your heart goes bump but your pulse goes down - for Charley
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junetideTitle: your heart goes bump but your pulse goes down
Gift for: Charley
By: edincoat
Gift type: fiction; 3,277 words
Genre: Urban Fantasy / Mythos Rewrite
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Movie-style violence, swearing, ancient artefacts of DOOM.
Summary: Fix hates her job, but this latest addendum to her duties makes her hate it even more.
Giftcreator's notes: This is a mixture of Egyptian and Greek myths in a modern-day setting and with modernised names. Anthropomorphizations of classic monsters all over the place, including the MC. The prompt used was "To die would be an awfully big adventure." Title is a lyric from The Reigning Champ of the Teething Crowd by Say Hi.
The chair Fix has to sit on day in and day out is uncomfortable. She says so to anyone who will listen.
"Get a different one if it pains you so." Cela scratches her nose with one long ragged fingernail. Then she snorts. "Or a cushion. With feathers inside it."
Fix looks at her own ragged fingernails. Not so long because she is a ravenous nail biter, but still. Very unkempt looking. Very weird looking against her dark brown skin.
"Should I get a manicure, you think?" she deflects. "This magazine I read in the market queue the other day said a little nail polish goes a long way."
Cela snorts again. "Waste of money."
She has to agree with that. It isn't like she actually bought the magazine. Or slid it under her sofa when she got home with all the other magazines that she's never purchased.
Some young boy with perfectly coiffed hair and a checked shirt approaches. He's sauntering, as if he has a right to be here. Cela spits a gob of mucus in his general direction.
He stops right in front of the door. Fix crosses her arms and looks down her nose at him.
"Let me in," he says in a nasal whine.
"Invitation?"
"Don't have one."
Fix rolls her eyes. Of course he doesn't. "Then answer this correctly and you may enter."
He looks at her, bored already. "Hit me, bitches."
Cela mutters "Don't tempt us," and Fix says, "Four brothers in this world were all born together--"
Fix has a one room flat with kitchenette and communal bath up on the corner of Finch Street. Second floor, no view to speak of. There's a huge water stain on the ceiling, and all of her furniture is second hand uncomfortable.
She doesn't spend much time there, but she likes to think of it as home anyway. Mainly because otherwise she would have to accept her workplace as home, and no one wants to do that.
So as she waits to be called in to her boss's office, she daydreams about "home". What she might do some day to the window sill: Container garden? Miniature gnome scenario? Mounted stuffed cat?
The door opens and Laddy gestures her in from the reception area to his office. She sneers at his slithery back and pinkish ears, but follows.
"Got burgled again last night," he says. He sits behind his desk and steeples his fingers. There are no other chairs in the room to entice guests to linger. "The security camera says Ed did it."
Fix closes her eyes. Not him, not again.
"I wasn't here last night. What do you want me to do about it?"
"Kill him, of course." Laddy swings side to side in his chair. It makes a loud screech with every move. "And retrieve the loot."
"Can't you get someone else to do it? Ed and I are sort of. . ." She grasps for words. None are in her reach. "Friends? Pleasant acquaintances? Tolerable strangers?"
Laddy raises an eyebrow. It makes his nonexistent forehead wrinkle into his hairline and almost disappear. "He stole from the club. You think I should just let him go?"
"Not let him go, per se. Just not make me be the one to punish him." She's fidgeting and sweating, fighting the urge to put her teeth to any ragged cuticle she can get at. He watches her intently, which just makes this whole thing worse.
"Oh well then, of course," he drawls. "I'll just send out Cela to do it, she can terrorise schoolchildren and bring the pigs in on us again. Or Taur, he'll find a china shop to bull through afterwards for celebration but in a pinch, he'll work."
He slams his hands down flat on the desk. "You're the least cause of property damage. Be proud and go forth to do your job."
"Cela will kill anyone without an invite if I'm not there to stop her." Last ditch plea, which Fix is quite positive will not change a single bloody thing.
Laddy rolls his eyes, goes back to the superior villain slouch in his chair. "Better where I can contain it than out in public."
Fix gives a lion snarl and turns on her heel. Stalks out of the room.
He calls after her, "Packet at coat check!"
She holds two fingers over her shoulder and leaves reception.
She gets the information from coat check. A small slip of green paper, with words typed neatly: WADJET SCROLL, GOLD CASE, JADE HANDLES.
(Usa mans the room on the weekdays, and she smiles wide, leans on the window's counter when Fix walks in.
"Hey girl, what brings you to my neck of the woods?"
Fix looks around at the walls. They're dark green with black satin strips stapled vertically all around.
"You redecorated just to use that line?"
Usa smiles and shoves a few pieces of unruly hair out of her face. Her yellow eyes have slits for pupils, and her gaze is heavy like stone.
"I must have my fun now," she says from smiling lips.)
She crumples the paper up, pops it into her mouth. Chews and swallows. Winces against the taste.
Fix has always hated strawberries. Too sweet.
Ed lives on the other end of town, somewhere near Constantine Circus. It was dark all the times she's visited, but she's fairly confident she can find it without help.
So she leaves the club via the employee's door. Waves to Percy and Ick, who are on their way in for the late shift.
Not many people are out on the street, but that is to be expected. It's two in the morning. Only the rich and the homeless are on the streets this late.
She takes a deep breath, and looks to the moon.
The Wadjet Scroll. Really, Ed. Really.
The last time Fix had seen Ed was the Monday before last. He had sauntered down the alley that made up the Guest Entrance to the club, and leaned against the wall next to Cela. She stopped fiddling with her feathers to glare at him.
"Hello my harpish delight," he said. "Did you eat the salt of children's tears with your lunch this afternoon?"
Cela bared her fangs at him, made scratching motions in the air. Lesser men have been known to piss their trousers at the sight. "No, but I'd love yours with my supper."
Ed had grinned wide and shoved off the wall to saunter over to Fix. She was rubbing at her cheek and eyeing him warily. Her reflection frowned at her from the black lenses of his glasses.
"Hullo," she said.
"Hullo gorgeous," he replied. Leaned in for a quick kiss to her chin, as that was all he could reach without going on tip-toes or her stooping down.
He produced an invitation from his trouser pocket. Waved it at Cela.
Cela rolled her eyes, cranked open the door from her side.
"Goodbye gorgeous," Ed said, then disappeared inside the club. The door shut automatically behind him.
Cela clucked her tongue. She looked like someone's disproving Southern Belle aunt when she did that. Except more greasy. "He's no good for you. The mother fucker."
"Who said he's for me?" Fix scrubbed at her chin with her fingers, as if she could rub the filth off.
"Your silence is the loudest thing here." Cela clucked again, then went back to picking at the feathers woven into her hair.
Fix exits at Constantine Circus. Her breath hitches at the cold air, reminding her that she forgot to bring a scarf or anything proper for this sort of weather.
Storm clouds are gathering in the sky. She hopes she'll be finished with this before they start to pour.
The park is across the street and to her left. She turns right and walks with her shoulders hunched up around her ears, hands shoved in the pockets of her thin coat. Faux fur is not the same as the real thing, no matter what the celebrities say.
The red house Ed lives in is a five minute walk from the station. The bricks are stained a blood colour and crumble slightly at the edges. A dim light is on through the ground-floor windows.
She doesn't bother knocking, just twists the doorknob off with a tight grip and shoves the door off the hinges. It falls inwards with a loud crash, and Ed swears from the sitting room.
"Gorgeous, repairs like that cost money," he says from the sofa, wearing a dressing gown and off-the-rack cream-coloured pyjamas. A shrine is made up on the coffee table, but Fix can't see who's pictures are in the frames. She has a good idea, though.
"I wouldn't worry about that if I were you," she tells him. Picks up a fake apple from the bowl on the sideboard and sniffs it. Smells like Ed, waxy and faintly like plastic. "You know why I'm here, of course."
He smiles faintly. His glasses sparkle in the flicker of candlelight, make it look like he actually has eyes behind them that are full of rage. "Oh, I'm not as stupid as all that. Why don't you tell me?"
"To kill you, I suppose. Though retrieving what you stole is the highest priority."
She looks around the room. It's empty except for the sofa Ed is sitting on and the table that he has the candles and picture frames set up on. It's quite dismal.
"Why did you take it, Ed?"
"For what was written on it, of course. What other reason would there be to steal an ancient scroll?"
She shrugs. "To sell it. Though you obviously don't need the money. Tell me, where did all of your exquisite furniture run off to?"
His mouth splits into a wide grin. "I still have the exquisite bed upstairs if you are interested."
"No, only in the rest of it."
"How boring."
She takes a step further into the room, lobs the apple into the air and catches it. "I have to kill you tonight."
"Same old, same old. I've already died, you know."
"You walked into hell on your own, and you walked back out. That's not really a death."
"You're going by the records only." He tilts his head to the left. "The records are false."
Her fingers clench on the apple. The wax moulds around them. "Tell me where it is, Ed. I need to know."
"Not ever, gorgeous."
She drops the apple onto the floor, kicks it across the room to hit his feet.
Ed looks down for half a second, and she uses that moment to strike. Lunge across the room like the lioness she is. To land on him, all fours and roaring, pressing him down into the sofa with her entire weight.
"Where is it?!"
He twists under her grip. "Don't knock them over!"
She kicks back without looking. Her boot heel hits glass, makes it shatter. "I'll raze everything, don't doubt this!"
He grabs at her wrists tightly. "You won't and you know it!"
Fix growls deep in her throat. This is her own trick to make lesser men soil themselves. The human ones cannot stand predators they cannot spear or shoot, and she uses all those instincts now.
Her hand goes around his throat and squeezes.
"I will break your neck and make you watch as I destroy everything," she says, quiet and firm.
He gasps under her grip. Goes pliant and releases her arms. Makes a broken noise on an exhale.
"Fine. Just don't knock anything else."
She releases him and shifts to the side. Shoves him up to stand while she sits on the sofa with a leg propped up and ready to sweep the shrine to the ground with her next whimsy.
"Fetch it, then."
He stares at her for a moment, then turns away, goes to the hall closet. Pauses in front of the open door to the street and says:
"You're horrible at this, gorgeous."
Then he runs out into the world with a high-pitched shriek.
Fix curses in her ancient tongue and kicks over the coffee table. The candles light on the carpet and glass breaks everywhere. She leaps over the destruction and runs out the door after him.
The scratched-out eyes of Ed's mother and wife watch her go, torn and burning on the floor.
Fix scents his trail through the park, down a back alley that runs along the square backyards of middling semi-attached houses and out into the commercial area of the neighbourhood. Sometimes she sees glimpses of his dressing gown as he turns a corner up ahead, or catches the glint of his glasses in the streetlight when he looks back to see her coming after him.
Heavy raindrops start to fall slowly from the sky. They soak through her jacket almost instantly, smack her in the face even though she puts up an arm to shield her eyes.
A small industrial block of under construction warehouses and office buildings is up ahead, and Ed climbs over the barrier right into it. She sees his head duck down under dead worker's equipment from two streets away.
Her long legs are better suited for jumping, so she tries to vault over the barrier rather than follow his example. She almost clears it right away, but her knees catch on the edges and she goes headfirst over it, falls to the pavement on the other side.
She lands on all fours and crouches down close to the ground. Sniffs the air and tastes it with her tongue. The rain is coming down harder now. It's covering up the trail.
A loud clang comes from up above in one of the buildings, third floor possibly. Clear sheet plastic flaps on the empty sides. A shadow is possibly moving quickly behind them.
Fix narrows her eyes and growls. Then runs to that building and grapples at the sheet plastic to claw her way up two storeys and slide under it on the third.
Ed wheezes in the centre of the partially-finished floor. He's facing her, one hand holding something tarnished gold and the other holding a cordless power drill.
She catches her breath while crouched and still. Water leaks in various places from the plastic where the ceiling should be. One such leak hits Ed in the shoulder.
"I will not hesitate to defend myself," he says. He's trembling in his soaked clothes, looking every bit like the human he is. "I don't want to hurt you, but I will if you persist."
She crawls forward, lithe and slinking. Her limbs always feel the most fluid like this, loose from a hunt and just a bit serpentine. The violence is heavy on her tongue. The knife is harsh where it is strapped to her thigh.
"Gorgeous, I mean it." His voice wavers at the full stop.
"Why did you take it, Ed?" She whispers and keeps crawling. Towards the side that has the drill on it, because if she can knock it away she can slit his throat. "Tell me."
He swallows twice. "Local address to the resurrectionist. Local number for the Death Gods. Secretarial notes on how to best approach both. The usual reasons, my dear."
She shoves herself to stand, just out of arms-reach and just to the left of him. His head is turned to look at her. His glasses are smeared with rainwater.
"Give me the scroll," she says. Eyes the gold thing in his hand, and yes that is it, that's what she needs to retrieve.
He shakes his head slowly, and she lunges.
The drill goes flying because she hits his shoulder first. He tosses the scroll to the side where it rolls away to parts unknown. She draws her knife and presses it to his throat.
Her grip adjusts for the kill, and he rasps, "Give me a riddle."
She stops. Holds the blade to him and breathes out.
"What?"
"Give me a riddle," he says. A little louder, a bit stronger. "I answer correctly you have to let me live."
The knife shakes a little. A trickle of blood slides down his neck from the blade biting into his skin.
"I don't have to do that," she growls.
He makes a thready sound that might be confused with a chuckle in another life. "Like the olden days. Come on. Gorgeous."
The compulsion is what makes her do it. Like the olden days. Back when that was her job, correct answer or die like the unintelligent human you are. She licks her lips, feels the spark of interest under her skin.
"What creature in the morning moves on four legs in the morning, two legs in the mid-day, three legs in the evening, and the more legs it has the weaker it is?"
Ed sucks in a breath, his entire body goes tense under her.
His wail of laughter is sharp in the air and hurts her ears.
"Man," he cries. "It's man!"
She rolls off of him and falls to her back, clutching the knife to her side and choking on rainwater. Ed persists in howling his triumph next to her.
"Alright, no need to be such a wanker about it," she mutters. Of course he would answer that one. Why wouldn't he? It's a stupid riddle. Everyone knows the answer to it.
He just laughs and laughs, rocks back and forth on the unfinished floor of the office building and makes squishing noises in his sodden dressing gown.
Fix rolls to a stand and sheathes her knife at her thigh. Stumbles over Ed towards where she thinks the scroll went.
A flash of gold catches her eye. She peers under the edge of a plastic sheet to the outside and there it is, wedged against two piece of plywood right at the edge of the structure.
She crawls out to grab it, getting a faceful of rainwater for her trouble. It's slippery in her grasp but she yanks and it dislodges, so no worries.
She sprawls against a support beam and shakes the water off the scroll. Gold round case, jade handles. She's never seen this one before, so she didn't know about the ornate carvings or the Eye of Horus right on the lock.
It's heavy in her hand, and she closes her eyes just for a moment. Clutches it to her chest while she wills her heartbeat to slow.
Listens to Ed cackle like a madman not twenty feet away.
Cela sucks on her teeth and squints at the newspaper open in her hands. The evening edition is always full of crap, but no matter what Fix says Cela purchases it nightly, anyway.
Fix thinks about the magazines under her sofa at home and resolves to hold her tongue in the future.
The newspaper crinkles as Cela turns a page. "How much pay is he docking again?"
Fix rubs at her forehead. She doesn't want to think about it. "I don't want to think about it."
"Will you be able to make rent? Food?"
She smiles slightly. "I'll be okay."
Cela closes the paper and frowns at Fix. "Don't lie to me, Fix. I'm making overtime out the shithole this month, I can help you if you need it."
Fix holds up a hand and shakes her head. "I'll be fine, don't worry about it."
Another teenage boy wearing an ironic print tee shirt and those weird oversized trainers starts to walk down the alley towards them.
Cela customarily spits in his direction.
Fix sighs, and crosses her arms.
"Invitation?"
Gift for: Charley
By: edincoat
Gift type: fiction; 3,277 words
Genre: Urban Fantasy / Mythos Rewrite
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Movie-style violence, swearing, ancient artefacts of DOOM.
Summary: Fix hates her job, but this latest addendum to her duties makes her hate it even more.
Giftcreator's notes: This is a mixture of Egyptian and Greek myths in a modern-day setting and with modernised names. Anthropomorphizations of classic monsters all over the place, including the MC. The prompt used was "To die would be an awfully big adventure." Title is a lyric from The Reigning Champ of the Teething Crowd by Say Hi.
The chair Fix has to sit on day in and day out is uncomfortable. She says so to anyone who will listen.
"Get a different one if it pains you so." Cela scratches her nose with one long ragged fingernail. Then she snorts. "Or a cushion. With feathers inside it."
Fix looks at her own ragged fingernails. Not so long because she is a ravenous nail biter, but still. Very unkempt looking. Very weird looking against her dark brown skin.
"Should I get a manicure, you think?" she deflects. "This magazine I read in the market queue the other day said a little nail polish goes a long way."
Cela snorts again. "Waste of money."
She has to agree with that. It isn't like she actually bought the magazine. Or slid it under her sofa when she got home with all the other magazines that she's never purchased.
Some young boy with perfectly coiffed hair and a checked shirt approaches. He's sauntering, as if he has a right to be here. Cela spits a gob of mucus in his general direction.
He stops right in front of the door. Fix crosses her arms and looks down her nose at him.
"Let me in," he says in a nasal whine.
"Invitation?"
"Don't have one."
Fix rolls her eyes. Of course he doesn't. "Then answer this correctly and you may enter."
He looks at her, bored already. "Hit me, bitches."
Cela mutters "Don't tempt us," and Fix says, "Four brothers in this world were all born together--"
Fix has a one room flat with kitchenette and communal bath up on the corner of Finch Street. Second floor, no view to speak of. There's a huge water stain on the ceiling, and all of her furniture is second hand uncomfortable.
She doesn't spend much time there, but she likes to think of it as home anyway. Mainly because otherwise she would have to accept her workplace as home, and no one wants to do that.
So as she waits to be called in to her boss's office, she daydreams about "home". What she might do some day to the window sill: Container garden? Miniature gnome scenario? Mounted stuffed cat?
The door opens and Laddy gestures her in from the reception area to his office. She sneers at his slithery back and pinkish ears, but follows.
"Got burgled again last night," he says. He sits behind his desk and steeples his fingers. There are no other chairs in the room to entice guests to linger. "The security camera says Ed did it."
Fix closes her eyes. Not him, not again.
"I wasn't here last night. What do you want me to do about it?"
"Kill him, of course." Laddy swings side to side in his chair. It makes a loud screech with every move. "And retrieve the loot."
"Can't you get someone else to do it? Ed and I are sort of. . ." She grasps for words. None are in her reach. "Friends? Pleasant acquaintances? Tolerable strangers?"
Laddy raises an eyebrow. It makes his nonexistent forehead wrinkle into his hairline and almost disappear. "He stole from the club. You think I should just let him go?"
"Not let him go, per se. Just not make me be the one to punish him." She's fidgeting and sweating, fighting the urge to put her teeth to any ragged cuticle she can get at. He watches her intently, which just makes this whole thing worse.
"Oh well then, of course," he drawls. "I'll just send out Cela to do it, she can terrorise schoolchildren and bring the pigs in on us again. Or Taur, he'll find a china shop to bull through afterwards for celebration but in a pinch, he'll work."
He slams his hands down flat on the desk. "You're the least cause of property damage. Be proud and go forth to do your job."
"Cela will kill anyone without an invite if I'm not there to stop her." Last ditch plea, which Fix is quite positive will not change a single bloody thing.
Laddy rolls his eyes, goes back to the superior villain slouch in his chair. "Better where I can contain it than out in public."
Fix gives a lion snarl and turns on her heel. Stalks out of the room.
He calls after her, "Packet at coat check!"
She holds two fingers over her shoulder and leaves reception.
She gets the information from coat check. A small slip of green paper, with words typed neatly: WADJET SCROLL, GOLD CASE, JADE HANDLES.
(Usa mans the room on the weekdays, and she smiles wide, leans on the window's counter when Fix walks in.
"Hey girl, what brings you to my neck of the woods?"
Fix looks around at the walls. They're dark green with black satin strips stapled vertically all around.
"You redecorated just to use that line?"
Usa smiles and shoves a few pieces of unruly hair out of her face. Her yellow eyes have slits for pupils, and her gaze is heavy like stone.
"I must have my fun now," she says from smiling lips.)
She crumples the paper up, pops it into her mouth. Chews and swallows. Winces against the taste.
Fix has always hated strawberries. Too sweet.
Ed lives on the other end of town, somewhere near Constantine Circus. It was dark all the times she's visited, but she's fairly confident she can find it without help.
So she leaves the club via the employee's door. Waves to Percy and Ick, who are on their way in for the late shift.
Not many people are out on the street, but that is to be expected. It's two in the morning. Only the rich and the homeless are on the streets this late.
She takes a deep breath, and looks to the moon.
The Wadjet Scroll. Really, Ed. Really.
The last time Fix had seen Ed was the Monday before last. He had sauntered down the alley that made up the Guest Entrance to the club, and leaned against the wall next to Cela. She stopped fiddling with her feathers to glare at him.
"Hello my harpish delight," he said. "Did you eat the salt of children's tears with your lunch this afternoon?"
Cela bared her fangs at him, made scratching motions in the air. Lesser men have been known to piss their trousers at the sight. "No, but I'd love yours with my supper."
Ed had grinned wide and shoved off the wall to saunter over to Fix. She was rubbing at her cheek and eyeing him warily. Her reflection frowned at her from the black lenses of his glasses.
"Hullo," she said.
"Hullo gorgeous," he replied. Leaned in for a quick kiss to her chin, as that was all he could reach without going on tip-toes or her stooping down.
He produced an invitation from his trouser pocket. Waved it at Cela.
Cela rolled her eyes, cranked open the door from her side.
"Goodbye gorgeous," Ed said, then disappeared inside the club. The door shut automatically behind him.
Cela clucked her tongue. She looked like someone's disproving Southern Belle aunt when she did that. Except more greasy. "He's no good for you. The mother fucker."
"Who said he's for me?" Fix scrubbed at her chin with her fingers, as if she could rub the filth off.
"Your silence is the loudest thing here." Cela clucked again, then went back to picking at the feathers woven into her hair.
Fix exits at Constantine Circus. Her breath hitches at the cold air, reminding her that she forgot to bring a scarf or anything proper for this sort of weather.
Storm clouds are gathering in the sky. She hopes she'll be finished with this before they start to pour.
The park is across the street and to her left. She turns right and walks with her shoulders hunched up around her ears, hands shoved in the pockets of her thin coat. Faux fur is not the same as the real thing, no matter what the celebrities say.
The red house Ed lives in is a five minute walk from the station. The bricks are stained a blood colour and crumble slightly at the edges. A dim light is on through the ground-floor windows.
She doesn't bother knocking, just twists the doorknob off with a tight grip and shoves the door off the hinges. It falls inwards with a loud crash, and Ed swears from the sitting room.
"Gorgeous, repairs like that cost money," he says from the sofa, wearing a dressing gown and off-the-rack cream-coloured pyjamas. A shrine is made up on the coffee table, but Fix can't see who's pictures are in the frames. She has a good idea, though.
"I wouldn't worry about that if I were you," she tells him. Picks up a fake apple from the bowl on the sideboard and sniffs it. Smells like Ed, waxy and faintly like plastic. "You know why I'm here, of course."
He smiles faintly. His glasses sparkle in the flicker of candlelight, make it look like he actually has eyes behind them that are full of rage. "Oh, I'm not as stupid as all that. Why don't you tell me?"
"To kill you, I suppose. Though retrieving what you stole is the highest priority."
She looks around the room. It's empty except for the sofa Ed is sitting on and the table that he has the candles and picture frames set up on. It's quite dismal.
"Why did you take it, Ed?"
"For what was written on it, of course. What other reason would there be to steal an ancient scroll?"
She shrugs. "To sell it. Though you obviously don't need the money. Tell me, where did all of your exquisite furniture run off to?"
His mouth splits into a wide grin. "I still have the exquisite bed upstairs if you are interested."
"No, only in the rest of it."
"How boring."
She takes a step further into the room, lobs the apple into the air and catches it. "I have to kill you tonight."
"Same old, same old. I've already died, you know."
"You walked into hell on your own, and you walked back out. That's not really a death."
"You're going by the records only." He tilts his head to the left. "The records are false."
Her fingers clench on the apple. The wax moulds around them. "Tell me where it is, Ed. I need to know."
"Not ever, gorgeous."
She drops the apple onto the floor, kicks it across the room to hit his feet.
Ed looks down for half a second, and she uses that moment to strike. Lunge across the room like the lioness she is. To land on him, all fours and roaring, pressing him down into the sofa with her entire weight.
"Where is it?!"
He twists under her grip. "Don't knock them over!"
She kicks back without looking. Her boot heel hits glass, makes it shatter. "I'll raze everything, don't doubt this!"
He grabs at her wrists tightly. "You won't and you know it!"
Fix growls deep in her throat. This is her own trick to make lesser men soil themselves. The human ones cannot stand predators they cannot spear or shoot, and she uses all those instincts now.
Her hand goes around his throat and squeezes.
"I will break your neck and make you watch as I destroy everything," she says, quiet and firm.
He gasps under her grip. Goes pliant and releases her arms. Makes a broken noise on an exhale.
"Fine. Just don't knock anything else."
She releases him and shifts to the side. Shoves him up to stand while she sits on the sofa with a leg propped up and ready to sweep the shrine to the ground with her next whimsy.
"Fetch it, then."
He stares at her for a moment, then turns away, goes to the hall closet. Pauses in front of the open door to the street and says:
"You're horrible at this, gorgeous."
Then he runs out into the world with a high-pitched shriek.
Fix curses in her ancient tongue and kicks over the coffee table. The candles light on the carpet and glass breaks everywhere. She leaps over the destruction and runs out the door after him.
The scratched-out eyes of Ed's mother and wife watch her go, torn and burning on the floor.
Fix scents his trail through the park, down a back alley that runs along the square backyards of middling semi-attached houses and out into the commercial area of the neighbourhood. Sometimes she sees glimpses of his dressing gown as he turns a corner up ahead, or catches the glint of his glasses in the streetlight when he looks back to see her coming after him.
Heavy raindrops start to fall slowly from the sky. They soak through her jacket almost instantly, smack her in the face even though she puts up an arm to shield her eyes.
A small industrial block of under construction warehouses and office buildings is up ahead, and Ed climbs over the barrier right into it. She sees his head duck down under dead worker's equipment from two streets away.
Her long legs are better suited for jumping, so she tries to vault over the barrier rather than follow his example. She almost clears it right away, but her knees catch on the edges and she goes headfirst over it, falls to the pavement on the other side.
She lands on all fours and crouches down close to the ground. Sniffs the air and tastes it with her tongue. The rain is coming down harder now. It's covering up the trail.
A loud clang comes from up above in one of the buildings, third floor possibly. Clear sheet plastic flaps on the empty sides. A shadow is possibly moving quickly behind them.
Fix narrows her eyes and growls. Then runs to that building and grapples at the sheet plastic to claw her way up two storeys and slide under it on the third.
Ed wheezes in the centre of the partially-finished floor. He's facing her, one hand holding something tarnished gold and the other holding a cordless power drill.
She catches her breath while crouched and still. Water leaks in various places from the plastic where the ceiling should be. One such leak hits Ed in the shoulder.
"I will not hesitate to defend myself," he says. He's trembling in his soaked clothes, looking every bit like the human he is. "I don't want to hurt you, but I will if you persist."
She crawls forward, lithe and slinking. Her limbs always feel the most fluid like this, loose from a hunt and just a bit serpentine. The violence is heavy on her tongue. The knife is harsh where it is strapped to her thigh.
"Gorgeous, I mean it." His voice wavers at the full stop.
"Why did you take it, Ed?" She whispers and keeps crawling. Towards the side that has the drill on it, because if she can knock it away she can slit his throat. "Tell me."
He swallows twice. "Local address to the resurrectionist. Local number for the Death Gods. Secretarial notes on how to best approach both. The usual reasons, my dear."
She shoves herself to stand, just out of arms-reach and just to the left of him. His head is turned to look at her. His glasses are smeared with rainwater.
"Give me the scroll," she says. Eyes the gold thing in his hand, and yes that is it, that's what she needs to retrieve.
He shakes his head slowly, and she lunges.
The drill goes flying because she hits his shoulder first. He tosses the scroll to the side where it rolls away to parts unknown. She draws her knife and presses it to his throat.
Her grip adjusts for the kill, and he rasps, "Give me a riddle."
She stops. Holds the blade to him and breathes out.
"What?"
"Give me a riddle," he says. A little louder, a bit stronger. "I answer correctly you have to let me live."
The knife shakes a little. A trickle of blood slides down his neck from the blade biting into his skin.
"I don't have to do that," she growls.
He makes a thready sound that might be confused with a chuckle in another life. "Like the olden days. Come on. Gorgeous."
The compulsion is what makes her do it. Like the olden days. Back when that was her job, correct answer or die like the unintelligent human you are. She licks her lips, feels the spark of interest under her skin.
"What creature in the morning moves on four legs in the morning, two legs in the mid-day, three legs in the evening, and the more legs it has the weaker it is?"
Ed sucks in a breath, his entire body goes tense under her.
His wail of laughter is sharp in the air and hurts her ears.
"Man," he cries. "It's man!"
She rolls off of him and falls to her back, clutching the knife to her side and choking on rainwater. Ed persists in howling his triumph next to her.
"Alright, no need to be such a wanker about it," she mutters. Of course he would answer that one. Why wouldn't he? It's a stupid riddle. Everyone knows the answer to it.
He just laughs and laughs, rocks back and forth on the unfinished floor of the office building and makes squishing noises in his sodden dressing gown.
Fix rolls to a stand and sheathes her knife at her thigh. Stumbles over Ed towards where she thinks the scroll went.
A flash of gold catches her eye. She peers under the edge of a plastic sheet to the outside and there it is, wedged against two piece of plywood right at the edge of the structure.
She crawls out to grab it, getting a faceful of rainwater for her trouble. It's slippery in her grasp but she yanks and it dislodges, so no worries.
She sprawls against a support beam and shakes the water off the scroll. Gold round case, jade handles. She's never seen this one before, so she didn't know about the ornate carvings or the Eye of Horus right on the lock.
It's heavy in her hand, and she closes her eyes just for a moment. Clutches it to her chest while she wills her heartbeat to slow.
Listens to Ed cackle like a madman not twenty feet away.
Cela sucks on her teeth and squints at the newspaper open in her hands. The evening edition is always full of crap, but no matter what Fix says Cela purchases it nightly, anyway.
Fix thinks about the magazines under her sofa at home and resolves to hold her tongue in the future.
The newspaper crinkles as Cela turns a page. "How much pay is he docking again?"
Fix rubs at her forehead. She doesn't want to think about it. "I don't want to think about it."
"Will you be able to make rent? Food?"
She smiles slightly. "I'll be okay."
Cela closes the paper and frowns at Fix. "Don't lie to me, Fix. I'm making overtime out the shithole this month, I can help you if you need it."
Fix holds up a hand and shakes her head. "I'll be fine, don't worry about it."
Another teenage boy wearing an ironic print tee shirt and those weird oversized trainers starts to walk down the alley towards them.
Cela customarily spits in his direction.
Fix sighs, and crosses her arms.
"Invitation?"
