Author's Note: Here we go…the second part of Chapter One. Be prepared for some culture shock ; Enjoy, darlings.
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He stood on the rail of the glass bridge, a silent silhouette in the early morning twilight. The city below him was quiet, shrouded in a cool, misty fog whose fingers seemed to extend from his lone figure to creep stealthily down the empty streets. The many buildings were cast in deep shadows, their edges barely illuminated with a blue-green promise of the coming dawn. And the Hunter took a deep breath, inhaling the life of the waking city. His burning gaze swept over his vast kingdom: Glastadt, the Shining City.
Even in the highlighted darkness, the city was magnificent. Shops and markets and town houses and inns lined every street; there was not an ugly building among them. Occasionally, a mansion or an old office building rose above the others. The glow of the street lamps did nothing to reprieve the darkness; rather, they only illuminated the thick, rolling fog, making it a neon blanket that covered all but the very tops of the buildings. At the far end of the city, the Chancellor's Glass Palace rose above the fog and into the clouds, towering over Glastadt as a venerable stairway to heaven.
Chancellor Istvan Khan was sometimes called The Bringer of Beauty. It was true. There was no evidence that this great Glass City used to be the ruined metropolis of Berlin, Germany. But perhaps the greatest aspect of Glastadt was that it was not all shiny, modern curves. Most of the architectural lines, however new they were, had roots in the 17th century, from the great Romantic statues to the ornamental ironwork. And it was constantly under construction, whether it be a fountain or a theatre, and had been growing since it was first declared the capital of Fovuc. A great wall encircled the entire city, from the palace to the bridge on which the Hunter now stood. Glastadt was a fortress, a beautiful, beautiful fortress, torn from the pages of lore and legend; and yet, it still managed to be the perfect playground to the many social elite that paraded its venues. Soon, the sun would call its many peoples out to play, and the quiet of the dark would be broken. But he was no fool; light was not always good, and night was not always evil.
His thoughts dwelled on things he was not supposed to know. His return from business in Japan had been unexpected, his plans having been upset by urgent messages, whispers in the dark. It had been a late night. It would be a long day. He needed answers, and he had very little time to find them. The weight of his knowledge pressed urgently against the city walls. Soon, the dam of revelation would break upon the city. Secrets never stayed secret for long. His gaze turned as the sun started to crest behind him, throwing the city into sharper relief. He easily found what he sought – the great structure, equally imposing as the Glass Palace, its shadow dominating half of the city. It was a castle that stretched out and rose up, an ancient, sleeping giant. It was called the Hold. And it was the home of the Killer Angels.
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She was up to her knees in water, in a shadowy place that had no discernible boundaries. In front of her, something was heaped up on a shallow sort of sandbar. A wind swept through the place, and she shivered; looking down, she saw that she was dressed in only a flimsy nightgown, with a white top and full red skirts. She sloshed forward towards the heap, and a faint feeling of surprise fluttered across her mind, because it was very hard to move through the water, harder than it ever had been before.
As she slowly made her way to the heap, a sharp, metallic smell assailed her, the smell of sweet copper pennies. A very, very familiar smell. She froze. And she knew, suddenly, without a doubt, in the horrible clarity that comes with truth, that the heap was a body; and she was wading in a river of blood, blood that had stained her once pure gown with its greedy hands.
And then she realized that the blood was hers.
The chilly wind swept her hair back and danced over her skin and she shrugged it away –
Catriona Winner's heart slammed into her chest as she flew from her nightmare back into her bed. There was a single moment of disorientation, of separating dream from reality, and then a total awareness of everything around her. The dream was still clear in her mind, as vivid as a true memory; they were all like that. But now, the vision was taking the back seat, pushed away by something else. An urgency sang through her, a fine prickling over her skin that was almost identical to the chilly wind in her dream. Her internal warning system had woken her from her dream world; a threat was lurking close, and her every molecule was screaming for attention, that the threat was not yet gone. On instinct, she had kept her eyes closed, her body still when she was first jerked awake, and as she lay among the soft goose-down pillows, she spared a grateful thought to those oh-so finely honed instincts. Even in sleep, her subconscious knew the feel of her room, her space, and could tell when something was out of place. Now, with her full attention honed on the air around her, she knew why the feeling of wrongness had been strong enough to wake her. There was an intruder in her chambers, not yet to her room, but almost.
The silence around her was deafening as she strained to hear, strained to sense, to get an advantage on whoever thought to disturb her slumber. If only her heart would stop thudding in her ears. There, the slightest shuffle, like clothes rustling. He was right outside of her open door.
She kept her breathing deep and measured, and noiselessly snaked an arm underneath one of her pillows; her hand touched the cool metal of a gun, and she gripped it familiarly. It was a Beretta, nickel plated, and loaded with high-impact lead bullets. Not the most damaging, but a bullet hole is a bullet hole when you're aiming at something vital. Besides, she didn't like using too strong ammunition in her rooms. Blowing holes in the walls tended to make the 'landlord' angry, and it always took a while to get them patched up. The last time she'd shot up the walls it had cost half a fortune to repair. And, besides that, she preferred keeping it neat. No need to splatter whoever it was all over those nice, newly-patched walls. Hiring someone to clean blood and other things from thousand-year-old stone wasn't cheap either.
Whoever It Was stood right outside her door, and had moved too quietly for her to assess their footsteps and identify them. If you were good enough, you could tell who people were by the sound of their footfalls, and she was pretty good. Judging by the barely-there haze through her eyelids, the sun wasn't quite up yet, but it was nearing dawn. So when she opened her eyes, there would be enough light to see, but she shouldn't have to wait for her sight to adjust. Excellent. Someone was in her room, and woke her up, and she was tired, damn it. Oh, she would enjoy this. She tightened her grip on the 9mm in her palm, and felt a sure, empty coolness spread from that hand all the way to her toes. If her eyes were open, she knew that they would be empty. Nothing like starting the morning as a sociopath; usually, she worked up to that as the day went on, like light fading from a sky. Her grip on the Beretta was steady; it was just like another finger, another part of her. She was ready to kill and maim.
The moment she heard his weight start to shift to take the first step into her bedroom, she was up, eyes open, gun pointing calmly and accurately across the room, even with his heart. Her hand barely shook at all.
The man already had his hands up in surrender, foot stopped in midair. They stared at each other for a good five seconds, cold green eyes blinking at warm, rich brown ones. He broke the silence first.
"If you're going to shoot me, Cat, I'd really appreciate it if you went ahead and got on with it. The suspense is killing me."
If it had been a little darker in the room, the suspense wouldn't have been the only thing that killed him. People who threatened her, in any way, tended to get dead, by principle; better them than her. She glared at him for a little longer, then clicked the safety back on her gun and lowered it.
"What the hell are you doing in my room, Athens?" she left her irritation heavy in her tone. The words weren't a statement, and they carried a strong threat. No one just walked into her chambers. Of course, she should have known immediately that it was him; first, he was the only guy who would come into her rooms uninvited, the only guy confident enough that he would make it out alive. Second, if it had been anyone else, she would have known it a lot sooner, not just as he was about to walk through her doorway. But Athens was not the least bit hostile, towards her anyway; and he was familiar, so she hadn't reacted as if he were a threat until he was upon her. Stupid, stupid girl. That was the way you got yourself killed. What if it had been someone else? Too many people wanted her dead.
Athens relaxed against the doorjamb, or pretended to, and started to smile; it turned into a grimace that didn't hide the fact that something was troubling him. "Just get dressed."
She raised an eyebrow at him, but jerked back the covers and swung her bare legs over the edge of the bed. Just who was the boss of whom here? The last time she checked, it was her, Cat, who was the Pegasus, and he who was her Dragon. She muttered grumpily, but stifled any open complaints. It was too extraordinary for such mundane, everyday sentiments. Even if he was her best friend, her partner, he had come to her room at the crack of dawn, risking death and all sorts of other injuries to wake her. Okay, so she probably wouldn't have killed him; shot him, now, that was another story.
Cat stood up, fully aware that she was only wearing an oversized t-shirt and panties, but not caring. It was her room, damn it. She was not about to be inconvenienced in her own bedroom. He'd seen the whole show before anyway.
He cleared his throat and chuckled in a quiet, amused way; it started to touch his eyes, but faded away very quickly.. "I'll wait outside," he said, and turned into the antechamber. "Oh, and Cat," he paused over his shoulder, "hurry."
She snarled and threw a pillow at his head, and he laughed good-naturedly as he closed the door just in time to avoid what she suspected would have been a very messy decapitation. Pity.
She had an overwhelming, juvenile urge to take her time getting ready, but she managed to push it back. Instead, after washing her face and brushing her teeth, she dressed quickly in whatever she could find, not stopping to survey herself in the mirror. She quickly pulled her platinum blonde hair back into a high ponytail, tugging her fingers through the tangles, and walked towards the door.
Her apartments in the Angel Hold were nothing short of regal. As the only girl in the entire Killer Angels, Cat had a whole wing of the castle to herself. Though it was all hers, she had claimed only a small portion, one of the more moderate chambers, for all the good it did; her rooms included a large foyer, a living room, a large kitchen, two bedrooms – each with its own antechamber -- two and a half baths, a game room, and a small library-office. Her wing had been part of the original structure, built in the late 18th century, and had been used to house royal guests. She loved it immensely.
Stepping into the antechamber, her eyes went to Athens, and she was glad that she hadn't taken her time. Athens looked downright weary, the kind of fatigue that comes from a combination of a lot of physical and emotional stress in a short period of time. He was young, only twenty, two years her senior. But he seemed older. Not in his sculpted, unlined face, or his tall, athletic build, but in his eyes. They were ringed in brown, starting with dark chocolate on the outside, then moving to a light maple; finally, a rich amber ringed the black of his pupils. They were eyes that knew too much. But they were kind eyes. All in all, he was one of the most unique looking people she had ever seen. His hair was blood red, the kind that natural red-heads just didn't have; indeed, he lacked the other typical characteristics for red-heads too. His skin wasn't fair, and it didn't have freckles. Rather, it was tan, almost olive toned. And those three-ringed eyes. He had talked before about an unusual mix of Scottish, Irish, and Welsh heritage. But still, his was the kind of face that people just weren't born with, like his mother had made a deal with some otherworldly thing and gotten him out of it. On Athens, though, it didn't look unnatural or fake, because it wasn't. Just another oddity in her life. As if she needed any more than she already had.
Cat didn't stop to talk to him; instead, she kept walking, knowing he would follow. She needed sustenance before she could start to think. The sun hadn't even come up yet, for God's sake. They were both silent as she rummaged around her kitchen for a few minutes, and he sat watching her on a bar stool. He was one of those people who didn't have to have the constant noise of conversation, and so was she. Usually, their silences were comfortable ones, but today, an undercurrent of something else made the quiet of her kitchen almost unbearable. When she had sliced some fruit for herself and tossed him a bagel, he finally spoke.
"Bastiaan was cancelled yesterday."
She froze. A detached sensation flooded her senses, stilling any thoughts running through her head. The last thing she heard was the sound of the knife falling to the floor. All noise had stopped; the world was a blur.
The silence was deafening, almost painfully so, and it pressed against her ears as if she were deep underwater. Static buzzed across her vision, and her mouth went dry, and it was like she couldn't tell upside down from rightside up, and for a minute, she couldn't breathe.
I am going to faint, she thought. No, I don't faint. The ground lurched. I'm going to faint. Vaguely, she felt her hands clutching the edge of the countertop on their own volition, trying to grasp onto something, anything solid.
Finally, the world righted itself with a sickening sway. Slowly, her senses began to return to her, starting with sound. A loud pounding echoed through her head and through the room and seemed to reverberate through the cold stone of the castle walls and the furniture seemed to hum with it. Cat realized that it was her heart pounding; and then she realized that she could think again, and her thoughts spun. She tasted panic in the back of her throat as the implications of those four words echoed in her mind. One word in particular.
Cancelled. Bastiaan had been cancelled. In Angel-speak, it meant that he had been terminated. Killed. Destroyed. Cancelled. More specifically, it meant that he had been killed on purpose; not murdered, not any sort of accidental death. No, his death had been ordered. And there was only one way to get cancelled, one broad, all encompassing way.
Treason. In some way or form, betraying Fovuc. People got cancelled when they became a liability, when they became compromising to the nation. Usually, being cancelled was associated with defection – going over to Kanor, or wanting to leave Fovuc. Same thing. But never, never, had an Angel been cancelled, let alone a Pegasus. The Pegasus.
Bastiaan had been her guide of sorts when she had first become a Killer Angel. They were too different and he was too aloof for them to be close, but Cat had considered him a friend, as in close acquaintance. More than that, he was an ally, one of few.
Athens wore sympathy and understanding like a cloak, and she let him comfort her as he walked around the bar and enveloped her in his soothing embrace. Cat rested her cheek on his chest and took a deep breath, taking in the strength he offered before pulling away from him. She didn't have time to grieve; things would be happening, terrible repercussions would already be set in motion. Bastiaan was a Pegasus. Though they all were equal in rank, he had been the oldest, the strongest, the figurehead. The King. This couldn't be happening. It was impossible. Things like this didn't happen. But it is happening, the pesky voice in the back of her mind reminded her. You knew it could.
She clenched her fists. "When?"
"Yesterday evening. Somewhere in Tokyo." Athens sighed heavily, reading the questions in her eyes. "No one else knows yet, but you can bet that if I know, then rumors will start flying before high noon. And after the rumors will come the reality."
He didn't have to elaborate. Bad Things were coming. Be practical, Cat, always practical. One problem at a time, that's the only way. She pushed any worries out of her mind, and concentrated on what she knew.
Bastiaan would rather die than betray Fovuc, of that she was certain. Well, she thought dryly, now he won't have the option. A pang of sadness tightened her heart, and she pushed that aside too.
As a Pegasus, Bastiaan was guaranteed a trial should any indiscretion arise against him. But he hadn't gotten one, of course, and there was only way he could be denied that courtesy: someone had proven that he was guilty of high treason, the worst imaginable, and was, up until the time of his death, a prominent risk to the empire of Fovuc.
But he would never, never do such a thing. Bastiaan was a freaking model citizen, assassin-wise. The poster child of the Killer Angels. He had been set up. He had to have been. There were sixty-three Killer Angels total. Bastiaan was dead, and she was fairly certain that neither she nor Athens had done it. So that left no less than sixty people in Fovuc with motives. Sixty people in the Angels. And, of course, the millions of Kanori who would celebrate his death.
Cat shook her head, her fruit forgotten, overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the past ten minutes. Bastiaan had been cancelled, hunted, reaped. She shuddered as she thought of his fate, of his last moments before death. It was obvious who had killed him, for only one person handled such cancellation.
The Hunter.
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It was cool in Glastadt, even in late summer. Today the sun was hidden, adding a chill to the air, the kind that was never strong enough to grab a sweater but laid unkind, frigid kisses on bare arms. Blue and silver banners whipped in the wind from atop watch towers that ran in regular intervals along the great wall that surrounded the city. Outside the wall, buildings clustered all the way from the massive gates to at least a mile beyond, past the Glass Bridge. Inside the wall, the city stretched out down wide boulevards and fountained courtyards, rising on low hills to a center. That center was the Palace, and the Inner City, again ringed by a pure, white wall, slightly lower than the sheer fifty feet of the great wall. Towers and domes and delicate bridges like spun sugar peeked above the smaller wall, looking down upon the rest of Glastadt.
People were everywhere, slipping among the market stalls in the outer city, selling wares or food; the designer shops and boutiques in the inner city were preparing for customers. Cars coasted down some of the busier streets, but traffic was not heavy. Glastadt wasn't a city made for cars and industry. It was made for people, and most of them walked. The people laughed, talked, argued – all the things that people do. Most of them hurried; down the streets, clutching children's hands, past the guards at the gates. All eager to return somewhere. A very astute observer might liken the diverse peoples of Glastadt to mice. Mice, who in a time of dire, dire need, asked the hawk to protect them. Mice, who were safe from any danger, except the most fearsome of them all – the talons of their beloved, terrible hawks.
For Glastadt was a city of war. The massive army held barracks in the outer city, and stood a vigilant guard rain or shine.
And, more so, it was a city of Angels. Angels, from a time when there was war in heaven and angels could kill. Glastadt was the King's city, the Chancellor's domain, the capital of all Fovuc. And the Killer Angels were its master.
There were sixty-three of them. Thirty Wolves, thirteen Griffins, five Dragons, and five Pegasi. In the Fovucian Army, there were many elite groups for the extraordinary soldier. But the Killer Angels surpassed even them by leaps and bounds. They were awesome in their skills, terrifying. They were the inhuman warlords; some laughed and called them the immortal hands of God. But the laugh was always uneasy, and died quickly.
The Wolves were the lowest ranked, but they could still spawn nightmares in the minds of their foes. The Griffins rose above them, and made all who looked upon them cry out in terror. The Dragons were invincible, overwhelming, exuded power that silenced crowds of thousands. Then came the Pegasi.
The gods of thunder, wrath, wisdom, war, pestilence. The Five Deaths.
People told tales about them around fires, in hushed voices. Mothers would threaten their children, "Be good, or Lucas will come after you," or, "Thorn comes and takes bad little girls away." To be a Pegasus was to be a King.
There was only one man above them, one man that even the Pegasi answered to. Alex Rapier was the king of kings of all Fovuc. He stood at Khan's right hand, the Killer Angels beneath him to do his bidding.
But on Khan's left, there was another man, cast in shadow and untouched by any hand, who followed no will but his own.
The world feared the Killer Angels, but the Angels feared the Hunter.