"Above the Din of Rice Krispies"

Philadelphia – 1984

Penance's head jerked; the boy accidentally dropped his cigarette in his lap. He retrieved it with a trembling hand and absently raised it to his mouth— lit-side facing him. He managed to catch his mistake a millisecond before the thing could scorch his lips.

He was huddled in the middle of the ruined floor, gazing out at the city skyline from Whip's roofless apartment. His legs were tightly crossed, huddled under a thin blanket wrapped about his shoulders. His upper body was still damp and the blanket stuck to his clammy skin, bunched up against it like a half sloughed-off snakeskin. He'd showered on the ground floor of Whip's desolate apartment building, taking advantage of a grimy water valve that still had some pressure to it. The water was colder than sea ice but Penance didn't shiver once. And even as a train of bloody water sloughed off his body and pooled around his feet Penance didn't really feel any cleaner, either.

His clothes were a total loss, little more than bloody scraps. Luckily Whip had a small stash of old clothes squirreled away under her mattress, courtesy of a time-honored hobby of dumpster-diving around the fringes of some of the better neighborhoods around town. He found a pair of white khaki shorts in her stash, but they were a pretty tight fit, and the gnarled fabric dug into his thighs like a knife.

He barely noticed, though. And in any event he didn't really care.

Whip paced behind him, one hand planted to her forehead. Her hair was also wet, and it was down from that usual massive French-braid. Turns out she landed in a small pool of blood when Kenaz dropped her on the ground, and it gummed up her hair something fierce. She was rather keen to scrub it out.

Hell, given how viciously she brushed her scalp Penance was surprised she had any hair left on her head at all.

For the third time in as many minutes Whip stopped walking. She looked like she'd speak, but then quickly brought her bottle of bourbon up to her lips and took a dainty little swig. She wasn't quite ready to chat.

Penance reached down between his legs and took up a giant handful of cereal from a box, part of Whip's eclectic stash of goods. They were Rice Krispies— not exactly Penance's favorite— but the boy was hungry enough to eat almost anything at the moment. He shoveled them into his mouth and started mashing them with his teeth. The noise traveled up his jaw and blanketed his ears with the sound of crunching. It kept him from hearing Whip's words when she finally spoke to him.

Convenient, right?

After gulping down his mouthful of cereal Penance merely stared down at the brightly-colored box, ignoring Whip's query. He stabbed his cigarette out on the front of the box, over the face of one of those cartoony elf mascots. 'Snap', 'Crackle' or 'Pop', whichever; he didn't know. Couldn't tell them apart.

"Why do you like Rice Krispies?" Penance asked.

"What?" Whip asked.

"The cereal."

"I— wait: what? I dunno. I was talking about you—"

"Is it because of the pretty picture on the box?" Penance looked up at the girl. "Kids like pretty pictures, don't they?"

Whip's big brown eyes trembled. The girl moved around the boy, getting on her knees in front of him. Her lips trembled as she spoke:

"Y— you killed a priest, kid!"

"Yeah, I did—"

Whip put her hands to her head and tugged her skin taut. It made that constellation of freckles on her face twist about, kind of like a time-lapse video of the night sky.

"You don't even care that you killed—"

"Nope. Not a bit."

Penance nonchalantly took another mouthful of cereal in his hand and crammed it into his mouth. He chewed like a cow, and he didn't look the girl in the face. She spoke loud enough to hear this time, however:

"What the hell are you, white bread?"

Penance got up and tossed his thin blanket away. He wandered to the edge of the building and stared across the street. By now there were at least a dozen cop cars crowded around the rec center, and more. There were now ambulances, two fire trucks, unmarked cruisers: the whole nine yards. It was quite the lightshow, too. The early afternoon sky was now shrouded in a cool and thin fog, and the emergency vehicles' strobes bounced about in the gloom like a bank of pool lights beneath the water.

Penance's mouth was still full of cereal, but he quite rudely spoke through his food:

"What am I?" He said.

"That's what I asked, you little shit," the girl growled.

Penance finally finished grinding the cereal up and he swallowed it, turning to face the girl. He eyes were cold and empty:

"I'm someone who doesn't like pretty pictures, Whip."

The girl stared down at the floorboards and she scrunched her lips.

"Y— you're... not a kid?"

"I am, and I'm not."

The boy took a step toward Whip and the girl instantly leapt to her feet. She brandished her switchblade, teeth on edge:

"You start makin' sense!" Whip yelled.

Penance got close enough to the girl to touch her; she responded by placing the blade against his throat. It wasn't a snug fit though, and her hand trembled mightily.

"You've seen how it's done," the boy whispered, keeping his rusty eyes locked with hers. "It just takes a little bit of force, really..."

Whip's hand trembled even more. Slowly, hesitantly, she lowered her hand and snapped the switchblade shut. She got to her haunches again, and again she ran a hand through her hair.

Penance looked away from her and crossed his arms. He sighed and shook his head:

"I am Penance Cameron, conceived 1599 in Zaragoza, Spain."

Whip stopped running a hand through her hair. She looked up at the boy, blinking:

"Wh— what did you just say? That y— that you were born in—"

Penance shook his head.

"I said I was conceived, then. But I was really born about 12 years later, in the darkness of history. I was given unending life by a certain kind of... power; it's called the Source of all immortality, and it comes to a chosen few when we feel the sting of our 'first death'..."

"Immortality? You mean that you're—"

"Not just me; no, I am not alone. We are legion among you. We slither through the centuries, living secret lives, slaughtering each other for just a little taste of that mysterious power, claiming each other's heads..."

Whip mulled the boy's words. Her face was still expressionless, but her eyes were wide. She stammered her next words, barely getting them out at all:

"S— so, then... that... thing when you, uh, did what you did to Kenaz—"

"The 'Quickening', we call it." Penance nodded.

"It... well it was pretty 'quick'..."

Penance couldn't help it; he had to chuckle. Whip didn't look too pleased by it, so he tried to stop. He couldn't though, not even with a hand over his mouth, and so he had to look away from her again.

"You're telling me that people like you and Father Kenaz can live forever? 'Cause it sure as hell looks like you killed him dead—"

Penance shook his head.

"I did. And he's deader'n dead. They call me 'immortal', but I will not live forever. The only one of us who can do that is the one who wins the 'Game': the one who bests all the rest of us in the contest between Immortals—"

Whip got to her feet and pointed down at the rec center below them:

"You call what I just saw back there a 'game'?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"And what you just did to Father Kenaz— and what he was trying to do to you— that's all just a 'game' to you, too?"

"Mmm-hmm."

Whip stepped up to the boy, looming over him with her superior height:

"And y— you've done that kinda thing before?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"And you don't even feel a littlerattled by that? By killing a man? Nothing? Not anything at all?"

"Mmm-mmm."

Penance shook his head and tightened his arms over his chest.

"Does that bother you?" He asked.

Whip glared at him, her brown eyes burning:

"Mmm-hmm." She wrinkled her nose sarcastically.

Penance didn't even know you coulddo something like that 'sarcastically'. Whip sure found a way, though.

"That's too bad," Penance said. "'Cause he was gonna kill me, Whip, and I ended up killing him instead. I'm gonna go to bed happy tonight, and I'll sleep comfortably, too!"

Whip faced away from the boy, fuming. After a moment, however, she looked back over at him:

"A— are you really... like..." her fingers twitched and she closed her eyes for a moment. "Are you really 385 years old?"

Penance cocked his head; he shrugged.

"Sounds about right. It's something like that, anyway. I don't bother doing the math, anymore—"

"How?" Whip spread her hands. "Wh— what does it? What the hell is this, uh, 'source' thing you're talking about?"

"Dunno," Penance shrugged. "For certain, at least. Everybody's got a theory. The man who first taught me about the Game had his own theory. Father Kenaz probably had his, too."

"And you?"

Penance looked down at the grey and rocky steeple of St. Hubertus. He wrinkled his nose.

And he didn't do it sarcastically.

"I've got my own theory..."

"But you don't have any info about... well, about anything else, then?"

"Not much. I do know one thing for certain." The boy wiggled his skinny limbs and thumped his chest with one fist. "I'm 12 years old now, and I'll be 12 years old on the day I die." Penance walked away from the ledge and he lazily circled Whip, dragging his shoes along the ground. "I don't know anything else. I don't really need to know anything else." He stopped walking, and then ground his teeth together, whispering: "'Why' would be nice, maybe, but honestly I stopped asking that question after the first few centuries..."

Some time passed. Eventually Whip approached the boy, getting at eye-level with him, and she stared into his face. This made the boy blink in equal parts confusion and discomfort.

"What?" He asked.

"So, then, like— ignoring the years, an' all, and how you look, too— are you actually still a kid, or..."

"Well, I've never really felt like an adult," Penance shrugged. "But I guess I'm not exactly your average kid, either. But what kid is, huh? I dunno..." Penance shook his head. He looked Whip in the eyes, and then he blinked questioningly. "What do you think?"

Whip sighed. She stood erect and stared down at her shoes. Finally she shook her head slowly:

"Yes," she said. "You are a kid."

Penance mulled her conclusion, and he nodded somberly.

"And... you're also not."

The boy looked up at Whip; her words were obviously very serious, but he couldn't help laughing again. This time she seemed a little less pissed by it.

"Wait a minute," Whip held up one finger. "What were you sayin' about before? You got, uh, 'immortalized' after your 'first death'? What's that supposed to mean? D— did—"

The boy turned away from her and shook his head.

"It doesn't matter."

"Do you mean that, when you were really 12 years old, somebody k—"

"I don't wanna talk about it," Penance snarled. It was a particularly throaty snarl, and enough to stay her questions for now. Whip chose a more benign line of questions, instead:

"So what's 'Penance' in Spanish, then?"

"Penitencia," he said.

"Mmm. Well, that sounds just as girly in Spanish as it does in English..."

Penance looked over his shoulder and glared at her.

"I just mean that I don't think a Spanishman—"

"Spaniard," Penance snarled.

"Whatever. A 'guy from Spain' in the 1500s would name his son 'Penitencia'..."

The boy shook his head:

"He didn't; that's not the name I was born with."

"What is your name, then?"

"Unimportant."

Whip scrunched her lips. She sighed and wandered over to the boy's side. The pair watched as police, firemen and EMTs milled around outside the library, no doubt trying to wrap their heads around the horrific crime scene inside.

Whip was doing the same, Penance knew. And so far she'd done a very good job. Better than he thought she would, at least. Still, this couldn't be easy for her; she wasn't like Penance, who was well-accustomed to such violence. She wasn't the same kind of stoic, implacable fighter as he was: a person who could never be fazed by such mundane, 'everyday' occurrences anymore.

The boy absently reached into his shorts to grab another cigarette. His hand shook too much, however, and he dropped the whole pack at his feet. When he bent down and plucked it up he pulled one cigarette out, but when he se it between his lips he could only taste copper, salt and rot on his tongue; the whole tip was saturated in blood, and the tobacco inside mushy with it.

Penance choked and fell on his rear, tossing the pack away in disgust. When Whip looked down at the boy, brow furrowed, Penance waved a dismissive hand:

"I'm just tired," he said. "The fighting— it takes a lot out of you..."

"How many people have you ever killed, white bread?"

Penance shook his head, curling his lips:

"Dunno. Doesn't matter—"

"Yeah, it kinda does—"

"Lots. Like I said: I'm not sure—"

"You can't remember?"

"Most of 'em? No."

Penance breathed hard, staring at the floor between his legs. Whip merely leaned against a ruined wall of the apartment, not looking at the boy. After a moment Penance took to absently poking at the rubble near his feet. He accidentally dislodged a small gunmetal case from the debris: it was a dented-up walkman complete with gnarled, floppy headphones.

"A walkman?" He muttered.

Whip looked down at him, and she bared her teeth:

"Yeah. My walkman. You just leave that be."

Penance ignored her and popped the cassette holder; a small white tape peeked out, and the boy's eyes widened as he read the label.

"Y— you've got Synchronicity?"

"I said put it back, white bread." Whip shook her head.

"You like The Police?"

The girl scoffed.

"Nah. That's all trashy, honky rock. Been tryin' to trade it, but around here that kinda softball white music isn't exactly a good sell."

Penance started putting the headphones over his ears but Whip kicked them away with her foot.

"You're not drowning me out, kid. Not with Krispies, and not with music, either. I want you to tell me—"

"There's nothing to tell, alright! Someone comes after me and I kill 'em, Whip. That's all. And when I do I know I've saved my own life. So I do go to bed happy that night, and I do sleep comfortably. End of story."

Whip looked down at Penance:

"Did you always?"

Penance shrugged:

"I... well, not really, I guess. It gets easier..."

He drew a breath. He knew Whip couldn't understand what he was trying to say. He must've looked like a monster to her. Maybe he really was, compared to someone like her. He didn't know what he could do to prove otherwise.

He had Galabeg 'yelling' into his ear, demanding that Penance hit the road immediately. He overruled that plan, though. He needed to stay up here with the girl, at least until the police in the street below them stopped swarming around the block. Also, during this time, he needed Whip to be calm enough not to run downstairs and give him up to the cops.

He was probably safe on that count: Whip would likely wait to turn him in long enough for a reward to be offered in Kenaz's death.

Those were the important things to consider, so he tried to think about how he could further justify himself to her. And it wasn't like he was trying to think of a way to actually explain himself, or anything. That kind of thing didn't matter, in all honesty; Penance only needed to keep Whip quiet for a while. He didn't care if she thought he was a monster or not. It wasn't important.

Nope. Not at all.

It took about three full minutes of silence before he figured out how he might go about it.

"It wasn't always this easy for me," he mumbled. "You're right about that. And no, I really don't remember all of the people I've killed in my life. I do remember my first, though. The very first time, well, I guess you never really forget it..."

The girl looked over her shoulder, her eyes skeptical.

"When was this?" She asked. "And where?"

"Scotland," Penance said. "Mid-1600s. In a place called Letterewe."

"Who were they? The person you killed, I mean?"

Penance lay on his back and stared at the gloomy sky overhead.

"Who were they? Same as everyone else I've ever killed. Just another enemy..."