When Tasìa stepped out the door, one motorcycle caught her attention. A FTR 1200 in platinum white frame and silver trim. A lovely bike made for a lady like herself.

The heady staccato strumming of the Mariachis compelled her to consider the possibility of stealing it. You don't just listen to unbridled music of that excessive meter, you lived it in your soul and expressed it in your actions.

You made grand gestures to be in accordance with it.

Yes. Indeed. She should steal the bike.

She looked around, no one paid attention to her. A pair of lovers were necking on one corner of the restaurant stoop, and a pair of kitchen workers were on a smoke break. They spoke animatedly to one another beneath the cover of a back alley walkway.

She squatted against a nearby pole to study how the bike was secured. A lock was belted against the break. A thin titanium grid chain encased the interior of the locking mechanism.

It consisted of interlinked plates designed to thwart the ambition of a thief such as herself.

It could not be flexed and drawn back into the vehicle without access to the unlocking mechanism. Likely a set of wireless signals triggered by a key hold.

If she had a magnet in her fanny pack she could test for movable interior pins inside the locking grid. That was the common flaw in systems with impenetrable casing on the exterior; they necessarily relied on simple machine mechanisms in the interior to function correctly.

Abruptly, Tasìa giggled before she burst out in full-throated laughter.

She steadied her head. The beer she just gulped down made her feel light headed.

Steal a motorcycle! What did she need with it? Annebél promised to strap the Virago to the back of her jeep.

Besides, the owner was likely someone of modest means.

Punch up, Tasìa. Always, punch up. She recalled in her father's voice.

Not that stealing from someone of greater means was always justified.

Tasìa had a sixth sense about that sort of thing.

She could always tell when the Sicilian proverb 'behind every great fortune is a greater crime,' justifiably played true.

When she caught sight of the Alfa Romeo HybrClydis series sports car for the first time, it reeked of the owner's puerile stench of unworthiness.

The car was a masterpiece of technical design and subtle aesthetics repurposed for the gauche sensibilities of a gangster.

It had to be liberated. Justice demanded it!

She shook her head to admonish herself as she slowly stood up.

Okay, you drunk-ass little squirt. No more distractions from our hunt.

Tasìa lit a cigarette, and walked over to the kitchen workers.

She caught the notice of the one who leaned against a screen door. A nice looking lady of middle-age wearing short hair kept up in a net.

From the scent of her clothes, Tasìa gathered that she was the fry cook.

"These cherry smokes are so damned good. Want one?"

Tasia displayed the pack.

"Sure."

Both kitchen workers took one.

"Hey," Tasìa continued. "If you don't mind, I got a question."

"Shoot," returned the lady.

"If an accident occurred in the kitchen, say you cut yourself so bad that you needed to get stitches for it. Where could you go this late at night? What would be open at this time?"

The lady laughed, but nodded along with her.

"You mean like the guy with the finger in a bag of ice? Where would you go to get that taken care of?"

Tasìa stiffened up.

"You saw that?"

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"Let's just say that it didn't even surprise us when you came over to ask that question."

She was being watched more closely than Tasìa thought. What she mistook for indifference was merely discretion.

She never even caught the glances of those around her inside the bar.

"Okay," Tasìa admitted. "Where would he have gone?"

"A spook like that? They have the means to have themselves patched back up at the Flamenco Rosa." She turned her head towards the neon sign in case Tasìa missed it. "Their doctor dines at Señora Azul most every evening. The spook with the finger on ice went inside, looked around, then he high tailed it that way."

With that tip, Tasìa thanked the two kitchen workers, and departed.

The crow up on the steel gable truss was a corpse but it chose to stare back at her anyway. Most curious was the severed finger it bore in its beak.

Tasìa was only a block up the road from La Señora Azul when she felt its eyes on her.

"What in the Seven Hells is this?"

She whispered to the bird.

It gave no reply. Could the poor leprous thing even answer her?

She approached slowly and drew her gun.

Perhaps, Petro abandoned the finger as she suggested, but who would chuck their own finger in the middle of a street for a bird to pick up?

The crow took flight when the wail of a moaning man came out of a nearby alley; the alleyway was set up similar to the one four more blocks up the street the coyotes skulked.

Amongst the stacked up garbage bags, a pair of legs thrashed. She recognized them as Petro's limbs.

Tasìa approached, cautiously.

"Hey, Petro?"

"What the Hell do you want?"

His legs stopped moving as he lay half buried between the many trash bags. He breathed in and out slow and labored.

His shirt had been shredded and a gash was ripped into his side from his ribs to his thighs.

He was a blood strewn mess.

"Tonight is just not your night is it?"

"Apparently, not."

"The fuck happened to you?"

He coughed up blood into his hand before answering.

"Phase beast."

"A what now? I thought you Asunción slickers didn't have to deal with the same kind of weird shit that the rest of us in the Quadra have to."

His head turned towards the SkyTether Tower.

"We've got our own weird shit we have to deal with. It phased out when it heard you whistling as you approached. I don't think the attack was an accident -," he drew in air once more before speaking again, "- the fucker was set upon me on purpose."

Tasìa looked around the alley and up into the over hanging gables.

Whistling? Then it occurred to her that she was drunk, and the Solares style tune the Mariachi duo played so nicely was very much ensconced in her mental landscape.

Quite a little walking blackout she had there. Her bladder felt empty. She likely found another bush or tree to piss behind as well.

She never pissed inside if nature made things convenient to do otherwise. The often musty and mossy smell of the ground and the rustle of breeze against her naked flesh made a good squat a refreshing experience.

Tasìa tried to focus her thoughts. Though she was likely in mortal danger, a rhino could sneak up on her in her current inebriated condition.

"That phase beast, Petro. Any chance that it will come back?"

"I assume it will, my blood is spilt. Spilt blood like my bleeding hand makes those beasts highly intemperate."

"What does the thing look like?"

"Have you ever seen a furless cat?"

Tasìa made an ugly face. "Yuck!"

"Yeah. Well. Its a furless tiger. Odd enough, though, it still retains its stripes but as blue and gold tones ripped along its skin."

Tasìa shrugged. Fighting a tiger was out of the question in her present condition. Then again, she had the means to change her present condition.

Alcohol is just another poison, right? I can excise it in steam out of my pores.

Not her fight, though. If she was going to risk life and limb, it needed to be for a cause that she believed in, and not for this piece of shit.

"It sounds like I should get going before it gets back."

He coughed, again, and winced as he looked up into her eyes. Her compassion was likely not showing.

He asked.

"Yeah. Maybe. Hey, at least answer me this, you were stalking me, weren't you?"

Tasìa laughed. She did a quick rundown of the time factor. Petro should have arrived back at the motel several minutes earlier.

Instead, he found a spot in the alley to lay in wait for her when the beast arrived.

"Yup. Why did you do it? Try to shoot Fodor?"

"I was spooked like you were. They are all Manifested." Petro coughed before he spoke again, and he wiped his face. The flannel sleeve was drenched in blood. "You were at the IMCQ, right, Ms. del Alma-Gris?"

She nodded. She really wanted to get going. Before she did so, she needed to shoot Petro in the face as not to leave his death to chance in case the phase beast did not return.

Then she would split. Not run like hell, as that could attract the thing. Instead, scamper up the two story building where the beast would unlikely be able to follow her.

She assumed the beast's phasing ability was an invisibility illusion of light wave manipulation and not actual inter-dimensional travel as that was purely a science-fiction concept not as yet invented if it ever could be a possible engineering feat the human race could achieve, but what the hell did she know?

In a croaking whisper, Petro asked her.

"Hey, are you still with me, misses?"

"Sorry. I'm drunk."

"I can see that."

"Two doppelbocks and an extra stout is equivalent to an entire six pack of piss lager in terms of alcohol content."

"Not my call to say otherwise."

Tasìa was torn in her decision of what she was going to do next.

She needed to shoot him, and save herself, but in good conscience she needed to hear him out. What was the point he was trying to make before she lost focus?

"Yeah. The IMCQ? What about it? What's your point in bringing it up?"

"Ward Ocho."

Tasìa nodded. The Spore Isolation Unit.

"Fodor's woman he lived with back at the Flamenco Rosa tried to kill herself. They medevaced her out of there.

"No one knows what has become of her since. Likely, she lost her mind entirely.

"She complained of these whispers she would hear at night that made her question her sanity.

"When you exposed them as the Manifested they are, back at the bar, I saw this spectral glimmer in Fodor's eyes. Indeed, that's what we call them, the Manifested that have to be kept in minimized proximity to the staff at Ward Ocho. Spectres."

Tasìa grabbed onto the side of the garbage bin as she began to feel dizzy. She had misread Petro's intentions.

He tried to kill Fodor out of fear and not to silence him for speaking up. Shit. She was prepared to kill him over the false assumption.

As she gathered her strength, the breeze bellowed hard. A growl whistled through it.

She turned to look, and she caught sight of its blue and gold striped head at the top of the alley as the phase beast merged back into time and space.