by Devin Graham
Chapter One
The cup of tea rattled atop the saucer, set upon the pull-out tray in front of Gabriel, as the steam-engine locomotive worked its way along the Great Railroad. The railroad stretched all the way from the southern town of Kapo to the city of Summerton, just inside the Northern Region. Gabriel was somewhere between the two.
Briefly, he looked up from his book and to his teacup. Any more rattling and there would be an empty cup atop a flooded saucer, he noted idly. He hardly paid it any mind, however, as some of the dark liquid sloshed over the saucer's shallow brim and onto the tray, so consumed in his own thoughts.
How many more of us can you take, before you are the monster? The Skin Crawler had asked the question more than a week ago and, still, he could not force it away.
Frowning in his thoughts, Gabriel took up the cup and sipped a bit of the bitter tea—what remained of it, that is. On any other day, he would have called for more sugar. After all, when playing a lord, one had to act the part. Today, however, he found himself less than motivated. There were more important things on which to dwell than pretending to be frivolous grouser. At least the drink was warm.
Replacing the teacup, Gabriel turned back to his book. Or rather, he turned to the loose paper he had hidden between two pages. It was a sketch—not a particularly talented one—he had done of a woman. One with no face.
He had the outline of the face, yes. The correct angles, strong contours that were yet feminine, and an accurate enough portrayal of the short, wavy hair, which flared slightly outward once it reached chin-length and framed the face perfectly. That much was all clear in his memory. But he could not, for the life of him, sketch the actual features making up her face. He recalled beauty and strength, but little more of the woman he sketched, and he felt those few details beginning to elude him as time pressed onward. He did not even have a name for the woman. She was...her. The reason he hunted the demons.
“Who are you?” he whispered to the faceless sketch. Gabriel remembered loving her; that constant ache in his chest could not be undone from his memories. And he remembered that she was now gone, taken from him by a demon. She was her, and she had been his. That much, he held on to with a fervency he hoped could not be taken from him by the others.
Gabriel turned away from his sketch, staring unseeingly into the tea-filled saucer on the tray. His thoughts lingered back to the alley in the slums of Pitsville. Back to what the demon had spoken.
Even as he sat there in his silence, he could hear the soft chanting of the others in his mind. Never ceasing.
How long will it take? he wondered. This could never truly turn me into a monster, could it? Consuming demons? I have control. They can do no more than try and frighten me with nonexistent sounds. Brief visions. Although, in the beginning, the others had not even been able to do that much, had they? He brought a hand up to the side of his head, massaging his temple with two fingers. It did feel cramped these days, his head.
After a moment, Gabriel brought his hand back down and shook his head, shoving away his unsettling thoughts. The demons are just trying to get under your skin, he told himself. Remain vigilant, keep your wits about you, and—by Father Truth, Himself—you will find a way to make them bleed. You will make right the wrong they—
“Ahem.”
Thrust from his thoughts, Gabriel snapped his book closed and turned his attention in the direction of the cleared throat. His grim mood lightened up almost immediately, as he took in the two glittering sapphires that were a woman's eyes, just outside his train cabin. The woman's skin was fair and soft, and her fiery hair—straight, sleek and cut short, as was becoming the fashion—fell just below her jawline, curling up at the ends, as though to cradle her chin. Freckles lightly dusted her cute, slightly turned-up nose and cheeks.
She stared at him, expectant. Gabriel found the sharpness behind those eyes of her's quite alluring. Yes, she would be a perfect distraction from thoughts of the faceless woman and the demons.
A bright smile alighted across his face. Gabriel had never known himself to be a charming man, until only about a year ago, when he had realized it was the most essential asset for one to possess when fooling others into believing he was someone of actual import. And, oh, how he had grown proficient at the most important part of charm. The smile.
“What can I do for you, madam?” he asked, taking her in with his grin. It was not enough to be a fake lord in his line of work. Tracking demons required piecing together a lot of rumors overheard from the higher-ups in society; rumors not even the media knew to share, but that those with enough status passed along to one another, as a kind of “ammunition” for their never-ending social warfare. And charm was the most useful tool he had to use in order to gain certain accesses he would have not been granted before, even as a lord.
Of course, there were also his hunches to follow, when he was at a dead end.
Charm was more than just a necessity when it came to gathering information. It was, also, a means by which to pretend—in moments such as this—that he was a normal man, with a normal life. Even if the charade lasted for a mere moment, that was one moment of distraction from the doom-and-gloom of what was quickly becoming his everyday life.
Absently, he patted the cover of his book with his hand. And from her.
“Oh, I do hate to be bothersome, sir,” the woman began in an apologetic tone, smiling in kind, “but all the other train cabins are taken and, well...” She nodded toward the empty booth across from where he sat.
“Of course, madam.” He gestured to the booth with his hand. “Please, sit.”
The woman did so with a curt nod, smoothing out her pristine white dress as she sat. She was exquisitely beautiful. The kind of rare gem who could stand out in a crowd of diamonds.
“I do apologize for having inconvenienced your peaceful reading,” she said, removing her cloche, which had a ribbon matching her dress, and setting it on the seat beside her. She huffed out a breath, seeming flustered.
“No inconvenience at all,” Gabriel said. “I was coming to the end of my chapter anyway. Not to mention, I was only reading because there was no one to keep me company.”
The woman gazed out from the train cart's window, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger.
“That's good then,” she smiled faintly, glancing his way with those piercing eyes. “I do hope you mean it. I had reserved s single-seated cabin just up the aisle a bit for myself, but someone had already taken it—a lousy train-hopper, no doubt. I told the man he had taken my seat, but he only just ignored me.”
I cannot see how that is even possible, Gabriel thought.
“I even told one of the attendants,” the woman continued, still looking out the window, “and the attendant had the moxie to ask me to move to another seat. After I had paid extra to reserve that one.” She sighed. “Anyway, I suppose it happens. Still, the train attendants really need to manage the rules more strictly, I think.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow at the end of her little rant, rather amused by the woman. She certainly had a fire in her.
“Oh, but look at me,” she said, turning from the window finally, and toward him. “A complete stranger going on about her troubles. You must think me an unrestrained woman.”
Gabriel shrugged. “Should I take it that unrestrained is a terrible thing to be, then? I, myself, find that sort of thing refreshing... May I have your name, at least, before deciding what to think of you?”
“I'm Anna. Anna Thornrose.”
“Ah, pleasure...Missus Thornrose.” Gabriel paused, briefly. Where had he heard that name before? Thornrose. After a moment, he shrugged inwardly. He had heard many names in his travels. “I'm William Baryon,” he lied, extending a hand toward Anna.
Baryon was his alias for the Southern Region. He needed no alias for the Northern Region. Where the South lived somewhat strict to its traditions of a tiered society, with the nobility at the top, the Northern Region—with its mayors and less-than-spectacular politic
ians—was more negligent. His business rarely took him to the North, anyway.
Although, in the South, it was much easier getting into important places when one were the supposed half-brother of a viscount—Gabriel, with the help of the viscount himself, even had falsified documents stating he was Viscount Tulius Baryon's younger half-brother, to make it official. Tulius had owed him a favor, and probably still a couple more.
The woman, Anna, took his hand in her own and shook it. Her grip was surprisingly firm.
“Ah, a lord,” she said, sounding impressed. “It's a pleasure, Mister Baryon. And, please, call me Miss.”
Gabriel drew his hand back, a clever smile creeping across his face.
“What is it, Mister Baryon?” Anna asked, brows furrowed.
“I was only just thinking on what you said a moment earlier, about being an unrestrained woman for expressing your opinion of the train service and whatnot to a stranger...” he began. Anna nodded expectantly when he paused. “Well, I have indeed resolved to make a decision on my thoughts about you. Now that I know your name, of course, I can make these judgments, see?”
“Can you now?” she asked through a grin. Abruptly, her face took on a serious expression—too serious not to be exaggerated. “All right...” she said, the way one might say it when bracing herself for a doctor's diagnosis. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. After a few seconds, she opened them again and nodded. “I'm ready.”
Again, Gabriel found himself amused by the woman. It was not often that he was able to have an actual fun conversation with one who was so clearly part of the upper class.
“You see,” Gabriel began, “I have witnessed many tell fellow acquaintances of their deepest, most troubling problems. If we, then, had not been strangers at the time of your...distress...telling me of your disdain of selfish seat thieves and train attendants lacking in proper authoritative standards would be a rather fitting conversation, actually. But, being that we were complete strangers at the time and you are a...er—”
“Woman?” Anna guessed, a slightly dangerous tone behind her voice. Gabriel cringed inwardly. The seat below him began to fell nearly like eggshells.
“Right,” he said, beginning to rethink having said anything at all. “Things being how they are, I have concluded, my dear, that you are quite the unrestrained woman. Although,” he added quickly, as Anna raised a deadly brow, “I do tend to fancy the unrestrained soul above the rest.”
Both sat in uncomfortable silence—at least, it was uncomfortable for Gabriel—for several seconds. Brow still poised high, Anna leaned back in her seat, pursing her lips in quiet scrutiny of him. With a dangerous stare—a woman's stare—, she looked him up and down. For a reason he could not understand, his mind kept being pulled back to her, the faceless woman of his ever-fading memory.
I should have thought this conversation though a little better, Gabriel thought, suddenly questioning the charm he thought he possessed only minutes before. That was the problem when it was a learned attribute and not a natural one; when something was false—charm, lordship, normality—he never felt as though he was doing it right. His guise felt unstable, as though he had cast a sheet over his head in the middle of a crowded room and expected nobody to see him standing there. That was the price when playing the role of someone who was not himself.
Fortunately, as Anna finally lowered her arched eyebrow, her lips turning up in a devious smile, it appeared her growing criticism of him had been only an act. A cruel act. It seemed she had cleverly played on his discomfort. He spent his time hunting demons, and one arched eyebrow from a lady had him questioning his ability to act in a role he had been playing for more than a year?
That's a woman for you, he told himself.
“We should get along just fine then, Mister Baryon,” Anna said, finally, her grin broadening. “And all that might be changing in the coming years—the expectations impressed upon us gentlewomen by you men, who seem to basically be able to say whatever you please. Common women are not held to nearly as lofty a standard, you know. And the women in the North...well, you can hardly tell them apart from the men, I hear. I, also, heard rumor of a group of gentlewomen banding together in Harlun, asking people to sign their petitions against this treatment.” She laughed out loud, as though she had said something funny.
“Unrestrained, indeed,” Gabriel said.
“In truth, Mister Baryon,” Anna said, her smile fading, “I believe there are more important things for the people of this world to worry about. Wouldn't you agree?”
Gabriel frowned slightly.
“Yes,” he said, after a pause, “I think there are.”
There was a span of thoughtful silence between the two, as though they were both thinking of a specific thing. Gabriel's mind went to the demons. It seemed to him, the demons were planning something. Placent had been the second lord to be killed within the month and demons almost never targeted people so high up in the hierarchy. They were drawing attention to themselves. Which could be a very bad thing.
Gabriel shoved the concerns away. He was not supposed to care about that. At his side, hidden beneath his duster jacket, Gabriel became aware of the weight of his revolver, Retribution, in its holster there. A gift, from the faceless woman's murderer. The demon who had taken her...that was his only care.
He studied Anna's unseeing eyes. As to where her thoughts had taken her, Gabriel could not even guess.
“If you don't mind my saying,” she began again, breaking the silence, and blinking away whatever ever her mind's eyes had been seeing, “I didn't exactly peg you as the type who would care much for literature.”
“I'm sorry?” Gabriel asked, before realizing she had gestured toward the book in his lap. Changing the subject, he noted.
“Right,” he said, looking down at the book. The worn cover was unadorned and a rather bland shade of brown. He did enjoy the occasional book, but, at the moment, he was more interested in the sketch hidden between its pages. “You find all the good stories in books. But, now I'm interested: What type did you peg me for, exactly?”
Anna's cheeks went red.
“Well,” she began slowly, “drawing from my very first impression of you, I'd have guessed your interests would extend more toward...women.”
“Well, yes, I suppose there are good stories to find with women, also.”
“Mister Baryon!” Anna said, gaping. Then, she laughed and shook her head incredulously. “But, Mister Baryon, as we've been speaking, you have become sort of a mystery to me, in honesty.”
“How so?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“There seems to be so many different personalities hidden behind that charming smile of yours, it is simply impossible to know for certain what you care for. I know we've only just met, but I am usually pretty good at pegging types. If I could be more certain, I would say you aren't exactly who you display yourself as being.”
Gabriel frowned.
“Really?” he said, carefully.
Anna nodded.
“For one,” she said, “true charmers are not inclined to let themselves get too close to any woman for too long a time. Woman do tend to be mere passing...experiences...in the charmer's life; and very rarely are they made important to that life. You, however, were once married.”
Gabriel felt a chill run the length of his spine.
“How did you...?”
“Your hand keeps moving to the ring finger of your left hand, as if to twirl a ring that's no longer there,” she answered, smiling knowingly.
Gabriel glanced down at his hands and separated them. He had not even noticed he was doing it.
“And,” Anna continued, “she must have been one of the most important things to your life, considering you have been doing that for the better part of our conversation.”
“That's...” Gabriel shook his head, in true awe of the woman, “...very keen of you. How did you learn to do that?”
“I took a profiling class in school,” she sai
d, glancing out the train's window. “Wanted to become an investigator.”
“What happened, if I might ask?”
Anna seemed to hesitate.
“Family issues,” she answered, after a few moments. “They are taken care of now,” she added, then rather abruptly leaned in toward Gabriel, looking over the pull-out tray with the teacup and at the book in his lap. “Keen Eyes and a Crimson Pool, by Wayne Philgrim,” she read aloud, tilting her head to see the book's spine. The title and author's name, in their silver lettering, were all the decoration the book bore. “Mystery?”
“Horror,” Gabriel answered distantly. This woman was, perhaps, a larger mystery than Gabriel. “Or, at least, that's what it's supposed to be, I think.”
Anna cringed, leaning back in her seat.
“I never cared much for scary stories,” she said. “Too gruesome for my liking.”
“I find they make the real world seem a little bit of a better place to be,” Gabriel said. “Do you enjoy reading?”
“I try to keep myself at a distance from books,” Anna replied, then sighed. “My father already has me nearly drowning myself in a very particular topic of nonfiction—which could be easily confused with horror, if you ask me. Yes, indeed, horribly boring.”
Gabriel chuckled.
“I do like your spirit, Miss Thornrose.”
“I like your acceptance of it,” she said. “It's not often a woman meets a man with whom she can freely express herself.”
The two of them sat smiling at one another for quite a few seconds. Then, the train released a cringe-worthy shrill and jolted Gabriel forward, as the breaks were thrown and it began slowing to a stop. Amazingly, his teacup, and the saucer atop which it sat, seemed to maintain a better grounding than he did.
Gabriel glanced out the window, finding a weathered sign, reading: Pleasant Station. His eyes turned back to Anna.
“It seems I've reached my stop,” he announced, pushing the tray aside and standing.
“What a coincidence, Mister Baryon,” Anna said, standing also and placing her cloche back on her head. “This is my stop as well.”
Gabriel grinned, then gestured toward the corridor outside his cabin.
“In that case, after you, madam,” he said.
She moved past him, into the corridor. He placed his bowler hat atop his head and slid his small book into one of the pockets on the inside of his duster, before—clutching his small suitcase in one hand and a polished mahogany cane in the other—following a step behind.
“I'll have you know,” Gabriel began, as they made their way toward the exit, “I will be attending Duke Bawdlin's ball tonight. If you should find yourself confined by the restraints of society, perhaps you would like to join me there.” Confined by the restraints of society? Flames, I'm getting good at this lord talk.
In front of him Anna laughed.
“And so you would have me cram myself in an entire building full of the gods of restraint?” she asked.
“Well,” Gabriel said, as they both stepped out of the train and onto the wooden platform which made up much of Pleasant Station, then faced her, “I did say I would be attending said ball. Perhaps, we shall show the other lords what's what, eh?”
“I might have taken you up on that offer, if I were not here on business already,” she said. “Perchance, I will see you another time, Mister Baryon. It was lovely speaking with you.”
“Was it the charm that made it lovely?” Gabriel raised a brow and smirked.
“No.” Anna shook her head. “It was the fact that I could never tell whether you were lying or not, even with the simple things—such as the genre of your book; I still can't be sure whether it's a mystery or horror. You are the first true mystery I have encountered in a number of years, Mister Baryon. A lord in a duster coat.”
Anna Thornrose turned and started away, toward a coachman who was waving her down, while another was loading the coach with a large trunk which he presumed was her luggage. Gabriel frowned as he watched her leave, uncertain how he should feel about her words.
Rejected, he thought. And she basically said my words couldn't be trusted. Hmm.
He turned his attention back to the actual station—a small building set near the center of the large, wooded platform—, then his eyes swept across the platform. It was busier than he remembered it being, when he and...her, the faceless woman...had come here many years before for... What had they come here for?
She had loved the quiet of the place. The way it seemed separated from the rest of the world. He remembered that much, at least.
And she had loved the trees... Gabriel's frown deepened. Where were the trees? The station was built on the edge of a small wooded area, which separated it from the town of Pleasant. Or, rather, it had been. It appeared the trees had nearly all been cleared and a wide, dirt path cut through where they had once stood.
A couple, thick, grey billows of smoke plumed into the sky about half a mile's distance away. Factory smoke.
More and more, the quiet towns of the Southern Region were becoming like the cities in the North. More and more, her memory was fading from the South and from his mind. It appeared that expansion had finally found its way to Pleasant.
Gabriel's boots pounded against the platform, as he made his way down to the dirt road. Fixing his eyes on the billows of smoke in the distance, and sighing to himself, he started forward.
The air was thick and humid, making him rethink his decision to wear his duster.
If there were trees to shade the path, he grumbled inwardly, I might find some solace. Truthfully, Gabriel liked the heat. It kept his mind from the constant, dull roar of the others—the demons—in his mind. What he disliked, however, was change. It was change that slowly tore her memory from him.
His eyes strayed from the road occasionally, to the empty, half-finished husks of wood and concrete that would become one type of building or another once they were finished. He had not yet reached the town, but he was already feeling as if nothing about this place was the same.
I'm not even thirty. Should everything be changing so quickly?
A few coaches passed him by along the way, the coachmen and their passengers sparing him no more than brief glances—sometimes, not even that. They most likely did not even suspect Gabriel was supposed to be a lord. He should probably work on his presence a bit more. A lord in a duster, as Anna had called him, was not exactly the sort of attention he wanted to draw to himself.
Briefly, he considered taking off his duster, but quickly decided against it. The coat was a tool—a more personal tool—, he used to separate himself from the nobleman he pretended to be. When one spent his time acting as a certain type of person—during the moments he was not actively hunting a demon, of course—it could be difficult not to incorporate the ideals of that person—fake or not—as his own. And so, sweat beading along his forehead, he continued along the road.
Eventually, the shouting of street vendors cut through the silence, and the heavy smell of industrialism, perfume, and musk settled down around Gabriel. It was actually a welcome smell, considering he spent much of his time chasing the stench of rotting flesh.
To his right, a large sign read in curving white letters, Welcome to Pleasant.
You should not enter this place, a single voice, somewhere beneath the constant hum of the other demons, whispered, so faint Gabriel questioned whether or not it had truly been there. You should not enter this place, it repeated.
Gabriel paused. His instincts, his hunch—he used to call it his Demon Radar, before deciding it was a ridiculous name—told him he would find a demon here. And those he worked with in the underground—those not afraid to admit the existence of demon-kind—had confirmed there was evidence of demon activity in Pleasant.
He was not exactly sure how they were able to pinpoint the activity of demons—he thought, perhaps, they somehow followed trails of unexplained disappearances, and even that, finding anything using those sorts of leads
, seemed far-fetched. Nevertheless, they in the underground were almost always accurate and Gabriel was smart enough not to ask questions. The people making up the underground of any city were not the type to take well to questions about the way they operated.
Leave, the voice continued.
Gabriel shoved the voice to the background, deciding it was probably only one of the others trying to mislead him. Follow the demons, find her murderer. Eventually. It was not much to go on, he knew. But, with demons constantly having to change bodies and no way to track one using any form of identification, it was all he had to go on.
He continued onward, passing the sign. Below him, his boots clomped softly as the dirt path gave way to a cobbled street.
I'm giving up on you, the voice whispered. Gabriel shivered, but ignored the words.
His mood lifted slightly as he took in the large town, not quite a city. Although they were not the mighty pines the once-wooded area had consisted of, there were a few trees here, lining a cobbled streets here or there. Dainty trees, bearing pretty blossoms of pink and white, but still trees.
Gabriel looked about him as he walked. Though many of the citizens of Pleasant were busy haggling with street vendors or listening to an a cappella group singing on a nearby street corner, a few stared at him as he passed them by. Despite its expansion, the people here knew a stranger when they saw one.
Gabriel ignored the few stares, his eyes searching the signs of the many businesses, blossoming in this progressing era like flowers in the springtime, as he strode along the street. It was not long until he caught sight of a sign composed of flashing amber lights in front of a large, two-storey building. Evening was only just arriving, yet the dimly glowing lights were still enough to catch any passerby's attention. Electric bulbs were one of the newer advents of the era. Pleasant was certainly advancing, indeed.
The flashing bulbs—probably set on timers—making up the letters of the sign ran vertically, reading, Grand Theatre. Gabriel had seen grander. He started toward the lights.
The moment he entered in through the bronze-edged double doors, a man standing behind a podium with a ready smile on his face called, “Welcome to the Grand Theatre, good sir! May I see your ticket, please?”
Gabriel tilted his hat politely to the man.
“I'm not here for the show,” Gabriel said. “I'm here to see the man who owns this fine theater. A Mister Barnes. Do you know where I might find him?”
The custodian shook his head, his smile not fading a bit. “I apologize, sir, but I am not permitted to let anyone pass without a ticket in hand. However, you may purchase a ticket from me here, if you wish.”
“Not even a lord can pass?” Gabriel asked.
The custodian seemed to hesitate at this and Gabriel started forward. He paused as the employee stepped out from behind his podium, hesitantly. Gabriel raised an eyebrow. Although, he realized, he looked nothing like a lord in his current wear. Gabriel, himself, would certainly be unconvinced.
“I-I'm sorry, sir,” the man stammered, “but I really can't let you pass without a ticket. The last guy who let someone pass without a ticket—as a favor to a friend—got dusted. Please, sir, I can't get fired too.”
Gabriel screwed his mouth up tightly, then sighed, giving the man a thin smile. “Very well,” he said in a lofty tone. He might as well act like a lord. “Will you, at least, go fetch Mister Barnes for me? Tell him Lord Baryon is here to see him.”
The man wavered briefly, before turning to another employee, who was sweeping the floor nearby. “Parkens, you take over my position for a minute. I'm going to get Master Barnes for...Lord Baryon.” The man eyed Gabriel, still obviously unconvinced. Gabriel lifted his chin haughtily.
The younger lad complied with a smile—were the smiles permanent for the employees here?—, while the other man went away. Gabriel watched him go until he rounded a corner, then moved aside to sit at one of the benches in the reception area. Setting his suitcase on the bench beside him, he pulled his book from its place in his duster and opened it.
He actually tried to read the words this time, as he waited. With the constant rumble of the voices in his head and his own thoughts constantly digressing to the faceless woman, however, his focus was quick to stray. He soon found himself leafing through the pages, until he reached his sketch.
The woman whose face he could not remember enough to draw. He could not even guess the color of her eyes. Yet she was important. He always felt as if he remembered her better the previous day, than he did the current one. Each day he awoke, there seemed to be something about her that was missing from his memory.
What is your name? he wondered.
It was her memory—or lack thereof—that drove him to consume the demons, breathing them into that part of himself he could not begin to understand. It was her who kept him human, at the core of it all. Yet, what more was she now, than a dead wife he could not remember?
Only snatches of recollection remained of the time before the last two years—his hunting years. There was a bank and...blood. Aside from that, he knew almost nothing of who he had been, of who he was. Gabriel hardly even remembered his own parents. She was the last remnant of his life before, and she was little more than an outline of a face, and the flashing image of a corridor, at the end of which stood the demon who had taken her life.
In truth, and what scared him the most, was that he did not want to remember more. Those memories held too much pain for him. That memory had broken him once before. But, he did not want to remember less, either.
Yet, day by day, she slipped closer and closer to the blackness.
Gabriel reached inside his duster and brought out a pencil. She had no face and she had no name, but she was more than those things. He placed the tip of his pencil to the paper, within the blank space of her face.
She liked the trees, he wrote. She was my wife... He leaned back on the bench, pressing his brain for more information.
“Ah, Lord Baryon,” came a deep, aging voice.
Gabriel shut his book with a start, tucking it back in its place within his duster as he glanced up to see two approaching figures. The custodian, along with Lannister Barnes, who was a tall, slender and slightly greying man.
“I've been expecting you,” Barnes said. His voice was much older than his face.
Gabriel extended a hand to Barnes as both men approached him. Barnes took his hand in a firm grip. Gabriel did not allow the handshake to extend past a couple seconds, before withdrawing his hand. Noblemen were hesitant to touch commoners for any length of time—apparently, they thought them unclean. However, a brief handshake was in order for any lord meeting a renowned businessman, such as Lannister Barnes.
“So I told your little employee, here,” Gabriel said, shooting the custodian a sharp glance. The poor man seemed to be sweating. Sorry, I have to act the part. Gabriel turned his eyes back on Barnes. “It is a pleasure.”
“Likewise, my lord,” Barnes said, excitedly. “Please, follow me. If you wish it, my employee here will take your...” Barnes glanced down at his one suitcase and cocked a brow, “thing...from you.”
Gabriel shook his head. “Many thanks but I shall carry it myself.”
Barnes frowned as if to say, You are not a very convincing lord. Was it really necessary to be convincing at all times, especially when speaking to one of the underground's leaders? Gabriel did look forward to those brief, increasingly rare moments where he could just be as close to normal as was possible...before taking up the role of the demon-slaying nobleman again.
With half a mind, Gabriel wondered if the underground bosses paying him to kill demons would start paying him less if they found out he could not actually kill them. Or try to kill me...
“Very well, sir,” Barnes said, after a moment. “Right this way.”
The older man strode away, down the main corridor, then turned right—along a dimly lit, much narrower corridor—mid-way through. Gabriel followed behind, warily. He could neve
r bring himself to fully trust any member of the underground, being that their business consisted of a lot more than just getting rid of demons; and those things were mostly of an illegal nature.
And to think, I wanted to be a lawman. Gabriel paused. I wanted to be a lawman?
He shook his head and continued behind the man. Whatever business the underground was involved in, Barnes was an invaluable informant, having business connections with much of the aristocracy across the Southern Region.
Barnes came to a stop at a large, windowless door and took a second to pull out a set of keys. Finding the right key, he unlocked the door and opened it to a narrow expanse of stairs ascending beyond it. The man started up these, Gabriel following behind.
These stairs ended at yet another door, which Barnes unlocked with a key he had hidden in the inside pocket of his suit. He opened the door and gestured Gabriel through before him. The floorboards creaked beneath Gabriel's boots as he stepped inside, eyeing the man as he passed.
“This is to be your room, Lord Baryon,” Barnes said, still keeping up the charade.
Gabriel nodded, looking over the cramped space. A small bed, taking up an entire third of the room, was set against the far wall, under the only window—which was little more than a foot in width, as well as height. His was not a glamorous line of work.
“It'll do,” Gabriel said. “Thank you for your kindness, Barnes.”
Barnes grunted. “If you really want to look like a lord, you should have given the custodian your suitcase. Lords rarely carry their own things. And you could invest in a little more in the way of possessions, also.”
Gabriel sighed, turning to face Barnes.
“I have all the faith that you employ some of the finest individuals here,” Gabriel said. “But, honestly, I don't have the luxury of trust, especially when it comes to the handling of my personal affects.”
Barnes just shrugged in a way that said, Being stupid is your choice. Gabriel waited for the man to exit. Barnes remained where he was by the door, however.
Right, Gabriel remembered, payment. The underground bosses paid him to kill demons, while another robbed him of half of it for a room the size of two closets and a party invitation. Reaching into his duster coat, he retrieved a rubber banded bundle of bills. The price for getting one invited to a ball was a hefty one, indeed. Apparently, even when they're the ones employing you, Gabriel grumbled inwardly.
Barnes reached for the money and Gabriel withdrew the bundle slightly, making the man pause. “Before you're off,” Gabriel said to the man's agitated stare, “answer me this: Why do you help? Why do your people expend some of your funds paying me to hunt demons? I can't see how it helps you, seeing as nobody knows.”
“We love this world as much as any, Lord Baryon,” Lannister answered. “It is by cheating it that we are paid, after all. Using a portion of our resources to eliminate any potential competition secures our own business.”
“Competition?” Gabriel asked. “From demons? I doubt they're interested in the things the many undergrounds do.”
“I did say any potential competition.” Barnes raised an eyebrow at Gabriel's still-questioning look. “Our money primarily comes from the wealthy—lords looking to upend another, merchants trying to rid their rivals of supplies—, and we get paid by making those things happen. If the demons are killing the lords, essentially our money, then we in my business have a major problem. Now, I think I will have my money. Or have you anymore question regarding the business?”
There was a dangerous edge in Barnes's eyes and Gabriel was quick to hold the money out for the man again. Lannister Barnes accepted the money gladly and turned to leave. He paused in the doorway, however.
“You would do well to work on thinking more like a noble yourself,” the man said over his shoulder. “I think you'd find many of your questions answered, merely by using another person's head.” With that, he left Gabriel to himself.
Gabriel leaned his cane against a wall and set his suitcase down on the squeaky bed, unclasping the fastens.
Time to save a lord.
