Page 4 of Brought to Light
Lord Evalt had clearly lost the plot. I was a cook’s bastard son, little better than a peasant. I possessed no wealth and no title. My magic was mediocre, my skills with weapons nonexistent. I made excellent hot chocolate, even when I didn’t enchant it, and spectacular hot chocolate when I did.
Unless Lord Evalt suffered from a lethal milk allergy, I didn’t pose much of a threat to him.
And yet here I was, cowering in fear for my life in a place where I knew no one and was at least as vulnerable as I’d have been at home.
Which brought me right back to the danger I’d put others in if they tried to protect me, and also right back around to the front of the shop, where I just had to put the chairs back down off the tables before I’d be ready to leave.
My apartment was only a few blocks away from the Chipper Bean, but I didn’t think I could stand to go back there to be locked in all night, terrified of what might lurk outside the flimsy door and windows. I’d go mad, pacing and brooding and also wondering what was wrong with me. After all, the only person who’d sparked a flicker of interest since I came to this town was possibly a psychopath and also possibly, hot chocolate test aside, planning to kill me.
I flipped off the lights, locked up behind me, and turned to face the empty street. No one. Not even the old man who often walked up and down this street in the evening “getting his steps in,” as he’d told me. I took a deep, shuddering breath, redolent of salty fog, delicious and clean, and set off toward the beach, mind made up about my destination, at least. I had to clear my head, and one thing I truly detested about the human world was the lack of fresh air in heavily inhabited parts of it. Standing in the breeze off the ocean, closing my eyes and letting it ruffle my hair, I could pretend I’d never left home, and that when I turned I’d be standing on the cliffs near Lady Lisandra’s manor, looking down over the rolling, wildflower-speckled green hills to one side and the turquoise waves to the other.
I stopped at the corner, wishing the diner was open so that I’d have somewhere to go. Somewhere safe, with people around. And they had the best pancakes I’d ever had.
Not that I had extensive knowledge of pancakes. We didn’t make pancakes back home. But I loved them. I’d made a mental note to bring my mother a recipe if I ever got to go back and spend a peaceful morning in the kitchen with her. Those mornings had seemed so bloody boring when I’d had an endless number of them; now I’d have traded centuries of my life to have that back.
Across the street and one more block down, I reached the end of the row of dinky shops and dusty law offices and weathered bicycle racks—and stopped dead in my tracks.
A man stood at the end of the street, right where the pavement started to blend into the beach, with tiny dunes heaping the edge of it where the wind had blown the sand every which way. He didn’t have the height or the broad shoulders of the one who’d been in the shop earlier, and what I could make out of his face in the light of the nearest streetlamp didn’t look attractive at all—but he’d been cut from the same dangerous cloth. It stood out all over him. He was a killer.
And his glinting eyes were focused on me.
I wavered, like a deer trying to decide which direction to run from a wolf. The man grinned, baring his teeth.
Oh, fucking bloody fuck. His very sharp teeth, the ends pointed like they were all canines.
He didn’t belong to this world.
I spun, broke, and ran like every Tarkunian demon chased me, snapping at the back of my neck. I didn’t dare look behind me, but I could feel him approaching, the weight of his eagerness for my blood nearly palpable against my vulnerable back.
Where had everyone gone? Where was the man who walked up and down, the diner’s nighttime janitors, the evening dog-walkers, people who’d see him and scream and call the police and frighten him away? Or perhaps he’d only kill them all to get to me…I ran and ran, my feet pounding a frantic tattoo on the sidewalk, my heart skittering along in a counterpoint rhythm that felt like it might burst my rib cage.
My arms pinwheeling, I careened around the next corner, hoping to find some cover, somehow—and an arm came out of nowhere, catching me right across the stomach and sending me flying. I landed on the ground hard enough to bruise my arm and side and knock the wind out of me.
I rolled to my back just in time to see the man from the night before, a gun in his hand. My attacker rounded the corner and launched himself at me, crying out in a language I recognized as one of my own world’s.
Were they going to kill me together? In sequence? Would I be more dead that way?
But I wouldn’t go down without a struggle, no matter how useless it would be to try to fight either of them.
Callum
Not gonna lie, my instincts were screaming at me to do the one thing I knew I wouldn’t have to think about, agonize over, or worry about: follow the son of a bitch right that second and cut his throat.
But I didn’t. Because I wanted to, and I wanted to because it was so much goddamn easier than going and doing the job I’d actually been hired to do.
So I forced myself to think it through from the perspective of someone who hadn’t suddenly gone soft. If I followed my opposite number, I’d run the risk of causing a scene that’d blow my cover as someone who wasn’t in town to cause murder and mayhem. John would run, and Jesse and I would be fucked even if I caught up with him later. If I went after John immediately, I ran the even more serious risk of Asshole Two (I was number one, of course; I might be honest enough to take the title, but I’d damn sure be the one on top) sneaking up behind me and killing both of us.
Which left me with one viable option: waiting for Asshole Two to go after John, and then sneaking up behind him and killing them both.
He wouldn’t do the job in the middle of the street if he was a professional, which he had to be if he’d been brought into this the same way I had. The interested parties who’d approached Jesse had made it damn clear they didn’t want a fuss. Which meant he’d either lurk near the Cannibal Bean or he’d head for John’s address and wait for him there. My best bet would be to find a position that gave me a view of the entrance of the coffee shop in case that was the chosen venue. From there, I could discreetly follow John home.
Carefully circling the block to make sure I didn’t have company and that I wouldn’t be followed in turn, I eventually installed myself behind a dumpster near the mouth of an alley across the street from the Cannibal Bean.
And then I loosened my main weapon in its holster under my arm and leaned up against the wall to get comfortable.
John would be closing up in about fifteen minutes, and then he’d need to do all the stuff diligent retail employees did at the end of the day. Fuck if I knew; I’d worked in a grocery store for about five minutes when I was in high school before I got fired for punching a dude who hit on the girl collecting the carts. But it had to take half an hour or so, I figured. Either way, I had some time to kill. So to speak.
Not that I had anything I wanted to think about.
