Pale: 1.5 - Verona
Author: Wildbow

Verona

Verona watched the goblins as they led the way.  Toadswallow was round, with legs a bit too short to be practical, and he crossed the street at a run that required him to rock from side to side to get his legs up enough, while periodically touching the ground with one hand to keep from tumbling or sprawling.  Cherry moved on all fours.

Not in a straight line, either.  They avoided the light from nearby buildings, cutting diagonally across the intersection, then crossing the street further down.  If she hadn’t been watching, she might have mistaken them for a racoon and a small rodent crossing the road.

Seeing the goblins be so careful with how they crossed the road made her look both ways before crossing, even though there weren’t any cars on the road.

At this corner of town, there were some scattered businesses and stores, a trio of big concrete buildings that might have been factories, and narrow neighborhoods of houses.  The houses were different from the ones in Verona’s area.  A house that had been a barn once had extra stuff tacked onto it, like a wooden staircase and a second floor addition.  A nicer house was sandwiched between a house with grass and weeds so long that strands had grown wheat-like feathering at the top, and a house with peeling paint and next to no lawn at all.

Her dad was in a mood tonight, and she was so glad Avery had called.  Verona threw an arm around Avery’s shoulders.

“Wah,” Avery said, more like a word than an exclamation.  “You scared me.”

“How was it, going home?” Verona asked.

“My mom ordered takeout,” Lucy said.  “She wanted to ask what we did all weekend, so I told a partial truth, that we had a short camp-out.  I think she imagined we had it in the backyard.  What about you?”

“My dad’s being a bit…” Verona floundered for a word that was both the truth and accurate.  “You know him, Lucy.  How do I put it?”

“I don’t know him,” Avery said.

“Lame?” Lucy offered.

“Yes, but… more than lame.  I want a word more profound than that, and…” she floundered again.  “…Sad.”

“Is sad more profound?” Lucy asked.

“It is the way I’m thinking it,” Verona said.

“I dunno,” Verona said.  “Maybe, but I feel like most adults are.”

“Agree to disagree,” Avery said.

“Sure.  But if you asked that because of what I said, I meant sad the other way.”

They’d reached the foot of the house.  It was a narrow building, and much of it had burned, with the edges of plastic siding having charred and melted.  Plastic sheeting had been nailed down to minimize the water damage.  Whoever owned it didn’t have the money to make the extensive repairs, and they couldn’t or wouldn’t sell it, probably.

This close to it, Verona could smell the burned plastic, even though it had been like this since before winter.

Toadswallow crept up onto the stairs in front of the house.  He didn’t give Cherrypop a helping hand, as she fought to climb the scraggly bush next to the stairs.  Instead, he walked over to the front door, reared back enough it looked like he was going to tip backwards onto his ass, and then kicked it with surprising violence.  The door swung open, a bit of wood dropping from where the latch met the frame.

“We heard John Stiles was twitchy, so maybe-”

“Please pardon our rude intrusion!” Toadswallow hollered into the house.

“-Don’t be too noisy?

Only silence answered them.

It looked like older teenagers had broken in at one point to have a party, and there were remnants everywhere.  Stuff was written on walls, and there was debris littering the area.  Surprisingly, not a lot of alcohol.  There wasn’t much light outside to begin with, and the boarded up windows let only dark grey slices of light through around the edges, while the plastic that covered the other windows allowed a dull glow that barely reached past the frames themselves.

Verona shrugged out of one strap of her bag, pulled out her mask, and pulled it on, because it helped with her Sight.  The sources of light seemed to reach further, and details melted away, like everything had been covered in a thin film.  Connections were marked out like spiderwebs or hairs, glistening wet and bright in the gloom.  She picked up her feet more to avoid stepping on anything like a can or a bag that might have held organic trash, before melting or being trampled down into a sketchy black patch on the floor.

She reached out to pluck at Avery’s sleeve, gently pulling Avery away from a course that would have seen her walking into a shin-high pile of trash.

Lucy kicked a bottle she hadn’t realized was there, producing a loud clatter.  The clatter extended as Cherrypop flung herself at the rolling bottle, propelling it further across the floor, until it reached a wall and audibly broke.  Both goblins stuck to the shadows, only visible for fleeting moments, even with Verona’s sight.

“This is a good haunted house aesthetic,” Verona whispered.

“Where’s John?” Avery asked.

There was light down the hall, dull and red.  Lucy took the lead, her back running along the side of the staircase that led upstairs as she inched closer to the room with the red glow within.

Verona used the same staircase to lean against as she pulled a pack of longer post-its from her pocket.  Putting one foot flat against the wall, her knee pointing out, she laid the post-its across her leg, and penned out a quick, simple diagram, one that was badly imbalanced, a triangle atop a circle, atop a triangle, each triangle pointing the same way.  Within the circle, she penned the simple ‘fire’ rune, underlining it.

“He was here recently, I hope,” Lucy said.  “Looks like he was cooking.”

It might’ve been that there wasn’t enough heat.  She tried pressing her thumb to the bottom end of the diagram.  Pull in heat, feed it to the rune that defined the function, then push it out.  She could feel the rune at her fingertip, uncomfortably numbing and kind of painful.  The end of the slip of post-it turned orange, smoking.

“What are you even doing?”

“Trying to create a light source,” Verona said.  The end of the paper ignited in flame, spitting out the occasional spark.  It wasn’t as much light as she’d hoped.  The fire extended to the diagram, and traced out glowing orange lines as it burned through, the entire thing coming to pieces, with fire rushing to the fingers that held the paper.  She tossed it up into the air rather than at the ground.  It was ashes before it reached the floor.  “Didn’t work.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, shaking her head.

“I wonder if there’s a good ‘light’ rune.”

“Focus, Ronnie.  Please,” Lucy said.

“What’s he cooking?” Avery asked.   “That can doesn’t have a label.”

Verona looked past the pair.  There was a hotplate sitting on the kitchen counter, which was tidier than other areas of the building, and a can sat on the plate, glowing red near the bottom.  The glow from within cast light onto the cabinets, that was more than the light elsewhere in the house.

“Makes sense to remove the label, if you don’t want it to burn,” Lucy said.  She entered the kitchen, heading for the hotplate.  “Where is-”

The kitchen door slammed shut, almost in Avery’s face.

“Hey!  Lucy!” Avery raised her voice.  She pushed at the door.  A heavy mass bigger than Lucy hit the door, slamming it shut yet again.

Verona backed away a few steps, alarmed.

She bolted, running back into the front hall, avoiding the heaps of trash, and took a hard right.  The house had rooms off to the left and right of the front hall, and they’d been cutting straight down the middle.  Verona took the right route, hoping that the rooms off to the right reconnected to the kitchen.  She grabbed a door frame to help swing herself around in a sharper left turn.

What could she do?  She had the post-its.  The fire hadn’t been much but it had at least been fire.  If she wrote something down, she could slap it down and the post-it part of it would make it stick.  She reached for her pocket, trying to extricate the post-its again.  Hard to do when running.

She circled around, saw the open kitchen door, and paused to pull the post-its free.

He came out of a dark corner, rising from a crouch so swiftly as he closed the distance that it seemed like he grew to triple height.  One-armed, he reached past her to take hold of her wrist, drove the length of his arm into the side of her neck, and stepped in close enough that he could place a foot in the way of one of her legs, when she tried to step backward and catch her balance.

Verona tipped over, half-spinning on her way to the ground.  Her mask fell ajar, obscuring the part of her vision that was normal, while leaving the general bleed of light, shadow, and the strings mostly visible when she looked through the mask’s material.  She shook her head until it fell into a position where she could see with one eye.  She felt a weight press on her chest.

He was leaning on her, pinning her down.  She had a hand beneath her and another hand in his grip.

John had used only one arm to take her down, and he used one thumb from the hand that held her wrist to pry the post-its free.  They flopped to the floor.  His eyes were all intensity, but he barely looked at her, his head angled more in the direction of the front hall.  Avery.

Verona looked past him.  His other arm held Lucy, who had her chin about as high as it would go, her eyes shut.  She was breathing hard.

Her eyes adjusted again, the Sight helping to clarify things in the gloom.  John Stiles had a gun, and it was pressing up against the underside of Lucy’s chin, his elbow hooked under her armpit, holding her close to him.  Lucy’s hands were out in front of her, fingers splayed, not facing anything in particular.

Verona pressed her lips together, tight.  She didn’t move as he let go of her wrist, brought his hand closer to his chest, and then pulled out a knife.  The blade touched her mouth, where her lips would be if she wasn’t already pressing them together enough they were barely out there.

“Hands out, fingers splayed,” he said.  His head didn’t move, but his eyes did, falling on her.

Verona obeyed, moving just enough to slowly free her trapped hand.  She put them out where he could see them.

“Uhhh, guys!?” Avery called out.  She might have called out a second ago, but Verona was too busy being thrown to the ground.  “Lucy?  Verona!  If this is a joke, it’s a really sick one!”

Verona couldn’t even move, because the blade being where it was made even the tiniest of movements hazardous.  She could feel her skin rasp against the blade’s edge.  If she had any hairs on her lip, even the tiny white fuzz hairs, then some were getting shaved off with the movements that the tiniest of breaths forced.

Lucy’s hands were shaking.  Verona’s were shaking, more for Lucy than for herself.  The reality of a gun being there, a gun, and that his finger was on the trigger.

If there was any way she could let her mouth get cut open, and with where the knife was, it looked like it would be nose to chin, and somehow save Lucy from that… absolutely.

“Anyone!?” Avery called out.  “Toadswallow?  Cherrypop!?  What was that thump?”

He didn’t move.  Verona’s tiny movements were making skin rub against the blade’s edge, not quite enough to cut, but enough that she could feel it, but John Stiles was statue still.  Even his hair was short enough it didn’t move.  His eyes were open, whites visible, and he didn’t blink.  His eyes didn’t water.  Heck, even the tiny movements of his eye didn’t change.  His clothes weren’t the sort that shifted or settled.

He really wasn’t human.

“Um, guys!?” Avery called out.  Her voice sounded closer.

“Stop!” John called out.

“Stopped,” Avery said, quieter, and not quieter because she’d moved away.

“My name is Avery Kelly.  Where are-”

Lucy made a sound of protest.  The gun shifted, pressing further into her chin.

The knife moved, pressing in.  Verona realized her hands had moved involuntarily, on seeing Lucy’s distress.

For a while, Lucy had been the only person she could stand.  Lucy and Avery were maybe the only people she really cared about.

“Speak only when spoken to.  Don’t go off topic.  Words are a weapon in a practitioner’s hands.”

“Where were you this morning?”

“A campsite, with Matthew, Edith, and Charles.  I don’t remember the name.”

Bethlehem, Verona thought.

“They dropped you off?”

“Around a quarter to six.”

“Tell me your movements since.”

“I was dropped off at home, after my friends were.  I dropped off my things, I started dinner, left early, I called them.  We thought we’d move into the interviews.”

“Are you under any compulsion?”

John shifted, and Lucy made another involuntary sound.  His voice was loud and crystal clear, no doubt audible through the entire house.  “Why only pretty sure?”

“I mean, I don’t- I don’t want to say anything for certain when I could be wrong, like… what qualifies as a compulsion?  ‘Any’ is a strong-”

A violent crash interrupted Avery, and made John move, throwing Lucy to the ground beside Verona, the gun aiming at another target.

Toadswallow sat on the dining room table, which he had just cleared the bottles from.

“Toadswallow,” John said.  “I nearly shot you.”

The plump goblin cackled.

The knife was no longer at Verona’s lips.  “Toadswallow, vouch?”

“Let ’em go, John,” Toadswallow called out.  “No reason to think anything’s up.”

“Can I trust you?” John asked the goblin.  “Practitioners have your name.  All it would take to sell the lie would be to summon you and compel you to a course of action.”

“I haven’t been.  Rest assured.  Not in months.”

John pulled the knife away, then stood, backing up a step, leaving them to get to their own feet.

“Avery, I think it’s okay now” Lucy called out.  She backed away from John, and walked around the end of the badly abused dining table, keeping it between her and John.  She was still breathing hard, and she had a shine of sweat on her face now.

Verona stayed put, moving her mask to the top of her head.  Staying where she was meant that John was less likely to move around or approach Lucy.

Avery stepped through the doorway.  She stopped short as she saw John standing there in the dark.  “What happened?”

“Why do that?” Verona asked.

He put his gun into his waistband, and put the knife into a pocket sheath.  He stood there for a moment, too still, too intense looking, his eyes fixed on a distant point in space.  He was wearing a black sweater with the sleeves rolled up, cargo pants, and boots.  He had circles under his eyes and his hair was sun-bleached blond and buzzed to an even shortness.  The only decorations he had on him was a narrow black label on each sleeve and the dog tags he wore- six tags and a gold loop that stood out against the fabric of the sweater.

He turned, striding out of the room and into the kitchen.

“Hey, John!”  Verona called out.  She approached, saw him at the hot plate, grabbing the hot metal with his fingers.  She heard sizzling.  He turned, coming right toward her, red hot metal gripped in one hand.  The contents were smoking.  He opened a cabinet and pulled out a plastic container.

She scrambled back.  She could smell something acrid and awful in the smoke, and the chemical smell from the bucket.

He went to the window at the end of the dining room, pulled away the wood covering, and tossed the contents of the can into the backyard.  The red hot can was draped over the stem of a glass vodka bottle at the top of a trash pile.  He reached into the bucket, pulled out a cigarette, and dropped it into a beer can before sloshing the bucket’s contents out the window.

“Okay,” he said, like that was done.  He approached the table, and stood there, hands on the back of a chair.  Avery was inching closer, drawing nearer to Lucy.

Verona went to the back window, moved the wood out of the way, and looked at the glowing contents of the can, which now sat on dirt.  Metal that might have been a steel scrubbing pad, long narrow things that might have been nails and screws, and…

“You eat batteries and metal?”

“No.  I don’t need to eat, though I like the routine,” he said.

“Boom,” Toadswallow said.

“If our discussion had continued for much longer, if you had forced a stalemate or initiated a binding, it would have interrupted things.  The can would explode.  If you handled the can, there was still the bucket, with a longer timer.”

“Geez.  You’re that nervous about having us around?” Lucy asked.

John didn’t give her an immediate response.

“Not us,” Verona guessed.  “I think he thinks we could be hypnotized?”

“Or disguised, or bound, or compelled,” John said.  “I’ll assume it was after he dropped you off, but Matthew addressed some of us, to let us know other Practitioners had found out about the Carmine Beast.  There are good reasons to be careful.  We should be able to tell if they enter Kennet, but there are never any guarantees in times like these.”

“Are we going to have to deal with this every time we come see you?  Or any others?” Lucy asked.

“No,” John said.  “We can hold to an approach where each meeting ends with an agreement on a time and place for the next.  If you need me sooner, use trusted channels, like Matthew or Toadswallow.”

“He’s trusted?” Lucy asked, indicating Toadswallow, who was plucking cigarette butts out of the top of a beer can, before tipping the contents into his mouth.  “He nearly got us killed, making that noise when you were ready to shoot me or cut Verona’s throat.”

“Careful, careful,” Toadswallow said.  “Don’t lie now.  The deal was struck, we can’t harm you.”

“Charles said that he thinks Others can,” Lucy said, louder, raising her voice more.  “If they’re acting on instinct.  And it sure looked like John was, there.”

“Don’t bunch up your undies there, dear, how was I supposed to know that?”

“Don’t tell me what to do, especially when you almost got us killed!” Lucy called out.  She advanced toward Toadswallow, who scrambled back, pushing more trash and bottles from the table to the floor as he scrambled across it.

“Kick his ass!” Cherrypop shouted, from a dark corner.

“Shut up!” Lucy shouted.  “Or you’re next.”

It was chaos, the goblins escalating things.  Verona took a step, ready to try to grab Lucy, but Avery was already on it.

“Easy,” Avery said, intercepting Lucy, stopping her.

Lucy stopped, breathing hard, face a bit shiny.

“Did you do it intentionally, Toadswallow?” Verona asked.

“Huh?  What?” the goblin asked, in his frog’s croak of a voice.  She wasn’t a judge of character, but he did sound genuinely surprised at the question.

“Sir Toadswallow, did you make that noise with the idea that John would hurt us, and we’d be out of your way?”

“No,” Toadswallow said.  “Gob bless and perish the hecking thought.”

“Did you have any inkling it was a possibility?”

“I thought it was a done deal, none of us can’t hurt any of you!”

The aristocratic act had slipped a bit.

“Did you have anything to do with the Carmine Beast and the disappearance-murder?”

“Some,” he said.  “Not like you’re implying, though.”

“Elaborate,” Lucy said.  “Now.”

“We saw it from a distance, saw it hurt.  Goblin noses, they’re good for sniffing out trouble, and she was in trouble.  We four met, ran into a dame who was bleeding from the eyes.”

“The witness,” John elaborated.  “Louise Bayer.”

“We followed her as far into town as we could get before it got tricky to go further.  Then we split up.  Told people.”

“Which people?” Lucy asked.

“Uhhh… I saw to Miss.  Munch went to Charles.  Gash went to Matthew and Edith…”

“Munch apparently found Matthew at Charles’ place.”

“Yeh,” Sir Toadswallow said.  “Yes indeed.  And Gash said Matthew called Edith about picking her up in his truck while he was filling her in.  Choir knew already.  Could smell ’em coming.”

“You could smell them coming, or they were already there?” Lucy asked.

“Couldn’t say, dearie,” Toadswallow said.

“Because they’re not a group or anything like that.  They’re like a storm or a clog in the sewer.  The kids you see?  They’re just the raindrops or the bad smell that comes with.  The whole thing?  Bigger and vaguer.”

“The storm was already there?  Gathering?  On its way?”

Toadswallow shrugged.  “Don’t know.”

“Good to keep in mind,” Lucy said, meeting Verona’s eyes.

“Where’d you go that night, Cherry?” Toadswallow asked.

“Ah, yes,” Toadswallow said.  “Cherry went to the Faerie’s hideaway.  The poor little abortion of a thing is too dumb to know to stay away from those things.”

“I’m so dumb.  So ugly,” Cherrypop said, rustling through trash.  She sounded mournful, like it was assumed to be a fact.

“You’re-” Avery started.  “That’s- you shouldn’t say stuff like that, Cherry.”

“She’s fast enough to escape alive, and we thought it’d annoy them more if it was her.”

“I laid a trap while I was there,” Cherrypop whispered, right beside Verona, making Verona startle and step back.  The goblin had climbed halfway up the wall.  Louder, Cherrypop went on, telling Toadswallow, “Used condom on a tree branch I tied back.  They walk by, thwap.  Right in the kisser, if it’s the girl twit!  Right in the belly button if it’s the jock!  Thwap!”

“Don’t laugh,” Lucy said.  “We’re a long way away from being cool, Toads.”

“What if I say I’ll make it up to you?” he asked.  “Dear me, I don’t want a practitioner as an enemy.  I thought I’d mess with you and give you a scare.”

“Luce,” Verona said.  “We’ll have to work with them for a while.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Okay.”

“Then I’ll make it up to you,” Toadswallow said.  “It’s so.”

“Okay,” Lucy said, again.  She had her hand near one pocket, where her knife was still in the sheath, and she seemed to be trying to calm down.

“Thwap,” Cherrypop said, quiet, before making a tittering sound and dropping down from the wall to the detritus of past parties.

Verona looked back at John, and was surprised to see him smiling a bit.

“You don’t like them?” she asked.  “The Faerie?”

“I don’t mind them.  Guilherme can be good to have drinks with, exchange war stories.”

“War?  Farce,” Toadswallow grumbled, before spitting.  “Real war is waged knee-deep in a mix of mud, blood, and bowel evacuations from the dead.  My dears, the closest you get to glory in real war is sitting in the trenches with your fellow soldiers, telling dick jokes and pretending not to notice when your buddy old pal cries.”

“Agree or disagree?” Verona asked John.

“I think Toadswallow’s seen a few too many movies of the World Wars.  There’s not nearly as many trenches or battles spent knee deep in mud these days.  But… right direction, I think.”

Toadswallow was getting worked up.  “To hear that tumescent lug of a faerie tell it, it’s all glory, all the time.  What’s the fun in that?  I’ll tell you this, and you can hold my ass to the fire on this one, the only people who come back from war talking like it was the best thing ever are the liars and the sickos.”

“It’s the people,” John said.  “Nothing tempers friendships like traveling to another continent and having to trust them with your life.  Or meeting someone like a guide who doesn’t speak a word of your language, you don’t speak a word of theirs, and getting to the point where they want you to eat dinner with their family.”

“Or idiots who’ll tie a condom to a tree for a laugh,” Toadswallow said.  “While you do double duty pegging some jerks who need to be knocked down a peg.”

“I think you phrased that wrong,” Verona said.

John shifted position.  He seemed more relaxed now.  “It’s reasons like this that about seventy percent of my time spent hanging out with others is spent with the goblins.  They’re colorful but… I think they get it.”

“You were smiling when Cherry was talking about her prank on the Faerie,” Verona noted.  “Why?”

“Because of what he said, reminds me of stories from old squads.  The more regimented the system you’re in, the more you find yourself needing the occasional laugh or testing of acceptability.  And this?  What you guys signed up for last Friday?  What the goblins, the Faerie and I all deal with by the very nature of our being?  A lot of it’s regimented.  A lot of people and non-people are watching you for the slightest slip-up.”

Verona shifted, uncomfortable.  “There are a lot of freedoms too, right?  New things you can do.  A whole new world to explore.”

“There are.  But if I were you, given similar choices, this isn’t the road I would have taken.  There’s lots of other things to explore and things you can do.”

“But like… I don’t know if you understand me, here,” Verona told him.  “The sheer scale of it?  A whole world of Others and places to go… there’s like… there’s literally no way the life of the unawoken can come even close to opening that many new doors and new possibilities.”

“Careful,” Avery said.

“No, Verona isn’t wrong,” John said.  “But I can tell you, a lot of doors have closed as well.  If you’re not careful, virtually all of them close, like they did for Charles.”

“What you said about old squads,” Lucy said.  “You were actually in the army?”

“No,” John told Lucy.  “But I have scattered memories.”

“Alright, hm,” Lucy said.  She swallowed.

Verona looked at her friend, and she was pretty sure that even Avery, who hadn’t known Lucy since kindergarten, was worried about the girl.  Lucy was still shaky, still had that bit of sweat on her brow, and wasn’t as together as she sometimes was.

“We came here to interview you, John,” Verona said.  “We want to do it with all the Others in Kennet.”

“Okay,” he said.  He stood a little straighter, feet shoulder-width apart, hands clasped.

“Okay,” Lucy said, kind of cutting into the conversation.  She was getting her bearings too.  “Can we move this elsewhere?  Somewhere with more light?”

“I can bring light.  If you’ll give me a second?  I’ll be back ASAP.”

Verona took the opportunity of John leaving to circle around the dining room table and join Lucy and Avery.  She kept an eye on the other room.  She could see a bit of John Stiles, and it didn’t seem like he was doing anything more than grabbing lanterns.

She glanced at the others.  Avery seemed to be most together, but Avery hadn’t been manhandled or held hostage.  Rather than deal with the stuff John had brought up, Verona wanted to make sure Lucy was okay first.  If it came down to it, she could help provide the guidelines and structure.  The fun stuff and the anxiety-inducing stuff could wait.

He entered the dining room and set the lanterns down around the edges of the room, before placing one on the table.

“Yes, thank you.  I may be blunt,” Lucy said.  “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Do you know who did?”

“To be precise, I might know the person who did.  It even seems likely, if the power is still in Kennet.  But I don’t know who it might be.”

“Do you have suspicions?”

“Toadswallow?  Same question.”

Toadswallow narrowed his eyes.  “Faerie.”

“Can you give us something more than just that one word?” Lucy asked.

“When things get messy, they like to stick their noses in it.”

“But… no evidence?  Nothing you’ve seen or heard?”

“Nah,” Toadswallow said.

“Okay, maybe uh, just hold back on the unsupported guesses until we ask.  Back to you, John.”

“John.  It’s my understanding that you’re a… super soldier?  A Dog of War?”

“No,” John said.  “Yes, about the Dog of War label, no, I’m strong but I’m not a super soldier, like they appear in movies.  I’ve been told I’m… a stained glass mosaic of a soldier, each segment pulled from someone.”

“A… Frankenstein?” Verona asked.

“I’d hope my brain wasn’t labeled abnormal, but…” he shrugged, smiling.  “Sure.  Maybe there’s some cherry picking going on there, with what pieces go into the mosaic, but…”

“Are you stuck on that bit of it because you don’t like being called a super soldier, specifically?” Avery asked.

“I don’t mind but… I don’t want to mislead you or be called a liar,” he said.  “It’s more accurate to say I’m many fragments adding up to a whole.  If I’m good at what I do, it’s because it’s more or less all that I do.”

“So when you can improvise bombs and think those three or four steps ahead,” Lucy said, “it’s because-”

“It’s because that’s the way I think, when I have a free moment to think.  I’m this, twenty-four seven, seven days a week.  I don’t sleep, I don’t ever fully relax.  If I do find distraction, it’s only a small share of me that’s distracted.  The rest is ready.”

“Are you entirely made up of Canadian soldiers?”

“No.  Canadian, American, ANA, armed citizens, others.”

“I think the part of me that thinks of ‘home’ came primarily from a man that thought of Kennet or a place very much like it.”

“Can I?” Verona asked.  “Ask?”

“Stay on target?” Lucy asked.

Verona nodded.  She was focused on Lucy and making things easier for Lucy right this minute.  That Lucy was so guarded about that, it was another sign Lucy wasn’t all the way okay.  Other stuff didn’t take priority when that was the case.  “What’s your day to day like?  What do you do?”

“I walk around at an hour before people are really awake.  I clean and sharpen my weapons.  I watch some TV.  I read and play video games.”

“Feels like you’re just whiling away the time,” Lucy said.

“Waiting, watching.  I don’t get bored in the same way you do.  There’s a stasis in it.  A… lack of anxiety.  I expect to live a long, long time, so there’s no feeling that I’m wasting my time.”

“Not yet,” Toadswallow said.  he was shaking various cans and bottles now, trying to find the ones with trace contents in them.  “Most of the Faerie have been around long enough to go a little loopy from it.  John might eventually.”

“I’m getting the impression you’re not the biggest fan of Faerie,” Avery said.

“Nobody worth talking to is, dearie-sweet.”

“Maybe you’re a bit biased?” Avery asked.

“What’s so funny about that?”

“Oh, if you keep on saying stuff like that, it’s your funeral, deerface.  Your funeral, and only if you’re lucky enough to die at their hands.”

Deerface?  Verona found that interesting.  Avery wasn’t wearing her mask.  Just her cape thing, which she was wearing more like a scarf, now that the weather was cold.

“Do be careful with the Faerie,” John said, cutting into the conversation.

Lucy nodded.  She looked at Avery.  “A lot of people are saying to watch out, so maybe…”

“We’ll try to watch out,” Avery said.

“We were saying?” Lucy asked.

“Routine.  Boredom.”

“In the evenings, if I’m alone, I’ll drink and I practice my awful singing and guitar playing.  If I can, I meet with others.  The goblins, usually, if they’re awake,” John told them.  “And usually Munch.  If there are new goblins in town who won’t listen, any monsters, any Bogeymen getting close, or any new Others who might be problems, sometimes Munch and I handle it.”

“How?” Verona asked.  “What can you do, exactly?  You come back when you’re killed?”

“More like I don’t die in the first place.  I can always keep fighting until I’m badly wounded enough that nobody would believe I could keep fighting.  If I get obliterated, you wait a couple days, I’ll show up again.  I get stronger with every life I take.  It clarifies me.  I and the other ones like me began with no names, no real faces.  Just… uniforms.  Piecemeal, like each part of the outfit was taken from one body.  After one very bloody, prolonged fight, I and two of my squadmates took on handles.  Then names.  Then specializations.  Skillsets.”

“There were others like you?”

“We rarely appear alone.  When the conditions are met for one of us to appear, the conditions are met for several.  After three years of bitter conflict, the conditions had been met enough for there to be twenty of us.  Usually… numbers vary, but for every five like me, there’ll be one more that’s a… they have a few names I’ve heard.  Dogs of Flame.  Frag Tags.”

“Hot Dogs,” Cherry piped up.

“They burn, they use explosives.  They cover other bases.”

“Like if a practitioner wants to bind us using something like a circle, item, fencing us in?  They’ll do like I did with the can and the bucket of paint thinner, but… much bigger.  If they blow up an area… something like me will survive it.  The practitioners trying to bind us usually won’t.  Someone like me, I can collect grenades.  I won’t magically always have one, but if I wanted to set out to get a gun or a grenade, I’d know just the direction to walk.  The easiest path to take to find or acquire one, whether it’s on a corpse or in a hiding place.  The Frag Tags, they always have explosives or ways to start big fires.  They don’t come back so easy once they’re properly put down.  Gotta start a big enough fire or wait for one, and they come walking out of it.”

“Kind of getting the bigger picture,” Lucy said.  “There were twenty of you, so… four of these guys?”

“Sixteen like me, three of them.  One other.”

Careful, Verona thought.  That other one was his friend, wasn’t it?

“A leader?” Lucy asked.

“Another kind.  For every twenty or so of the rest of us, you might see one Black Dog, one Rag Tag.  They come from civilians like I come from soldiers, but… they come from wrongs, from pain, attrition.  They’ll look like kids.  Or like old men or women.  Kill them, you get sick, or something twists inside you and you can’t eat enough anymore, or… you get cold and you can’t warm up.  A curse.  The strong ones, you can’t even hurt them or say an unkind word without them laying something on you in turn.  And they come back too.  They protect us, walk into firefights, stop other kinds of binding than just the circles.  They give us direction, motivation.”

“What happened to them?  These others like you?”

“Some came from nearby conflicts that ended for long enough, then took a bullet.  Others were bound by War Mages.  Combat-focused practitioners that like a good soldier and know special ways to bind us.  Others were stopped by other practitioners, caught in other traps.  To some, we’re like cockroaches.  Pests to be exterminated.  We fled.  They got two more of us while we were fleeing.  In the end, it was just me and Yalda.”

“Our Black Dog.  My friend,” he answered.  “She filled the empty hours of the day and kept me entertained, she watched terrible shows.  Not, uh, not so clarified.  Black Dogs, they don’t take lives, not easily.  Only if they give someone a curse of revenge and that curse kills.  But what was there was… rich.”

“Did you love her?” Avery asked.

“I don’t know if I can love.  I think so.  She was my last friend.  Then I was the only one left.  I’m lucky I found Kennet.  That it’s safe here.”

“Do you hate them?  The people responsible for taking your comrades?” Avery asked.

“No.  It’s the way it is,” John said.  “And I was the one who took Yalda’s life in the end.  I was cursed.  I carried it with me for years.  Then Charles carried it for a short while before they figured out how to break it.  If I was going to hate anyone, I’d hate myself, and I spend too much time on my own to spend it stewing in hatred.”

He said all that, Verona observed, but he had a dark look in his eyes.  Sad, in a much different way than her dad was sad.

“You’re in the running to be the next Carmine Beast, if someone doesn’t get there first.  Are you excited about that?” Lucy asked.

“No interest,” he said.

“I don’t want it.  I’ll take the role if I have to, but I’d rather serve a quiet life protecting this place from errant goblins and bogeymen than an important life keeping all of Northern Ontario and part of northern Manitoba in balance.  I’ve served enough.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  She looked a little caught off guard by that.

Verona jumped in, “If you did want it… how would you do it?  Kill the Carmine Beast.”

“Explosives?  A big gun?” John asked.  “She’s too… important.  The forces of this world wouldn’t want to let you, and if you did manage it, I feel like it might hurt.”

“Hurt how?” Avery asked.

“Like killing Yalda, except… not as obvious.  I could be wrong.  But this death feels bitter in the way hers did.  I don’t know what it would look like, but I feel like that would be something that would demand an answer or put something on the shoulders of the killer or killers.  You could look for that.”

“Do you have an alibi for that night?” Lucy asked.

“I wasn’t in town.  I was walking forest trails, looking to see if anything was encroaching too close.  Guilherme can corroborate.  I saw him when I left and when I came back.  I saw Miss when I came back as well.  She can confirm I was away and why.”

Verona cleared her throat.  Lucy shot her a look, rolling her eyes a bit.

“It’s awkward to ask about, but…”

“Tricks and treats!” Toadswallow exclaimed, clapping his hands together before rubbing them.

“The boons and teachings,” John said.

“If it’s no trouble,” Avery said.

“You told us to think about what we could give you.  I’m sure the Faerie and Goblins could give you something.  Alpeana, Edith, they can make things, or know enough to teach things.  I’m not sure what I could give.”

“If I may interject,” Toadswallow said.  “I heard them talking outside.  I heard about the deerfaced one laying a penis on her kid brother.”

“Uhh, I called him a penis.”

“So!” Toadswallow exclaimed.  He started to rise to his feet, struggled with his belly and short legs, and only managed on a third effort.  “Want to make it count?”

“I’m not sure,” Avery said.

“Anything you can teach us is great for our magical toolbox, kinda,” Verona butted in.  Lucy seemed to be more okay, they were into the interesting stuff now.

“The rule of three, my dears.  I dare say it’s why we picked three of you, see?  Threes count.  Calling someone a name?  That’s introducing them to the idea.  Giving it to them again?  That’s establishing a pattern.”

“Two points make a line,” Avery said.

“And three points?  They make a shape, something you can lay on them.  The trick is you need to make it abundantly clear what you’re doing.  Stick to a theme, if you can’t use the same word three times.  And nail it in.  You!  Useless rat in the corner!”

He shouted off at the empty end of the dining room, Cherry falling from her perch on his head as he rose to his feet.

Verona turned her head.  There was indeed a rat in the trash, visible with her Sight.  It had frozen at the noise.

“Repugnant beast!” Toadswallow shouted, and slapped his hand down on the table.  He turned his head.  “The slam or physical action helps nail it in.  If you can make it personal, that helps make it hurt, get them in the heart instead of the shoulder or leg, that helps.”

“Makes sense,” Lucy said, her arms folded.

“Does it?” Avery asked.

“Revolting filth!” Toadswallow shouted, louder.  He pushed bottles from the end of the table to the floor.  He pointed at the mess beneath, “Nailing it.  Make it louder each time.  If you can make the insult more creative, bring out the really bad words, which I can’t do because of promises I swore, then it’ll stick in more.  Memorable swears won’t ever want to come away.”

“I don’t know any great swear words,” Verona observed.

“Gotta pick some good words and tie them together.  You could ask Gash.  He hasn’t sworn anything about kids, I don’t think.  Now, ahem,” Toadswallow cleared his throat, then flung himself off the table, knocking over a chair and crashing into bottles and “You malmsey, detestable shit-lick!”

The rat bolted, tried to go for a hiding place, and failed.  Toadswallow crashed through more trash, tearing his way toward it.  It finally escaped into a hole somewhere.

“Always fun,” John said, observing from the other end of the room.

“I don’t got much,” Cherry said, looking up at them.  “Some gobs of stuff.  You could rub ’em in someone’s face.  And a condom I was gonna use.”

“Uhhh… we’ll take a rain check, maybe,” Lucy said.  “Think on it some more?”

“Do you know what you need?” John asked.  “Things I could provide?”

“Protection,” Lucy said, looking uneasy.  “We need to check in with the Choir.  Figure out what they are, try to interview them.”

“Even if those kids are raindrops from a storm,” Verona added.

“Tough,” John said.  “But if you need me there, I’ll be there.  I’ll do what I can.”

“I need- we need power,” Verona said.

“I was trying to do a rune earlier.  I don’t have a power source.”

“I don’t have much,” John said.  “I don’t even know if this would count, but… let me go find it.”

They remained where they were, standing in a trashed, abandoned house that smelled like burnt plastic and paint thinner, while John ducked into the back.  Toadswallow continued tearing through the room, agitating the rat.

“Can you please leave it alone?” Avery asked.

“It- Excuse me, I wanted to demonstrate the fecking thing!”

“It’s fine!” Avery said.  “Just finish explaining?”

“It’s a-” Toadswallow started.  He nearly fell over, tripping over trash.  “Third one sticks.  It’s a minor curse.  Turning an insult into something that means something, by driving it in.  That rat’s going to be grosser.  It works with all kinds of things.  Faerie use it with fancy words and phrases.  If you do a contract with them, they’ll work in repeated words and phrases that imply crap and make other stuff more important.”

“Guilherme has mentioned something similar about fights.  I think you could turn it around,” John explained, as he re-entered.  “Use words while beating someone, three times, escalate the drama of it.”

“I’ve done that,” Toadswallow said.  “Calling someone names while kicking in their… ahem, their asshole, like I kicked in the front door here.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Good to know.  I’m going to try not to visualize that.”

John approached, and Verona was aware that Lucy backed off a bit, reflexive, before steeling herself and standing her ground as he closed the distance.

He held out a hand.  Verona placed hers beneath it.

It was a slug from a gun.  It was uncomfortably hot against her palm.

“It’s always had an energy to it.  Heat that wouldn’t go away,” he explained.

“Putting down an elemental that was causing engine blocks to overheat, sometimes to burst into flame.  I don’t know how you’d tap into that power, but it’s yours if you want to try.  Keep it in a container that won’t burn.”

“It’s painful to hold.”

“It’s not real harm.  Don’t put it in your pocket.  It won’t burn through so long as it’s carried, but no matter how you carry it on you, it’s uncomfortable.”

“Got it,” Verona said.

Lucy made an inquisitive sound.  Verona handed it over, saw Lucy’s expression change at the contact.

“And…” John said.  He pulled off the simple necklace that the dog tags and the singular ring hung off of.  He removed three tags, each of them partially melted, gouged, or otherwise scarred, well past the point that the labels could be read.  “For you.”

“They’re connected to me.  Throw one down, stride forward into conflict without looking back… I’ll be right behind you.”

“No more than five steps behind, armed.  I’ll give it back to you after, or give you another one, provided you aren’t being frivolous in calling me there.”

Lucy nodded.  Verona ran one finger over the one she’d been given.

“Thank you,” Avery said.

“It’s appreciated.  I imagine these mean a lot to you,” Lucy said.

“Are they from your squadmates?” Verona asked.

“And the ring is Yalda’s?” Avery asked, her voice gentle.

“It’s not available.  I’m not offering it.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to imply that.”

“I know,” he told them, his voice hard.  “I believe you.  But I’m being as clear as I can.  No.  It stays with me.”

The hardness of his voice and the intensity of his gaze was a lot, like there was a promise that there was a fight to be had.  A reminder of what he was.

And Lucy looked scared.  Lucy, who hated to look scared or weak.  Lucy, who would go ballistic sometimes, or go over the top, whenever she was anxious.  Like how she’d threatened to curse Avery before the Awakening.

“I think that’s all we need for now,” Verona said.  She reached out for her friend, holding the dog tag in her closed hand.  She retreated a step, and the others took her cue.  “Thanks for cooperating.  Thank you for this.”

“Thank you for stepping in as Kennet’s practitioners,” he said.

“Toadswallow,” Verona said, trying to think of what Lucy would want to say if she was more herself.  “We may be talking to all of you goblins later, I think, for a more complete interview.”

“As you wish.  I’ll have some trinkets and gifts ready, I can help Cherry pick something fun.”

“Great.  Fantastic,” Verona said.

They left out the front door, and compared to the gloom from within, with the focused lights of the lanterns, it was bright outside.

Verona looked back at the way they’d come.  An Other that lived in a house that made sparing use of light, and only cleaned up select areas like the kitchen, because he wanted to keep a low profile.

She looked at the others.  At Lucy.

Lucy’s hand went to her upper arm, near the shoulder, like she was trying to find a place to put her hand, and she settled on higher ground rather than lower.  The hand moved, agitated, like it couldn’t find purchase.

She reached out, laying a hand over Lucy’s, pressing the hand into place.

“Well,” Lucy said, her chin rising, her voice making an effort to sound nonchalant.  “Got a gun pulled on me for the first time in my life.  Wasn’t expecting that.”

Verona’s free hand, still holding the tag, moved up to her mouth, touching her lip.  She wondered if her skin was red where the blade had rubbed it.

“Kinda got real,” Lucy murmured.

Avery hugged her, one arm.

“Kinda unreal,” Verona echoed her friend.