1.8
With my heart thundering in my chest, I tightened my grip on my scabbard, my knuckles popping with the force, and cast aside unnecessary thoughts. Right now, my priority was figuring out what had happened and where my people had gone.
There would be time to panic later.
Turning my head, my eyes flashed over the length of the alley and I spotted something I'd missed before. Someone was standing off to the side, halfway hidden by a small alcove in the wall of one of the buildings. They seemed familiar, and when I took a closer look, I realized that it was the teen who'd lent me his smartphone earlier, so that I could look at a map of the area.
Not wasting any time, I stepped over the side of the building and dropped into the alleyway, kicking off to dash towards him the instant one of my feet had touched the ground. The distance between us vanished in a blink, and on my arrival, I spotted a girl hidden in the shadows of the alcove beside him.
She was sitting on her heels against the wall, hugging her legs to her chest so that she could press her face into her knees. Hiding as she was, it took me a moment to recognize her as the one who'd been our driver.
"What happened?!" I demanded as soon as I came to a stop, my tone sharp. They both flinched with exaggerated motions, the boy recoiling sharply enough that he started to topple over away from me.
Not having the patience to deal with their surprise, my hand snapped out and I latched onto his arm to drag him upright. In my haste, I must have used a bit too much force, if his pained cry were a reliable measure, and I had to remind myself to relax and take a deep breath. With conscious effort, I forced myself to loosen my grip, but didn't let go entirely.
After I'd stood him up straight, he glanced skittishly in my direction, and shrank in on himself in obvious fear.
"They-" he began, choking on his words and unable to meet my eyes. "Dai- Daisuke took the car and everyone else."
"Daisuke?" I interrupted him, my suspicions mounting. "Who is Daisuke?"
"He- he was the older guy that was with us. He said something about m-making us real men, and that we were leaving." With a shaky hand, he gestured between himself and the girl.
"We tried to tell them that we had to stay here, but they wouldn't listen and kicked us out. I was going to call you, but..." He trailed off and looked down at his hand. I followed his gaze and saw that he was holding the ABB burner phone that Daisuke had tossed away in the car.
"That piece of shit, I should have known!" I mentally cursed to myself. I had thought that I'd sent him a strong enough warning to behave, but obviously I'd underestimated the size of his ego.
One way or another, I had to find them and do something about this before Lung found out. If it really had been a mistake to leave them hiding in the first place, this would be another, bigger strike against me. Beyond that, if I didn't teach them a lesson myself, I knew for a fact that Lung would. That arrogant bastard deserved whatever he had coming to him, but the other people that got roped into going along with him? They definitely shared some fault, but they didn't deserve Lung.
"How long ago did they leave? Do you have any idea where they might have gone?" I demanded from him, shaking his entire body with each question. His face took on a queasy air, and it was the girl who spoke up in response.
"They're going to a fucking brothel!" she cursed out, tears obvious in the quaver of her voice. "They said something about nineteenth street and I know I heard my older brother mention one of Lung's places being there in the past."
Pulling her face away from her knees, she looked up at me with a desperate, pleading expression, highlighted by the trails of mascara running down her face. "That was my parents' car. If I don't bring it home-" her words choked off into ugly sobs, and she curled back up, hugging her legs more tightly.
I was dumbfounded.
I wanted to shout at her, ask her if she was fucking stupid, but I forced down my incredulous anger. Maybe she'd been trying to impress her friends by being helpful, maybe she'd been forced to go along with it and hadn't had a choice. I didn't know her circumstances, and it wasn't my place to judge her.
I didn't have time for this.
"Give me your phone." I demanded, turning back to the trembling teen still in my grip. Wordlessly, he held out the ABB burner phone in his hand. "Not that one!" I snapped, losing what little patience I had left.
He flinched, and hurriedly pulled out his smartphone.
"Bring up the map," I ordered, continuing to pile on demands.
With shaking hands, he thumbed through a few screens and loaded up the map application. Taking the phone from him, I finally let him go and stepped over to the girl. In one motion, I stooped down to grab her under the shoulder, and easily hoisted her to her feet.
"Show me where." I ordered, holding the phone out. Sniffling back tears, she took it and panned the map around, stopping to zoom in on an area of the docks.
With a nervous glance towards me, she pointed at one of the streets. "I don't know where specifically, but it should be somewhere around here."
Silently taking the phone back from her, I studied the area she'd indicated and traced the route south back towards the club to get my bearings. Even if I had to search the whole street, it shouldn't take me long to find them, as long as they were actually there. I'd just need to keep an eye out for the familiar SUV, or gatherings of ABB gang members.
Looking up, I locked the phone's screen and slid it into the back of my sash with the others.
"Come with me," I ordered, beckoning for them to follow. "I'm going to go find them, but you two need to stay here to keep watch."
Abruptly stopping in my tracks, I spun around and clapped my hand down onto the boy's shoulder, meeting his eyes. He froze up and immediately started shaking, faintly twitching his head side to side as though he wanted to turn away, but couldn't bring himself to.
"This time, if something happens, call me," I all but growled.
Visibly gulping, he nodded his head with jerky movements, and I mercifully let him go.
Storming out of the alleyway with quick but human steps, I marched my way down the street back to the club, my two remaining 'gang members' trailing meekly in my wake. Mitchell and Ken were still standing out in front, chatting with a pair of women dressed for a night out on the town.
Ken was the first to spot me, as he glanced up over one of the women's shoulders mid conversation. I could see him tense up, the easy smile vanishing from his face as he met my eyes across the distance. He took a step forwards, hesitating for only a moment before decisively placing himself between the pair and myself to push them in the opposite direction.
"You should go," I distinctly heard him warn, catching the faint tremor in his quiet voice, even from this distance.
Concerned, the women shot a glance over their shoulders and gasped as soon as their eyes landed on me. Without further prompting, they delivered a quick farewell, and hurried off in the opposite direction.
When I reached Mitchell and Ken, I could see them subtly draw away from me, studying what was visible of my expression with an obvious note of caution. After a moment, they seemed to notice the quiet pair of teenagers standing timidly behind me, and turned to give them a curious once over.
"Battousai," Mitchell began, pausing as his eyes drifted back to meet my own. "Did something happen?"
"There's a small problem I need to go take care of," I replied, my words level and cold. "These two will be standing watch in my place. They have a method of contacting me, should something happen while I'm gone. Please ensure that they use it." A visible shudder ran through them at my turbulent tone, and I ignored the soft whimper that followed from behind me.
With an audible gulp, Mitchell gave me a brief, acknowledging nod, and I turned to walk away from them. After taking a few steps to put some space between us, I dropped my body low to accelerate.
As I pushed off to launch myself forwards, the toe of my boot bit deeply into the ground, and I could feel the concrete of the sidewalk crumbling beneath it. I shot away from the club, accelerating from a standstill to neck breaking speeds in three easy steps, the second touching the ground a half block away from my starting position, the third after another two streets had flown past.
Brockton Bay rushed by around me at speeds too fast for the human eye to follow, but I never lost track of my surroundings. Every car in my path was easily vaulted, every pedestrian sidestepped without breaking pace. If I wasn't so focused on my objective, I might have found it exhilarating to cut loose like this, but with the current circumstances, only the path ahead of me remained in my mind.
It didn't take me long to reach nineteenth street, cutting east to west across the northern side of the city. The grim squalor of the docks was apparent here, with worn down brick and cinderblock buildings pressing in on the narrow lanes from both sides.
As I approached the street, I took several quick steps to cut my speed in half, and kicked off from the sidewalk to cross the four-way intersection diagonally. When I reached the opposite corner, I planted my foot into the side of the curb to help redirect myself, and the impact shattered off a piece of the neglected concrete. It burst out in an explosion of dust, spraying a nearby industrial building with fragments of jagged stone.
Ignoring it, I continued on down the adjoining road.
Now that I was getting close, I decided to take a moment to check my location. Planting my right leg forwards, I bled off a bit more momentum and launched myself into the air, traversing a shallow arc up to the rooftops. Once there, I landed with an easy grace, and slid to a stop against an old chimney.
Pulling out my requisitioned smartphone, I unlocked it using the code I'd sneakily memorized, and took a look at the digital map. Maybe the GPS couldn't cope with the speeds I'd been moving at, but it took a full thirty seconds to figure out my position. When my little dot finally appeared, I quickly confirmed that I was in the correct area, and slid the phone back into my sash.
I set off down the street along the rooftops, carefully keeping track of every vehicle and person that I passed. Whenever I reached an intersection, I made sure to check in both directions, on the off chance that my target was down on one of the side streets, before quickly carrying on. I was moving much more slowly than I'd been on my mad dash over here, but it still didn't take me more than a few seconds to scan each block.
I found the SUV not even five minutes after I'd started my search.
It was parked in a row of cars across the street from a worn down apartment building. Three men wearing ABB colors were loitering around out in front.
Stopping on the roof of the building, I peered down across the street at the SUV, and found no one inside it. Deciding that they must already be in the building, I pushed off from the edge and dropped down right in the middle of the gang members. They reacted predictably, recoiling in shock and shouting out indecipherable exclamations as they reached into their jackets for weapons. I turned my head, shooting each of them a cold glare in turn and they froze up, eyes growing wide as they realized who I was.
Once I was sure that they weren't going to attack me, I calmly closed in on the one standing in front of the door and met his eyes.
"Did a man named Daisuke come here with a group?" I asked him, tone sharp with impatience. He turned away from me, looking over my shoulder to say something in Japanese to the men behind me. His tone was mocking, and he punctuated it with a flippant little gesture.
I'd already had enough of him.
Slamming my palm into the center of his chest, I drove him back against the wall before reaching up to grab his throat, and bodily lifted him off the ground. His eyes shot wide with panic as I constricted his airway, skillfully avoiding his carotid arteries. He reached up and frantically clawed at my forearm in a vain attempt to break free, his nails fruitlessly scratching at the surface of my vambrace.
As the men behind me cried out in outrage, I felt a spike of intent from them, and turned to see them once again reaching to draw their weapons. Silently, I grasped the hilt of my sword with my free hand and looked up to meet their eyes. They froze, fearful gasps hissing in through their clenched teeth, and I held their eyes for several long seconds before turning back to the man in my grasp.
"Is. He. Here?" I demanded, intoning each word deliberately slowly. There was a long, empty pause as he continued to struggle, mindlessly kicking at the air and scrabbling to find some purchase against my unyielding arm. Eventually, the men behind me started to call out in loud, jittery voices.
From the tone and cadence of their speech, it seemed like they were bickering, and every now and then I managed to catch them saying 'Daisuke' in their rapid Japanese. They shouted back and forth a few times, as the face of the man I was choking started to turn blue, before the door to the building suddenly slammed open beside me.
An older man with graying hair and glasses started to step out, an annoyed expression on his face, but when he saw me holding the struggling man more than twice my bulk, he flinched backwards, paling. The men behind me shouted something out and he replied to them in a panicked tone, gesturing in my direction. They responded, and I once again caught them say 'Daisuke' before the older man turned to glance back into the interior of the building, blinking rapidly in thought. Seeming to come to a realization, he turned back to me and held his hands out in a placating manner.
"Ah-ah, eh, he-he is here! He is here!" he called out to me in heavily accented English, seeming to take a moment to find the right words to use. He pointed behind himself into the building. "I-I take you to him, okay?"
I turned to him and waited another moment before releasing my grip on the suffocating man. He collapsed to the ground and clutched at his throat, coughing and gasping with desperate abandon. I stepped over his prone body with affected indifference, and followed the older man into the building.
Though the facade had seemed like an ordinary apartment complex, the interior gave me the feeling of a cheap motel with an artificial, oriental flair. The walls were covered with a tacky red and gold wallpaper, accented by a number of statues, hanging decorations, and fake plants. They were littered around the foyer, seemingly at random, with no discernible pattern or design.
Directly opposite the entrance was something of a welcome desk, replete with a grimy little bell, a waxy looking fern, and a creepy statue of a wide-eyed, waving cat. Next to the desk was a narrow hallway that stretched back into the gloom of the building. It was lined with numerous doors that seemed far too close together for their rooms to be comfortably sized.
The entire place reeked with the stench of mold, sweat, cigarettes, and another thick, cloying odor that seemed to stick to the back of my throat.
As I followed the old man in, doing my best to not breathe through my nose, another space came into view around a corner to my left.
It was a narrow room, lined by squat chairs with stained upholstery, and a filthy carpet covered with cigarette butts and ash. There were three teenage boys sitting there, busying themselves with their phones as they fidgeted uncomfortably in the chairs with stiff expressions.
I recognized them as my missing gang members.
Abruptly stopping in my tracks, I placed my left hand deliberately onto the hilt of my sword and stared at them in silence. As though he could feel my gaze, one of the teens glanced up and met my eyes with a gasp. Alerted, the other two turned to him before following his line of sight, becoming statues as soon as they saw me.
I stood there, watching them with unblinking eyes, for seconds that seemed to stretch out endlessly. They started to tremble, quaking in their seats and unable to turn away.
When the old man realized that I wasn't following him anymore, he turned to see what had happened. I heard him suck in a sharp breath through his teeth, and he muttered what sounded like a quiet prayer.
As visible beads of sweat started to form on the three's foreheads, the old man took a few cautious steps towards me, clutching his hands together as his eyes were throwing out a silent plea.
"You want Daisuke, yes?" he tried to draw my attention. "Here, here, this way!" he beckoned me along after him, towards the hallway.
I maintained my silent glare.
The old man's hands went to his head and he gripped at his thinning hair, breathing out panicked lamentations. "Ah-ah-ah! P-please, do not fight inside, okay? I take you to Daisuke, you take them outside, okay? Okay?!"
I held my position for another few moments, before turning to follow him.
A trio of desperate gasps burst out behind me as soon as I broke eye contact, the three sucking in rasping breaths as though they'd been having trouble breathing.
When the old man saw that he had my attention, he immediately spun around, rushing towards the hallway with frantic steps. As I followed him deeper into the building, I felt myself being enveloped by a frantic discord of discomposing sounds.
There was the rustling of blankets, shifting against each other in time with the motion of skin across skin, like a wispy rhythm. Breathy voices leaked out, sighing through the air to conceal quiet, pained whimpers in an ever-changing chorus. There was so much dynamic movement that the floor rocked with a frantic fervor.
The space seemed to thrum around me with an unignorable passion. It ground against my enhanced senses like heavy static, sending uncomfortable shudders crawling down my spine. I did my best to block it out, despite the fleeting, grainy pictures painted within my mind's eye of the scenes behind the doors.
I hated it, hated that I had to be here, hated that I'd been forced to come because one arrogant bastard couldn't just be patient and do what I'd fucking said.
As the old man quickly approached a door, he knocked with a few quiet taps of his knuckles and called out in hesitant Japanese. The vibrations in the air sent a shock through my already agitated nerves, and my mental picture of the room flared into a brief but greater clarity.
There was a listless woman sprawled out limply on top of a pile of what seemed to be blankets and cushions. A man was above her, moving rhythmically until the knock disrupted him. When he turned to face the door, I could just barely make out Daisuke's face, like a fleeting snapshot in my imagination, as it distorted in obvious irritation.
He called out angrily in Japanese, before turning back to resume his activity.
After a hesitant pause, the old man started to give a meek reply, before I stepped up and forced him to the side.
Lashing out, I slammed the base of my palm into the edge of the door and it exploded open, the internals of the cheap metal latch shattering and spraying pieces out across the floor. The pair were startled to alertness, the woman screaming out in fear as Daisuke lurched to his feet with a furious exclamation. He bent low and scrambled to hoist his pants up from where they sat around his ankles.
As I stood menacingly in the doorway, a cold fury burning in my eyes, I saw recognition root itself in his expression as he realized what was going on. He hesitated for only a moment, before turning away from me and lunging towards a corner of the room. Time seemed to slow to a crawl and I glanced towards his objective, spotting a jacket sitting on the floor in a heap.
I made my move, crossing the distance to him in an instant, and brought my knee up to slam into his bare abdomen. It hit with a meaty thud and he collapsed to his knees, spewing out the contents of his stomach. He was down for only a moment before moving again.
Without wasting the time to even wipe the bile from his mouth, he managed to get his feet beneath him, and dove across the floor to grab the jacket. Getting a hand on it, he dragged it to himself and frantically pulled the material apart to search for something inside. As I stalked closer to him, I took my scabbard into my left hand and pulled the sheathed sword from my waist.
His hands seemed to settle around a solid object in a pocket, likely a gun from the shape, and he rolled over onto his back, carrying it with him without pulling it free. As he began to bring the obvious weapon to bear, despite it still being buried in the material, I grasped the hilt of my sword and drew it in a simultaneous strike.
My blade flashed out, faster than the eye could hope to follow, and cleaved effortlessly through my target. The jacket was sliced apart, revealing a cleanly cut pistol falling in pieces to the floor. It was followed immediately after by all of the fingers on Daisuke's right hand.
I stared impassively, naked blade held ready at my side, as a long moment passed before he seemed to realize what had happened. He stared at his hand in shock, as blood welled out from the stumps of his fingers to drip messily down his arm. It seemed to take seconds for the pain to finally reach his brain, but when it did, he recoiled sharply, back arching on the ground and screaming his voice hoarse in agony.
"Fuck!" he howled in a drawn out exclamation, rolling onto his side to clutch his injured hand to his chest. "You bitch! You fucking bitch!"
With a sharp flick of my sword, I scattered several droplets of blood across the wall before sheathing the blade in a quick, fluid motion. I slid the scabbard back into my sash and stooped down, wrapping my fingers into his disgusting, greasy hair. When I pulled up, he screamed out again and scrambled to get his legs beneath him, reaching up with his uninjured hand to grab at me for support.
Unwilling to tolerate his touch, I pulled one of my hands away and rammed my knuckles into his naked back, forcing him up against the wall. He tried to catch himself, reaching out with both arms to stymie the impact, but his resistance crumbled with an agonized howl as his severed fingers slammed into the hard surface.
Somehow, he managed to retain his senses and lashed out, striking back at my face with his left elbow. I caught it easily, and hooked my right forearm underneath his joint to wrench his arm out straight, pinning it with leverage in the crook of my neck, on top of my right shoulder. Finally, I hooked my right arm underneath his right shoulder and reached around to grab him by the back of the neck. Keeping a firm grip, I yanked him to the side to hold in front of me, and forced him stumbling out of the room.
As we moved into the hallway, I realized that our confrontation had alerted the other patrons. Doors began to creak open so that cautious faces could peek out to find the source of the commotion. I ignored them, staring resolutely ahead as I marched my belligerent captive away.
Suddenly, a warning seemed to blare through my mind and my body tensed, eyes snapping over to focus on a shirtless man emerging from a doorway to the left. He stepped out into the hallway, a pistol in his hand and his expression twisted into an angry sneer. When he spotted me, I saw murder surge into his eyes.
I responded immediately, carrying Daisuke forwards with me as I closed the distance on my wouldbe assailant. My left hand went to the hilt of my sword, and I drew it into a reverse handed strike. Once again, the edge of the blade easily cleaved through the body of the handgun, rendering it inoperable. The man's fingers were spared, but as I finished carrying through the arc of my swing, I pulled my elbow down sharply, slamming it into his shoulder.
There was a resounding crack as his collarbone snapped in two, and he collapsed backwards into the darkness of the room, once more filling the building with agonized screams.
No one dared to oppose me after that, and I made my way out into the foyer unmolested.
As I passed through, I shot a steely glare at the three junior gang members, still lingering in the grungy waiting area with fearful expressions.
"Outside, now," I spat out, my acidic order spurring them to motion.
Without sparing them a second glance, I stormed out through the wide open front door and hurled Daisuke out into the middle of the street. He flew a fair distance, flailing wildly through the air, before his back slammed down onto the pavement. His body rolled a few times with the leftover momentum, and when he finally came to a stop, his face was distorted in a drawn out, soundless scream.
I stalked over at an unhurried pace, taking my time to glower down at him as my fingers drummed out a steady rhythm on the hilt of my sword. I came to a stop a few feet to his side, silently looming over him with obvious disdain. Behind me, I could hear the quiet rustling of clothing, as a number of people filed out of the brothel to watch the spectacle from the side of the street.
The air was heavy with a grim attention, and no one dared to make a sound.
Daisuke's chest was heaving with pained gasps, sweat pouring out in rivers from the surface of his skin, but even so, he continued to struggle. Visibly fighting with his own body to force himself to stand, he managed to prop his uninjured arm beneath himself and shakily rose to his feet.
He kept his wounded right hand pressed to his chest, blood trailing down the toned muscles of his abdomen to stain the front of his pants, and brought up his left, curled into a quivering fist. With reckless determination, he lowered himself into an unsteady fighting stance, and watched me with wide, desperate eyes. Finally gathering his nerves, he roared out a primal war cry and came charging forwards.
I stared back impassively, my mind automatically tearing apart and breaking down every minute detail in his form. Though his style was wild and sloppy, I could see that he was an experienced street fighter. It was as though hundreds of battles from his past played out in my mind, overlapping with his real body as he closed the distance in what felt like slow motion.
Every blow he'd taken was something he'd learned from, every fight containing a lesson applied to the future. He'd taught himself with experience alone, getting just a little bit better and a little bit smarter every time he'd managed to walk away from a confrontation with his life.
Here now, on full display before my innate, superhuman skill, it was worth nothing.
As his attack came closing in on my face, a wild haymaker sacrificing poise for sheer power, I unwaveringly met his eyes and leaned my head back a mere four inches, the bare minimum to dodge his desperate strike. His fist whooshed past my nose and I grabbed my sword, abruptly pulling it up to slam the pommel into his diaphragm.
I stepped to the side as he doubled over, falling to his knees and retching to empty whatever else happened to be left in his stomach. Carrying through the motion, I pulled the scabbard free of my sash, this time grabbing the hilt of the blade and drawing it immediately to hold at my side.
He turned his head to glare at me, and with a deft motion I reversed my grip on the scabbard before lashing it down. It struck across his jaw hard enough to whip his head to the side, eliciting a messy spray of saliva and blood. He crumpled to the ground, rolling with the force of the strike to lie limply on his back, chest heaving up and down with each breath.
His eyes were closed, but I could tell that he was still conscious.
"Stand up," I commanded, my voice so cold and devoid of emotion, that I couldn't even recognize it as my own.
His eyelids fluttered open and his gaze turned towards me, first falling on my face before sliding down to the sword in my hand. He seemed to deflate, defeat and resignation sweeping in to cloud his once defiant eyes. They closed a moment later, and after a short, heavy silence, he managed to slur out a weak reply.
"Jus' do it. Kill me."
A shudder ran through me like a shock down my spine, and my hand tightened painfully around the hilt of my sword. I stared down at him, bloodied and broken at my feet, and my heart started to thunder in my chest.
Almost beyond my control, my gaze wandered over the ground, passing over the dark sprays of blood, the pool of vomit, and finally coming to rest on the dripping stain at the end of my scabbard.
Clenching my teeth together hard enough to hurt, I desperately swallowed down the bile rising up my throat.
With an abrupt, precise motion, I slipped my blade back into its scabbard, and stooped over to quickly wipe the blood off on my victim's pants. With it relatively clean, I slid it back into my sash and glanced down at his face again.
"If you're so eager to die, then I suggest you lay there until you bleed to death," I spat out, managing to keep my voice from quavering.
Once I'd left the area, I was sure that someone would take him to a hospital. They'd been covering for him when I'd first arrived, after all.
I turned away, hurriedly scanning the small crowd that had gathered, before finding my three wayward gang members. All three of them were staring down at Daisuke's prone form with blank, ashen faces.
'Maybe now they won't get themselves killed,' I tried to convince myself, as though I were some noble individual teaching them a hard lesson for their own good.
"Hey!" I called out, startling them enough that they visibly jumped. When they turned to face me, I could see the obvious terror in their body language, all three of them expecting the worst.
I did my best to ignore it.
"Where are the keys for the car?"
My question seemed to surprise them, but they managed to recover a bit of their nerve fairly quickly. They looked between themselves, and after a momentary, silent exchange, the bravest one stepped forwards and called back in a feeble voice,
"Dai- Daisuke had them…"
I mentally cursed as I turned back to study the profile of the fallen man's pants pockets. With my sharp vision, I didn't see anything that looked like the outline of a set of keys, so I was pretty sure that he didn't have them on him. They must have been in his jacket, back in the room.
"Go inside and find them," I ordered, realizing that I shouldn't be seen searching myself.
They glanced at each other in uncertain anxiety, before all three clumsily turned to head back into the building. As they approached, the old man from before subtly waved them along after him, attempting to keep out of my line of sight.
I didn't have to wait long before they reappeared with the keys.
Giving the group a once over, I glanced back at the SUV. "Which of you can drive?"
The one who'd answered me before stepped forwards. "I-I can," he managed to stammer out.
I gave a perfunctory nod. "Good, we're going back."
They fidgeted nervously for a moment, and I turned to walk towards the car by myself in consideration. I circled around, and stopped decisively by the passenger door.
Once they'd seen me choose my seat, the trio hurried over and immediately piled in. Without a word, I slid into the plush upholstery and pulled my sheathed sword out to hold between my legs. Doing his best to keep his eyes resolutely ahead, our driver started the engine and cautiously pulled out onto the decrepit city streets.
The ride back to the club was absolutely silent, leaving me alone with my frantic thoughts, and my painfully churning stomach.
