That wasn’t right. My name isn’t Francis. “Leon,” I corrected her.
Pain tore through my body, and I writhed on the floor. “Your name is Francis,” she repeated. The boys stared at me. “And Francis, this is Patrick, Gabriel, and Raphael. My angels of vengeance.”
I peered at them as Sister Mary Agnes giggled.
Patrick. Gabriel. Raphael.
None of them had moved when I collapsed, or my body jerked, or when pain forced the air out of my lungs.
They just watched.
My collar was the same as theirs.
TWO
Novak
NOW
The bassinside Black Static was low and constant, and I stayed to the perimeter of the nightclub where the light broke into fragments, and I watched the floor instead of participating in it. Caleb was in the center of it, loose in a way I’d never seen before—far too vulnerable, hands on him, people too close.
I’d been working with the Cave that night, a routine retrieval with Doc and Levi, controlled and contained, with Caleb running comms. My time observing Caleb, should have ended when we separated and he left without looking back. Instead, I tracked him home then followed him here an hour later, into the crowd, through the noise, through the shifting bodies, and I didn’t stop.
At first, I assigned it to habit. But the job was done, the risk contained, and I hadn’t followed Doc or Levi.
No.
I’d followed Caleb.
I told myself it was efficiency. That it made sense to confirm he was safe. That it was no different to any other assessment I’d made before.
It wasn’t.
Victims had died tonight and Caleb had paled, and gone quiet, and then this… whatever wildness this was as if what he’d seen could be forgotten in the mass of bodies getting close to him.
And now, I was watching him without a defined objective, tracking his movement without a clear endpoint, and when he didn’t leave—when he stayed, when he let himself relax into the music instead of exiting cleanly—I stayed too.
I didn’t understand why.
I assigned it to control. Variable management. He had been part of the operation, and I was confirming he exited clean, that no loose ends attached themselves to him once we were done.
That explanation held for approximately three seconds.
It wasn’t risk.
It was Caleb.
I was here for him.
He moved easily, shoulders loose, hips rolling in time with the beat, not performing but not holding anything back either. People gravitated to that and had hands on him—at his waist, brushing his back, sliding too familiar over fabric—and he let it happen as he closed his eyes and swayed. Too many points of contact. No control. Anyone could take something. I was already correcting for it.
The blond who monopolized his time fit the pattern of men Caleb appeared to want to dance with. Shorter than Caleb by a few inches, compact, built to slot in close without resistance. Caleb angled down toward him without thinking, closing the height difference, letting the man press in, letting their movement synchronize. Caleb preferred smaller men here tonight—the opposite of me. I’d assumed that early, based on repetition, and I didn’t need confirmation to know I was right.
The blond’s hands were everywhere—waist, hip, sliding higher with each pass—messy, enthusiastic and Caleb matched him for a while, then let himself be pulled into it, head tipping back slightly, throat exposed for a second longer than was safe. He didn’t notice. He didn’t register the number of hands that weren’t the blond’s, the incidental contact that wasn’t incidental at all.
Most of them were nothing. Noise. Drunk, bored, looking for friction and nothing more.
Not all of them.
