All the streetlights outside the van could manage was a purpling of the night sky, but the interior light shone steady. The temperature had been dropping steadily since the sun went down, and I could now see white clouds each time I breathed out. The chill gripped my head and heart as I crouched and watched the large man twist on the floor of the van, the scratches on his face angry red lines against his pallid complexion of fear.

My stomach turned at the sight, bile rising in my throat. A deep flood of rage was pushing up my esophogas, mingling with the terror radiating off the man like a frightened animal. My head throbbed from the drain on Focus, and I felt a drop of sweat sliding down from my temple despite the cold. I pushed through these sensations with clenched teeth. But I forced my lips into a grin anyway.

The monster before me deserved it. All of it. Especially if what I heard him say about Jon was true.

"Bushra, go keep an eye on Thorsten." I said back to her without looking away from the ugly thing in front of me.

I heard silence, then a firm voice. "No."

I swiveled slowly from my crouched position and looked back at her. Her face was tired and her jaw bunched up in tension, but her eyes were clear and serious.

"It would be better if we didn't leave Thorsten alone too long, even if he's tied up." I tried in as reasonable a voice as I could manage.

She bit her lower lip and dropped her brows in worry, but her reply was strong and firm "No. I'm staying here with you."

I sighed and looked down at the floor. "You don't have to be part of this," I nearly whispered. I looked up at her again without standing, and forced my face to soften in a tender expression. "Leave it to me."

If anything, Bushra's gaze became harder. "Whatever you have to do, I'll help. It's my trial too."

I didn't understand, but felt the rising rage inside me break at that point, like a cresting wave. As it receded like the tide, it left behind an icy emptiness that sucked the breath from my lungs. I still felt my pulse throbbing and a tightness in my chest, but it was almost like the dull ache of a remembered injury, painful, but numb.

The crouching mess on the floor couldn't tear its eyes away from the ring I still held. A weird laugh escaped from his throat, shaken and thin. "You don't get it," he muttered, flecks of spittle flying from his lips. "She's a threat now because of that fucking app. Even if we don't need it anymore. He got what he wants, now he's just cleaning up!" His eyes broke from my hand, and started wandering around the interior of the van like a caged animal.

"If 'he's' so safe, why give you this?" I gestured with the ring, and I felt his sharp reaction, rage, fear, and a desperate need. "What does he still have to get?" I countered.

His burning eyes shifted away from the ring and locked on mine. "You don't know a damn thing, you dumb, ignorant bitch!" His voice rose in volume and pitch, ending in a screeching wail that reverberated in the close confines of the van.

I put back on the smug grin from before, and looked back down at him. "I know you are in some deep shit… Bruce was it?" In his own mind, he was a predator and I was prey. This was an intolerable situation to his ego. I wanted him as angry as possible, to push him as hard as I could, to see what broke loose. And I could feel that reaction building via Augur's Insight. But the fear was there, too, rising, pushing him to run, to escape.

He shook his head from side to side, lips pulled back tight across clenched teeth. "You DON"T know! You know NOTHING!"

"You're afraid of him." I purred low, with no idea who 'he' was. I had to keep prodding, keep him off balance. "Like a little child who has no idea why he's frightened. Told where to go, what to do, with no idea why."

"No, I'm his hands he said! He wouldn't throw me away." He was mumbling to himself now, panting. "He gave me that, my revenge!" His chin jutted toward the ring. "I would finally get what I deserved!" The arrogance and rage swelled, overcoming the fear for a moment. The corners of his mouth turned up in a sneer.

"Oh, you'll get what you deserve." I shook my head slightly in mock pity. "His hands? His pawn, more like it. Disposable."

That shook him. I had a moment to regret that last poke as his face crumbled and his whole body began quivering.

"No no no no nononono!" His head was shaking back and forth, as if by sheer force he could keep the fear at bay.

Maybe if I showed him a way out, an illusory escape. "If you tell me, we can get to him first. You can get away." I urged. "We can help each other."

His eyes latched onto me frantically. "You. He was worried about you." A panicked calculus seemed to be going on behind his eyes. "Give me the girl and the ring." His eyes flicked to Bushra. "I'll take you there. We can take him together." Augur's Insight confirmed the baldness of his deceit.

I sighed. "I can't help you if you're not honest with me, Bruce. I'll hold onto this," I pocketed the ring, and his eyes tracked it like a starving wolf stalking a meal. "But you have to give me something more concrete. Where is he, what's he after?"

"No, no, NO!" he screamed, breathing hard. "He'll kill you, kill me! You can't run!" His voice became ragged, eyes staring into some terrifying future. "He'll take you, take it from you, it's mine, mine! GIVE IT TO ME!" Wild-eyed, he levered his feet up on the side of the van wall and lunged forward. "Urnnnghh!" The weight of his whole body shuddered against the plastic zip tie, biting deeply into the skin around his wrists, straining – and it broke. He fell forward hard, his full weight landing solidly on his left shoulder, and I heard a ominous crack and pop. I quickly stood back and out of the way, nearly running into Bushra in the limited space of the van. But Bushra moved in, almost as if she was waiting for the moment and lashed out with a kick across his temple.

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"Ugnh– AAAHHGHH!" He suddenly let out a howl that shook the van, and his back arched up, his whole body tensed. "NO! NO! WAIT! WAITWAITWAITWAI–" at which point his voice transformed into a gurgling choking, his eyes bulging, neck red and swelling. A viscous dark fluid began bubbling up through his mouth, past the rictus of his lips, followed by a wispy shadow of smoke. Like an insubstantial snake, the smoke slithered its way up and out of Bruce's throat. It kept coiling up and out, seemingly too large to fit inside the man, while Bruce's terrible gagging gasps went on and on unintelligibly. Bushra and I jumped out of the van, all the while Bruce's horror and panic assaulting me via Augur's Insight… along with something else, something alien and… curious? Hungry?

"Bushra, that snake thing, can you do that golden kick on it?" I was backpedaling away, unable to tear my eyes away from the coiling miasma filling the rear of the van, rapidly obscuring Bruce's seizing body from view. I switched off Augur's Insight in self-protection, and turned on Aura of Inspiration. When I did, I heard something like a hiss in the back of my mind, and felt a weighty attention land on me. The writhing mist lurched, and seemed to pull back as if to strike… when a bright golden light flashed across my vision. Bushra, swathed in radiance, had lashed out with a leg into what appeared to be an insubstantial mist. But her leg seemed to land a hit on something solid within the smoke, and the incandescent aura around her surged forward to eat at the twisting mass. The smoke recoiled from that light, but it was too late – the shadowy form dissolved into thousands of individual tiny cinders that winked like dying fireworks and faded away to nothing. Bushra stood before the entrance to the van, leg fully extended, arms pulled in, eyes sharp and determined.

I suddenly tripped over something while backing up and landed hard on my ass. As I sat there in awe at Bushra's poised and, it had to be said, knightly form for the second time today, I heard a ragged whisper from the ground next to me.

"What the fuck was that," Thorsten murmured, the side of his face pressing awkwardly into a mess of vomit on the concrete ground.

✦ ✦ ✦

Bruce's limp and lifeless body lay on the van floor, neck and face swollen and distorted. Blood from the wounds on his face had dried, but it still oozed from the lacerations on his wrists where the zip-tie had been fastened. There was no trace of the smoke snake, or whatever it was.

Bushra had helped me to my feet, then lifted Thorsten easily from the ground by a his shoulder and pushed him down against the short loading dock wall. I noticed she avoided the mess on his face and clothes, keeping her nose averted.

"What was that?" She asked him hard, pointing back toward the van with one hand while keeping Thorsten pressed down with her other one.

"How the hell should I know?" Thorsten yelped, groggily. His eyes still seemed to have a hard time focusing. I must have given him a concussion or something earlier. Good.

Bushra glared at him, and I decided to intervene.

"I think now's the time to call the police," I said. "If this goes any further, there will be a lot more questions we can't answer." I looked down at Thorsten in contempt. "He's not lying, he's really ignorant about what Bruce was doing." I'd turned off the Aura of Inspiration and reactivated Augur's Insight after the snake dissipated. The edges of my vision were getting fuzzy and I started feeling nauseous, which meant I was pushing my Focus into the danger zone. But I could sense nothing but fear, confusion, and a lingering queasiness coming from Thorsten. Shortly after I felt a swelling sense of lust rising as he stared up at Bushra, and I turned off the skill, exasperated. "He's still a fucking pervert, though." I said, stepping back away from him. Bushra dropped him and did the same, her nose wrinkled in a grimace of disgust. Thorsten leered opened mouthed, undeterred.

"Yeah," she said, avoiding looking at Thorsten. "I'll call the cops. Where are we, anyway?" She looked around at the empty industrial lot.

I gave her the cross streets, and she looked at me funny. "Hero stuff?" She asked quietly, and I nodded. She shrugged, then pulled out her phone, powered it back on, and dialed 9-1-1.

While she made the call, I considered the other markers I'd seen on Location. I thought this might be the only opportunity I'd have to investigate them. Leaving the gross man under Bushra's icy gaze, I lifted myself up on the loading dock and headed toward the interior warehouse.

I'll save you the description of my search for the lights, and of scouring of the warehouse and assorted small offices. I left everything where it was, trying to avoid touching anything barehanded or leaving fingerprints. This whole situation was going to be hard enough to explain to the police.

What I found showed this to be some kind of small-scale electronic parts supplier. In fact, I was sure the drab sounding company name, Custom Components Corp, had been listed in one of the fraudulent invoices I'd been shown.

One of the markers was in a filing cabinet. It was so neglected, I had to move some bankers boxes stacked in front of it, but a bottom drawer held copies of a business license registration, naming Bruce Paap and Thorsten van den Berg as co-owners.

The other marker led to a desk drawer in a different office. When I opened it, there were a few office supplies, and a large and expensive looking smartphone with the battery removed. At a guess, Jon's missing phone. In the dim light I saw a streak of some dried residue, and shuddered. Remembering the terrifying feeling of helplessness under the effects of the ring, any vestigial sympathy for Bruce evaporated away. I clamped my jaw shut, and closed the desk drawer.

I went back to Bushra, who let me know the police had been dispatched. "What do we tell them?" She asked in a whisper, a sidelong glace toward Thorsten on the ground.

"Everything about the kidnapping we can tell as it was, except we don't know how we were paralyzed." I thought for a bit, going back over the events of the night. "We were able to get free as they were trying to move us inside. After we subdued them both and tied them up, we looked around for help. Bruce must have had some kind of seizure or something while we were away." I looked down at Thorsten, speaking a little louder. "He can say whatever he wants. There's enough evidence here to tie him to kidnapping, embezzlement, fraud, and a host of other crimes. With his… predilections, I'm sure more evidence will be found once people start looking." I frowned in distaste through a pounding headache.

Bushra pursed her lips in worry. "You think the police will buy all that?"

"Well, that's basically what happened. Except for the giant smoke snake." I shrugged. "Hell, I can't explain that to myself."

"You can't?" Bushra looked genuinely surprised. "It's not, you know, Hero-related?" She lowered her voice for the last bit, but we were far enough from Thorsten he likely wouldn't have heard anyway.

"Maybe?" I said. "Iter never mentioned anything like that. I've never seen anything like – shit!" I realized suddenly. "I could have appraised it! Damn it!" I clenched both fists tight against my forehead in self-reproach.

Bushra watched me worriedly, then patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. "Still, with Bruce gone and Thorsten ruined, that's good, right?"

I exhaled and unclenched my hands. "Yeah." She was right. Bruce had apparently dogged our steps from the beginning. "Though now we have another problem." I reached into my pocket and pulled out the ring. "Where – and who – did this come from?"