by Billy Wong
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Weeks went by, Lincoln working a few uneventful concerts in goth costume and makeup in the meantime. It felt weird, but he adjusted. He took to wearing his gauntlets from the music video at shows, figuring they would serve to encourage would-be troublemakers to fear his fists a little more.
His new job proved very satisfying. Though there was a slight generation gap—for instance he really couldn't understand their love of "apps" or constantly updating each other on their locations—the kids were pleasant to be around and a typical day with them hardly felt like work. Sloth's condition improved, although he still weighed over three hundred sixty pounds, and Lincoln and Gunner developed something of a rivalry to be the group's alpha male. Even the disagreements among them were generally innocent, and readily forgotten with a new sunrise.
One evening after finishing the day's work, they were playing Team Gunwar on a setup with multiple screens and consoles put together by Sloth. "Killed you again, Freya!" Gunner yelled as his virtual avatar blew hers up with a rocket launcher.
"You just wait until I respawn, dick," she grumbled.
Loki looked their way. "Will you guys cut it out? We're on the same team. You're going to make us lose—oh shit! Great, you just got me killed." He glanced at Sloth's screen. "And look at Sloth off terrorizing some noob again."
Lincoln was having real trouble. He'd only played video games at parties after college and had gotten killed more times so far than anyone else. Even Annabeth knew how to lay low and snipe. He switched to grenades to see if he would fare better using those.
"Throw a grenade over the right wall," Annabeth said.
He was always surprised when she addressed him. "What? The radar says there's no one there."
"Just try it. It's only one grenade. You have plenty more."
Shaking his head, he lobbed one over. His eyes widened when, moments later, the words "Six kills. Team Helbound wins." appeared onscreen.
"Lincoln just soloed the enemy team!" Sloth declared. "Go Lincoln!"
"I think Annabeth had something to do with that," Loki said.
"Say, how did you know about that?" Lincoln asked. "They must've all been using that camouflage or whatever ability."
"Lucky guess?"
Freya shook her head. "No, I think it's time we let the cat out of the bag. You guys can head home for the night. I want to talk to Lincoln in private."
After the others left, Lincoln stood confused. "So what's going on? She a psychic?"
"Well, uh, sort of, close, but it's more complicated than that. The guys already know and I'm sorry we didn't tell you sooner, but you probably wouldn't even have believed us. You know me and Annabeth have known each other since middle school, but what you don't is I lost a lot of friends because of her. I used to be really popular, partly because I was so athletic. Everything came easily to me. I even played football with the boys in high school, and even though I wasn't huge—I'm only five seven and one fifty now—I could play running back or linebacker. I was knocking down guys twice my—wait a minute why am I going on this tangent?" She shook her head. "Enough self promotion! Concentrate, Freya!
"Anyway I knew Annabeth since junior high, but we weren't really friends until high school. That was when I decided to stick up for her, and had a falling out with the in crowd for doing so. She was picked on for being different and as lonely as she seemed, I felt somebody had to support her. So I took it on myself—we pretty much started the whole little goth movement in our school."
Lincoln blinked. "Okay, so that was a whole lot of nothing. I mean, sure it would make a nice chapter in your biography, but not exactly anything mindblowing?"
"It gets more interesting, okay? After becoming friends with her, I found out she had powers of foresight."
"So basically it took you three pages to repeat what I said to start." Then Lincoln saw moisture in her eyes. Sadness? He doubted it as nobody they were talking about had died. Fear? What could possibly frighten her? he wondered with dread. "Sorry. I'll stop."
"Heh. I'd be impatient if someone was being so long winded with me too. Anyway, normally she just has relatively minor flashes of insight. You know, like that thing with the game. But when she dreams, sometimes she has serious visions that can change the course of history. We've stopped a few potentially major disasters in our time. The terrorists who got caught planning the football stadium bombing three years ago? We called that in anonymously. The kidnapped family the cops rescued from the abandoned mill six months ago? Us too. The earthquake rumors before the fact last year? We tried, but no one believed us.
"You believe me?"
Lincoln thought about it. "Yeah, I believe you. Us dark men like to think we're pretty open minded. Plus, I find the Gothic warrior a pretty trustworthy person."
She smiled. "Thanks."
"But what are you scared of?"
"I think I better pause and show you something first." She walked over to where her prop sword lay and picked it up. Then, she withdrew a thin key from her pocket which she stuck into a tiny slot on the hilt and turned. The huge unsharpened blade of the prop split apart and fell off, to reveal a slimmer, brilliant blade hidden within. "This is Empty Blue. My sword."
"Jesus Christ, what the fuck! Don't tell you me you're a real Gothic warrior who runs around killing people with a sword?
Freya smiled sadly. "I've never killed a person, with a sword or otherwise. I've never even fought a human being with this sword."
"A human being? So what are you, a vampire slayer with supernatural powers? No wonder you're so strong and tough."
"No. Like I said I'm just an athletic girl. A person can do amazing things when they don't allow their mind to limit them. But I'm not a vampire slayer. I don't fight with this sword. I fight with my fists, feet, elbows, knees, head, and girly nails."
"Then why do you have that sword?"
She looked wistfully up the blade. "I saved up over a year of my allowance to have this commissioned. Forged from holy steel to kill the enemies of God himself."
"Okay..."
"It was because one night, Annabeth had a particularly frightful vision. As she tossed and turned, shivering and pale, she said 'On my sweetest day, the Dark Man, the devil's scholar will take my soul.' So taking her sweetest day to be her sweet sixteen, I started saving to have this made.
"But if I already killed the Dark Man, why did she have a vision about him again?"
Lincoln raised his hands. "Wait a minute. So you say you already killed the Dark Man?"
She seemed to relax a bit. "Yes. When the Dark Man came through a cloud of crimson fog on the eve of her sweet sixteenth, a black man—wait, I mean black like coal, not brown like you Lincoln—with ram's horns and cloven feet... I ran him through the groin and slew him!"
"Uh, why the groin?"
"I ducked a punch from him right before and it was the first target I noticed."
"So what happened after that?"
"After the Dark Man fell down with hellish vapors leaking from his crotch? We got the hell out of there, of course. I'm sure he was dead, though. The vapors stopped coming after a while. But a few months ago Annabeth said in another vision, 'When I am freed to drink Christ's blood by the laws of man, the devil's scholar will come again.'" She sat down, holding Empty Blue pointed downwards before her like a cross.
Lincoln sat too. "That's... a lot to take in. What does that last line mean?"
"I figured it means the Dark Man will come for her when she turns twenty-one."
"And when is that?"
"In about a month. Honestly that's part of why I hired you, Lincoln. I was getting pretty worked up and thought we could use an extra able body to help us out. I'm sorry if you feel deceived. You can quit if you want, no strings attached."
He stood up. "Quit? Naw, son! We good buddies now right? And what kind of cowardly fighter would I be leaving a bitch to fend
for herself against a black demon from hell?
"I'll show him what real dark men are all about!"
At that, Freya smiled.
