A/N: I do not own the Cal Leandros series, or any of the characters therein, I'm just having fun. I swear to you, writing those last five paragraphs to this chapter was like pulling teeth! I really don't know what the difficulty was, either, it was straight from the book anyway! Sheesh!
Posting this on the fly before I head to work: probably ya'll will be getting updates at night or around three AM in the morning, now, as I work nightshift. Nice surprises in your mailbox in the morning? I hope!
A special thanks to SensiblyTainted for being the first review last chapter! Thanks also to: Kin-outcast1, Comuterale, halesgirl101, genesblues, and Parnassus!
Chapter Four: Friend and Foe
It's just one of those days when you don't wanna wake up
Everything is fucked, everybody sucks
You don't really know why
But you wanna justify
Ripping someone's head off
No human contact
And if you interact
Your life is on contract
Your best is to stay away, motherfucker
It's just one of those days
-"Break Stuff," Limp Bizkit
The day started way too early, and badly. A bunch of revenants decided they wanted to park in our garage. Not happening. But I woke up after it felt like I'd only just gotten to sleep when Niko bolted upright in bed, one hand planted right in front of my chest. I jolted and held very still, and wondered how I'd ended up being spooned again. I hate being spooned - I'm too old for that coddling shit. Niko's stillness only lasted a moment; then he swore and was up, jumping over me to land on bare feet. He grabbed the nearest sword and bolted out of the room. I rolled out of bed right behind him, grabbing my Glock from under the pillow, and followed.
Niko did not take the stairs. He hit the balcony railing and vaulted it. A whole story's drop. Ouch not me! I took the goddamn stairs.
Now. A dozen revenants is not exactly hard. Except when they're all crammed into one tiny locker-room in the back of your abandoned firehouse and your brother is already in there swinging a broadsword with abandon. He was removing heads, limbs, and anything else without discrimination. That and the way he smelled told me he was pissed. Frankly? I was too. I had to go to work in about five hours and I hadn't gotten any sleep. And after we killed all these rude fuckers we were going to have to bag them up and chunk them in the dumpster outside.
Fuck. That. Noise.
I started shooting wherever Nik was not, which was harder than it sounds. Niko moves like fucking lightning when he's got a mind to. And he was. So every shot I took? I had a fair chance of clipping him. Talk about pressure. But I was just mad enough that I was on the edge of not really giving a shit. A dozen revenants in one small tight space, and it took us all of ten minutes. Niko stood there panting and I shot the last wriggling twitching torso. Niko glared at me and I glared back.
He looked around at the mess. "I want a drink."
So before we cleaned up the reeking revenant pile, we made cocktails and got roaring drunk. So we didn't have much in the way of food yet, but we had a hell of a liquor cabinet. Most cocktails have really hilarious names. Like White Russian, Sex on the Beach, Black Cat, Screaming Orgasm, Dusk in Eden, Vampire, Frog in a Blender, Screaming Greenie... Niko and I mostly just went for getting drunk, quick, and that generally involved a series of vodka shots, a little absinthe, a little whiskey, Jagermeister, and the last of that one bottle of white wine because Niko had it open.
This did nothing to improve our tempers, even if it seemed a damn good idea at the time.
Cleaning involved shovels, trashbags, and vomit, because the smell was fuckin' fantastic and I was drunk as hell. It takes nearly lethal amounts of alcohol to get me that drunk, but it'd had the opposite effect that I'd wanted. Dammit. Niko shouted at me, I shouted at him, we threw things...the shovel, a severed arm, a severed head, a brick...
We cleaned up, we showered, and we collapsed again into bed. I had to be up in three more hours and I set the alarm.
I overslept said alarm.
By two hours.
So when I did get up, I was late, I was hungover - which never happens unless I've really tried to kill my liver and haven't slept enough - and Niko woke up with a migraine from his skull fracture and hungover. That was what had gotten me up, actually - him throwing up on the floor. Yuck. Niko was pissy, I was pissy, Niko was in pain and determined to make sure he wasn't the only one being miserable today. He knocked my feet out from under me every time I passed him trying to get ready. By the way, it's hard as hell to get ready for work in any amount of time when somebody keeps kicking you in the ankles so you end up going splat on the linoleum.
So I got to work late, with my ankles and elbows and hips bruised, my eyes bloodshot and my fuckin' head feeling like an overripe tomato on a thin stem. I'd be fine in a few more hours, as my Auphe half purged the poison from my system, but until then I was going to feel like shit. All this because I got drunk instead of getting alcohol poisoning. Or, you know, dead. Niko, however, was going to spend the rest of the night being fast friends with the toilet. Was I worried about him? Not really, we'd both been stupid like this before and lived. He'd been coherent enough to time his kicks precisely before I'd left, he'd be okay now.
"You're scaring the customers again."
Rather than move my aching head, chin propped in my hand, I rolled my eyes towards the speaker. With pale blonde hair to his shoulders, grey-blue eyes, a straight slash of dark brows, and white wings barred with gold, the only things that kept him from being a figure out of a stained glass window were the weapon-calloused hands and the long scar along his jaw from chin to ear. Ishiah, who owned the bar, was one kick-ass angel if ever there was one. You could all but see the flaming sword, not to mention the nonflaming boot he'd be happy to put up your ass. Except he wasn't exactly an angel; he was a peri. No-one seemed to know exactly what a peri was, though. They were rumored to be the offspring of angels and demons, but I think there'd be more horns or scales for that. And less of an air of moral superiority.
"How am I doing that?" I grumbled. Yes I was impressed by him, usually, but tonight I was feeling like hell and that made me very devil-may-care. Kill me now, relieve my misery, let me live, it was the same deal right now. "By slinging drinks and making change because none of these cheap-ass bastards leave tips? Yeah, that's scary shit right there."
I liked getting tips, okay? A good tip could make my whole damn week when it came to pay.
Ishiah's wings flexed, shimmered with light, then disappeared. It was a neat trick. I didn't ask how he did it or how any of the peri did it, for that matter. We all had our secrets, though I kinda wanted to know. I mean, those wings were real and getting clipped by one hurt like a bitch, but when they were gone, they were gone. Not just invisible, gone. Hell of a magic trick. Ishiah, now looking like just a man, albeit an unusual one, said in a low tone for the two of us only, "You're being Auphe."
That made me raise an eyebrow. So I was half-Auphe, yeah, but it didn't seem to really freak anyone out that badly. They still bought drinks when I was behind the bar, after all. "And how am I doing that?"
Grey-blue eyes studied me gravely. I had the feeling he was seeing right through my skull - that was the kind of look Ishiah had. "Let us say," he began, evenly, "That you don't precisely look happy. And when you don't look happy..." He raised his eyebrows in the direction of the clientele, some who knew by the grapevine and some who could smell the Auphe in me, who were either clustered on the far side of the room or at closer range silently snarling. "That happens. It's not good for business."
"Happy. I can do happy. Just not when I'm hungover as hell," I answered, baring my teeth in a parody of a grin. Or maybe it was a grin, just on the Auphe side of things.
"Gods save us. I haven't seen an expression like that since Medusa went through menopause." Robin dropped onto the barstool in front of me. "Quick. Brandy before you destroy my will to live with your catastrophically bad temper."
Ishiah immediately drifted off. He and Robin had some sort of problem with one another. I had no idea what it was, or why Ishiah had hired me if it wasn't as a favor to Robin. Maybe it'd been to annoy him, who the hell knew. But with Robin's mouth and the way he'd talk, if one of them didn't leave, there'd be little left of the bar for me to terrorize with my inner Auphe. They would pull the place down around our ears.
"Catastrophic temper? Really?" I asked, as I reached for the good stuff kept under the bar just for Robin. A hundred years old, it was still barely fetal in age to his point of view. Yet another mystery: why Ish would stock it for him when they weren't exactly friends.
"If you've got half the temper your brother does, it's definitely catastrophic," Robin announced. "Not to mention your fighting skills, or your fashion sense. You could probably put on eyeliner and join the rest of the Children of the Night knockoffs at the local Goth bar."
"Eyeliner?" I demanded, and eyed the black bar apron, the black longsleeve-Tshirt, the black jeans, and the battered black keds. Okay, so maybe that was pretty Goth. The black holsters and guns on either shoulder? Common sense fashion. Everything goes with a matte black Glock, my friends, everything. "I do not need eyeliner." I put a glass and the squat bottle on the bar for him.
"Perhaps not. You do have incredible eyelashes," Robin declared, pouring himself a drink. I blinked. That was not something I'd been told before.
"...the hell?"
Robin chuckled at my confused expression. "Women would die for long thick lashes like those. Now improve your attitude and you'll get more tips, pretty-boy."
"Oh fuck you sideways." I flipped him off, and he smiled, because he could tell I was trying not to smile. My head was misery but Robin was teasing me like he hadn't just learned Niko and I had a hell of an unhealthy relationship.
It probably said a lot about us that one of our current closest friends was a used-car salesman. Robin saluted me with the glass, smiled like a fox in the henhouse, and drank it down. Yeah, that smile...trouble didn't cover it and disturbing didn't cut it. Predators smiled like that, and a used car salesman was a hell of a predator in my book. Robin had even sold us a used car, but it at least had been pretty decent. Niko was still fine-tuning the engine, because recently the air conditioning had started to quit and that just wasn't good. I mean, hell, it was fall and we would need the heat soon, not the A/C, but Niko was Niko and anything less than functional was not acceptable.
A werewolf came up to the bar to order. It was obviously hard for him to talk around a mouthful of fangs straight from The Call of the Wild, but he pointed just fine. He clearly wasn't one of the fine-breds, but from one of the line-breeding efforts to achieve recessive wolf traits. I wasn't one to judge, but having the same grandfather on both sides didn't exactly lend itself to intelligence...or speech, for that matter.
I handed over his brewski, he paid, and did not tip. I glared at the exact change but did not, very pointedly did not, throw anything at him, not even a bar napkin. Dammit, how was I supposed to make enough to buy that new holster I wanted? Fuckers.
"I believe I've offered you the opportunity, but you've never taken it," Robin said.
I stared at him a moment until my hungover brain caught up with that one and connected the apparent non sequitur to my previous comment. "What?! Ew, no! Gross, Robin, no!" I did not swing that way, we were mostly friends, and after all the stories of who he'd done, and where, and how often...just no.
Robin laughed at the face I pulled, and smoothed his wavy brown hair. One curl fell free and hovered right above an eyebrow, right above glittering green eyes. His shirt matched his eyes, verdant and fine, and his suit jacket was a rich dark brown. Dressed to the nines, as usual, and probably that shirt alone could buy me three holsters, if not a new gun altogether. He picked up the bottle and stood, the amber liquid in the bottle not sloshing even a millimeter. When you'd been alive as long as he had, you tended to be pretty damn controlled and graceful in your movements.
"Well, since you decline, I'm off to more agreeable prospects." He winked rapaciously. "Do you want to guess? Male or female? Other? One or three? I'm willing to gift my knowledge to the less fortunate."
"You've ruined my virginity by proxy, which is not a good thing because I don't do dudes," I told him. "Get thee gone, Satan."
"It's 'get thee behind me, Satan,' " he returned.
"Hell no, not with you. As much as you've groped Niko's ass, behind me is the last place I want you, randy old goat." I pointed to the door. "Hence, get thee gone, thou miscreant. For I fear misadventure with thee near; nay, speakest thou not, yet go, I beseech thee."
I broke out my best Shakespeare, and what do you know, it worked. Robin smiled that bright, clear, surprised smile that I could always startle out of Nik when I pulled my old theatre lessons to the front. I did my best not to really advertise I'd done drama in highschool. Really, how lame can you get? But with a monster's name from high literature, well, why the hell not? I'd played Caliban in my eighth-grade's production of The Tempest, which really had amused me and Nik to no end.
With a graceful salute, Robin bowed, and left, tossing me a smile over his shoulder.
Less than a moment later, Ishiah returned and watched Robin disappear out the door. He looked exasperated. Scratch that. Not exasperated - highly, profoundly annoyed. And intent, very intent. It was a peculiar combination. I blinked as it hit me. "Oh, hey, I get it. You have a thing for him."
He turned his gaze to me. It was still annoyed. "Insolent bastard."
Me or Robin? I went with me this time. "True enough, but it doesn't change the fact that you were watching his ass." I tossed the bar towel over my shoulder and nodded. Not that I had any idea if Robin's ass was worth looking at. That wasn't the way my boat floated, but Robin had told everybody in the free and not-so-free world that it was. Maybe Ish had an opinion on the subject. "By the way, is it a good..."
He turned and walked away before I could finish the question.
I shrugged. Well, not really my business, but one day I'd get an answer on that point. Maybe I'd ask the next patron I saw Robin flirting with instead. Less tetchy than a peri would be.
At four, I closed up the bar. Swept up the feathers, fur, and scales, locked up the doors and headed home. It was a long subway ride from St. Mark's Place, where the bar was, to our home in the south Bronx. I dozed off twice and fell out of my seat both times. I still wasn't happy, but my headache was gone and I at least didn't feel like shooting anyone who moved wrong.
I came in through the side door of the firehouse, ignoring the loud argument that was going on across the street. That brownstone house had an awful lot of traffic after dark. I was pretty sure it was a whorehouse. Classy, man, that was our neighborhood, sure. I didn't even flinch at the muffled gunshots that rang out as I trudged up the stairs to our apartment. I was tired as all fuck, but I had that buzz in my head that probably meant I was going to lie in bed staring at the wall until Niko came to get me up for the day. Insomnia, yay.
I opened the door and walked into the semi-dark apartment. The lights were on in the kitchen. I walked in and found Niko leaning against the counter. He smelled like stale alcohol, soap, and anger bitter and thick. His eyes were bloodshot but he focused sharply on me, and tapped my phone on the counter with one very annoyed finger.
"Oh fuck." I'd forgotten it in my hurry to get to work.
"Fuck is right," he said, in a deceptively soft voice. I knew that tone. He was too pissed to even growl, reining in everything tight and hard. "Your favorite vampire called. She wouldn't leave a message with me, but I think she has a job for you. Pick up your damn phone and call the bitch back."
I startled - Niko didn't usually call women names like that. Despite Sophia, he'd always been respectful of women in general. Promise must have said something, I decided, that had really ticked him off. I had no idea what it could have been, though. I didn't know what Promise really thought of him, and I'd thought her too classy to resort to the kind of insults it would take to put Niko in this kind of rage. After a measuring moment, I stepped closer and picked up my phone. I was almost electrically aware of Niko's bulk at my side, his anger bitter to smell, and visceral memory told me how hard he'd hit to knock me down on the floor. I flinched when he touched the back of my neck as I dialed, but his hand only rested there, heavy and hot, as I raised the phone to my ear.
"Promise. Hi. Nik said you called?"
She had, and she had another job lined up for me. Apparently she was on the board of directors for the Metropolitan Museum, via an ex-husband, and the curator had a problem of the supernatural kind that she didn't want to call the police on just yet. Beyond that, Promise didn't offer details, just told me to show up at the museum as soon as possible. I thought longingly of sleep, decided I wasn't getting any today, and told her we'd be there. We, because no way in hell was I doing it without Nik.
I hung up and looked up at Nik; the callouses on his hand rubbed at my neck as I moved. "Get that?"
"Got it," he agreed, mildly enough. "Next time, remember your goddamn phone, Cal."
"I'll try, okay? I was a little distracted this morning," I grumbled, annoyed because he'd been a big part of that distraction. His hand tightened against my neck in silent warning. I stiffened my shoulders. He didn't get free reign. And he knew that.
"How was work?" He let his hand fall away, and turned to go down the hall to get his coat and weapons.
"Fine. No tips. Apparently when I'm grouchy I exude Auphe. Ishiah told me so." Which, in retrospect, he hadn't really needed to, but he'd done it anyway. Maybe he was trying to be nice. Who the hell knew? "I don't think they make a roll-on for that."
"I doubt it." In the bedroom, Niko fetched coat, swords, and gloves. He shrugged them all on with easy efficiency and with a certain kind of wince that suddenly clued me in on half his bad mood; headache. Specifically, the kind of headache that was centered around the scar and healed fracture in his skull; it was in the faint tilt of his head to the left and the way that eye almost closed with it. Migraines always made him extra pissy.
"You okay, Nik?" What if all the fighting had damaged something in his head again? Shouldn't that headache from earlier have gone away by now? My heart squeezed cold in my chest.
"Sunshine fucking fine," Niko answered, dryly. "You will be talking to Promise. I cannot keep a civil tongue in my head if she starts accusing me again."
"What? What did she say?"
"Nothing germane." Niko reached up to rub at the scar, fingers pressing so hard the skin blanched then reddened after the touch was gone. "Let's go. I'll drive, it'll be faster."
That was true, Nik could get us there faster than the subway, but... I puzzled over 'germane' as I followed him back down the hall. We both grabbed our cell-phones in the kitchen and kept going. I gave in as we clattered down the stairs and asked. "Germane?"
"Relevant or fitting; nothing that needs to concern you or is related to the job we are about to undertake," Niko explained, testily, as he opened the car door.
"Nik..."
I stopped as Niko made an abrupt gesture with his hand. It wasn't to hurt or scare me, just to make me shut up and pay attention. "Ask her when I'm not around to hear it. If she'll even tell you. I doubt it."
His voice had gone deceptively soft, the tight restraint that meant he was well and truly pissed off and likely to do some serious damage if he let it go. I'd seen that, once, seen him unleash everything to protect me, and I never wanted to see it again. He was dangerous like this, but not even for me, not even if I did something wrong and he beat me. He never let go with me. He always had some measure of control. But this...he was as pissed off as Sophia had ever made him, when she'd been around to push all his buttons at once. If I screwed up, sure, I'd get a hell of a beating, but he wasn't going to kill me.
God help any other son of a bitch Niko got mad at tonight.
Niko drove, and Niko drove fast and reckless, and we ended up at the museum in twenty minutes. I knocked on the door, then shook my head at the pathetic sound and started kicking it instead. That made a louder noise. Steel-toed boots are great for knocking. Niko stood behind me and rubbed his left temple, eyes half-closed. He was still pissed. I could smell it.
"I guess they don't get a lot of pizza deliveries." I kicked the door again.
"Probably not at five in the goddamn morning," Niko grumbled.
"Best time to get pizza. Unless it's three in the afternoon," I told him. He rolled his eyes at me.
That was when Promise and another woman opened the door. Promise was dwarfed by her friend, who was taller than me and Nik, blonde, and with linebacker shoulders. Her eyes were a piercing ice blue, her hair was the colour of bronze and pulled back into a French braid, her breasts were an entity unto themselves, and I could all but see the horned helmet she should be wearing. I stared up at her for a moment. Holy hell.
"Valkyrie?" I muttered to Niko.
"Missing her crow feathers, but very good," Niko returned, and put on a pleasant smile for them both. I tried smiling, but it felt nervous as hell. "A pleasure to meet you, miss…?" he asked, in his most charming tones.
Niko was a hell of a charmer. People liked him. Me, I made people nervous, mostly - they could usually tell, even if it wasn't conscious, that there was just something off (Auphe, hah hah) about me. But Niko, with his good looks and bright smiles and the quick manners...yeah, people liked him. Promise was giving him one hell of a Look, though, the kind that had me half-expecting the end of Niko's braid to catch fire. Shit, were there monsters that could actually do that? Hell, I didn't want to know.
"Sangrida Odinsdottir," said the Valkyrie, and shook hands with Niko. Odin's daughter. Okay, like hell was I going to mess with her. No vengeful gods coming after my ass, thanks.
"Niko Leandros," Niko returned, still with his best smile on. "And my little brother, Caliban."
Niko never called me that, but he always introduced me properly. I waved a little, but didn't offer my hand to shake. She looked like she could rip it off and use it for a backscratcher, and that was my best shooting hand. I needed it, and I was really damn attached to it. Literally.
"Nice to meet you, ma'am." See, I had good little monster manners. "Hi, Promise. What's up?"
Promise smiled at me, not a hint of a fang, very sweet and sad. Sell it somebody else, sister - I'd seen the way she'd been attempting to skewer Niko with her gaze alone, and not in the romantic way, either. "Cal. Thank you for coming."
Sangrida answered me properly, as she turned to lead the way into the museum. "There has been an incident with one of the exhibits."
"Did it eat somebody?" I asked, because that was just about the only reason I could think of that we'd been called. Except, you know, the Valkyrie could probably have glared it into submission herself.
The inside of the museum was just the way I'd remembered it - Niko and I had been here before. Niko liked to introduce me to as much art and culture as possible. Broadening my horizons, he said. I actually didn't mind too much. I kinda liked some of the sculptures and stuff, but given the choice? I'd drag him off to the Natural History Museum. Dinosaur exhibits. Does anything else need to be said? I thought not. Once they'd had an exhibit with a huge T-rex recreation, towering tall. Robin had once said the Auphe used to hunt them in packs...not so much for the meat as for the fun.
Yeah...the fun.
I think those velociraptors from Jurassic Park probably would have been more fun. Sneaky little bastards.
"I think Miss Sangrida could handle that sort of mishap, Cal," Niko pointed out, pulling me out of my thoughts. "Not to mention the inestimable Promise." He flashed her a smile like the edge of a blade.
Promise smiled tightly back and I could see the way her pupils expanded, predator response. Fuck.
"Yes. Different problem. Best for you to see," Sangrida said, walking with long muscular strides. There was a faint glottal flavor to her words, a hint of her old country. I liked it. I wondered if Niko and I had an accent - I doubted it. We'd moved so often, been all over the country, that any accent we had was probably lost in all the layers. American pie, that was us.
Well, with a heaping helping of 'murderous ancient monster' on my side, but hey, America was the great mixing pot and all that jazz, right? New York definitely was, with all the monsters that walked its streets.
We entered the Arms and Armor section and walked past an exhibit of suits of plate armor. One of the galleries was labeled with a red and black exhibition sign that read FAMOUS SERIAL KILLERS THROUGHOUT HISTORY AND LEGEND. I raised an eyebrow. Hardly the sort of thing I expected in an art museum.
"Entertaining," Niko said, wryly. "It puts impressionism to shame."
Sangrida sighed in annoyance. "A traveling show of horrors. The board of directors, curse them, are responsible. Not you of course, Promise," she added, gruffly. "Just the vultures and hyenas on the board. They are of the opinion that sensationalism keeps attendance high. The first exhibit to your right will be, of course, Jack the Ripper."
Promise gave a hint of a satisfied smile at the name, and I thought of how Jack had disappeared, never to be heard from again. Most serial killers don't stop, unless they're caught or someone does the stopping for them. And back in a time when vampires still relied on blood….well, all I knew about Promise was that she was pretty darn old. Had she been around in 1888? Hard to believe, that'd make her around two hundred years old at the very least, but that was pretty damn old. I stopped to take a look at the letters, the old photographs, and the period blades that could have been used. Niko also peered at the paraphernalia over my shoulder, but he didn't look very interested. He knew all the historical shit, though, so he'd probably be a better information guide than the tiny print on the plaques.
Promise touched my arm, and I flinched, startled. She moved like Niko, predatory-silent. "He liked attention then. Let us deny it to him now."
Yeah, I'd already seen pretty much the same thing earlier tonight in living colour. Strange how the photographs didn't bother me even half as much. Maybe because they weren't fresh and smelling like blood; old blood that didn't concern me anymore.
A few exhibits down, Sangrida stopped. The glass of the display case was blackened...scorched by what looked like a small explosion. Glass shards were lying everywhere. Niko took in the damage, then knelt, fingertips stirring the crystalline chunks of the safety glass.
"The case burst from within," Niko pointed out, and there was interest lacing his voice, not just held-back anger and fake politeness. "There's no glass within the exhibit itself, only on the floor."
Also on the floor was a stone box, lid broken open into pieces and scattered far and wide. I toed a piece with my black sneaker. Historical or not, I damn sure couldn't do any more damage to it. "What was in that, anyway?" I asked Sangrida.
"Ashes. Fragments of bone." Sangrida shook her head, high forehead knot with worry. "Sawney."
The name meant shit to me, but Niko sat back on his heels immediately, looking up at her. "Sawney Beane? The Scottish mass murderer?" He peered at the box I'd nudged with new interest. I could see him starting to think. "The cannibal? I know the women and the children of the clan were supposedly burned, but the men were executed differently."
"No one is quite sure what really happened. No one who wasn't there." I immediately thought of Robin. Yeah, if he hadn't been there, he'd have known someone who was. Sangrida went on. "Of course, mankind doesn't know if Sawney was fact or fiction, but we know better. Although he ate close to a thousand people, he wasn't strictly a cannibal, as he wasn't human." She looked at the shattered box and corrected herself. "Isn't human."
Five words fought to be the first out of my mouth: a thousand people and isn't human. I went with the slightly more concerning one right this moment. "Isn't?" I repeated. "He came back from ashes and bone? No way. No goddamn way."
Sangrida didn't blink at the language. Come to think of it, since she was a Valkyrie, she'd probably hung around enough warriors to learn every variation of cursing there was. She could probably swear me under the table...while bench-pressing me with one hand and swilling ale with the other. "I'm not sure. I've never heard of such a thing in regards to him, but it is a chance I don't wish to take.
The explosion from within, the missing remains...I could see her point. Niko stood up again, dusting off his hands. "Was there anything else in the exhibit?" he queried.
She frowned. "His scythe. Or what was claimed to be. It was a handheld one, his weapon of choice. It is missing as well."
And that was the definition of didn't bode fcking well, now wasn't it?
