"Pattern of life Indelible"
Salem, New Jersey – 1984
The black Mustang inched forward, engine grumbling like a stalking tiger. Its headlights fell across the arched windows of the red-bricked house, casting pointed shadows through the ordered row of cypresses. The red sun had yet to set, but it had already started its descent behind the tall tree line surrounding the property.
Night would come soon enough.
He could see smoldering embers in the fireplace of the study even before he reached the front door. Without breaking his stride he kicked the door open and stalked through the dark house. His shoes and the clack of his umbrella tip echoed fiercely on the marble floor; all furnishings were now removed and the cavernous hallways lay solemn and bare, like the dignified chambers of a grand mausoleum.
He stormed into the study, descending three steps of fine purple carpet. He meant to make for the fireplace and investigate the smoking remains there but then something caught his eye on the careworn mahogany desk across the way, sitting under the gaze of a narrow stained glass window.
Noirbarret caught his breath when he saw it.
The book was fat, but also wide enough not to look too out of proportion. Its ancient wrinkled pages bore a dark stain around the edges— like a fine coat of soot— and nearest the center they were colored a sickly pumpkin-orange hue, the product of both age and meticulously-applied chemical preservatives. It was cracked open, but even without seeing the outside and the spine Noirbarret could picture the dark emerald hue of the felt cover.
Altogether, in construction and quality of paper, it was a shoddy dime-store ledger. And it was also one of the most valuable books in existence, to those who knew its contents.
Noirbarret had seen it before, of course, and the mere sight of Medici's ledger wasn't enough to stop his breath. What did stop his breath was what he saw in the open book: the serrated stub of a torn page jutted out from the middle. The pages to either side bore a registry of names, all written in precise, overwrought calligraphy courtesy of a fountain pen with a tip as sharp as a Damascus blade. Across the pages, in almost impossibly small text, the whole lives of each of those names was written— from distant past to latest known.
Perhaps the most powerful weapon of all immortal culture— a look into the spinning of the threads of immortal lives, the fine details of the allotments of their lengths and, to those who knew how to read it, perhaps the means of cutting those threads short— and a whole page was torn from it.
Noirbarret's jaw hung agape.
"You look like you've just seen some spilled milk."
Noirbarret bolted up, glaring into the shadows.
Medici stepped out of the dark, a bottle of wine in one hand and two empty crystal glasses dangling in the other.
"What have you done?" Noirbarret's voice cracked with horror, as if he'd caught the man smothering his own infant child in its crib.
In a way he had.
Medici shrugged nonchalantly.
"What? You never cared about that ledger, did you? Hardly ever asked me for its wisdom. You're a born tracker and trapper, Black Hat; you never really wanted to rely on a thing like that."
"But... you!" Noirbarret pointed at the man. "Your life's work!"
Another disinterested shrug.
"Other lives' works. All I ever had was a little paper and ink."
Still in disbelief Noirbarret ran a finger across one of the pages, scanning the list of names. The page before the tear ended on the I's; the page after was all J's. He looked to the fireplace and the last curls of smoke rising off its hot ashes.
"Why?" Noirbarret whispered.
"For your own good."
Noirbarret looked at Medici, a confused frown on his face. Medici set the glasses down on the table and poured the wine as he spoke.
"What was written on that page would be unhealthy for you to read. All it would do is feed your addiction."
"My 'addiction'?" Noirbarret grumbled.
Medici nodded, handing the man one of the glasses.
"I'm no addict," Noirbarret said.
Medici held up a finger as he picked up his own glass.
"No. You are. All three of you are addicts, in fact."
"Three?"
Medici nodded.
"You, Penance Cameron, and Carlin Gay."
Noirbarret's puzzled face slowly contorted into a wolfish sneer.
"What business is it of yours?"
"You were always my business," Medici answered. "And you always will be, I think."
After a pause Noirbarret again looked to the ashes in the fireplace.
"You don't mean... Penance was in there?"
"Certainly not," the elder man said. "The poor child you're looking for, however—"
"You don't keep records of child immortals!"
"I told you I don't," Medici whispered. "And I think you know why."
It took Noirbarret a solid minute to process this; he set his wine down and stalked over to the stained glass window. After a moment he smirked, then chuckled.
"All this time," he mused. "All this time he was in there? All that he was, and all he is? Everything?"
"Not everything," Medici said. "But a fair share more than you know, I figure."
Noirbarret glared at the man with mad eyes. The light of the dying sun outside colored his dark irises through the stained glass; they glowed like 8-balls under a black light.
"We've both been keeping enough secrets, I think." Medici said. "Don't you?"
The younger man's anger looked to boil over. He snatched the wine glass from the table, ready to down it in one gulp, but he paused with the rim of the glass pressed to his lips. After a moment's thought he pulled the glass away and derisively dumped the contents on the carpet, glaring at Medici with hateful eyes.
"Secrets, huh? Was that supposed to be one of yours?"
Medici sighed. He put his own glass to his lips and drank deeply, slowly downing the entire thing in one breath as Noirbarret watched.
The anger in the younger man's eyes slowly dissipated. He shook his head, turning to the stained glass window. He gently tapped one of the panes with the handle of his umbrella. A dread silence fell between them, and just before Medici decided to break it Noirbarret spoke up.
"I never had much need for your ledger, that's true. Never had much need for any outside help. I once wondered whether that was a Sommer family trait, or just my own nature. Doesn't matter, anyway. For me it was just about having control over my own destiny. And I had it out in the wilds. God, I had it! I trapped my own game and I made my own trades. Made trades where those prissy fops in Jamestown wouldn't dream of venturing into. The legwork was all mine: the relationships I fostered with all those Indian tribes, the languages I learned to absolute fluency, the rituals, the respect, the rules, the right to tread where Angels would shit themselves into dehydration."
He smiled, tapping his umbrella on the glass one last time and letting the handle rest there.
"And I was treated like a devil for it by the colonists. It never mattered that whenever my travels brought me back to 'civilization', and whenever I walked the streets of Jamestown, I tried to show that same respect to their rules and rituals— I even had that foppish capotain for my head, with that fine dark fabric, all the better to play the part of a 'proper gentleman'— but all I ever got were whispers behind my back and a derisive nickname." He shook his head. "Well, I never let any of that get to me. I was more at home in the wilds, anyway."
"And..." Medici paused before continuing. "Were you showing 'respect' to the Indians with what you did to those native childr—"
Noirbarret turned, pointing at Medici with a trembling finger.
"You know all about that!" He growled. "The... the compulsion—"
"I know they were probably easy to 'control'..."
Noirbarret looked away, struggling to regain his composure.
He succeeded.
"Was it the same with—"
"Penance was completely different." Noirbarret shook his head, wagging a stern finger. "Everything about him was different.
"Eventually some colonial concerns made major inroads into my trading routes, and they moved like lightning through tribes that only I had the bona fides to work with. Baffled me, at first. Took me longer than it should've to discover that I had a rival in bed with the Indians; it was a European boy who, so they said, was partially raised by the Indians. Like me he knew the rituals and respect due to both cultures, and he could successfully navigate both. Helped reach agreements between both. But he got a derisive nickname for his trouble, too. The sissies in Jamestown called him the 'white savage'. That's gratitude for you, right? Kid gets the colonists prime trading conditions with the tribes, and still he was just a 'savage' to them."
Noirbarret sighed, looking up at the unlit chandelier hanging down from the vaulted ceiling.
"I preferred the name the Indians gave him: Papasowh Sansaqivawwh."
When Medici tilted his head Noirbarret returned his to level.
"Uh..." he motioned with one hand. "It means 'The Sunrise that Refuses to Bend', literally. It's a poetic name, and the Powhatan certainly loved their poetry. What they meant, behind the poetry, is 'He of the Endless Youth'."
"So they knew about him? His immortality?"
Noirbarret nodded.
"Somehow. And of course I didn't understand the name at the time. Given how rough Indian life was you can imagine a trillion different ways he might've been 'outed'. I like to think he tried to rescue some kids from a frozen pond, drowned, and was thawed out later by the tribe."
"Why would you think that?"
A cruel smile crept up Noirbarret's face. He shrugged.
"It just seems like Penance, that's all..."
"That's what started it all, then? The hatred? The resentme—"
"Hatred?" Noirbarret shook his head, waving an impatient hand. "No, no, no! That's not it. Not at all. It's..."
He sighed, then continued.
"I wasn't angry or threatened by any of this. Not in the slightest. Mostly I was bemused, you could say. I found this tale of a little 'white savage' intriguing. More outlandish than most frontier legends springing up, that's for certain. For the longest time I only heard of him through second-hand sources, until I started to think that he was more legend than real. That all changed one cold morning when I came across an Indian camp set up along a snowy tree line, straddling a winding little stream. I could tell the colonists were there; their wagon waited outside one of the larger huts in the camp.
"Two young Indian boys were busy training some of the tribe's pups; they were supervised by a third, older boy. This one's got his back to me, wrapped in furs from his neck to ankles, laughing along with the smaller boys as they watched the dogs awkwardly mantel over the snow. The Indian boys notice me approaching first, and that's when the older boy turns around."
Noirbarret again looked out the stained glass window, his oily eyes not actually seeing any of the colored bits of glass before him.
"And there he was: Papasowh Sansaqivawwh. The boy with the seawater eyes and creamy white skin. I passed by him that first time— first sight— without a word, but only a respectful nod; I knew to a certainty it was him: my little phantom adversary. He nodded back with that same somber respectfulness. That first sight of him told me enough, and I knew he was a creature that also preferred 'savagery' to 'civilization'. Most people might not think so, his body and face being so... delicate, like a painted eggshell. But no: I saw through all that and could detect the 'ruggedness' in him. It was in his eyes, you see. They were hard and resolute— they were things of will.
"There wasn't much to do in the hut; the colonists were finalizing their agreements with this tribal branch and I was left out in the cold, so to speak. After a conciliatory hot beverage and handshake I took my leave of them. Should've gotten back on the trail. Should've struck out for the next camp on my list, but I had to have a word with him. Had to; there was simply no choice in the matter."
Noirbarret set to pacing around the desk, head downcast, a nostalgic smile on his face.
"And oh: how shy he was! Wouldn't trade more than a few mumbled words with me, but I pressed him as we both watched the Indian kids play with their pups. When I switched from English to Algonquin, though, that was when he lit up. I bet he never met a white man that could speak it near to my level. We had a fine conversation about Powhatan life and culture; clearly he adored it as much as I respected it."
Medici followed Noirbarret with his eyes as the man circled the desk, his brow furrowed.
"And what happened next?"
Noirbarret shrugged.
"Life, as it was, went on. I ran my trades; other colonists ran theirs. Sometimes I'd see Papasowh Sansaqivawwh out around the Indian camps; sometimes I'd see the little 'white savage' in town, jealously guarded by whatever traders were employing his services. He wasn't... I mean, you have to understand that it's not like I was specifically keeping my eye out for him, or hoping to catch a glimpse of him. No, it wasn't anything like that. He was just a competitor that I respected and... well, I'd certainly note his presence, whenever I did happen to see him."
Medici, eyes unmoving, gave this assertion a perfunctory nod.
"And then...the rebellion?"
Noirbarret's nostalgic smirk smoothed out, replaced by a wistful frown.
"Mmmm." He stopped at the front of the desk, leaning down over it, staring at the mahogany beneath him. "Good ol' Nathaniel Bacon. Another fop handed everything he could ever want in life, who simply wanted more. Bacon was an entitled ass for the most part, but he did have some points against the establishment, I suppose. The politics of the rebellion never much interested me. Ultimately, however, all he really did was stir-up anti-Indian sentiment in a bid to force the powers that be to give him a grander seat at the political table. Well, that's nothing special. History's full of 'useful idiots', as they call 'em, and Bacon rode that wave of Indian hatred as far as it could take him.
"Turns out, of course, the wave he rode was made of fire. He and his useful idiots marched on Jamestown and they struck when I had the misfortune of being in the city. Being Black Hat the 'Indian-lover' I figured I wouldn't fare well against the mob, so I hid, trying to skulk my way out of the city. And in one of life's many twists of fate I happened to run into the little Papasowh Sansaqivawwh himself while crawling through the barrel-maker's backyard. He was in the same boat— if the mob caught him all they'd see is the 'white savage' of the dirty Indian tribes— and all it took is one wordless exchange of glances between us to communicate our needs; we had no one, at the moment, but each other to rely on.
"We made it to a nearby merchant's house. He'd been smart and read the writing on the wall, getting far away from town before the mob struck. And there we bunkered down, barring the doors and windows, riding out the destruction and looting of the city. The merchant had a stash of premium brandy and we broke into it; we steadied our nerves with it, you see. We got to talking then, of course, and the brandy loosened our lips considerably. He ended up teaching me a song as we huddled in that house; it was a new one not so long off the boat from England: 'Matty Groves'. You know that one, right?"
Medici nodded.
Noirbarret set his fingernails on the wood desk, palms arched, as if digging two sets of talons into the mahogany.
"The story of a 'highborn' seductress whose charms captivated a lowly wretch, and he could not escape the cloying grasp..."
"I remember how that song ends, at least." Medici spoke in a low, grave voice.
Noirbarret looked away, shaking his head.
"Nips of brandy became draughts, then guzzles. He held his liquor better than most grown men, but it caught up with his scrawny body soon enough and he was plastered. I wasn't entirely right in the head, myself. Because I did... I did respect him, you see. I did think of him as a worthy little opponent. I valued that in him, you know. But..."
He turned back towards the stained glass window, letting the last of the day's light fall on his face. His lips trembled; he stilled them before continuing.
"The 'compulsion' didn't care about that. When we'd drained the bottle— when he was lying there sloppy drunk, giggling like a little fool, those seawater eyes shining with happy tears..."
Noirbarret set his forehead to the glass, closing his eyes and drawing a breath.
"There was simply no choice in the matter," he said.
He let the coolness of the glass window sink into his skull a bit, then he faced Medici.
"After I brained him with the empty bottle I tied his wrists. After...you know, the clothes. And I just waited there, watching him stir in his sleep."
He noted Medici's disapproving look and pointed sternly at him, his finger an inch from the man's nose.
"I could've had him at anytime, do you understand? Any time! But I didn't. I couldn't, yet, because by God I still had enough respect for him. Enough to...to..."
"You wanted him awake, didn't you? Kicking and—"
"I wanted..." Noirbarret gripped the air in tight fists, hands set together against his chest as if shackled. "I wanted him to understand..." He shook his head and waved a dismissive hand; whatever he wanted to say he knew he could not get Medici to understand, and it seems that he wouldn't even try. "When he woke he was in a panic, and I at least tried explaining things to him. He wasn't listening, of course, only thrashing about like a speared boar. That I didn't want, you know. I had to look away, just for a moment..."
"And that's what got you killed, is it?"
Noirbarret's forlorn frown turned to a small smirk.
"Mmm. I tied those little wrists tighter than any boy his age could hope to escape. Just didn't count on an immortal boy his age. He broke the bonds, snatched up that little knife from his bundled clothes, and..."
He gently massaged his own throat, running his thumb over the bulge of his Adam's apple.
"When I turned to look back at him it took me a solid two seconds to even realize I'd been hurt. Force of my pumping blood got up into the rafters overhead, and a river of the stuff washed down my shirt. I remember that it made my chest hot. Uncomfortably hot. I felt no pain where my throat used to be, just cold. I tumble to my knees and the last thing I see is that little 'unbending sunrise' standing over me, his bloody knife in a savage grip." He closed his eyes, momentarily lost in his own memory. "Last thing I see is those eyes. That will..."
Eventually Noirbarret opened his own eyes, again noting Medici's disapproving glare. He coughed and shrugged.
"The rest you know: Bacon's mob burned the city to the ground and I eventually pop up out of the ashes. I find you, and—"
"And I work with you. Teach you. Train you. Rehabilitate, you." Medici shook his head. "Help you overcome the 'compulsions'. And for what, Black Hat? For what?"
"Everything!" Black Hat shouted back. "Everything. You can't even possibly understand. I've kept the compulsions at bay. I've done more than that, for Christ's sake. I've been celibate, you ungrateful Italian bastard, and not just for the compulsions. For anyone!"
"You'd dare say that you've conquered your compulsions," Medici whispered, "when you've hounded and tortured a child for over 300 years?"
Noirbarret slammed one fist on the tabletop.
"What's Penance compared to a whole life doing decent work, otherwise? What's he next to my spy work in the Revolution? My service in the Union? Liberating Europe from the Nazis? The lives I've saved as an FBI agent? Your 'rehabilitation' worked, Medici! I'll never call myself a saint, but look at the whole record before passing judgment, here!"
The elder man's bushy eyebrows contorted with a scowl; it was as accusatory as it was sorrowful.
"Your record is constant and unchanging, my boy. And you only do the good things you do for the same reason you do the bad. It's still the compulsions: that feeling of control over others—"
"Who cares about the reason?" Noirbarret threw his hands up. "It's results that matter. And the fact is I can do all that good— all that good 'is done', if you wanna use the passive voice and ignore the fact that it's me doing it— if I just have this one… little... vice..." He held up the thumb and ring finger of one hand, spaced a centimeter apart. "One little sin! One thing I need. What the hell else do you expect me to do?"
Medici's scowl gave way to a melancholy frown. He spoke as if he were the farmer bitten by the viper: startled to be stung, but resigned at the same time.
"You could've walked away from Omelas," he whispered.
Noirbarret squinted, tilting his head.
"What are you talking about?"
"Something you'd probably never understand," Medici said. "Something outside the pathetic pettiness with which you live your life—"
"You can't boil what I am down to simple 'pettiness'—"
"And I know where that pettiness really comes from." Now it was Medici's turn to point an accusatory finger at Noirbarret. "You owe him, when all's said and done. For your immortality. For gaining it in your prime. Otherwise you might've been Carlin Gay's age before you got it. Maybe you'd never get it. Not only did he get the better of you when you attacked him, but he's the very reason you're here today. And you can't stand that, can you? You can't stand the idea that your fortunes were so in the control of someone else; you've been spending all the time since then taking out your own petty, impotent frustrations on him and his!"
Noirbarret's oily black eyes bulged; he gnashed his teeth together and huffed through his nose like a snorting hound.
"And the really sad thing," Medici continued, "is that you say you don't hate him. I can believe that. I can believe that you don't believe you hate him. In fact you must think you've got some twisted kind of love for him. You have to, because you need to. Whatever warped 'relationship' you think you have with him is all you have. It's all that matters to you, at least. You're no better than a junkie holding a syringe, too late to realize that his highs aren't doing the job anymore. You're worse, in fact. At least the junkie can usually admit how utterly fucked up his own obsession has made his life."
Noirbarret appeared beyond words, so churning with rage as to be incapable of speaking. Instead he stared down at Medici's fine shoes, and after a moment his frothing rage gave way to sudden, cold curiosity.
"How... how, exactly, did you learn all this about me and Penance? When did you discover it?"
Medici shrugged.
"Penance Cameron told me all about it, himself. Enough, at least. I just came from an apartment in Morrisville where I had him tied to a chair, answering all my questions. And I had the foresight to restrain more than just his wrists."
Noirbarret scoffed, letting a small chuckle out as he met the man's gaze.
"And here I thought your psychoanalysis was funny—"
"Don't believe me?"
Another scoff.
"I'd have felt it," Noirbarret said. "I'd have felt Penance losing his head from the goddamned moon, let alone a few city blocks away. I know you've been cruising the neighborhood in that silver beauty of yours— and by the way: you'll stop that if you know what's good for you— but catching Penance? No. I know his pretty little head is still on those narrow shoulders."
Medici turned around, slowly moving for an ornate oak bannister separating his bookshelves from the center of the study.
"When did I say that I took his head?"
Noirbarret barked out a derisive laugh.
"Oh, I suppose you just let him go, then?"
"Exactly."
Medici stopped at the banister, still facing away from the younger man. He looked over his shoulder.
"I left him to be collected by that pretty young girl. The one with the lovely French-braid. You know her, I'm sure."
Noirbarret's chuckle cut out. The man licked his lips, his face contorting with the same horror as he when first saw the torn ledger.
"N— no. No: you're lying—"
Medici put his hands on the banister, staring down at it as he spoke.
"That blond hair hardly suits him. Makes him stand out more than anything. Sounds a little strange, but I'd say he almost looks a little like Madonna, if that makes any sense."
Noirbarret said nothing to this, but the silence in the air spoke louder than a scream. Medici gently gripped the edge of his sword, mounted on hooks on the opposite side of the bannister.
"No," Noirbarret whispered, first without inflection, and then with growing dismay.
"No...no... no!"
Medici prepared to pull out his blade from its hiding place. He knew that everything he'd said had to be said, and for both their sakes, and he knew this was the only possible way to even remotely salvage anything of their pasts, if such could even be done.
But he also knew it would come to at least a few blows. He knew Noirbarret would be angry. He knew, in fact, that Noirbarret would be white-hot furious.
He did not expect, however, that Noirbarret would be cold.
"My boy," Medici said, "we need to find a way for you to have a choice in this matter. We need to wean you off this crutch..."
The footsteps sounded behind him and Medici dutifully produced his sword, ready to lock blades and parry the attack. He was not confronted with a blade, however, but the yawning, empty barrel of a gun.
The man had a split second to widen his eyes in disbelief before Noirbarret blew one of them back into his skull. He followed up with the five other chambers of the revolver, tearing holes through the elder man's throat, chest, and mouth.
Medici crumpled to the ground before the bannister, splayed on his back like an overturned turtle, vomiting hot bile. While he suffered in this stunned agony Noirbarret cast his gun aside and picked up the man's sword from the ground. Without so much as a whisper he rammed it through Medici's chest with a force strong enough to spear the blade into the plush carpet and the flooring underneath.
In the aftermath Noirbarret stumbled back against the desk; he panted, face slack, a sheen of cold sweat trickling down his brow. Medici gripped the sword that impaled him with weak hands, craning his head up off the carpet to look at it with a confused, dreamy frown. All around his body the royal purple carpet began darkening into a ruddy crimson, black as ink in the wan light of the room.
He was, for a moment, stunned by his own actions, but Noirbarret got up off the desk quick enough. His face at first showed regret, but that quickly passed. Only a cold scowl burned on his face when he retrieved his umbrella, cast the sheath aside and confronted the helpless elder man with his slim sword, kneeling by his side. He took Medici's hair in one hand, forcefully lifting his head up to face him.
"Nobody takes Penance away from me, you stupid old fool. Nobody!"
Noirbarret set his blade to Medici's throat; it trembled in his hand.
Before he could strike Medici gripped Noirbarret's shoulder with a bloody hand, grabbing him tight. His lips moved about as he tried to speak, as if what he had to say were more urgent than anything in history.
Last words often were, weren't they?
"S— Sterlyn... Sterlyn..."
Again Noirbarret's face flushed with something close to regret. He repositioned his hand, cradling the back of Medici's head rather than tugging on his scalp. The eyes of both men met and Medici ran his trembling fingers over one of Noirbarret's cheeks.
He then gripped the collar of Noirbarret's shirt, pulling himself up as far as he could, glaring at him with a contemptuous scowl.
"You... are such... a disappointment!"
Noirbarret's cold gaze returned; he batted away the man's hand as if shooing a fly off his shirt and let Medici's head fall to the carpet with a thud. He gripped his own sword's handle with both hands. When he spoke his voice was as cold as his face.
"You should show me more respect," he said. "I'm the man that bent the sunrise to my will, and I'm the man that's gonna break it, too. So you want me to make a choice between Penance and you? Sorry, old fool..."
Noirbarret raised the blade over his head.
"...there can be only him."
X
X
X
After the pyrotechnics he moved back into the cavernous, empty halls of the house. When he reached the foyer he stopped at the front door, staring at the oaken thing for God knows how long. He certainly couldn't say.
He pulled his wallet from his pocket, briefly examining his ID, badge and cards before throwing it across the floor. He produced his revolver and loaded the chamber with a single spare round, then he walked to a wall opposite the front door. He stood sideways from that wall, pressed the barrel to his own temple and then pulled the trigger.
After he finally came to on the floor—ears ringing and head pounding— he wiped the drying gunk from his face, got back up and examined the brainy mess on the wall. It would be acceptable, he judged.
He then produced a knife and rolled up his shirt sleeve; he made a trail of blood from that spot beneath the wall all the way to the front door, smearing it out like a macabre red carpet as he went. Stepping back he surveyed all his handiwork: the brain-splattered wall, bloodstained floor and his wallet cast off to one side.
It would do.
He drove back to Morrisville in silence with not even the radio to keep him company. When he reached the waters of the Delaware, pitch black in the growing night, he drove alongside it until he reached a suitably secluded spot.
And then he took a sharp turn, careening out into the black abyss.
The water along the shoreline still ebbed and churned when he managed to make it back to land. He crawled out of the river and along the ground, grateful to have the scent of grass replace the stink of river water, and when he had the strength to stand he did so. He got to his feet, looking out across the dark water, watching the last of the ripples mark the passing of that beautiful black Mustang: Connall Noirbarret's most prized possession.
He couldn't care in the slightest.
Black Hat turned away from the river.
He ascended the small slope, stalking off and leaving a trail of water in his wake, moving like a sea beast come up to land.
A sea beast with motivation.
A sea beast with hunger.
