Elise's eyes got lost for a moment studying the woman's thick mane of scarlet red that appeared unnatural though she wasn't entirely certain if that heightened coloration was preternatural or a dye job given the roots of it were consistent with the body of her hair.

The golden hued lady breathed hard and unsteady. Elise signaled for everyone to lower their weapons. The woman held her hands against her sternum. Her fingers were in a panicked jitter.

"Relax. Just keep your hands where we can see them and we're cool. What is your name?"

The woman cleared her throat.

"Hecate. Hecate Balmori."

"I can give you a sedative that will help with your breathing, Senora Balmori. Sit on that stool if you like."

Balmori nodded her head vigorously.

"Yes. Yes. I think I'll have a heart attack if I don't calm it shut."

Calm it shut. Elise took notice. That's an interesting phrase. The first inference that came to her mind was the Sigrid Rosa document on the tangle of voices that lived inside del Alma-Gris' head.

"We're here to shut this madness down," Elise said.

Hecate appeared exasperated and her voice grew tightly shrill.

"How can you keep your cool when you see something that grotesque happen? I'm in the middle of all of this, this is my reality obviously, and my mind never, never adjusts to this shit."

Elise administered a shot through a needle-less pressure pointer against the soft ridge of Balmori's left shoulder.

"I don't know what to tell you, Senora Balmori. Perhaps serving a greater purpose helps keep the fear at bay but neither should I assume that you don't."

Her answer was intentionally vague, Elise played it cautious with the petite woman, friend of Sachmilli's or not. This was bizarre after all. Was this skin condition a variation on the Otros pathology? Or, entirely unrelated?

Elise continued. "So . . . I don't mean to be rude by asking, you look absolutely ravishing by the way, but how did you wind up looking like that?"

"Golden? It eventually goes away but while the condition is active I am a conduit for a collective unconscious."

Elise gave her a close inspection. Hecate was indigene. Did she mean in service to the racial memory of her people, or did she mean something else?

She glanced around to see if the team was keeping to their task or were distracted by the sight of Hecate. Bruges studied the woman with a scientific curiosity. He could be put to better use.

"Bruges, I need you to collect several samples from the ascospore and run whatever test you have available. I have a feeling it is key to this puzzle."

"Oh, it is," Hecate enthusiastically agreed. "The sacrifice ritual attunes the ascospore until it is ripe. Once ripened, it can be used for the golden ceremony to create my special condition. We were attempting the next phase, feeding that young ascospore until it ripens. It is a shame you destroyed it. I would have acquired a golden lover."

Though fascinated by where that inquiry would lead it was not pertinent to the mission. Elise decided to ask Hecate what she knew about the remaining two floor levels.

"This activity your group here engages in is directed by the people down stairs, correct?"

Hecate was about to speak when Sachmilli interrupted through the comlink.

"Senora Luna Claro, could you have one of your men escort the lovely damsel to the service van?"

For a moment she glared. Elise had a bad feeling about that request.

"I'll send her over once I have everything I need to know."

Sachmilli was silent for a moment.

"I'm afraid . . ."

Elise was at times quick to temper; it was the source of her reputation to which she was deemed by many to be difficult.

"Oh, Lord, Cuervo! Not you too! Not now!"

Sachmilli cleared his throat.

"I'm afraid that further interrogation of Senora Hecate Balmori would compromise our operation."

Elise noticed the eldest male of the group they had bounded and restrained had his head turned towards their conversation.

"It is already compromised. These people we have subdued already know of Hecate's duplicity thanks to you."

She could hear Sachmilli click the tip of his tongue as if he was measuring what to say next.

"And, no, we are not going to murder the detainees," she answered before he asked.

Sachmilli cursed softly.

Elise decided to put her foot down.

"I'm calling off the mission. I won't put my people in danger when the contractor is quite evidently compromised. Claro out."

She cut the comlink.

Caza nodded his head.

"I'm impressed. What do we do now?"

"We wait a minute," Elise answered. Her eyes glanced down, searching into Hecate Balmori's brassy orbs. They were a few tones darker than her skin.

The little pixie of a woman looked away with a nervous quiver in her lips.

"Anyone ever tell you you have the prettiest green eyes," she asked Elise.

Elise chuckled. "Don't mean to sound vain but I get that a lot." Elise continued but her voice turned somber. "I need to know something, Senora Balmori. Is Sachmilli ever abusive to you?"

The golden's forehead wrinkled, and she sneered.

"It is not like that at all. Gael-Sebastian and I were once engaged. He was the most precise of gentlemen until that damned thief lead him astray."

"You know del Alma-Gris?"

Hecate nearly spat. "I have never met her."

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Elise meditated on the raw animosity.

Did del Alma-Gris introduce Gael-Sebastian Cuervo to the Opium-Eaters and their vida loco ways? Her bio indicated the thief dealt in almost anything pharmaceutical as a trade product but she was chiefly interested in mind altering psychotropics for her own use.

This wasn't her scene.

Elise decided she was reading too much in to it. This was likely a simple matter of jealousy. Though not an outright beauty, del Alma-Gris was striking in her appearance and there was a certain coolness in her slough eyes that drew men towards her.

And once more, Elise needed to steer the conversation back on course. Now her distrust of Sachmilli was her most essential concern.

"So, Sachmilli has you keeping tabs on Gael-Sebastian and you got caught up in this cult activity yourself?"

By Balmori's reaction, an affected grimace, Elise knew it wasn't that simple.

"From the sound of your conversation with Sachmilli, I probably shouldn't answer that question until I know what he wants."

Elise glanced at her watch. Nearly five minutes had passed since she delinked from that conversation with Sachmilli.

She turned away from the little golden.

"Alright crew. Let's call it a night," Elise yelled out. "ETA Bruges?"

"Give me five more minutes."

"You got it, chief."

Elise heard a whimper from Balmori. The Golden's eyes ran with tears.

"Keeping tabs on Gael-Sebastian was never your primary objective for being here, at least from Sachmilli's stand point, was it?"

Hecate's jawline quivered.

"No." She grew silent for a moment. "You are not just going to let Gael-Sebastian be assimilated are you?"

"That is up to Sachmilli, and his willingness to be straight with me. I wont risk the lives of these good people any further when my suspicions are off the charts about what is really going on here.

"I'll give him five more minutes to call back, but that is it."

Hecate finally looked back into Elise's eyes.

"What are your suspicions?"

"That Sachmilli has his own designs on this little pharmaceutical-nanospore venture. That he sent both yourself and Gael-Sebastian to investigate this operation and that is how the younger Cuervo caught his nasty habit. Likely, that was by intention when this establishment got wind of who Gael-Sebastian is and they fed him strains of dope with suggestive properties embedded. Also, I gather by his behavior that Sachmilli knows the operative crew in this building personally. How am I doing?"

Senora Balmori bit her lip.

"Mostly correct."

"Thank you," Elise said. "Can you tell me what to expect down stairs, and where is the entrance by the way?"

Hecate's eyes appeared hopeful. Indeed, Elise was reconsidering the mission even without Sachmilli if the golden could fill in enough of the details so they weren't flying blind.

A metallic screech like a wheel turning rippled up the hallway near the offices.

"That's the entrance down to the subbasement," Hecate confirmed.

"They are coming up?"

"No," Hecate answered. "It's being opened from this side."

Elise squeezed her comlink. "Birddog what's going on up there?"

No answer. Elise grit her teeth.

"If he has done anything to Fiona . . ."

Hecate's voice got whispery.

"The hellhounds will be roaming about out of their cages. What is Sachmilli thinking?"

Elise breathed in deeply, "everyone back on point. Get in position. Caza, slow crawl us."

Elise glanced at the golden. She had made up her mind that she was going to sit still.

Half way up the hall they dropped into a crouch and hugged the walls at the sound of a ten gauge shotgun going off twice.

It was followed by a roar, and the swift gallop of a beast. A hellhound rushed passed the corner before it angled straight towards them. Tri-bursts from all six guns fell the beast.

Elise gave it a good run down with her electronic eye.

So, that's what those monsters look like up close.

After reloading, the crew picked up the pace.

Elise yelled.

"Sachmilli, if you have harmed a hair on Fiona's head you are a dead man!"

Several shotgun blasts exploded from nearby before the gun flew up, hit the ceiling, and planted itself beneath a free standing desk while Sachmilli fell backwards with a hellhound lunging at his neck.

He kept the beast at bay with his arms locked in place. Three teflonrazor rounds destroyed the top of the hellhound's head. It jerked its neck back severely and was freed from Sachmilli's grasp. It's jaw clamped to Sachmilli's forearm.

Elise assessed that it was going to take precision to dislodge the unnatural animal.

"Guns locked in place," she commanded.

With the team's weapons pointed downward, Elise rushed forward with her K-bar drawn. She punched a hole just above the hellhound's jaw hinge and levered the blade downward with all of her strength.

One press wasn't going to do it even though the blade was titanium with a graphene lattice molding the metal into a seamless mesh at the nanometer level.

She lunged her arm downward several times with her two hands gripped to the blade handle. It still would not break. Each lunge, however, caused Sachmilli to squeal. His face turned beet red.

"Chief, lets clear him out of the way." It was Levon the biggest man on her crew. "Gallo Puntera sees a lot of movement on the scans below."

Elise nodded to let Caza know he was back in control as she and Levon dragged Sachmilli and the hound out of the line of fire. The guns went back up.

Levon didn't wait to be ordered. He grabbed the K-bar by the handle, thrust the blade deeply at a steeper angle than Elise incised it the first time, and he applied all his body mass until the hound's jaw cracked open, and the beast dropped to the side.

Elise had a smart gauze at the ready for the blood fountain she anticipated would occur when the canine's teeth released their hold.

Sachmilli let out a howl. She held the gauze on for several seconds until it fitted itself to the wound and no longer bled.

"Thank you, Levon. That beast is made up of something supernatural."

He nodded. "You had the right idea but the density in that skull . . . damn."

Levon returned to the arrowhead formation.

Sachmilli breathed hard at her side. His skin returned to a more natural appearing brown. She did not offer him anaesthetic. Elise watched him for a moment before she stood up, aimed the Saturnine, and shot at the floor at his left ear.

He winced but said nothing.

From the nearby stairwell a voice echoed.

"Sachmilli? I've got the hounds locked down. Let's talk."

Elise squinted at the elder man.

"Don't you say a word to him."

Sachmilli gave her a contemptuous scowl. He raised up to speak but before he could mutter a word, Elise flicked a neurotoxin grenade down the stairwell.

It popped off like a set of firecrackers.

"Sachmilli! We had a deal. Call off your goons!"

"Ignore him," Elise commanded. "What did you do with Birddog?"

His eyes pointed to his waist. A small airgun was clipped to the inside of his belt.

"Tranq. I didn't want her to warn you."

"We had a deal!" The man below yelled once more. His words grew slurred. Evidently, he didn't completely dodge the bellowing gas.

Elise nodded. "Answer him."

Sachmilli lifted his torso up so he could yell clearly.

"You stop the assimilation of my son. That has gone on far enough."

The man below cursed.

"That is neither mine, yours, or Gael-Sebastian's decision. You knew that when you shook on it. Be reasonable. Come down. Let's talk."

Whose decision was it then? Elise asked herself.

Sachmilli shook his head as he expired with resignation.

"I'm coming down. I'm coming down alone." He then turned towards Elise. "Senora Luna Claro. Your services will no longer be required."

Elise scowled.

"So just like that, after putting this raid together, risking myself and this crew, our lives, you are giving up on your son?"

"There is more at stake here than you can imagine," he protested.

Elise squinted, hacked up a luigi and spat in his face.

"Don't think for a moment we are square after the shit you pulled, Cuervo."

She turned away and motioned for the team to follow.

For an hour after she put Fiona to rest in the tech's own trailer, Elise lay nude in bed and she smoked away at a pack of cigarettes that a guest had left behind more than a year before. Elise kept them in the freezer for the right moment.

She gulped down the last red wine in her glass, set it down, and told herself it would be the last of the evening.

"Here I thought the bastard was the straightest shooter I ever met. Fucker was just using me for leverage with no intention of going through with a full rescue and bounty on those shitheads."

Elise rarely cursed, unless she was angry enough to shoot someone. To calm herself down, and be true to her creed, she tried to see it through Sachmilli's point of view but it did not come easy.

How does one justify making common cause with a drug cult, sacrificing one's own son, not to mention that spritely little thing Hecate? His actions seemed so monstrous but until that turn of events nothing about Sachmilli seemed to be anything other than good and genuine.

Mel came to mind. The bird would not serve an evil master. Whatever Sachmilli's reason for these transgressions it involves that greater cause that the crow serves - identifying the Manifested and getting the individual cured wherever it was possible.

That had to be part of the equation. Sachmilli was blind to the destructive duplicity of those other actions due to the assumed nobility of his over all intention.

Elise poured a half glass of wine. This would be the last, certainly.

The caution light slowly pulsed its circle around the parameter of the ceiling. Elise was expecting this unfortunate late night call the entire evening. She had the gate sensors set to identify the person and let her in.

Elise slipped on a robe and opened the door. Tasìa del Alma-Gris approached, and stopped in front of Elise. Her eyes were dry but her lips quivered.

"He is dead. My prince is dead."

She threw herself at Elise in a tight embrace which Luna Claro leaned herself into, and soon the bounty hunter's bosom became soaked in the little thief's warm tears.