“Understood.” My eyes looked down to where he still held my forearm, and when his gaze followed mine down to his hand, he released me.
“Sorry,” he apologized, looking sheepish as he did. eepish Ӏ did. “And, yes, he can fight. If a war breaks out, you want him on your team, that’s for sure. He’s nearly as cold as Casey, and that’s saying something.”
“How is it that you are so unlike him then?”
He shrugged, tilting his head to the side.
“He got the brains and the brawn,” he said quietly, looking over at me with a smile that did not reach his eyes as all his previous ones had. “I guess I just got the good looks.”
I furrowed my brow, not understanding his logic.
“But—”
“It was a joke, Khara. Get it? We’re identical twins . . . we look exactly alike.” When he didn’t appear to get the response from me he sought, a look of exasperation overtook him. “I’m making fun of myself because it makes it easier than having others do it for me. Beat them to the punch, so to speak.”
His words still perplexed me.
“You must have brawn if you’re the one out here fighting while Pierson sits comfortably on a couch awaiting your return,” I countered.
“I guess . . .”
“Do you kill with ease or not?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Do you hesitate when the time to strike comes?”
“Never,” he said, looking offended by the question.
“And if something evil rounded that corner now and threatened my life?”
His eyes darkened slightly.
“I’d tear its fucking head from its body.”
An unfamiliar tugging sensation plagued the corners of my mouth, and I could do nothing to stop it. What I could only describe as a faint smile ghosted my expression.
“You see? You have something that Pierson does not.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Heart,” I said plainly. “Loyalty. My father spoke of those traits often. One might assume that all who dwell in the depths are devoid of such qualities, but that is not the case. Hades has many who would do for him what you just admitted you would do for me. That cannot be learned, he would tell me. Someone is either inherently driven to serve in such a way, or they are not. Pierson is not. You, however, are. I see your heart as superior to his brains, and I have no doubt that your brawn is as well. Those who possess that degree of loyalty appear to be charged with something extra when they fight. I have witnessed it. It is a fearsome sight indeed.”
His face had gone slack by the time I finished my explanation. For a moment, he did little more than stand before me and stare, silent for the first time since I had met him. Then, in what I deemed to be his true nature, he scooped me up in his arms, crushing me to his chest and burying his face in my hair.
“I’m so glad Drew found you . . .”
“Yes, as am I. I am not entirely certain what would have become of me if he had not. I may have been wandering the streets of Detroit still.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Khara. I’m saying that I’m glad he found you because I feel like you fill a void that has been empty in me for longer than I can remember. It feels right having you around.”
Again, I found myself trying to absorb the sincerity of his words. The result was astounding. Having directed my attention to it, I noticed that I, too, seemed to have something deep within me more at peace in his presence. It was strange to reco SranHavgnize the emptiness only after it had been filled, however slightly.
I had little time to dwell on this realization, though, before Kierson all but threw me down, his gaze snapping up to something in the distance I could neither hear nor see. To me, the street appeared vacant, aside from a single human passed out on the sidewalk, but as Kierson’s body coiled to strike I knew that something ominous was present.
It was precisely what he had wanted to happen. A chance to show me what he and the others could do.
“Stay close, and always behind me,” he said sternly, taking me by the arm and all but dragging me down the road. We were nearing a crumbling tenement at the end, with no light surrounding it and nowhere to go beyond it. It seemed as though the street just stopped completely before it.
Kierson slowed as we approached, casing the outside cautiously until a woman’s scream broke through the silence. He leapt right through a broken window and disappeared inside, the darkness swallowing him within seconds. I jumped right behind him as I was told to. Dust and dirt blew into my face as I landed in a crouch, making it still harder to see.
“Let her go,” Kierson growled from the far corner of the room. “You know the rules.”
“I . . . I can’t stop,” a shaky voice replied.
“Last chance,” Kierson warned.
I walked toward the voices, wanting to see just how the situation would play out. Would whatever creature Kierson pursued let her go, or would he face the wrath of my brother? Furthermore, I had a strange desire building within me that demanded to see just what the assailant was. I had not seen the evil that I had been so constantly told of since meeting Drew and the others. Curiosity got the better of me.
Just as I rounded a thick concrete pillar, I could see the three of them, though light was still scarce. A thin and sickly looking man held the young girl, her face cupped in his hands, mouths nearly touching. The second I stepped into view, his hollow, empty eyes snapped directly to me.
And they never left.
The tortured man leapt at me like a soul possessed, face contorted with a foul determination, though he did not make it far. Kierson, true to his word, severed the being’s head from his body with one pass of his blade. Had he not already been holding the weapon, I was quite certain he would have used his hands, as he had earlier claimed he would.
While Kierson examined his kill to be certain it was thoroughly dead, I walked to the petite brunette with whom the being had been toying to see if she was all right. She appeared to be stunned and did not respond to my questions or move at all. I presumed that fear had frozen her in that state. Kierson, however, did not.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath when he came up alongside me.
“Shit?”
“He already got her. We’re too late.” His words were plain, but his tone and expression were not. They were saddened, a direct result of some realization he had when he looked at the paralyzed girl. “She’s an Empty . . . I have no choice.” He turned me around to face him, placing his hands on my upper arms firmly. “I want you to go outside.”
“But you said I was to stay with you—”
“I know what I said, Khara, but this,” he said, turning sad eyes toward the vacant girl, “this I don’t want you to see. Just wait for me by the window we came in through. It won’t take long.”
I did not wish to prolong whatever suffering he felt, so I did as he bade me, walking away briskly toward our original entrance point. Echoing off the walls, I could hear a whisper of a song being sung. It held an eerie beauty. I felt lulled by it momentarily before it ended. Directly after that, Kierson appeared before me, attempting to wipe himself clean of the blood that his clothes were covered in.
“It’s why we all wear black when we go hunting,” he confessed, that same weak smile painting his expression with false happiness. “C’mon. We have to head back and check in with Pierson. I need to see if he felt what I felt.”
“Did something go wrong? Were you not hoping you would encounter something like this? A way to display your skills to me?”
“I wanted to show you my mad skills, but not like that,” he said, hopping out of the window. He turned back and reached for my hand, assuming for some reason that I was incapable of getting out of the very window through which I entered. Instead of refusing the unnecessary gesture, I took his hand and allowed him to guide me out.
“Should I then assume that something did go awry in there?”
“Yep. That’s a safe
bet.” He reached into his coat pocket, producing the same style phone that Drew had given me. With the push of a button, he was speaking to him directly.
“We have a problem. Meet us back at the club. And call the others. This affects us all.”
Whatever playfulness Kierson had exhibited prior to that moment was suddenly absent, leaving behind a warrior far more befitting of the title. We walked in silence to the Tenth Circle at an urgent pace. Not long after we arrived, the others filed in, all of us convening in the usual area upstairs.
“So what is this problem that so desperately requires all of our attention, Kierson?” Casey inquired, though he was clearly disinterested in the answer.
Kierson, who had remained silent until everyone arrived, shot a look to Pierson, the two of them appearing to have one of those wordless conversations he had earlier alluded to. Eventually, Pierson nodded in confirmation of something the rest of us had yet to be let in on.
“I killed an Empty tonight.”
“What?” Drew asked, stepping toward Kierson. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, Drew. Pierson will tell you the same thing.”
“He did as he says he did,” Pierson added. “I saw the event play out in its entirety.”
“Where? How?” Drew pressed, desperate for answers.
“We were only a few blocks over. Khara and I were just walking along, shooting the shit, when suddenly I got that feeling I get . . . you know . . . the one I get when Pierson sees something.”
“And?”
“And he led me to a Breather. When I got there, I thought he’d maybe taken too much from his victim, but it was dark and I couldn’t quite tell. I told him to let the girl go, and it seemed like he really wanted to.”
“But?”
“But . . . it was like he really couldn’t. Like it was somehow out of his control.”
“They all claim that when they overstep,” Casey argued. “The greedy little fuckers have it coming.”
“No,” Kierson bit out harshly. “I’m telling you, this was different. You should have seen the look in his eyes. He was afraid and confused.”
“If he was so afraid, then why didn’t he listen to you?” Drew asked, confusion overtaking his expression.
“I don’t know. That’s why it’s so weird. I really think he would have, but then Khara came around the corner, and it seemed to spook him. He went all crazy and made a play for her. I took him out instantly.” None of the brothers responded to his tale. Instead, they all stood silently, staring at him. “So while I checked the body to be sure he’d been properly disposed of, Khara went over to the girl to see if she was okay. When I came over to join her, I realized what had happened. She was gone. Way gone.”
“This just doesn’t make any sense,” Drew said, sitting down on the couch. “How long has it been since one of them has gone that far?”
“Too long for this to have happened without provocation,” Pierson offered.
“Exactly.”
“But I’m telling you the truth,” Kierson declared in defense of his actions.
“I’m not saying you aren’t; I’m just trying to sort this all out. When I saw Khara the other day, it took me a moment to realize that she might have been an Empty because it had been so long since I’d taken one out. I couldn’t be sure right away.”
“Turns out you were wrong anyway, Drew,” Casey purred while he took a seat across from him.
“Obviously I was, Casey. I’m just trying to reiterate the point that we have not had issues with the Soul Breathers for an exceedingly long time. Why now? Why would one of them go that far now? Especially when they know that death is imminent if they do. It’s suicide.”
“Perhaps that soul was particularly tasty.” Casey’s lazy grin was starting to visibly rile Drew. Pierson stepped in to offer his intellectual assessment of the situation in an attempt to stop the fight that was brewing.
“There are too many unknown variables for us to make any sort of conclusion at the moment. What we need to do is better track the Breathers so that we do not have any repeats of tonight. We need intel. That should be our top priority at the moment.”
“Agreed,” Kierson said, coming to stand beside his twin. “I do not want to have to do that again. I don’t like killing humans.”
“I’ll do it for you if you’re too soft,” Casey offered, repeatedly wiping his blade across his leather pants in a rhythmic motion.
“Must you?” I asked, my voice seeming to startle them all as though they had forgotten I was there altogether. “Kill them, I mean—the Empties. Must they die?”
“Yes. If they are not taken out, they will only take the soul of another to fill the void left in them. They have to. The very thought consumes their being, unrelenting until it is sated,” Drew explained. “If they are permitted to do this, a nasty domino effect is set in motion that will eventually infect the city, a rampant plague of soulless beings overtaking the human population. They will leave nothing in their wake. Our job is to keep the balance and police the supernatural. In doing that job, we must keep the humans from knowing that otherworldly beings exist or from falling victim to them. If an entire city were to be robbed of their existence because the Stealers could not be contained, it would not go unnoticed. Once done, there would be no way to easily undo it without extensive collateral damage.”
His explanation was thorough and compelling, but I was still confused.
“Stealers?” My look of confusion must have tipped Drew off to the fact that Kierson had explained nothing of what h Singtion that ad happened that night. “What Kierson and I saw was a Breather. What is this Stealer that you speak of?”
“Soul Stealer, to be exact, Khara. They were one of the many evils that thrived in the New World. To prevent the potential debacle I just described to you, they were eradicated . . . in a fashion.”
“What Drew is trying to tell you is that we came to terms with them—an agreement—that changed the breed, if they can be called that. Creating the Soul Breathers was the palatable solution to the problem. Because the Stealers sustained themselves on the souls of others, more precisely the light or goodness within them, humans were a readily accessible food source for them. The Stealers quickly became efficient at draining a person of their soul, and had no qualms about doing so,” Pierson clarified.
“And that is what an Empty is? One whose soul has been taken?”
“Precisely. They are the soulless remnants of their former selves.” A vision of the young female who Kierson had saved, only to have to slay, flashed in my mind before fading. “If an Empty could survive in that catatonic, questionably human state, perhaps they could be allowed to live, but that is not so. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so it must be filled.”
“With another soul.”
“Correct,” Pierson affirmed. “The Empties will not rest until they have taken one. They know no restraint. They will take it violently, publicly, however they have to in order to sate the hollow cavern of darkness that remains deep within them. It is a liability far too great to be tolerated. I’m sure you can now see why.”
“I do understand the need to kill them, but what I do not understand is how the Breathers factor into all of this,” I stated, not seeing how that piece of the puzzle fit.
“Before the agreement was made, it was apparent that the Stealers posed an enormous threat to the balance. The New World was vast, and regulated by only a few of us. It took decades to see what was happening with them, and once we did it was obvious that they had run amok, infecting enough of the population to be of great concern to the balance and therefore the PC. When it became a war between the PC and the Stealers, whose appetite had grown larger than their restraint, it was clear that the war would not be easily won by either side. We could kill them easily once located, but they spread so quickly that for every one we took out, another Empty had already been created. In effect, it was an everlasting stalemate. Seeing the futility of an eternal battle, we had to l
ook for other solutions that reached beyond our normal methods. In the end, we found a compromise. The Stealers were preservationists and saw reason when presented with an option that would prevent an eternal war.”
“Or you could call a spade a spade and admit that we pussed out, Pierson,” Casey countered, still methodically wiping his blade across his pants.
“Hardly, Casey,” Pierson spat, his tightened features clearly displaying his disdain for Casey’s analysis. “We took the most logical route and did what needed to be done to protect the balance. We allowed them to sustain their lives by taking tiny pieces of light from the humans, and their kind no longer spread like wildfire. This plan has been in effect ever since, and it has worked brilliantly—”
“Until now,” Kierson said flatly, finishing his twin’s sentence for him.
“And that is why you think there is a problem. You think this tenuous agreement that you struck with the Stealers has been dishonored? That what you’ve allowed them is no longer enough?” I asked.
“It’s possible,” Kierson replied. “That’s exactly what happened tonight—he broke the treaty. What we have to figure out is why, if there is a ‘why’ at all. And fast.”
“What were the exact conditions of the agreement you set forth with these Stealers?” I asked, curious as to how creatures so potentially dangerous to the balance could be allowed to exist at all.
“They had to willingly relegate themselves to one location; we chose Detroit for several reasons, not the least of which was its inherently seedy nature. They also had to agree to no longer remove an entire soul when they fed. Ever,” Pierson informed me, his tone serious. “If they did not abide by those rules, the punishment was to be instant death. We would then make an example of their death to their fellow Breathers so that such an infraction would not occur again.”
“That is all? Those Stealers still alive at the end of the war all agreed to those terms?”
“Most did. Those that didn’t . . .” Kierson hedged.
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