Will

  Exiting the warehouse, Will decided that he had better return to the farm. He needed to get the place liveable again, maybe round up some animals if there were still any that hadn't been taken by the local wildlife.

  Folk were avoiding him even more than usual, pedestrians giving him a wide berth so that there was a bubble of empty road around him wherever he went, even in the busier streets. He reckoned there was probably one rumor or another going around that had people thinking he was a devil without the horns. It wouldn't be the first time.

  At least it let him get around quicker.

  Will found his mind wandering, trying in vain to piece together some kind of plan for how to handle his newest rush order of contracts from Brimstone. The best thing would be to simply stall until Sam returned with Buck, but he was not nearly confident enough in the lord's patience to put much faith in that idea.

  He probably could actually pull off the kills if he put some elbow grease into it, but that felt like a waste of time and effort and potential allies, while also taking on considerable risk in facing three lifers at a higher level than him.

  There had to be another way.

  Absorbed in thought, it took him a while to realize that he had gone the wrong way somehow, taking into a Topside side street going north when he had meant to cross the lower bridge going east. As he went to backtrack, he somehow ended up even more lost than before, the side street not leading out onto a main thoroughfare like it should have, but an even more narrow alley, littered with stinking refuse and empty of people.

  "What the hell…?" Will grumbled, pawing at his bad eye.

  He was looking around in a vain attempt to get his bearings, cursing himself for getting so distracted, when a back door flew open maybe twenty feet ahead. A woman lurched out into the street, tall and bloody-faced, staring him down with an expression grim enough to curdle milk.

  Will's frown deepened as he studied her. "Sam…?" he asked, not quite believing what he was seeing. "What are you doing here?"

  "I'm not that easy to kill," Sam announced, fists clenching and unclenching. She settled into a low, tight guard, the walls pressing in too close around them to accommodate a wide stance.

  "What the fuck are you talking about? Sam, where is Mongrel? Who hurt you? Did something go wrong?"

  She ignored his questions, baring her teeth in a snarl as she came at him. "I'm going to give you exactly what you deserve, killer."

  Will couldn't believe what he was seeing. In fact, he really didn't. This couldn't be right, it was—

  Sam's fist collided with his chin and he reeled back with the impact, hanging onto the walls on either side as he teetered on his heels. He worked his jaw, blinking away the confusion, and just barely had enough presence of mind to duck the hard jab that came his way.

  She was moving impossibly fast, almost a blur, and he'd only halfway brought up his elbow to parry when a hook caught him below the ribs and pitched him into the right-hand wall. It was all he could do to keep backing away, keep dodging. She ignored all his attempts to talk her down, cold fury writ large on her face.

  Recovering somewhat from his initial confusion, Will let his cheek roll around a jab and noticed that she only had five AP crystals on her hard-muscled forearm. From her peeled-back snarl, he could also tell that she was missing those ridiculous new teeth of hers.

  But most importantly, he had taken a hit from Sam before, and this felt nothing like it. Each hit brought a real impact, which had fooled him at first, but there was no pain to follow it. No true weight.

  Will had almost backed himself into a dead end that hadn't been there before, but he forced himself to halt, stand his ground. He didn't draw his weapon. Instead, he closed his eyes and whispered: "Detect [Life]."

  The glowing outline in his mind confirmed it. Someone was standing behind him, invisible to the naked eye but outlined clear as day by the extrasensory perception afforded by Detect. Arm raised. Hand posed just so, forefinger curled…

  Will threw up a hand over his shoulder, Repelled hard. The hidden arm flew up, and a deafening gunshot clap broke the turgid stillness of the alley. A person gasped. Will spun, drew his saber hilt up, and hit the attacker with the pommel all in one fluid motion.

  The person fell with a pained yelp, and Will opened his eyes just as the Illusion shattered around him, both the vision of Sam and an unreal sheen that lay over the alley itself, details of the surrounding buildings shifting, connecting paths shuffling into their correct places.

  A woman lay sprawled on the dirty ground, spent muzzle-loaded pistol lying next to her. The woman rolled on her side to spring for her weapon, and Will knocked it away with the toe of his boot before she got close, sending the pistol clattering away out of reach. He placed a foot against the side of the woman's head, pressing her firmly into the filth.

  He fished up her left sleeve with the end of his sword to get a peek at her sheet. Level 7 Entertainer. She didn't look familiar. A freelancer, maybe?

  "You probably know how this works already," Will said, keeping his sustained cast of Detect [Life] active to scan for additional threats. He only sensed tenants shuffling around inside the surrounding homes, startled by the gunshot. "Tell me who sent you, and I let you walk out of here with all your pieces still attached."

  "No one fucking sent me!" the woman snarled, trying to spit out the unmentionable effluvia trickling into the corner of her mouth.

  "Right. Of course not." He ground his boot heel deeper into her cheek. "You have loyalty for your employer—I respect that. But you know, we have some empty cages up at the fort, and I am a pretty patient guy. So save yourself a finger or three or five, and tell me what I want to know."

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  The woman struggled weakly, but she wasn't getting up, and they both knew it. She tried to conjure another Illusion, but a firm stomp cured her of that notion. "No one sent me!" she hissed. "Someone had to stand up to you, freak!"

  "Oh, yeah? And why's that?"

  "Because you killed a good person."

  "Fascinating. They got a name, this person of yours?"

  "Fuck you. I'm not telling you anything."

  "If they're dead anyway, what's the difference?"

  "Sam Darling. She's the one you killed. Does she haunt your dreams, I wonder? Or are you enough of a monster that you feel nothing at all? You certainly look like one."

  Will blinked down at the dirty, scuffed-up woman on the ground, boot still pressed against her face. "Is your name Serene, by any chance?"

  "None of your business."

  "It is you, isn't it?" He took his foot off, hauled the woman to her feet by her baggy shirt, caught her wrist when she tried to claw his face and twisted her arm around so her face was pressed against a splintery wood building. "You've got bad information," he said in a slow, calm tone. "Sam isn't dead."

  "Bullshit!"

  "I was just talking about you, actually. Sam asked me to check in on you. Looks like you're doing all right to me, present life choices notwithstanding."

  "Wait…" Serene suddenly went very still. She couldn't look at him straight on with her face against the wall, but one bloodshot eye fixed him with an intense stare. "Are you… that guy she was obsessed with?"

  "I hope so."

  She was silent for a few seconds. "Let me go," she said, pushing against him for emphasis.

  "If I do, will you try to kill me again?"

  "Not if you're telling the truth."

  "All right, then."

  He took Serene out of the alley and over to The Lucky Lady, where he talked Joe Crag into lending him a private room without offering much explanation. Luckily he was a good sport about it.

  Will sat the woman down to check her over. Her clothes were filthy, but there wasn't much he could do about that except give her a rag courtesy of Joe to wipe away the worst of it. The right side of her face would bruise rather badly, but there were no fractures that he could tell. There was a good deal of older damage already present, marring a face that would otherwise have been quite attractive.

  "Sorry about all that," Will murmured while he took a pair of forceps to the woman's face, plucking out long splinters. She did not wince or make any noise in protest. "In my defense, you were going to blow my brains out."

  "I've had a lot worse for a lot less," Serene said; voice emotionless, eyes distant.

  "I'm surprised you showed such loyalty to Sam. From what she told me, it seemed like you only knew each other for a day or two."

  "Yeah, well." It sounded like she was going to continue into some kind of explanation, but instead she just fell quiet.

  "She has that kind of effect on you, doesn't she?"

  "That how she reeled you in?"

  "Pretty much. That girl is offensively charming."

  "Yep."

  "Yep, yep."

  Will finished up with her and gave her a mild painkiller from his medicine bag. Aside from her superficial injuries, he noted that she was also sweating excessively, with dilated pupils and twitchy hands. "You're an addict," he observed. "Opium? Or do you go in for the harder stuff?"

  Serene shrugged, picking at a few smaller hair-fine splinters that he had missed. "What's it to you?"

  "Nothing. It's a disgusting habit, that's all."

  "If you say so."

  He sat back from her, settling into his chair and beginning the process of resetting his supplies into the medicine bag. "Your talent with Illusions is impressive, though. That skill only works on one sense at a time, so you must have woven at least three separate casts together to make your little projection of Sam. You might have gotten me with it if you'd chosen a better subject for your distraction."

  "Thanks, I guess." She was staring off into the wall, dead behind the eyes. An AP crystal on her arm popped and went dark. A shimmer alighted on her face, settling into a perfect mask of smooth, unblemished beauty framed by her mussed black hair.

  The mask was seamless. If he didn't already know that it was an Illusion, he never would have guessed.

  "So, what now?" she asked. "Are you planning on letting me go?"

  "Not going to ask about Sam?" Will buckled his medicine bag shut, opened his Inventory, and stowed the compact satchel inside.

  "It's not really any of my business. As long as she's safe, it's all good."

  "Your devotion to avenging a friend is admirable. Stupid, but admirable."

  "Don't read too much into it. I've just realized that my life just isn't worth very much to me, that's all. Might as well throw it away on something 'admirable'."

  "You're a prostitute, is that right?"

  "Yep."

  "Interested in a job?"

  Serene cocked a sculpted eyebrow at him. Fascinating. The expression, despite being a manufactured Illusion, was perfectly lifelike. "I don't fuck my friends' boyfriends. Go ask someone else."

  "Not like that. Something more in the admirable and/or stupid direction."

  "Meaning?"

  "I have just the job for you. You'd be helping Sam and the city in the process. Doing good."

  "That sounds like pro bono work. I'll pass. No offense, but you're really not as charismatic as your girlfriend."

  "I'll pay you for your time."

  "My time's not cheap."

  "Good thing I've got a lot of money, then."

  "Whatever. What do you want me to do, exactly?"

  "You're going to help me and Sam kill Brimstone."

  "That sounds more stupid than admirable to me." She leaned back in her chair, gave a shaky sigh. "I find it hard to believe that Sam would sign off on murder."

  Will shrugged. "She's not the one who'll be doing the murdering. She understands that there is no way for this to end peacefully."

  "And for that matter, I also find it hard to believe that Sam would get with someone like you. Does she know what you do?"

  "As of recently, yes."

  "And she's all right with that?"

  "No. But she understands."

  "Understands what?"

  "That I kill because I have to, not because I like it."

  Serene's laughter dripped venom. "That's a lie, and you know it."

  "Because?"

  She tapped at the corner of her eye. "That eye of yours. When you had me on the ground, right under your boot, that eye told me everything I needed to know."

  "Such as?"

  "You wanted me to fight back. Wanted the excuse."

  He already knew what she meant, but he asked anyway. "Excuse to do what?"

  "To get your hands red, killer."

  Will shook his head, chuckling. "You've got a bit of a mouth on you."

  "Wouldn't be much of a whore if I didn't."

  "You want the job or not?"

  "Sure, what the hell? I'm feeling stupid enough."

  Will rose and kicked the chair back against the table none-too-gently. This conversation had taken a toll on his nerves. "Good. Come with me." He made for the door, pausing with a hand on the jamb. "My name is Will, by the way. Please don't call me anything else."