Seven Tales of Blood and Beauty

Part of the cycle, that's all. I've been here before and I’ll be here again. Only …

Only tonight there's something very different in the air. What is it? I ask myself, but I already know. It's initiative's old enemy, doubt. It' s the screaming, jumbled voices of indecision.

Clunk—skrrk …!

Something just fell against metal. My ears have grown very keen in my years as an assassin. Orchard just shifted his weight and lost his balance. Hazy contemplation vanishes. I stop momentarily and listen.

From out of nowhere a buzzcar passes overhead, illuminating the rooftop briefly with its strobing beacon. Through a veil of falling rain and spidery tendrils of fog, I glimpse the fleeting outline of a man. A heartbeat later it is gone.

I fight off the temptation to call out. To assure the fugitive I mean him no harm. To lure him out of the murky darkness and cut him down with one swift shot. But even killers have their own sense of honor. Their own perception of right and wrong. At least, this … killer … does.

Instead, I let unseen strings drag me forward.

Something awaits me in the gloom, and be it routine or revelation, I must face it.

I glide like a wraith over the rooftop, concealed from the knees down in a quagmire of listless fog. The rain covers for me. It obscures my form and renders the minute sounds of my passage silent.

I am wearing a black, elk skin coat which extends several inches beyond my knees, nearly to the ankles. It is tiger-striped from top to bottom with jagged bands etched in maroon. It is beautiful yet hideous in equal measure. It has a collar lined with my own amber hair—the long, flowing hair that used to so enchant Belladonna, but was shorn from my head upon my acceptance into the Grimheels. Now it’s cropped short and I am utterly alone in the world.

The Recoil is my lover now. And I despise her for it. But … we need each other. She and I.

Now, only at night, when I walk the city with my Recoil and an onionskin hit list in my pocket, I wear my mane once again. Not a mane of short, bristly, synthetic fur, but a veritable lion's mane of tapering human hair, marred in spots with smears and blots of long-dried blood. I am a murderer, but I am a poetic and well-dressed one.

A large part of being a good Grimheel is knowing how to scare your prey. How to spread your cowl like the cobra and loom over them, leaving nothing but terror-filled eyes gleaming white and wet in the seamless black expanse of your shadow. The shadow that stretches. The long, alien-looking coat helps me do this. It's part of my act, part of my gig. Modus operandi.

Suddenly, a shuffling motion, a figure dashing from the refuge of one ventilator to the next. I train my pistol on it, but by the time I've begun to squeeze the trigger, the shape is hidden once again. I ease my finger away from the trigger very, very carefully, rain and sweat beading along my forehead. A round in vain now would be no less dangerous than firing off a flare and allowing it to sift down through the gloom, bathing the area in its harsh, green-white light. My quarry would still be hidden safely behind a ventilator, and I'd be exposed, if only for an instant, for what I am. Which is just a little guy with a big gun and a long shadow, no different from him in my possession of fear.

You've noticed, of course. My Hard Mask. It's beginning to slip a little. It always does. And the rain isn't helping. Nor is it helping my ability to judge distances correctly. In fact, the downpour is quite obviously playing tricks on my mind. Like a game of shells. I know he's behind a ventilator, but which one?

My arm is growing very tired now. The weight of the Recoil is taking its toll. If the man is armed, and I'm drawn into a fire-fight, I'll be at a disadvantage. Still, I move forward. In a few moments it will be decided. One of us will walk away alive, or neither of us will walk away at all. So be it. Doubt is for reverie. Right now, I have a job to do.

The edge of the building is now within my blurred field of vision. I can see the reflective surfaces of the opposite towers fading down, down, first to darkness, then to the multicolored haze of streetlamps and