Chapter Text
My name is Temperance And Patience of Saints Demonte, but if I had any friends they’d call me Tempy or maybe Patty or Sany because I’m a little bit crazy. I’m 21 years old and I’ve got pink hair down to my waist and I dye my roots every two weeks like a good girl. I dress modestly because my Mommy taught me not to be a whore, and my hobby is falling in love with all the cute boys in my classes.
Today was the day I was gonna be an exchange student. I studied mathematics because Daddy has said I needed to master the holy geometries if I was going to be a valuable memeber of the Demonte family, but in truth I’d rather have been studying something more exciting, like fashion.
I didn’t really want to be an exchange student, I kinda liked it in Rome, but my folks thought it was inappropriate for a girl my age to collect animal skulls, even though I had even gotten really good at cleaning and bleaching them myself and roadkill was free.
And then the Stalking charges might also have had something to do with it. How could I have known that Fabricio didn’t want me breaking into his apartment — he could have put in some better locks. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t talking to that Danish floozy Lonnie.
So now I was boarding a plane across the Atlantic to Madragonica, New Brazil.
I hated flying. Not that I was scared of it, it was just really boring and noisy, but at least I had a window seat — Daddy had said no first class, and I knew I never got anything from throwing a tantrum so I hadn’t said anything.
The guy next to me was a really unattractive dude, so I spiked his drink with some crushed sleeping pills while he was in the boys’ room.
Mommy had confiscated all my romance novels on account of them being ‘smut,’ even though I knew her and Daddy did far worse to each other in the bedroom, so all I had to read for the whole flight was the safety manual and the tourism pamphlet.
It told me that Madragonica was the second-largest city in the penumbra, but pretty far from the totality compared to the other four major cities that were conquered during the Hell War. In the totality lay the portal and the city of Dis and the UN garrisons that kept the border secure, and there hadn’t been an incident since the 1970’s. There was even the opportuinity for demons to earn work visas and find gainful employment in New Brazil.
It was a ten hour flight, which meant we got two meals. Seriously, what was the deal with airline food? It was terrible food. I forced myself to eat anyway and helped me to the sleeping dude’s portion, too. The boys in New Brazil probably didn’t mind chubby girls.
I also helped myself to his cigarettes. Maybe the boys in New Brazil were used to girls who smoked.
Eight hours later my boredom was alleviated when I saw it with my own eyes. The eclipse was a black splotch on the clouds on the horizon, and it looked like some great big octopuses were hanging out in the sky. Outside the plane I also saw some big birds flying along with us — crows or something.
“This is your captain speaking. We’ll be touching down in Capennar airport in just half an hour. Weather conditions are good, so it should be a smooth landing.”
Since he didn’t seem worried about any of that, I decided not to be either.
He was right, too, about the landing, and yet everyone clapped when the plane touched down. I didn’t understand then and I haven’t understood since. The pilot was just doing his job! Stepping over the sleeping dude was kind of cumbersome, but then I had already done it twice in flight to use the girls’ room.
And then we all got to go down stairs and onto the airfield, there wasn’t even a jetty. We just went down a staircase and into a shuttlebus that took us to the airport terminal. There were still weird things up in the sky, and I took a moment to glance up at the sun — and true enough there was a little slice taken out of the sun disk. I blinked the dots away from my sight and got on the bust. An ambulance also came up to the plane. Maybe someone had gotten sick?
There we had to wait for our luggage and fortunately they hadn’t lost my suitcase, I can’t imagine what I would have done if I’d ended up stranded in New Brazil without my stuff.
Then there was customs. I waited in line like I was supposed to and then the officer waved me over to the desk. I handed over my passport and the student visa they had given me at the embassy back home.
“Anything to declare?” he asked in English.
“Uh… what does that mean?” I asked. I wasn’t an idiot and so I had taken classes in English, Portuguese, and French before my departure; I was pretty good with languages that way.
“Do you have any items on this list in your luggage?” He pointed to a sign.
I read the list, it had things like food and alcohol and live animals and plants and money, but also cosmetics and religious items. “Yeah, I have a lot of cosmetics like any pretty girl should have. The good stuff from Italy.”
“For private use, I assume.”
“As if I’d share. It all has to last until I get a chance to go back home!”
“I see.”
“Also I have a blessed silver cross. Why do I need to declare religious items?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Please show me, ma’am?”
I reached into my purse and pulled it out. Daddy had insisted I bring it, and I knew it could ward off demons but I wasn’t counting on it having any use. It was about the size of my palm and weighted almost half a kilo. I could have packed lots more important things if I didn’t have to spend half a kilo of my carry on allowance on a stupid cross.
The customs officer took out a jeweler’s loupe and inspected it. “How did you acquire this?”
“Family heirloom,” I said.
“You’re from that Demonte family?”
“Yeah. It’s lame, I know.” I rolled my eyes.
He handed me back the cross. “Then I bid you welcome to New Brazil, Madam Demonte.”
I didn’t thank him as I left, and went out to the parking lots to find a taxi, and that was really when it struck me that I was in a different country because the taxi signs said táxi instead of taxi.
I was going to recieve a monthly allowance in money orders, and Daddy had told me I needed to find a job if I wanted more money, which, ew. I was also going to stay at a dormitory!
These two years couldn’t be over soon enough.
I arrived at the campus in the afternoon and had to ask some girls for direction since all the signs were kind of hard to read. Whoever had told me that they spoke Portuguese in New Brazil had been lying to me, because it was only almost Portuguese. Fortunately the girls I asked spoke French.
The administrative building read Bene Dictum which was the name of the university — fortunately these New Brazilians hadn’t seen fit to mangle good old Latin — and the motto vade retro Satana. It was built of red brick and the entrance had fake roman columns which was really gauche.
Inside I went to the desk and the clerk didn’t say anything while she got me my student ID and the keys to the dorms and a stack of pamphlets and stuff I needed to read because I was an exchange student, and a student handbook. As if I was ever going to bother anything else than skimming it. Rules weren’t all that important anyway.
With the campus map I found my way to the dorms and I was so, so lucky to find I wasn’t going to have to contend with room mates. It was a really small room, just a bed and a desk and a closet. I’d have to find somewhere safe to store my knives and bones. The closet also wasn’t big enough for all my clothes — it was big enough for the ones I had brought with me but not and all the ones I was going to have to buy.
Toilets and showers were down the hall and the common kitchens on the ground floor. What was worse, the dorms weren’t even co-ed so I’d just have to deal with girls all the time. Not that I minded girls — they were pretty and definitely smelled better than boys, but I couldn’t just have a crush on a girl, now could I?
Putting all that aside, I did my due dilligence and looked at the syllabuses for the classes I was going to attend and went across campus to the bookstore. Unfortunately I quickly found out that some of the books I needed was in the same kind of wrong Portuguese, and I almost started crying — I didn’t, of course, because that would have ruined my makeup.
At least the advanced mathematics main course was in English, because apparently the professor and the TA were both American. I liked Americans, they had the right idea with so many things.
When I returned to the dorm I passed a girl in the hall. She was taller than me, which annoyed me a little — not that I was short — and she was much more tan. I was still prettier, but she definitely could be a beauty with a bit of a makeover.
She greeted me, and I said: “Sorry I only speak English, Italian, and French.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” she replied in English. “I’m Rosa Álvarez Macedo.”
I considered for a moment telling her my full name. “Temperance Demonte. Tempy for short.”
“Right. Are you a transfer student?”
“From Italy.”
“Ahaa. What’s your major?”
“Mathematics.”
“Oh my god! Me too! Maybe we’ll see each other in class!”
I didn’t like how energetic she seemed. She’d likely be a romantic rival when the rubber met the road, so I put on a facade of fake cheer. “Yay! Oh my god, maybe you can help me with, like, finding my feet and such?”
“Of course, girl. Are you taking language classes?”
“No?”
“Well, it’ll be a lot easier if you know Portuguese, and it’s just another romance language so you’ll pick it up in no time. We can go get you signed up for an introductory—”
“But I already speak Portuguese,” I protested. “Whoever told me they speak Portuguese here lied to me!”
Rosa blinked a few times then broke down in laughter. “Oh! You know Portuguese Portuguese. From Portugal!”
I was very confused.
“We speak Brazilian Portuguese here. It’s slightly different, but man, it’ll be a lot easier. I almost think you could pick it up just on your own.”
I almost wanted to cry again. I had just met this girl and she was already making fun of me.
“Listen, don’t worry about it. How about you go put your books in your room and we go for a late lunch? I’m sure my boyfriend will be thrilled to meet you. He’s also in Maths.”
I breathed a small sigh of relief. Rosa was spoken for, and so I could safely ignore her when it came to boys. Hopefully her boyfriend was ugly.
Daniel wasn’t ugly. He was really handsome and American and I didn’t like it, but I let Rosa have this one win. All the rest of the boys would be mine. Both of them were really interested in what it was like back in Italy, and I answered best as I could without mentioning any of the stuff Mommy’s lawyer had told me to keep to myself. I asked them about practical stuff.
“There’s a few demon students here, actually,” Daniel said. “One in our class. He keeps to himself.”
That did pique my curiosity. Not that I would want to actually pursue a literal demon, but I had never seen one in person. “What’s he like? Is he single?”
“Whoa, down girl!” Rosa said with a chuckle.
I blushed on purpose. “I’m just curious, okay?”
“Generally, just say away from him. He’s a cousin some degrees removed from one of the demon princes. If you actually started dating, that’d be… complicated. Not to mention I have to ask,” Daniel said. “Are you from the Demontes family?”
“If you mean the hereditary knight order, yes.”
“Then definitely don’t try to hit up Arozoth, that would be aa~wkwaa~rd.”
Daniel and Rosa both laughed. I got a little bit drunk with them — just three glasses of wine, mostly to hide my shame and endure them talking more about what Madragonica was like — and made my way back to the dorms.
Classes started the following monday, and I spent Saturday clothes shopping for something more appropriate. After all Mommy wasn’t there to tell me not to dress like a whore, and none of the girls here wore high necks and long sleeves. If I were to get any of the boys, I would definitely need to show off the goods — God had blessed me with E-cups for a reason.
Sunday I went to church and then to the beach all alone, not to bathe, but to gauge the local population of eligible bachelors and set my expectations.
The first block period of advanced mathematics went as I had expected. The professor was some old dude who had studied at a university in California or something, and this class was part of the international programme with UN funding. He went over the curriculum — there’d be calculus, topology, and some applied stuff with geometry.
I spent most of the time looking around the auditorium and deciding which of the cute boys I’d sit down next to next period. It was kind of slim pickings, but I definitely spotted Arozoth, the demon. He was handsome, and the crown of horns was definitely interesting, but surely I could do better. Mentally I gave each of the boys nicknames and rated them on a scale from one to ten, throwing away anything below an eight.
After lunch came the first lab class and all the effort I had put in for first period went away when I met the TA for the course. He was tall and slender yet muscular — cut — and had his long dark hair tied in a topknot showing shaved sides. He wore glasses and a button down and suspenders. His voice was a smooth tenor.
“Hey everyone I’m Luce, I’ll be your TA for this course. I’ll be covering Professor Magnamara’s office hours for him when he’s unavailable, and if you have any questions direct them to me. Mind, I’m just a student like you, so it’s not like I know everything.” He smiled a beautiful smile and I was immediately smitten. He was so perfectly American, even.
I sat there being unable to focus on the exercises — just some basic proofs and first-order logic, nothing I struggled with — and eventually, embarassingly, realized that I could just call over the TA for help!
I raised my hand but unfortunately some bitch next to me raised her hand first and Luce came over to her first. However I was treated to the heavenly coincidence of him bending over with his backside towards me and oh my god he had an amazing ass, even despite the slacks. I was also treated to a full view of his ID card hanging in a lanyard on his hip and I hurried to copy down all the details I could read.
His full name was Luce Riley. Now I just had to sweet-talk or lock-pick my way into the administrative building and find his employee records for his address.
Mister Riley finished with the other girl and turned to me.
“So, what can I help you with?” he asked, and I got a whiff of his cologne.
“I— uh… Everything? It’s been a good while since I did any first-order logic.”
He smiled that handsome smile. “Certainly, but there are others that might need my help, too.”
I crossed my legs under the table. Every second I could keep him close was another second I could soak my panties. Unfortunately he was a really good teacher and walked me through the exercises pretty fast, but fortunately smoking wasn’t allowed indoors here and Luce went for a smoke break about an hour into the block.
With the stolen cigarettes in hand, I decided to get up and follow him.
I found him a few dozen steps away from the entrance to the building. Even his smoking posture was perfect.
“Oh hey,” he said as I approached.
“Hey,” I replied kinda sheepishly and fumbled with my lighter. “I’m Temperance. Tempy for short.”
Luce smiled. “Nice to meet you Tempy. What made you decide to do your exchange programme here?”
“What— how do you know I’m an exchange student?”
“Accent. Italian, right?”
I couldn’t help but blush. He was super smart, too? God, I needed to smell this man’s dirty underwear and murder every girl that looked his way.
“Yeah… wowwie.” I slapped a hand over my mouth. Had I really said that out loud?
“Ah.” He laughed a bit. “Listen, Tempy, you seem like a very nice and pretty woman…”
My knees almost buckled.
“… but truth is, I don’t date. I’ll just tell you right now so you don’t go crushing on me — I know I tend to have that effect on some women.”
I kept smiling. So he wanted to play hard-to-get, huh? “Oh, I’m sure,” I said. “You’re into men, perhaps?”
“Nope. I’m not secretly married either. I just don’t date.”
“Ah, I see.”
He threw his cigarette down and stepped on it, then went back inside.
I stuck around finishing my own cigarette to keep up appearances. Then I went inside to get my books and left without sitting in for the rest of the lab session. I went directly back to my dorm and found my lockpicks, then I went prowling around the administrative building.
Security was rubbish, and getting in was a piece of cake. I knew the routine of looking like I belonged, and went directly past the receptionists to the stairs up to the second floor. There I grabbed a folder to walk with under one arm, and read each of the door signs until I found the employee records room.
The lock gave way to a bit of raking and I went inside to look under ‘R.’
They called me Lucifer as a joke. Seven years ago I killed all of those fuckers and fled. For two years I was on the run just waiting for the CIA to send more people after me, and they didn’t. I went south, living in hiding, lying my way through every obstacle that admitted it and killing my way through everything that didn’t.
I was very good at killing. That was what they had created me for, destroyed some poor girl who might have had a good life, and out of her parts they had built me. The Morningstar Program.
Then I was given a second chance. They called it Operation River Crossing. Someone had picked up the COINTELPRO and Mk Ultra files and tracked us down — or I think they tracked the others down. I sure as hell never heard anything about any of the others. I didn’t really care. We had suffered together, trained together, but whatever they did to us, somehow we never really fostered any camaraderie.
They had given me a liaison that I could contact for just about anything, though I didn’t want to rely on them, a cover, and all the fake passports I could ever want. In return all I had to do was kill the people they told me to. They sent me to New Brazil because Interpol had no jurisdiction here. To further keep me occupied they also put me in contact with the Old Guard.
Not only did governments have secret assassins on payroll, so did organized crime, and theirs were better funded and looked after — in fact I quickly learned that governments pretty regularly hired from the Old Guard’s rosters. I got entry into the Speakeasies of the world, and calling cards for all sorts of useful services, I got my signet ring and an entry into the ledgerbooks predating the Ottoman empire. I smoked a bowl of hashish and began my career as a professional assassin.
And River Crossing turned me into Luce Riley, a mild-mannered mathematics TA at Bene Dictum University in Madragonica, New Brazil. I didn’t know how old I was, but with the appearance I chose for the role and soon grew attached to, I could pass for anything mid-20’s.
Working at the university was not anything resembling a demanding job, and one that permitted me frequent short vacations to go wherever River Crossing or my clientele at the Speakeasies required that I go.
What set me apart, what I had that nobody else had, was a thousand faces. The blood they put in me, the bone marrow they put in me back in that place, it had changed my body. Enabled my body to change — not at a moment’s notice, but over the course of days I could will myself into an entirely different appearance. The fake passports River Crossing supplied me with reflected this. I was very respected in the Speakeasies, always careful to wear my ‘real face’ there, and only change when I went on missions. I was a ghost. They called me the Cursemark of Death. Once I was assigned, my mark would die, and nobody would have ever seen me in the same city.
But life was not skittles and beer. Madragonica was a shithole of a city and I was a bleeding-heart idiot in my first year here, trying to influence things for the better. Accept contracts strategically, and it made me a lot of enemies. Not quite enough to jeopardize things, but for the last four years I had just built up the habit of being on guard all the time.
And so it was pretty easy to notice that I had picked up a stalker. Especially since she had bright pink hair.
Whoever had sent her was clearly an amateur, but even amateurs had goons with guns and I wasn’t bulletproof. Faster and stronger and tougher than most, better trained, but I only had to get unlucky once. And I had already gotten shot on a job — it wasn’t fun.
But it was a problem that had a simple solution. I simply needed to find out who had sent her after me and then kill everyone involved. It had been a slow month so far, so a little bit of action might be in order.
The first encounter had been pedestrian enough: she had been a blushing mess and I had rebuffed her advances before they happened and that should have been enough. But the next session she had been watching me intently, undressing me with her eyes, and on Friday, not even a day when I had a TA session, she had followed me home.
I also needed to track down everyone at staff who knew where I lived and figure out who had told her, then if someone had, kill that someone.
And then I needed a new place to live. It wasn’t as if I could go to the police and tell them one of my students was stalking me. There wasn’t a police-as-such in Madragonica. There were privatized law-enforcement that tried to keep the mafia and the unions in check, and then there was the UN. Neither of them were going to give me the time of day.
There was one final out before violence would be inevitable. Talking to people. In my experience it worked sometimes but less reliably than killing them. And it could involve lies.
So at the end of Tuesday’s lesson I pulled her aside in the hallway.
“Tempy, was it?”
“Yes?”
Those big eyes, practically vibrant amber. I suppressed a shudder. “Listen, I know.”
“What?”
“I saw you by my apartment block. I’ve noticed how you look at me. I’m gonna give you one chance to stop this stalking campaign — I appreciate my privacy and I don’t want to escalate this.”
“I—”
“It’s okay. Just stop.”
“Why?” She asked.
“Why?” I repeated, kind of baffled.
“Are you secretly married?”
I blinked. “What part of ‘I appreciate my privacy’ don’t you understand?” Then I turned away and went down the corridor. I did not have a good feeling about it.
But then when I went home that afternoon I did not notice her tailing me. And the next lesson she wasn’t so keenly watching me. And for a little while I kind of hoped that it had passed.
Saturday evening I took a job. I got dressed in my work suit. Dark blue was more my color than black, and with a subtle plaid pattern to widen my otherwise slim silhouette. A women’s cut because it looked good and made men underestimate me. I did my hair up in a tight bun and put on the wig with the fake ponytail with the barbed wire segment inside. I strapped my favourite pistol — a German .45 — in a shoulder holster and a serviceable combat knife on my wrist.
I went out the back door of the apartment building, shimmying up the drainpipe to jump the wall to the neighboring property, stepping on the crushed glass laid atop the wall — barbed wire was illegal by UN decree — and jumping down into the back yard. Then I snuck out through the gate there.
It was a bit of a walk to the Speakeasy — it would have been easy to take a cab — but the weather was nice.
Two streets over I ran into a group of youths, some gangsters of one of the street gangs of the city, one that had given me some trouble once. Now they knew my face, and three of them were off the street for good.
One of them spotted me and immediately stood, slapping his buddy on the shoulder. “It’s Madam Lucrezia!”
“Hello boys. Say hi to your boss from me,” I said as I walked past.
“Always, Madam!”
No casual street robber saw fit to make designs on my watch and wallet, and so I made it to the club without having to maul anyone. There was a rave at the ground floor, which looked earnestly like people were having a good time, but I was not in a mood to party.
Showing my signet ring at the door in the back I was let through to a quieter corridor and continued underground through halls lit in red light that made my blue suit look black.
And there I came to the Lounge. Here a much more dignified echelon of clientele were having their own party. Billionaires, grand criminals, and politicians — if there even was a difference between the three. I went to the bar, where Miguel was waiting as always. Tall and serene.
“Madam Lucrezia,” he greeted me.
“Miguel, my buddy. A negroni?”
He was already getting the gin, red vermouth and aperitivo. “For you, as usual.”
While waiting I made eye contact with Senhor Batista da Cruz, the proprietor of the place. I gave him a little nod and he gave a nod back and gave a slight gesture with one finger indicating he wanted to talk. Miguel served my negroni, and I took it with a ‘thank you’ before heading over to sit at the Senhor’s table.
“Ah, Lucrezia,” he said in English putting down the newspaper — something printed in Cyrillic. “How are you tonight, my girl?”
“Quite fine, Senhor. I’m looking for a local job.”
“Have not seen you in some time, have not heard the Cursemark at play, the Americans are stingy with work?” He was always making a point of speaking people’s native language if he could, and I had heard he knew over forty languages.
“Peacetime, you know how it is.”
“Peace?”
“Relatively speaking.” I shrugged.
He chuckled. “It is good to see you, Lucrezia. Go have a look at the bulletin. The Frenchmen have been making moves.”
I gave a toast with my drink and he answered the gesture with his own — neat mezcal.
True enough the bulletin was over-plastered with notes. Strictly photo-free, just short descriptions of targets and complications, along with letter-grade difficulty ranks. Nothing above a C. After a few minutes of reading something caught my eye: apparently one of the pimps of the estivadores had run afoul the Ballet School and gotten a bounty on his head.
I even knew where his brothel was — I had gone there myself once in my first year, when loneliness had gnawed so hard at my soul not even opium could dull the pain. I pulled the note and finished my negroni, then went to the bar. “This one, for tonight.”
“Naturally, Madam. Happy hunting.”
Then I left the way I came, through the rave floor, and into the warm night air. This time I hailed a taxi to take me within walking distance of the place. If it had been a more difficult job I would have elected to do it in disguise but I had a pretty good idea of the layout of the building.
The taxi driver was rightfully fearful of someone bearing a signet ring, but I tipped him well for being silent the whole way. Once in the neighborhood I went away from the streets and made my way to the brothel in the shadows of alleyways.
Coming around the back of the building it seemed like the facade was reasonably secure, but rarely did such thugs have the budget to secure the buildings adjacent to theirs. In particular while the fire escapes had been torn down, there were still those on the building across from the brothel.
With a run-up and a kick off the wall I grabbed the lowest rung of the rusty ladders and pulled myself up. Then I climbed up to the third floor. His office was down on the second floor, and even though the windows had been blacked out I could still tell the office was occupied. I couldn’t know who else was in the room, so even if the over-pressure rounds in my gun could get through the boards, I couldn’t be sure I’d get him.
So instead I continued up to the roof, and it took another almost superhuman jump from the fire escape to get onto the roof of this building — and unfortunately the roof of the other building was slightly higher. Still all that meant was another run-up and me performing a superhuman feat of parkour, catching the edge of the roof and pulling myself up.
From there it was easy enough. I pulled up a cloth mask and put on a set of shades, then mounted a fat silencer on my pistol and waited until I heard gunshots elsewhere in the city before I shot out the lock on the roof access and picked up the shell casing.
Down the stairs I arrived at the second floor and went directly in to where I knew the office was. I opened the door and found the man behind his desk on his computer. “What—”
I shot him in the head and twice in the chest. Then I quickly picked up the shell casings and made my exit the way I came. From the roof I leapt back over to the other building, and then decided to even skip another alley finding a drain pipe to shimmy down with four hot pieces of brass in my jacket pocket.
Down on street level I found a payphone and called the Speakeasy. “It’s Lucrezia. Job complete.”
“That was quick. I shall note it,” Miguel said. “The money will be deposited in your account as usual.”
“Have a nice night, Miguel.” I hung up, and then I went out to find a taxi.
Coming home, I took the same roundabout way inside as usual just to make it a little less obvious where I was actually staying. It wasn’t the nicest apartment but it had just begun to feel like home, and moving would kind of destroy that.
Perhaps it was unwise to grow attached to something as insignificant as a roof over my head. With the money I was making I could afford any mortgage I wanted. Coming in I did my usual ablutions, checking over my suit for blood stains — thankfully clean — before getting in the shower to wash off the sweat. It was about time to send some clothes to the cleaners.
I might have been turned into some kind of super soldier, but I still smelled when I exerted myself. To my chagrin I was out of sleeping pills and out of stronger things that would knock me out. Drinking myself to sleep didn’t seem appealing either so I just turned out the lights and resolved to have a sleepless night.
The rental car hadn’t been cheap, but now it turned out to all have been worth it. The lights finally went out up on the second floor of the little apartment building and I waited patiently for another thirty minutes to make sure that he was asleep up there. I took another sip of cold, bitter coffee, feeling my eyelids grow heavy, and considered for a spell whether I should have gone out and tracked down some cocaine for this.
Carefully, almost as if I was afraid he would hear me all the way down here, I got out of the car and pulled the beanie over my hair. I grabbed the cheap backpack that held my gear, and went over to the street-level door. It was unlocked, as I had disabled the mechanisms earlier in the week and the landlord still hadn’t gotten around to fixing it.
Up to the second floor I went as quietly as I could and stopped by the door. Here was Mister Riley’s apartment — even bore his name on the plaque, so I knew I had the right place. He had two locks on his door, one of which was a tricky kind of cylinder, but I was a really good lock picker and it only took me three minutes to pick even as sweat ran down my forehead.
Whatever Mister Riley had to hide, I would love him anyway. He would realize the error in his ways when he realized he would never be rid of me, and we’d get married and stuff.
Finally the lock gave way and I put the picks away and drew my favourite knife — not the balisong because I couldn’t stop myself from playing with one if I held it and that made noise. Just the big one with the spring loaded blade. I wasn’t going to hurt him, just show him how unwise it was to rebuff me so rudely.
Very carefully I pulled the handle and the door opened. I snuck inside and there was two clicks in quick succession. One of which was the light switch.
“I have a gun. Drop the knife and turn around.”
Dutifully I did as asked and couldn’t help but tense my stomach muscle at the thought. I had never been held at gunpoint and it was terrifying and oddly titillating at the same time.
The person holding the gun was a woman with long black hair hanging messily in her face — the amateur must have gone to sleep after a shower — and wearing a sleeveless white shirt that showed off some impressive muscles. The gun was a really hefty pistol.
Of course. He didn’t date and he preferred his privacy because he had a wife. That was so obvious, why had I even taken his word? Of course he was a liar, too.
And now she couldn’t even knife this harlot and solve that problem…
She pushed the door closed and locked it. “Who sent you?”
“What?” I said.
“Temperance Demonte, if that is indeed your real name; first you approach me at my work, then you follow me home, now you break into my apartment. Who do you work for?”
“I don’t—”
“Because if you don’t start talking —” she picked up my knife “— I’m gonna start hurting you. Tell me who you work for!”
I was very confused now. But I also for a moment got my wits about me somehow and realized something. This woman was Mister Riley. The voice matched, and the face. “… Mister Riley?”
“Mister? What— I know I don’t exactly wear a low cut blouse but I have fucking C-cups, you dumb girl!”
“But— I— what?” So there wasn’t a wife? And I had just thought she was a guy this whole time? I felt disgusted and disappointed. “This was all a misunderstanding, I’m sorry. I thought you were a guy…”
“U-huh.” She took a step closer, knife in one hand, pistol in the other, and put the blade to my throat and the muzzle of the gun to my temple, which made me really wet. “So let me get this straight. Your interest in me is purely because you have some sick psychosexual obsession.”
I nodded emphatically.
“You weren’t sent after me by some gang or enemy.”
“No ma’am. I just thought you were really hot as a guy.”
“Okay. See I had thought I’d get you expelled for harassment or something but I think you’re too dense for that, but I’m in a good mood tonight so I’m going to let you off with a warning. I know what dorm room you sleep in. If I ever see you anywhere outside campus in the general direction of where I like to spend my time, I’m going to fucking end you.”
I almost pissed myself then and there.
“And if you tell anyone about this, I’m going to skin you with your own knife, first.”
Miss Riley opened the locks on her door, then grabbed me by the neck and threw me out the door and I fell down the first flight of stairs. The door slammed above me as I struggled to my feet, and realized just how much pain I was in. Hopefully nothing was broken, but even so it took me a full five minutes to get back down to the car and drive away.
My thoughts were a fucking mess. Luce Riley was a woman. She had enemies. She had a gun and she knew how to use it. And I was going to need new underwear.
For the first time in my life I was curious about a woman. And for the first time in my life I had felt things because of a woman.
Needless to say I didn’t get a lick of sleep, but I definitely did find that masturbating while thinking of something holding a gun to my head was a whole new level of hot.
All good things came to an end. In this case my relationship to this shitty little apartment came to an end when someone made a connection between my comings and goings that Saturday and the death of the pimp. Someone among the estivadores had gotten info from those street thug boys, and then tailed me back to my building.
It happened Thursday night, after midnight that some prickly gentlemen interrupted my sleep by kicking down my door. I had taken some sleeping meds and so my reflexes weren’t particularly fast, but I still got my bedside pistol and my glasses in that order.
I got out of bed and my brain caught up to what was going on. It sounded like three guys at least, one staying in the stairwell. I took the door to the living room moving silently and heard them moving inside, quickly heading for my bedroom.
Then there was a scream from the stairwell, a man grunting, and the tell-tale sound of a knife sinking into flesh.
“The fuck?!” one of the would be assassins said which let me pin-point the exact height of his head. One well-placed 9 millimeter bullet put a hole in the thin wall and through the man’s skull. That got the other one to shout in fear and I leaned around a door frame to put a bullet in his head as well. Only then did I have time to look out in the stairwell to see a guy bleeding out from a stab-wound to the neck.
And a girl with pink hair, holding a bloody knife.
Temperance.
I lowered my gun. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I— I— Please don’t kill me— I—”
It was pretty easy to figure out. She hadn’t heeded my warning and direct threat and instead kept stalking me, then she must have seen these thugs head up the stairs and decided to play hero.
I pointed my gun at the dying man and put him out of his misery. “Grab that guy and pull him inside, then close the door best as you can.”
Scared witless, the girl did as instructed and went at it with some difficulty while I went into my living room and got dressed. Jeans, blouse, gun belt, shoulder holsters. I put my hair up in a messy bun and grabbed my telephone.
Dialling the Speakeasy I didn’t get to wait even a second. “Miguel, it’s Lucrezia. I’ve got three bodies that need cleaning up.”
“Ah. I was not aware you were working a job tonight.”
“I’m not. Three men kicked in my door and tried to kill me.”
“I’ll send the janitor.”
“Make sure he brings his locksmith. And thank you; put it on my tab.”
“As always.”
Then I hung up and turned to see Temperance stand there, still holding a bloody knife, with a blank expression. I sighed. “As you might guess, I’m not really a TA.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to have to go do some errands, but I’ll get you to a safe house first.”
“Why?”
I went up to her and put a hand on her cheek. “Because you just killed an estivadores pistoleer with a knife. Their getaway driver saw you. Which means you are on their hit list.”
“Oh.”
Then I began packing up all the stuff I either needed or didn’t want to leave behind, which was mostly guns and drugs, enough clothes to last the week, and all the cash I kept in my apartment. The janitors arrived as I dragged Temperance with me down the stairs. Then I went over to the one rental car on the whole street and held out a hand to her. She obligingly put the keys for it in my hand and we drove off.
The ‘safe house’ was apparently just a slightly upscale hotel, but the concierge in the reception just nodded at Miss Riley as she walked past over to the elevator. Up on the fifth floor she pulled me along over to a room, and unlocked it with a really expensive looking key.
Inside was just a normal hotel room. She set down her duffel bags. “Stay here until I get back. If I’m not back by sunrise assume I got killed, grab the cash, and leave the country.”
I took a step towards her. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to destroy the estivadores gang. Teach them what happens when you mess with one of the Old Guard.”
Then she turned and left, the door locking after her, and I was left alone. It felt like there was a hole inside my chest. I had killed a man tonight — well, Miss Riley had finished him off — and not even as an act of sadism. I had done it to defend someone else…
Luce Riley. She had called herself Lucrezia on the phone. I had tried to get my answers all week and hunkered in for the high stakes long stakeout where getting found out could mean she actually killed me — and by the looks of it she was even more capable than I had thought — but even now that I had been close enough to smell the adrenaline on her sweat, I knew even less. What was the Old Guard?
And was she going to go off and fight an entire gang on her own?
I paced until I grew tired of worrying, then went to rinse my knife in the bathroom sink before turning on the TV. There was pay-per-view movies, but I didn’t even feel like putting on one of the lesbian porn flicks.
Actually I just kind of wanted to curl up and cry. I grabbed the room phone and waited for the front desk to pick up. “Si?”
In still kind of shaky Brazilian Portuguese I ordered a pint of chocolate ice cream from room service. Then I waited in the half-dark for it to arrive.
There was a knock on the door. “Room service.”
I opened the door to find a waiter who handed me the cardboard tub and a spoon. “Enjoy, madam.”
“Thanks,” I said and closed the door. Then I stumbled back over to the bed and put on a nondescript Hollywood cookie-cutter romance flick just to see if I could cry the pain away. Halfway through it I had to get up to puke up half a litre of ice cream.
Deciding enough was enough I crawled into bed, but all that meant was I lay awake for another long while. My thoughts were so messed up I could barely even tell what they were.
Only that all of them were about Luce.
As the clock on the wall struck 5 AM I had been fearing the worst for over an hour… and then there was a key in the lock. The door opened and in she came.
Luce Riley.
Hair messed up, so much blood staining her coat it was a different color.
“Oh, you’re still up. Don’t worry, none of this is my blood.”
The relief that flooded me was an incredible rush. Here she was. Unhurt.
“What happened?”
“The estivadores are no more. That’s the sum of it.”
She shrugged off her coat and the holsters and the gun belt, letting it all fall where it may. Then she pulled off her blouse and I felt heat rise to my face as she casually discarded her bra, too.
Luce Riley, I noted, had perfect breasts.
She then unzipped her jeans and pulled them off as well, and then her panties. I could barely look away.
“I’m going to go shower,” she declared.
“Okay.”
“Wanna join me? The showers here are really nice.”
I pointed to myself, not having the wits to speak.
“Yeah. If I can’t get rid of you, I might as well make you mine, right?”
Slowly I got off the bed and Luce came up to me, strong hands effortlessly relieving me of my sweater, then my blouse, then my own bra, then skirt, leggings and panties and throughout it all I wanted her to kiss me the whole time.
Then she grabbed my hand and pulled me along into the bathroom.
The shower really was nice, the nicest I had probably ever had, but not because of the water pressure or the scented soaps.