There isn’t a single trace of him anywhere—no way to tell if someone took him or if he left.
It couldn’t possibly be a good sign.
Granted, he’s just a kid… but every day after his disappearance feels like a quiet disaster, creeping in.
A reckoning hovering in my periphery.
My axe flies through the air before digging deeply into the runner’s back.
He screams as he falls and though I tire of hearing it, there is no haste as I approach, silently. He tries to crawl, but there’s not much distance he can put between us now.
I have to step on him to pull the axe out and the moment it swings free, he bucks like a fish before falling still.
Nonetheless, it never hurts to be thorough; I bring the axe down on his neck, and his head tilts to one side, separated from his body. The colours for his fear and agony fade away from the air, but the red of his blood pools around my boots to take its place.
I don’t linger. Hurried footsteps are receding down the hall, away from me.
I’ve come to relish the sound only recently.
I step over the dead man as I follow after them, but I have to use a lot of effort to ignore the footsteps that follow behind me through the old building.
“I’ve told you I don’t need you here,” I tell them, for what may be the thousandth time.
“Someone has to be here,” Baal’s reply is the same.
“Then surely I don’t need both of you,” my temper flares. It’s been doing that a lot since then.
Since Evie.
Since Christian.
“It’s the Don’s order,” Aster’s reply is the same as well, like clockwork.
I get that Aster has been a stick in the mud since birth, but since when did that apply to Baal?
“Shouldn’t you, of all people, have other things to do?” I ask Aster.
“It isn’t more important than family,” Aster says without missing a beat.
I’d believe he cares.
If his energy wasn’t that same obnoxious white.
Twenty-eight years and Aster continues to be a mystery.
It’s been weeks of this routine with them, and I’m still as displeased as the first time they dared to tag along with me. It makes me snort but I have nothing more to tell them as I continue through the dimly-lit halls.
I’d released four rats tonight.
As long as they didn’t interfere with my catching them, they could do whatever they wanted.
The building I chose for my hunt has been abandoned for decades, nestled quietly on the northeast side of the city. It’s my favourite place to blow steam, to get away from my thoughts, to improve my mood…
Five weeks in, and so far it has done none of those things.
A sound from an empty room nearby makes me stop. I like to imagine how the rats feel when they hear my footsteps, and I wonder how steeped in terror this one must be when I turn and step into the room.
Aster and Baal wait at the doorway, and I hum a low, deep tune as I walk deeper into the space, the relaxed and lazy version of a song I don’t know the name of, as I tap the butt of the axe against the tables.
