Hour of Mischief (14 page)

“What, no witty retort? That’s not like you. Or maybe you’re finally running out of them?” Itazura lowered himself to the ground. His boots splashed in the puddles when he landed. “So, how did it go?”

“How do you think it went, you son of a bitch?” I shot back.

So much for reining in my anger.

“I told you, you’re doing this for the good of mankind. Stop being so grouchy.” Itazura shook his head. “He couldn’t have been that bad.”

“Don’t know.” I turned away from him. Heat pressed at my face, like a fine coating of shame.
Selfish. Selfish. I am selfish.
“Guess I’ll never find out.”

The silence seemed to echo behind me. I could practically hear the gears turning in Itazura’s head. “So he didn’t ask you to–”

“No, he asked me,” I said bitterly, staring at my reflection in a dark rain puddle.

“And you said no?” Now Itazura’s playful tone started to drop. Any other day this would have been satisfying.

Tonight it wasn’t.

“I guess I did.” I replied dully.

“So he’s not going to help us?”

“Not unless I give him what he wants.”

Again, silence filled the alleyway, save for the soft lull of the rain as it dripped down my face and onto the ground at my feet.

“You have to go back in there.” Itazura finally said.

“And do what?”

“What he wants.”

“No.” My fists clenched so tightly I feared for the metalwork of my arm. “I’m not going to do that.”

“What?” Itazura seemed absolutely astounded.

“I said
I’m not going to do that.
” I shook my head viciously. “You might want me to go in there now and throw myself at him. Pledge my love to Meroquio. Swoon and sigh and do whatever he wants me to. But if that’s what you need me to do, then you should have picked another girl to make a pact with.”

“I fail to see what the issue is here.”

“Of course you do.” I whirled around to glare at him.
“You’re
a god. What have you ever known about hardship, or misfortune or
poverty
?” I spit the poisonous word at him. “You live your life how you want it and no one tells you to do otherwise because
you’re the God of Mischief.
That’s just who you are. But we humans? We can’t do that so easily. In the slums, we have to scratch and claw and fight every waking
moment.
And if we’re lucky, we make it through another day.”

“What does this have to do with our problem?” Itazura asked. “Or your friends? Or the human race for that matter?”

“Because I
watched
my mother fuck every last man in town so I could eat, sleep with a roof over my head, and
live
.
That’s
what this has to do with our issue.” I snarled. “I listened to her work every damn night because that’s all she knew how to do and I sat upstairs with my hands over my ears trying not to scream. It took everything in me not to go downstairs and slice every single one of her customer’s
throats
because I knew we couldn’t live without money.”

I gave him a mirthless grin. “Oh, and you know who my mother worshipped? You know who she prayed to every night, begging for a man to come through her bedroom door and stay, and truly
love
her?”

I stabbed my finger toward the mansion. “That
bastard
in there. He’s the one who gives his blessing to the whorehouses. He’s just as bad as those men! He doesn’t give a shit about his worshippers. He just watches them do their work. He watches them
drown
in it. And you thought I would offer myself to him?”

My final question echoed off the surrounding buildings with the volume of a gunshot. Each ragged breath tore from my hoarse throat like a rusty blade. And for the first time in a long while, I felt like crying.

Itazura didn’t speak. He gave no witty retort. No clever insult. He just stared.

I didn’t know how long we stood there, facing each other, but finally I couldn’t take the silence anymore. I spoke, this time my voice softer. “You know I’m really not cut out for this business. Saving the human realms?” I gave a hollow laugh. “I can’t even save my friends.” I lifted my eyes to the sky and exhaled shakily. “It doesn’t matter how big I talk. I’m just a kid. And none of your little tricks can change that.”

With these words, I turned and walked from the alley, not caring when the rainwater splashed up from my feet and sprayed my dress. I listened for footsteps behind me, but none came.

The raindrops still ran down my face. But funny . . . they seemed to be coming from my eyes. And I never tasted raindrops before that tasted like salt.

Salty rain drops. After everything that had happened, they shouldn’t have surprised me.

I hated their taste all the same.

’m not exactly sure how far I walked, but somewhere along the line, I finally stopped and sank onto a soaked rain barrel. My legs were heavy, my chest tight, and I didn’t want to go anywhere. A rainy, back alley seemed as good as any other place. The water soaked every bit of my body, all except for my waterproof steel limb. It wasn’t high tech but it at least had the little luxuries.

I sat there a good long while, resting my head back against the steel exterior of the building behind me. Somewhere in the distance, the bell tolled midnight.

That’s when I heard the footsteps.

“If you try to convince me to go back into the party, Itazura, I swear to all the gods and beasts of the Abyss you will regret it,” I muttered.

The footsteps stopped but no one answered, which was very uncharacteristic of Itazura. Usually he opened his loud mouth in every situation, even with my gears wound to a breaking point. But he did not reply.

Much to my annoyance, my heart rate picked up and I slipped slowly off the rain barrel to face the direction of the footsteps. I couldn’t help but wish for my knives in that moment. Laetatia had made me leave them at her private room in the bar.

“There’s no way I’m going to risk you tearing up my dress with one of those damn weapons,” she had said. “And besides, you don’t need any temptation when it comes to my little brother. You might just try to stab him if he makes a pass at you and that won’t get you on his good side.”

Admittedly, if I had a knife when faced with Meroquio’s advances, our conversation could have gone a lot worse. However, when I stood alone in a dark, back alleyway in the middle of a rainstorm that would warn most law-abiding citizens off the streets, and I heard
footsteps,
I couldn’t help but wish for the comforting feeling of a razor sharp blade in my hand. Just in case.

“Hello?” I called out into the rain.

Silence. The footsteps didn’t even start up again. Only the soft trickle of the rain down the roof and the light plops of the water drops as they fell in already sizeable puddles filled the alleyway. Had I imagined the footsteps?

No. I couldn’t have. My senses rarely betray me.

“I know you’re there,” I said, my voice coming out stronger now. Nothing like the threat of attack to whip me into shape. “I’d just like you to know that I
do
have a metal arm and if you attack me, your face will regret it.”

“I doubt it, girl.”

The voice came from behind me, the exact opposite direction I expected it. Fortunately, it gave me a split second heads up. Enough time to roll out of the way to avoid a knife blade. The weapon whistled past my ear as I summersaulted rather ungracefully across the wet cobblestones and came up panting on one knee. Adrenaline shot through my system, but at least it was the kind I knew. I’d been looking for an excuse to fight something and here came the answer.

A man stood next to the rain barrel I had sat on a moment before. A red-eyed man, the was the same man who had been lurking in Laetatia’s favorite tavern, and the same man who had served me a drink at the party. Though he still wore his now-soaked suit, he had donned his black cloak once again. Even with the hood casting shadows over his face, I could see the glow of his crimson irises and the sharp teeth gleaming from beneath his curled lip.

“Quick for a human,” he remarked. “Perhaps I should have killed you without revealing myself. But most humans are much slower.”

“Glad to be the outlier of this situation,” I retorted. “Who are you? And how long have you been following me?”

“A few nights,” the man mused. “But you were nearly always in the presence of that damn God of Mischief. I could never find a decent opening to kill you. Fortunately, now that you have stormed off,” he flipped his knife in his hand and held it up in front of his face. “I have ample opportunity.”

He lunged at me, even though he never answered my first question of who in the great Abyss he was. A blade sliced across my chest, cutting my dress, forcing me to flop backward. I rolled on the slick cobblestones a few yards to my right before scrambling to my feet. He lunged again, stabbing at my throat, and my left arm flew in front of my face. The blade clanged off the steel plates of my forearm with a force that rung throughout the alleyway like a clap of thunder. Too close.

“Sorry, wrong arm, pal.” I raised my foot and kicked the man as hard as I could in the stomach. He stumbled back a few steps, but seemed rather unharmed all things considered. I was getting really tired of going up against people I couldn’t
hurt
as much as I wanted to.

“Your metal attachment does come in handy.” The man straightened. “But you can only do so much without a weapon of your own, girl.”

“Possibly,” I said, keeping my arm raised in front of me like a shield. “But I’m trying to ignore that at the moment.”

“Hmm.” The man smirked. He did not have the mischievous smirk of Itazura, or the seductive smirk of Meroquio. This man bore a smirk etched with malice and nothing less than that. It seemed to say,
“Killing you would make me happier than Axira at a funeral.”
My heart beat faltered. Okay, maybe it was a bad idea to take this guy lightly.

He lunged again, raining blow after blow down on me. I tried to block his strikes with my arm in order to protect my face and body. Unfortunately, this didn’t allow me many opportunities to fight back. He moved too fast and he didn’t give me any windows to lash out. I could only stumble about the alley, hoping I didn’t make a wrong step.

He brought his blade down again, for what seemed like the hundredth time and in my frustration, I lashed out and seized the blade with my steel fist, squeezing down on the weapon as hard as I could. Usually, I could break even the sturdiest of knives with a firm grip, or at least damage them.

But the blade didn’t break. It didn’t even bend a little. It remained immovable in my hand. My eyes widened.

“An interesting trick,” The man said jamming his fist into my stomach before I had time to think about blocking him. All the breath whooshed from my lungs and stars burst across my vision. I crumpled to the ground, landing roughly on my knees with a force I’m sure left serious bruises. My hand slipped free of the knife’s blade.

“Unfortunately for you, this blade happens to be blessed by Axira herself. She looks favorably upon the weapons of assassins.” The man kicked me in the face. My head struck the cobblestones and I almost blacked out again. A throbbing sensation swelled in my cheek and a thin stream of blood trickled from the side of my mouth. I rolled my tongue across my teeth to check if he’d knocked any loose, but my mouth was so numb I couldn’t be sure. Fear gripped my heart in its icy hand and my body protested at the slightest movement, all while my mind helpfully screamed for me to spring into action.