Chapter Text
Some human once said that within every man, there lurked the occasional urge to run up the black flag and start slitting throats. He might have been surprised to see how true that actually was. All most people need before they start going after what they really want is the right skills and a way to shut up that annoying voice telling them that they might get caught.
Lucky for them, I provide both.
I’m in an airport, riding a fellow who has one of the most boring lives I’ve seen in a decade, mostly just keeping him from fidgeting while he daydreams about being a superspy and fingers the ID card we swiped from one of the TSA agents. That, and the jacket we’re wearing, got us past the security gate (once I’d transferred over and persuaded the agent behind the computer that she didn’t really want to worry about the fact that the ID and face didn’t match), and now we’re waiting for the courier. It is, quite honestly, the most excitement this poor bastard has ever had in his life.
A middle-aged woman comes up and asks for directions. Turns out, my horse actually has a useful answer, so we point her in the right direction. I don’t even swipe her wallet; this is a quiet job, not a pleasure trip.
Another plane disgorges its passengers. Tired, huddled masses, yearning to be free of all the ties that bind and the tedious obligations of the modern world. I swear, one day, once I’ve gotten a Distinction and have some real time to kill, I’m going to come to a place like this, where everyone is just so worried, and spend some time teaching them all to have some fun.
But not today. Today, I’m scanning the crowd until I see my target: she’s young, brown-skinned, in a tailored suit and carrying a briefcase with a wonderfully discreet (and I’ve been told, unbreakable) little manacle attached to her wrist. I give my horse a little mental nudge, and we start making our way through the crowd, the sea of humanity parting like water before us. One quick little touch, and I should—
I steer us away at the last moment, ducking our head and shouldering on past the courier. The celestial courier, I am pretty damned sure, as my symphony shivers with tremors of Disturbance. A Celestial song, and one the courier must be good with, because she doesn’t make a sound that the mortals around us can hear.
The courier was not supposed to be celestial. I was assured--well. Plans change. Maybe someone tipped them off. Maybe Valefor tipped them off, because some days, that’s his idea of a good way to make a job fun. I consider, then discard, the idea of jumping him and taking the case. My orders say “quiet”, and that doesn’t cover trying to gnaw a woman’s hand off in the middle of an airport.
Instead, I get the horse to slide his hand over that of another tired traveler, and make the leap. Across the bridge of skin, from one fascinating universe to another. By the time I’m in the saddle, my target has nearly cleared the gate, and I hurry to catch up. On shorter legs; my new horse is a woman, early twenties, here for a dental convention (what the hell do dentists have to talk to each other about, anyway?). Nice enough, I suppose, and so tired from the flight that I barely have to whisper to get her to on board with the new game plan.
We follow the courier out the doors to the passenger pick-up. Of course she has a car waiting, and by the look of the driver, I’d say Soldier. I hate getting inside the heads of Hellsworn – usually, their masters have them so fucked up that they don’t even know what they want, anymore, much less how to get it. Plus, the bastards have a better chance of bouncing me and figuring out that I was there. I ain’t taking the chance, not with this.
Instead, we head for a cab, sliding into the back seat just ahead of some other poor schmuck. I fish the available cash out of the dentist’s purse, all of it, and press it against the window separating the front seat from the back. The driver’s eyes widen. We grin, my horse finally starting to get into this as we say, “Follow that car, and this is your tip.”
It’s not that easy. It’s never that easy. But five horses, three cars, and one bike later, my current horse is coasting his bike down a broken up road while I scan the scrub woods around us. The road leads to a warehouse complex in the middle of nowhere. Almost looks abandoned, but for the shiny new barbed wire and the glint of sunlight off of cameras closer in. It looks distressingly well-fortified. I nudge the new guy to hide the bike behind a heap of debris from some abortive building project or another, and then we do recon.
It takes an hour or two before I have a full picture, but once I do, I teach the kid all sorts of fun words for later use. I am, not to put too fine a point on it, screwed like a virgin Lilim in a Shal-Mari brothel. Judging by the Disturbance, there are at least three demons in that compound, and the few people I’ve seen come out all look like the muscled, Soldier type. Rough rides, each and every one, with a few dark horses among them that might blow my cover wide open. What the hell is so important that it takes three demons and a bunch of maybe-Aware humans to manage?
My horse starts making worried thoughts in the direction of “home” and “parents”; I shush him, remind him what a grand adventure we’re on, and go in for a closer look. There’s a place where the embankment has slipped and torn out a couple of the concrete posts of the fence, and we wriggle our way under the gap beneath. Our shirt gets caught, and then our back. A single note of Disturbance shivers along my symphony, and we freeze.
No one seems to have heard it, but that was too damned close for my comfort. The last thing I want is to have to abandon this horse when there’s nobody around but pissed-off demons and armed Soldiers. We slide the rest of the way under, then sneak up to a grimy window to peer through.
…okay, so there aren’t just demons and Soldiers. The warehouse is filled with children and young adults, mostly girls, chained together and being watched over by the burly fellows I’ve seen before. My host wants to recoil in shock and disgust as one of the guards casually backhands a woman who tries to ask for something, but I soothe him down so that I can scan the floor for the important bit of cargo: my case.
The courier emerges from a back room, case still cuffed to his wrist, and takes a seat next to a woman who has a Djinnish look about her. Or just a human who doesn’t give a shit. From this distance, it’s hard to say. The courier doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere for a while, which matches my intel. It’s the only thing so far that matches my intel, though, so assume that my timetable is down to a day, if that, and not the three I was promised before the Captain of Lust shows up to pick up his mysterious package. I nudge the horse, and we retreat, back under the fence, avoiding cameras along the way, all the way back to the bike.
As he bikes back home, I think. Valefor wants the case. He doesn’t want it to be traceable to us, because technically, we’re friends with Andre's people. Which means if I get caught…well. I won’t get caught. But I need to figure out my local resources, and how to neutralize three demons and an unknown number of Soldiers along the way.
It’s a challenge.
We’re supposed to like those.
Fuck my life.