a buttonhole in the centre of his jerkin. They both penetrated his skin but the blade buried in his chest snapped off on one of his ribs, and the one in his throat got stuck in his changed flesh.
She tried to yank both weapons free, stab again, but neither wanted to budge. Not while he willed otherwise.
He gave her a grim smile, keeping his teeth hidden.
“May I?” he asked in a pleasant tone.
He gestured; she stepped back and, with a benign expression on his face, he reached up to twist each stiletto loose.
He leveraged his immense strength, ripping them free and letting them clatter on the boards. He took a moment to open his jerkin and explore the hole in his torso with his fingers – he soon found the broken shard of metal, slick with his weird, oil-like blood, and pulled it out. It joined the twisted daggers on the floor.
He could already feel the holes in his flesh itching as they knitted back together. He wiped his hands on his mucky vest.
“’Something bad. Sort of.’ I think I get it.” Dirk had a wary smile on his face. “You’re still you, right, Lethal? You still suck at fortify?”
“By Kultemeren, I’m still me,” Lodus replied. This time as he smiled he couldn’t help but display his teeth, and grinned yet further upon seeing his friend’s eyes widen. “I still don’t see why you ever take the Geomancer.”
“It’s a controversial choice,” Dirk replied tightly.
There was another moment of silence as the two stared at each other – everyone else in the room, even Lady, seemed to be eyeing the pair – then Dirk bowed his head in a gesture of acceptance.
“What are you?” someone asked in awe.
“A vampire, I think.”
Hushed exclamations rippled through the assassins.
“Don’t go picking any fights with trees, then,” Huntress Habitha suggested, her lips twisting. “Or kids with wooden swords.”
“Damn it,” Lodus muttered. “And I had that pencilled-in in my diary – Starday morning, duel a forest to the death…”
“Ouch,” Huntress replied. “Morning? No can do for you, anymore.”
“I think the greater take-away from this is that Lethal keeps a diary,” Dirk said, grinning; he leaned forwards again, putting his elbows on the table. “So what happened, mate? Last I saw, you were headed towards Sticktown…”
Lodus sat down at his table, and explained.
By the time he was done with his little story, two more assassins had joined the impromptu meeting, and none had left their places, everyone listening with rapt attention.
“That’s why I came back here.” Lodus sat back in his chair and spread his hands. “I know the way it’s supposed to go down. I run and hide, leave behind everyone I know, everything I had…” He looked around the room wistfully. “But I’m already a night-walker. Maybe, for me, the rules are different.”
“Yer look bloody ‘ard to kill now, Lethal,” said Charnel Charves, leaning forwards with an eager, almost envious expression on his bearded face. “What’s it like?”
Lodus raised an eyebrow and smirked. “You want to try it?” He put the thought of what that’d actually involve far from his mind…
What does it actually involve?
He couldn’t remember anything past being drained of blood. Had the vampire fed him its own afterwards? Was it that simple?
Dirk laughed, raising a hand as if to stop the idea in its tracks. “Don’t tempt them! They’ll be lining up to die.”
Sounds of amusement and not-complete-disagreement echoed around the room.
“What about drinking blood, boy?” Lady cut in; there was no humour in her voice. “What happens when you –“
“I can eat my marks,” he replied, to a general uproar of laughter.
He still didn’t like to even think about eating and drinking, and he was doing his best to ignore the odours of cider and pork pie lingering in the air, the slurping of ale and stew, disgusting distractions offered by those having their ‘midday’ meals. He looked down at his lap for a moment, composing himself; when he raised his head again, he glimpsed Lady’s eyes moving across the crowd, assessing the situation.
She knows I’m right, he deduced. The majority agree. It’ll go ill for her, if she tries to move against me.
“But you’re dead, right?” Dirk asked, with an unusual gentleness to the tone of his voice. “You can’t go out in the day?”
“I don’t know,” Lodus replied, frowning. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see?”
Lady had folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not letting you work until you know… how you work. And that’s final.”
She turned her back and stalked towards the bar. He opened his mouth to protest, but Dirk leaned forwards, saying, “Let it go, mate. She’ll come around once she’s had a chat with the boss-man. A vampire in the guild could be good for business, if we play our cards right. Speaking of…”
Dirk held out the deck of cards for Lodus to shuffle, but he shook his head, smiling.
“A game of fortify instead?” he offered.
“So long as you don’t give me any drop for taking the Geomancer…”
The guild had a fine fortify set, crafted from pewter, silver and glass, pilfered by one of the thieves’ guilds a couple of years back and traded in exchange for a discount on a contract. It was heavy, so they kept it on the bottom shelf of the cupboard near the door that led to the stairs and the meeting rooms.
Lodus crossed the room and hefted the thing as though it were made from wicker. Before it had taken two hands; now he used two fingers.
He returned and placed it down carefully on the table – he was still getting used to this new form, its new capabilities. Then he beamed at his old friend, baring his teeth once more.
“My dear fellow, don’t you know that is what’s called a ‘controversial choice’…”
* * *