

Messengers

book one of the Shadows series

by Jesse D. Green

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Jesse D. Green

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Chapter One:

"The father and maker of all this universe is past finding out; and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible." \- Plato, Timaeus

Erin paused at the top of the stairs, trying to get her breathing under control. Now that the time had come, she couldn't let her body seize up. Her left hand clenched around a photo of a young woman with a radiant smile; her right held a sweat-slick pistol. She thought again about what she would say to him - whether she should even speak, or just put a dozen rounds into his body. God knows he didn't deserve any final words, but a part of Erin wanted to see his terror the instant before she killed him. It was a small, vindictive little voice that she barely recognized as her own, but it was there.

There was a knocking, she realized, and Erin looked down to see the gun clattering against the railing. She had to calm down. She had to calm down or she wouldn't shoot straight. She pushed dark brown hair back behind her ears, an unconscious soothing gesture, not noticing she was using her gun hand to do so. Breathe. Just breathe, relax and it would come easily. She could do this.

The steps creaked as she stirred herself into motion, but there was nothing new in that. Erin and her sister had lived in the old house since their parents died, and its various groans had become a backdrop to daily life. Even he wouldn't think anything of it, though he'd only been spending nights here for two months.

Two months. She didn't know which was worse - how badly he had hurt her sister, or how quickly he had descended upon their lives. She had often suspected Ann's taste in men, but her sister usually refused to even talk about it. Martin, though ... he took a special prize for both cruelty and nerve. Erin couldn't wait to award him.

At the bottom of the steps she turned and stepped into the kitchen. Just ahead was the back door. It was open, the screen door swinging idly with the breeze. Afternoon sun left bars of light across the tile. Erin leaned to her left and caught a glimpse of a scraggly man in a beat-up lawn chair in the shade of an elm tree. Her elm tree, planted when she was seven. She snarled under her breath, her mind racing to add it to all of his crimes. He would sit under her tree? Somewhere in her brain, his theft of her shade became a violation on the same scale as the purple, spotted welts across Ann's back.

The feel of her fingers running across those pitted yellow-specked lumps returned. Again her hands felt the smooth wood of the meat tenderizer as she threw it into the marshes across the road. It had been a week since Ann had confided in her, but the images and sensations were as fresh as if that conversation had taken place seconds before. All that over a few pills, and through it all Ann had continually and tearfully refused to go to the police. Erin was only sorry now that she had thrown tenderizer away; it would have been good to have now, to drive it into his skull.

At the thought, Erin felt cold and smart and quiet. She stepped through the doorway and onto the spongy clover that covered half the backyard. The time had come for him to die.

But he wasn't in the chair anymore. He was standing, his back to her, a beer clutched loosely in his hand. Erin didn't give a good goddamn if she shot him in the back, but she wanted him to know.

Her gun hand came up, and the afternoon went as still as the grave. Her mouth opened, and the words, as petty and weak and stupid as they were, burbled out: "Hey asshole!"

He paid no attention.

She may have whispered. Erin wasn't sure, but she thought it likely that she had. She was about to repeat herself with a bit more breath, a bit more passion, when she saw that he wasn't alone. Across the lawn, beyond the elm and in the full glare of four pm South Carolina September sun, stood a lean young man in a heavy dark coat and black pants. His skin was a light brown; if she'd had to guess, Erin would say he came from an interracial family. A thin crop of black hair provided little protection from the sun. He looked completely out of place, and Erin had to blink to register his presence. She was surprised she hadn't noticed him arriving. As far outside of town as the house was and with a long gravel drive off from the road, she usually knew when anyone was coming.

Erin barely had time to take in the newcomer before he spoke. "I need to confirm. You are Martin Conte?"

The asshole, saved for a moment by the presence of a witness, spoke through his fifth or sixth or tenth beer. "Who wants to know?" Martin swayed slightly.

"That's good enough." The stranger's voice was cold, dark, utterly uninterested. The humid air thinned until it was empty.

Erin would remember what happened next in the days to come. She would go over it in her head moment by moment, frame by frame, but she could never quite break it down into something manageable. The stranger moved, that much was certain. There was a rush of air, a strong wind. But she never saw his legs churning, never saw his arms pumping. He simply seemed to flow from one point to the next. Martin was still raising a beer can to his lips.

An instant after the stranger finished his sentence, three things were evident. The dark man was now behind Martin, two long bloody blades in his hands. Martin's head and left arm lay discarded on the clover, beer still in hand and eyes wide. He had a surprised, stupid look across his tanned face. And the rest of Martin's body, working diligently to keep running, pumped scarlet blood out of the two gaping holes in his anatomy. It spurted out in pulses, first on the side and then from the neck, as if he couldn't decide which end should really be bleeding. Martin's body continued to stand for a good four to five seconds. Nothing else moved as it fell.

A chickadee called out. The wind slipped through the trees. And the impossibly fast man with long knives turned his head to Erin with no expression whatsoever. "Hi," he said.

Terror engulfed her, and she let out a wordless cry that didn't allow her to think about anything else. When it stopped, she was surprised to see that she still had her gun raised, and that she was repeatedly pulling the trigger on an empty chamber. She followed the sights of the weapon down to where the stranger had been driven back onto one knee, dust and smoke rising off his coat. Bits of down drifted to the ground next to him as he stood, apparently unhurt. He was still looking at her, but now a strange little smile sat on his face, and that was almost worse than anything else. "You done shooting me?" he asked calmly.

That was too much. Blackness beat Erin's consciousness into a tiny circle, and the ground flew up at her.

She awoke to the glare of the sun in her face. Had she fallen asleep on the lawn chair? Her jaw felt wrong.

The familiar creak of the back door brought her head around, and she saw the dark stranger walking out. Now he was dressed in jeans and a Breast Inspection Team T-shirt, an outfit that had turned up about two days after Martin moved in. Oh, God, Martin...

Ann's boyfriend was still there, stupid wide eyes staring unrelentingly at a dandelion, body four feet away. Erin giggled, then clapped a hand to her face. Ex-boyfriend, now.

"You're awake. That's great. Here." That flat voice didn't seem menacing, but Erin felt the hair across her body go on end.

Before she could register more than this, though, he tossed a can of beer to her. She snatched at it and held it close, like it would provide some kind of protection. "Are you ... who are you?"

The stranger didn't seem to notice. Maybe she was whispering again. Dammit. He turned and banged his way back into her kitchen. His voice floated out to her: "Drink up and then you can join me, if you like. I found some pasta in your fridge."

Erin stared after him, utterly nonplussed, until the condensation on the can caused the beer to slip through her grasp. She caught it awkwardly and popped the top, holding it with two crabbed hands. A small river of fizz ran down to her elbows, but she paid that no mind as she sucked on the beer as if it were an antidote to the last hour - no, to the last two months.

She felt calmer, after. She did. Her legs hardly shook at all as she stood. But there, in her own backyard, Erin had no idea what to do. Should she call the police? Run like hell? The problem was, she had wanted to kill Martin, and would have if the stranger had not showed up. And she had passed out - her shocked brain still recognized that he could easily have left her head on the ground too. Instead, he had propped her up in a chair and gotten her a beer.

Erin had never killed anyone before, but she was pretty sure this wasn't how it was supposed to work.

The man who slaughtered Martin Conte was humming softly to himself as he minced garlic. Erin wasn't sure, but she thought it was "Under the Sea" from the animated Disney movie. She was not ashamed to admit that she didn't have the nerve to ask. She stared at him as he put the garlic on to saute and helped himself to a beer. Twin bands of dark leather crossed his chest, ending in sheathes at his side for the blades she'd seen earlier.

"I'd have had it ready by now," he blurted out of nowhere, "but the sauce you had in there was for shit. Don't Americans know anything about subtlety?"

Was she expected to answer? "I..." she started, but then the words died in her throat. She was sorry for alfredo? He had chopped off a man's head in the back yard, for chrissake. She wanted to go to bed and try this day over again.

He looked up. "Do you think you could put my clothes in the dryer? They should be done by now, I think."

"I - yeah, sure." It came out as a squeak, really, but Erin was happy to get out of the room. He had retrieved an onion from somewhere and was already dicing it. The man was very good with knives.

It wasn't until she opened the washer's lid that she realized she was willingly cleaning a murderer's pants. A tiny smile bloomed on her thin face. "What law am I breaking now?" she muttered.

Twenty minutes later, the pair sat down for an early dinner. The man took Erin's spot at the table, but she decided not to mention it. The food smelled fine even though she couldn't bring herself to try it. Her stomach felt like it was trying desperately to escape her body, and would take any route offered.

"You killed him." She had to say it.

The stranger nodded around a mouthful of rotini. He held up a hand so she would wait for him to swallow. Erin's terror started to reassert itself - the utter normalcy of how they were interacting clashed with the brutal violence that was already acquiring a haze of narrative in her memory. Finally he finished.

"Yeah."

Erin thought more might be coming, so she waited politely for several seconds. The man across the table just tucked back into his food, methodically filling his stomach. At least one of them had an appetite.

"And now you're wearing his clothes."

He grinned, the most life she had seen yet in his face. "I'd still have my coat and shirt except you shot the hell out of them. But yeah, I'd have needed to borrow a clean outfit anyway. Sometimes, no matter how fast I am, the human heart is quicker. Your friend splashed blood on me."

"Not my friend."

"Huh."

More eating. The stranger finished his beer and immediately cracked open another.

"So, um ... why did you do it?"

His eyes came up. "You don't sound too upset about it."

"No, I - I'm not," she replied, realizing that she wasn't. She felt no loss or guilt. She was glad for it. "He had it coming. I, uh, didn't know it would come from you, though."

"That's the thing about life, isn't it?" He gave her a broad smile, with little bits of pasta plastered between his teeth.

"If I may ask, though, who are you?"

The man sighed, leaned back, and regarded her. He tapped the table with his fork. "Who did you say you were again?"

"Me? I'm Erin."

"Oh, of course. I'd forgotten. It's been so long since we've seen each other, hasn't it?"

It had, hadn't it? Erin nodded as she took a bite of her food. It was excellent.

"You remember me, don't you?"

Erin was shocked at her own forgetfulness. She did know him after all. "Six years ago, was it?"

The man nodded, and details started to flood into her mind. It was like a fog lifting, or maybe descending. How had she not known this before? "Yes, that's right! Jason - how could I have forgotten? We went rafting together after my roommate backed out!"

Again the nod.

"Do you remember that Greek place we found? I wanted to keep going after dinner but we were both way too drunk? Oh, crap, I don't even want to think about that hotel room we ended up crashing in! It had those stains on the floor and we made up stories about all the terrible things that had happened there?"

Jason smiled and kept eating.

Erin toyed with her pasta, self-conscious of a sudden. She'd always had a bit of a crush on Jason. "What brings you down to South Carolina?" she asked, the accent she'd worked so hard to bury up north coming back out.

"Mostly just seeing the sights, I guess." Jason must really have been enjoying the pasta she made for them, since he was practically shoveling it into his mouth at this point.

"Well I'm so glad you made time to come and visit. What are you up to these days? I remember you were going into - into -" and all of a sudden her memories started to crack. Erin shook her head, willing them back into place. "You wanted... it was something in business, right? Or - or - no, you hired people. You found people for hire?"

Jason was standing now. When had he gotten up? For that matter, when had he arrived? Something wasn't right with her mind. "Thanks so much for dinner, but I'm afraid I need to be on my way."

Everything felt really wrong now in Erin's head. Connections weren't connecting. "You found people. You did."

Jason was swinging a long, dark, tattered coat around himself. It didn't suit him. "Good luck and all of that. We should keep in touch, you know? But now I really should -"

"You killed Martin!"

The words just popped out of her mouth. Erin didn't know where they came from, but once they were out she knew it was true. And everything was back as it was. Her appetite was instantly gone again. Who was Jason? She'd never gone rafting in her life. She was alone in her house with a stranger, and somehow she'd gotten twisted around into thinking - what had she been thinking?

"There's something ... something wrong here." Erin shook her head, as if that would help the day rearrange itself into one that made sense. It didn't work. "Did you make me think ... who are you?"

When the man responded, his voice had a rote quality. "I'm no one, really. I don't even exist. Maybe he did it to himself, or there was a terrible accident, or he's not even dead. Who knows?"

Erin nodded. For a moment her memory wanted to conform itself to his words. Yes, that makes sense \- "Wait, what? That doesn't seem, I mean I thought I saw ... no! Who are you? What do you keep doing to my head?"

"Or maybe this is all a dream, and when you wake up you'll discover that you were the killer all along. I don't care what you..." The man trailed off, staring at her. He opened his mouth a few times, but never said anything. Finally he looked away. "Ah, fuck," he breathed. Erin thought that was what he said.

He sat back down. "You seem like a nice girl. Even though you shot me."

That was right! She jumped up, knocking her chair to the floor. "Hey, that's right! Were you wearing a bulletproof vest or or or what was going on there?"

"One thing at a time. You obviously have a murderous streak, or you wouldn't have been staring down a barrel at one of your houseguests. I've gotten to know people fairly well, and that just isn't something that 'good' people do. Not these days, anyway." He sighed. "And yet -"

The stranger broke off, rubbing at his chin. He seemed to be listening to some internal argument as he studied her. Erin wondered briefly if she was in over her head. Only briefly: she was sure she was.

Whatever the man was considering, she must have passed muster. He scratched himself and looked at the wall. "Ok, I'll tell you who I am, but you probably won't believe me and you can't tell anyone else."

"I can't ... what, are you a spy or something?"

"No, no. It's just that everyone would think that you're nuts."

"Hunh. This sounds like a set-up."

"Look, it's actually quite simple. I killed that guy Martin because it was my job to do so."

"You're a hit man?"

"I'm ... no. Well, yes. That doesn't describe it, but okay, yes. That works for now."

Erin's mental image of a hit man didn't match up with the person in front of her, but she held onto the idea. "I didn't know that Martin had enemies - like that."

"He probably didn't."

His answers weren't clarifying things for her. "Then why - well, ok ... who hired you to kill him, then?"

"Nobody."

Erin threw up her hands. Sure, he had slaughtered a man in cold blood and in a disquietingly quick fashion, and sure he had the scariest dead eyes she'd ever seen, but he was eating her food, and drinking her beer, and Martin had bled out on her lawn, and he wasn't making any sense.

"If you - ok, so why - so how was it your job to kill him?"

"Ahh..." Erin imagined that was the same sound he made when dropping into a bath. She wasn't sure why that image popped into her mind. "It's difficult to explain. But believe me, my interest in Martin Conte was entirely professional."

"But he was just a guy who ran a landscaping crew! And, well, sometimes he tended bar."

The stranger cocked his head and studied her. "Some of the most influential people in history have been bartenders, you know," he said quietly, and Erin hadn't the slightest idea whether he was joking.

"Was he into drugs? The mob? This isn't fair \- no one just shows up to kill a man and have no reason whatsoever!"

The man stood, brushing off his torso unnecessarily. "Do you have any other questions for me before the police show up?"

A different kind of panic struck Erin. "What? Who - how do you - did you call them?"

"No. It's just usually about now that they appear to tidy up my messes."

There was that assuredness again, that certainty that he had murdered many, without care, without regret. It tore Erin down; the more comfortable he made himself, the more unstable she felt. She twisted in her chair to peer out a side window.

"What are you going to do?" she said.

"Do?" he seemed to have never heard the word before. "You mean besides finish my pasta?"

"About the police!"

"Ohhh, them." The man shrugged. "Figure I'd let them do their jobs. No reason not to, eh? They're just folks like you and me."

Somehow, Erin doubted that.

"Trust me," he continued, "everything will be fine. No one is going to jail today. I'd elaborate, but it's better to see for yourself. Besides, I don't think there's any more time to explain right now." He walked from the room toward the back door. "Looks like the sheriff is here."

Erin's breathing quickened. She was not used to being so far behind a situation. She had to get some kind of control back. "At least tell me your name!"

The stranger paused on the threshold, and then smiled. "Of course," he said. "My name is Kairos."

Sheriff Luke Turner had a carefully crafted body that women liked to look at and a face that made them decide to keep their focus down. Erin thought he was perpetually gagging on a fish. Still, she did her best to like him. He had gone through school with Ann, and if he hadn't been the brightest kid around, he was at least basically honest. Erin had come to appreciate that more as her life went on.

Right now, though, mostly what she was grateful for was not having Turner's job. The policeman knelt on the lawn between Martin's head and body, peering professionally from one to other. His knee just missed the darkening splash of blood that dotted the grass and clover like morbid afternoon dew. Every few seconds he'd let a little "mmhmm" slip out, and he'd rub his puffy lips. He paid no attention whatsoever to Kairos, who'd set himself up on the lawn chair.

After several minutes of examination, note-taking, and officious humming, Luke stood and rejoined her. From here, Martin's head might have been a fuzzy rock. Erin much preferred that thought.

"A good guy," the sheriff said. "It's a shame."

"Yeah," Erin responded, immediately feeling guilty. Not for Martin's death, but for lying to a man she respected. She wasn't about to offer details concerning his death, though. One assurance from a strange man didn't change the fact that when someone gets murdered, someone else is supposed to be arrested. Erin had always assumed that was the way of the world. "What are you going to do?"

"Do?" Why was that question so difficult for everyone today? "Well, nothing, really. This review should wrap it up for me, though. I'll have a couple boys by to take care of the body. Nasty case, this, but pretty straightforward. I can get you the number of a funeral home if you don't have one in mind." Luke wiped his hands on his pants. "Didn't think I'd see this happen to such a young guy."

Erin frowned. "What do you mean? What does his age have to do with any of it?"

"Well, Marty was what, twenty-nine or so? Usually don't see heart attacks at that age is all."

"Heart attack..." Erin's mouth hung open as she looked from the sheriff to the decapitated corpse. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Unmistakable."

"Luke, his damn head's been cut off!"

Luke laughed. "Oh, that. See that happens sometimes with the bad ones. Comes from all the blood pressure build-up in the neck, doesn't it? Head goes right off - pop - last gasp of a dying system and all that. Yeah, Marty must have had a real nasty zinger to blow off both his head and his arm."

Erin goggled at him. On the lawn chair, Kairos laughed. "I always love the explanations they come up with," he called out.

Luke dug into his ear with a finger and wandered a few steps toward the house. "You leave the TV on, Erin?"

Kairos stood and walked next to her. "You see?" he said with a smile in his voice, "it doesn't matter what I do, or say, or anything like that. If I do my job, almost nobody even notices. I was surprised that you did. Have you ever wondered what it was like to be untouchable?"

She took in the headless body, the befuddled sheriff, the dark man next to her. "Who are you?" Her voice barely rose above a whisper.

He looked down at her, and for a moment she thought there might be a spark of actual emotion in those eyes. Probably not, though. "I'm just a guy with a crappy job."

Sheriff Turner retreated back toward the road. "Damn tinnitus," he was saying as he walked off, "I gotta get into the doctor's one of these days. You gonna be ok here, Erin?"

She waved distractedly, her eyes never leaving Kairos. "That doesn't tell me anything," she said, though it made him seem more normal. But why did he feel so much older than he looked? "Who are you, Kairos?"

"Right. The whole story, huh?" He stretched. "You want to talk, we'll talk. But let's go around the front or back inside. I don't want the dead guy to distract you."

Kairos stumped off through the weeds. Erin paused. "He deserved it, you know," she called.

"Huh?"

"Martin, the man you - you killed. He deserved to die."

Kairos shrugged. "That's good, I guess."

She followed him around to the front porch. It was falling apart, but it had been just as broken down in her childhood. She sat a few feet from him for a time, silently looking at the mimosas. Those had always been her favorite trees. Eventually Kairos spoke.

"So a long time ago, back where I was born - I'm from Greece originally - I applied for a job and I got it. I didn't really know what I'd be doing. As it turns out, I travel around the world looking for people."

"That doesn't sound so unusual."

"And most of the time, when I find them, well ... you saw back there what I have to do."

"You're a hit man."

"Kind of. It's weird. Not too fun, in the long run."

"Why don't you quit?"

"I can't. Besides, I'm good at my job and the benefits package is pretty unique."

"What do you mean?"

"How's this: I can make most people do what I want, I never run out of money, and I never die."

Erin laughed. The sound dashed across the driveway and disappeared somewhere, and after it was gone Kairos was still sitting calmly next to her, looking utterly serious. "That's ... you don't actually believe that, do you?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Well because it's not possible. Set aside the rest of it. One thing I do know is that everyone dies."

"Not me."

"You don't die."

"Nope."

"You don't die."

"No."

"Bullshit."

"You shot me, you should know."

"That's ... that can be explained!"

"I'm also really old."

Erin didn't say anything to that. She was only twenty-six, and he looked even younger, with a smooth unlined face. Even so, the statement rang true. It was something in the eyes, she thought.

"Men these days like to shave," Kairos went on. "I started to enjoy it myself, once I got used to the idea. Well, you know how some guys have to shave every day? I need to shave maybe once a decade. Maybe."

"I'm not sure I -"

"Time hits me at a much slower pace than it does most people. Here, let me get you another drink."

Erin sat on the stoop in the following silence, willing herself to think clearly. The man was insane, wasn't he? Or bullshitting her. It had to be one or the other. There was just no way what he was saying could be the truth. But - but Martin, and that way he'd moved, and Luke - Erin felt something coming loose inside of her and she desperately hoped it wasn't her mind.

The door creaked Kairos' return. A new beer took over her vision. She took it automatically. "You were about to ask just how old I really am," he said.

"How do you know?"

"They always do."

"They."

"Yeah, they. Ok. Look. I have a solitary job. That's great, it's mine, but every once in a while I get bored and a little lonely. When that happens I tell somebody who I actually am."

"Every once in a while."

"Yep, you know - maybe two or three times a century."

Two or three times a ... no. No. "No," Erin said. "No. No you do not. This is not right. You're not - you can't be that old. This is bullshit!"

"Just shy of two thousand years, if my math is right."

"You're full of shit!"

"Sorry, it's true."

Erin slammed her beer onto the porch. "Ok. Yeah, sure, fine. You're the two-thousand-year-old man. So tell me, what was Jesus actually like?"

Kairos shrugged. "No idea. Never met the man."

"Of course you didn't. Well how about Newton, or Shakespeare, or Da Vinci? Meet any of them?"

"You know the world is a pretty big place, right?"

"Oh, isn't that convenient!"

"Look. I know what you're asking for. How about this - I got to meet Vincent Van Gogh once."

In spite of her skepticism, Erin had to ask. "What was he like?"

"Incredibly high."

Erin threw her hands up and stalked inside to the living room. Behind her, Kairos called out, "You did ask!"

Her disbelief was turning to anger and jealousy. It wasn't fair. She grabbed the remote and flicked on the TV. If it was true - if, if - then it wasn't fucking fair. If he was that old, then people could live that long. Erin punched randomly through the channels, not watching anything. No one was living that long though, not her, not her parents, not poor Ken Reid smiling out at her from a picture frame. Not Martin, that was for damn sure. Erin smiled. That last one might be fair.

"You ready to believe me, or do you want more proof?" Erin hadn't heard him open the door or come into the room. She remembered again that he was a killer and muted the television.

"What do you mean?"

"Look, I need to move on. Usually I have some time to myself after a job, but I already have my next assignment, so I'm going to have to leave town."

"So you just ... that's it?"

"Yep. I'll be on my way once the pants are done drying."

Erin looked away, frustrated. "If - I mean, you just make these claims and then you're gone, it's not ... why did you bother even telling me all of this?"

Kairos gave her a small grin. "That's what I'm talking about. How would you like a vacation? All expenses paid?"

Her breath caught, but whether from fear or excitement she didn't know. A crowd of possibilities had just thrown open their doors to her. She spoke carefully. "What exactly are you saying?"

"Just that," he replied. "If you want to travel with me for a while, you're welcome to it. You'll be able to see that I'm telling the truth. I travel pretty light but pretty easy as well. And there's a lot more to the world than what you believe. If you come along, you may get to see some of it."

Erin set the remote down, thinking hard. "I meet you today, and you want me to trust you just like that."

"I suppose. Look, what do you have to lose?"

Erin laughed at that. "My life! A murdering stranger asks me to take a road trip with him and I have nothing to lose? How do I know that you won't kill me, dump my body by the road?"

"I'm not here to kill you."

"Yes, you can say that, but how do I know?"

"I'm not a cat. If I was here to kill you, you'd be dead already. Remember Martin? I don't fuck around."

Ok. He had a point, and though he couldn't actually be telling the whole truth about himself, Erin had to admit that some bizarre power outside her bounds of reality was at work. It was tempting, so tempting.

"You're coming, then?"

Erin looked into the killer's face, searching for direction.

"I can tell you this," Kairos said softly. "It won't always be very pleasant. Some of it will be boring. But you'll see and learn things you didn't think were possible."

Erin's mind was already decided, it was just that her voice didn't want to acknowledge it. She nodded, quickly. If he was surprised, he didn't show it.

"Good. Change your clothes, pack a bag if you want. We're going to Galveston."

Her hands started shaking again on the way up the stairs. What was she doing? Three times she almost turned around to say she'd changed her mind, but somehow her legs kept moving forward. Her arms packed up clothes, money, the gun.

Kairos was waiting for her at the bottom of the staircase. The dryer must have finished, for he was back in his dark pants again.

"Do you have a car? I'm about out of gas."

She did. It was a '95 Buick Skylark, but it still ran fairly well. Fairly. It had been well-cared for, but was beginning to succumb to the years. "It was my mom's," Erin said as she raised the garage door. For some reason she wanted that known.

Kairos shrugged. "Looks fine to me."

He reached for the keys, but paused. "Do you want to drive? Some people get uncomfortable when I do."

"What do you mean?"

"I ... drive pretty fast. And get in a lot of accidents."

Ah. Erin kept the keys.

She hoisted her travel bag into the back seat, where it landed among an overturned stack of books, food wrappers, and junk mail that she kept meaning to clear out. Erin shot Kairos an embarrassed grin as she moved to the front and snatched up a few of Ann's used tissues from the passenger side. He looked utterly uninterested. Finishing up, Erin surreptitiously snapped the volume of the radio down to nothing. "All set," she said.

Two minutes later, the pair were on their way to Texas.

Notes - Group 3

Overall group notes: Largely inward-looking. Exclusively in North America at the moment, and no signs of impending departure. Some clockwise shifting detected. The driver is Yves, the target Christina.

Individual Notes

Kairos: Dispatch message to Martin Conte delivered, probably as move against the other agencies. Used only 80-85% speed: sign of sloppiness? Made contact with Erin Dawes, human. Probable motivation: companionship/sex. Given new target. Name: Claudia Rains. Location: Galveston, TX.

Christina: Horseback riding near Cheyenne, WY. Unusual for her. Probable motivation: unknown, possibly pleasure. Returned to motel and found new target. Name: Elle Blackfox. Location: Blanding, UT.

David: Left Caborca, Sonora after four-day stay. Stole a truck. Bringing many pictures of petroglyphs with him; most likely will drop them at safe box in Las Vegas, NV. No current target at this time.

Alessandra: Dispatch message delivered to Jason Djanovicz. Influence play almost a certainty. Rather spectacular kill: used a firebomb. Motivation unknown, but likely boredom. No new target at this time.

Nshange: Message delivered to Gerald McKay. Prime Movement, as usual. Quotidian duties. I received a birthday card from her today, no postage. It was very funny, but she often is. After message delivered, had her hair done at a salon in Indianapolis. She's wearing it very short. Not sure if it suits her, but I think so. Bears further watching.

Yves: Traveling. On foot, reason unknown. Walked through Kitchener, ON. No current target at this time.

Ichiro: Visible. Spent the day playing poker on a computer at house in San Bernardino, CA. House belongs to a T. Jeremy James. Made eighty-three dollars. Would have made more but saw an inside-straight-draw through to the river. No current target at this time.

Recommendations: Continued monitoring. No further action required at this time.

* * * * *

Chapter Two:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" \- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Traveling with a man claiming to be almost two thousand years old wasn't what Erin expected, if she ever would have thought about such a thing. For one, he didn't go in for conversation much, seeming content instead to stare out the window. That may have been just as well, since the consequences of such a long life had begun to creep into her mind. How could she say anything that he either hadn't heard a thousand times before, or didn't seem utterly stupid? Erin resolved not to care. She didn't believe him anyways, right? Still, she hesitated before she spoke.

Just over the Georgia border Erin pulled into a well-lit gas station to fill up. Kairos hopped out, offering to pay. Erin smiled and relaxed into her seat.

At the pump across from them, a low-slung yellow and black sports car pulled in much too quickly. It was of the sort that she always associated with assholes. Rich pricks always seemed to pick the flashiest cars they could find. The guy filling it, suited arms crossed and slick hair perfect as he studiously ignored his surroundings, certainly looked the part. A small fantasy of him stumbling around without a head played itself out in Erin's mind before she caught herself. She'd had violent daydreams plenty of times, but with her traveling companion those could easily come true. They didn't feel nearly as harmless now.

Kairos must have noticed her staring. He tapped on the window, breaking her train of thought. "You want that?" he called through the glass.

"What? No, no, he looks like a tool - oh you mean the car. What? Why?"

"Grab your bag and follow me," Kairos said.

Curious, Erin did as she was bid. Kairos was already over by the other pump, where the man in the expensive suit had drawn up defensively. "I think you forgot something," Kairos was saying.

"I ... I did?" came the confused reply.

"Oh, yes," Kairos said, turning to Erin. "Dear, do you have the car keys?"

Erin raised an eyebrow at being called 'dear,' but she held up her overloaded key chain, and as Kairos was confidently holding out a hand it seemed only natural to toss them to him. "Here we go," he said warmly, "And you've been very gracious to hold onto ours while we've been busy. We're all set now. Thanks."

"Oh. Ok," the man said, and dug into his pocket for a small set.

He held them up and studied them as if trying to remember what they were. He paused. "I ... I have a gun, you know. I'm connected."

"Good for you!" Kairos said, and didn't give the man a chance to reach a further decision. He snagged the keys out of the air and pressed Erin's keyring into a newly-empty palm. "Oh, look! We're just about filled up," he said. "Thanks again. Off you go."

The rich man plodded back over to the old Buick, where he stood and stared uncertainly back at them. Kairos didn't notice, he just put the pump back and swung himself down into the passenger side of a Bugatti Veyron. "And we have a new car. You coming?"

"What did you-"

"He just remembers things a bit differently now. You coming?"

"I need some of those keys. My house, my job, I -"

"Hey. Listen, and trust me on this. Anything can be replaced."

Erin almost gave up then, but she had to make a point. "Before we steal a car - and we're actually stealing a car, this is happening? Anyway, I need to make something clear. What you just did to that guy: If I'm with you, you don't get to pull that on me. Ok? You may have some kind of psychic roofie going, but I won't have it. Understand?"

"I don't know what that thing is that you just said."

"Just stay out of my head. Deal?"

Kairos spread his hands. "Sure, deal." It did not inspire confidence.

Erin sighed, got behind the wheel, and tried to pull out onto the street as carefully as possible.

An hour later, Erin was ready to admit that the rich assholes of the world had at least one point. These things were an awful lot of fun to drive. Two hours later, though, it was just the same old highway in a night sky. Erin started to nod after Atlanta, and was struggling to keep her eyes open as the Alabama border neared. Kairos reached for the wheel. "Let me drive. I feel fine, I don't really need sleep."

She started to protest, but her sleepy brain wasn't good at coming up with a reason. "I'll keep it fairly legal, I promise," she heard, and that was good enough for her.

She pulled to the side of the road and gratefully curled up in the passenger seat. Sleep overtook her without a single consideration that this was easily the strangest day of her life to date. The last thing Erin remembered hearing that night was Kairos murmuring, "I wonder how fast this thing can really go."

Those thoughts chased her into shadowy dreams through the night.

The morning sun and a sudden cessation of movement jolted her out of sleep. Erin blinked and looked around, uncertain for a moment where she was. A stranger next to her said, "we're in town," and Erin stared dumbly at him until she remembered who he was. That's right - a hit man claiming to have seen most of human history.

Erin crawled out of the car, discovering a hundred little aches as she did so. Her neck and back fought for the most attention, but twinges shot through her right shoulder, right wrist, left leg and butt. Her hair was plastered to her right cheek where she must have drooled in her sleep. The Bugatti was not built for restful sleep.

She pulled herself up to a rough standing position in the morning haze and attempted a stretch. This created a loud unnatural pop that bent her over like an old woman. "Owww," she groaned, and then, in case Kairos hadn't heard, "Owwwwww!"

Kairos looked perfectly rested and at ease as he took in their surroundings. They had parked in the lot of a strip mall, right in front of a mattress store and a payday loan provider. The day was already hot.

Erin groaned once more for effect. "Do you have to kill this person right away, or is there time for breakfast first?"

Kairos sized her up. She probably looked rough. "You look rough," he said. "Nah, we have time. I get a nighttime feeling about this one. Once I find her I'm on the clock, but you can get yourself together if you like. Just bring your bag. A car like this will be stolen by the afternoon."

They took a leisurely lunch. Erin talked about herself much more than she had planned, rambling on about her life after her parents had died. She told Kairos how she'd had to move back from Chicago down to South Carolina, where she'd found teaching jobs in short supply. For the last year and a half, she'd been subbing. Try as she might to be optimistic, that felt so much more like babysitting than teaching that she was a little ashamed to tell him about it.

Kairos was a good listener, though, and nothing he said passed as judgement for her not being a 'real' teacher. He ate his Greek salad and nodded along with her stories. Afterwards, he bought a new coat and set of clothes - all in cash - and announced he wanted to see a movie. The thought of sitting still for hours wasn't exactly thrilling to Erin, but Kairos insisted. "You can wander town if you like, but I want to see me some giant robots fighting." Erin was tempted to explore Galveston on her own, for a moment. Then she remembered she would be in a stolen car, without Kairos' ability to hypnotize others. A traffic stop would put her in a bad spot. She resigned herself to popcorn.

It was late afternoon by the time they returned to the car - or at least to where they had left it. As predicted, it was gone. Kairos worked his mind-magic on another poor slob, and they set off around Galveston in a much more sensible vehicle.

Kairos would drive with his head cocked, listening or smelling or using some unknown sense to figure out where he was headed. Erin wasn't sure he knew what he was doing. Several times they passed through the same neighborhoods, looping a few blocks several times before he would mutter, "No, not anymore." And then they'd drive on. It was fairly boring.

The sun had disappeared behind the rooftops when they pulled to a stop in front of an industrial park. Kairos killed the engine and stepped out. "She's in there," he said, and strolled down the drive. Erin wasn't sure she wanted to watch him kill someone, but she followed nevertheless.

The two walked between buildings, some obviously abandoned. He was moving with much more purpose now, a bloodhound with the scent in his nostrils.

Kairos stopped abruptly and looked to his right. "I think this is it. I get a feeling about this one."

Erin surveyed the warehouse he indicated. It wasn't much to see. The sign on the doors read "Telco Office Solutions". That company had apparently been out of business for some time, as the padlock had been pried apart and rust had begun its inevitable takeover. Weeds sprouted from cracks beneath the walls. A muted glow in the high windows attested to someone's presence within. "How do you know?"

Kairos scratched himself. "Not sure," he admitted, "it just kind of feels like the spot, you know?"

While Erin was deciding if he was toying with her or not, Kairos leaned into the door handle. The sliding door squealed, but moved.

The interior was a study in human misery. A dozen or so people had set up camps inside the abandoned building, trading the relative safety of company for - well, for just about everything else. Each person or family had their own sad little living space set up, and someone had rigged up power from another building so that a few lamps and in one case a halogen gave the evening some light. It was obvious that the people living here had nothing other than what they could carry. All of them were staring at the new arrivals.

Kairos grunted. "Never really enjoy killing the homeless. It's almost like they expect it."

A short bald man with a full beard stood and stumped his way over to them. "I'm Steve," he said with an extended hand.

Kairos didn't respond. After an awkward moment in which Steve stood waiting like an oversized marionette, Erin seized the initiative and shook the poor man's hand.

"Are you new to the area then? We got some rules here, see."

Kairos paid no attention to the man, instead scanning the faces of the other campers. His eyes came to rest on a young woman sitting with a book propped on her knees. She had short dark hair, red cheeks and a creased brow as she looked across the room. "That's her," he murmured.

As if in response, the woman set down the book and stood up. It took some doing, as she was obviously very pregnant.

Kairos nodded, a slow exhalation accompanying the gesture. "Is your name Claudia?"

Her answering nod was silent. Steve tried to push himself in front of Kairos, squawking, "Now you may know each other but you need to respect what we've set up." He was thoroughly ignored by all, even as he went on.

Erin went cold. She had been perfectly comfortable judging Martin as unfit for life, but this stranger? This poor, beautiful young pregnant woman? And Kairos was just going to - Erin turned to him to find her gaze returned. He must have been watching for her reaction. "You can't - I can't..." she whispered.

"It isn't all righteous justice," he said.

"You can't do this."

"I have to.

"No, just refuse! Say I'm not going to kill somebody today!"

"It's not that simple. I can explain later. For now, I have a job to do."

She couldn't let him. She couldn't just stand by while he did this to a helpless mother-to-be! Her arms wouldn't respond, though. She felt full of jell-o. Kairos laid a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe you shouldn't see this," he said, and gave her a small push back to the door. Erin didn't resist.

Erin stepped into the alley and dropped to the ground. She wanted to cry or scream, but all her body would do is shake. Erin gave herself to that, then. She shook and rocked as she imagined the girl's head on the ground, just like Martin. Why had she come? How many people had he done this to? Was it happening right now? She squeezed her eyes shut and waited, waited.

It was the sound that made her look back up. Whispers, light steps, the rustling of fabric.

At first Erin had no idea what she was looking at. There was a crowd in frost of her: twenty or more people had arrayed themselves before her, and all of them - as well as she could make out in the deepening twilight - had dressed in black formal wear with blood red or cream white shirts. Some of the women had what appeared to be capes.

Once someone in the crowd caught her gaze, a sudden cessation of movement and sound swept through them like a breeze. Everyone stared, watching her as if she were the guest of honor at an outdoor gala. She barely noticed that all but one of them were young and heroin beautiful - she was more focused on the sudden and sharp terror that had struck her, an emotion that had nothing to do with what was currently happening in the building behind her. Her stomach was twisting around itself.

One of the men, a head taller and a hand thinner than Erin, took a lazy step forward. He was perhaps ten feet from her. "Haven't seen you around here before, little one."

He lisped as he talked, and knew it. It seemed to amuse him. At least, he grinned broadly at her, and that was when she noticed the long, tapered canines. Erin's breath died. Her brain tried to reprocess those teeth, but failed. A pale woman also detached herself from the crowd. Her black strapless dress stood up in defiance of all physical law, and a languid smile featured the same inhuman teeth. Several other partygoers shifted, as if eager to approach. The one older man leered, out of place but not caring. Now Erin felt a scream trying to claw its way out of her chest.

"Shhh..." said the tall one in front, gliding forward. "Quiet now. Quiet." He snaked out a hand that was pale to the point of translucence and traced the line of her jaw.

Little noises that might have been whimpers came from her throat. The thing before her smiled again, widely. This was death before her, her death, and she knew it. Kairos was nothing next to this, less than nothing. His mouth opened, and Erin knew these were the last words she'd ever hear. "So beautiful," he whispered, leaning into her, "so beautiful..."

The door behind her squealed open. "I'm sorry you had to -"

Kairos noticed the others. "Ah, shit," he muttered, and slammed the door shut again.

The crowd of, of - Erin's mind didn't accept it - the crowd shifted its attention to Kairos. The young man stepped back quickly and stared at him as if uncertain what to make of him.

For his part, Kairos just looked annoyed. He stood next to Erin and glared at them. Erin had a brief flashback to one of her old boyfriends - the look on his face was a mirror to the one that Paul would have when his cat puked all over the carpet. A terrified little laugh bubbled out of her. She wasn't dead yet. Not yet.

Kairos gave her a sidelong glance. "Do you know what they are?"

Erin nodded slowly, but was afraid to give voice to her fears. "They... um, they showed me ... teeth..." she whispered.

Kairos swept the crowd again with his eyes. "Yep," he said, "vampires."

The effect of his words was immediate. The crowd surged forward a step, and every one of them was hissing violently. Fingers curved wickedly into claws, and a shrill wind whipped their coats and hairdos. Erin's knees almost buckled at the terror rising in her.

Kairos didn't seem to notice the reaction he had invoked. He turned to her, a stern look on his face. "Don't give in to your fear. It isn't even yours - they're causing it. That's one of their tricks, tinkering with your emotions. They think it's insanely clever and all that. It's ultimately bullshit, though they're too stupid to realize it. If anyone knows about that, it's me." He raised his voice. "Isn't that right? Bullshit!"

A few of the vampires exchanged glances. The wind died down a bit. The old man cocked his head.

"What I don't get," he continued, almost talking to himself, "was what they hoped to gain by using vampires."

As he spoke, Kairos stepped forward toward the crowd, until he was within arm's length of several. He pivoted and walked blithely down their line without regard to the rows of sharp glistening teeth two feet away. "You see, it's too much to imagine that these assholes just happened to be wandering an industrial park tonight. Vampires, as a whole, like to think of themselves as higher class than that."

Erin's hands trembled, and a short black male vampire snapped at Kairos' back as he passed. He didn't seem to notice.

"So what could it be?" he mused, coming to a halt in front of the young man that had first spoken. Kairos turned to face him. "What's a dumb Texas fuck like you playing with trouble for?"

The vampire hissed gloriously, but the effect was spoiled when Kairos shot his left hand out and locked it around the man's neck. There was a gurgle, and a moan, but Kairos didn't seem to notice. He strolled back to Erin with a careless smile on his face. The vampire got pulled along after, half-crouched and stumbling. It appeared to be having trouble breathing.

"See, your average vampire is a pathetic thing. Sure it wants blood, and sure it prefers to feed on unsuspecting young virgins and all that crap, but what gives it power is fear. That's what you gave it. I'm assuming you're not a virgin."

Erin's private stock of terror took a nosedive, and she felt an absurd little smile bloom on her face. "Should I be taking notes?"

Kairos smiled back, grimly. "They get great PR, vampires do. They encourage it at every opportunity. But strip away the books and movies and pale ladies sighing and screaming, and what do you have?"

Despite the circumstances, Erin found herself getting interested in the conversation. It helped that Kairos seemed utterly unperturbed by their situation, and that all the other vampires looked uneasy to say the least. "I don't - a bloodsucking, undead monster?"

"Close. Think about this. It isn't blood they need, not really. It's life. They're usually pretty boys like this because that's what the last person they drained looked like, and they all think like high schoolers and want to be hot more than anything else in the world. Without sucking on actual living beings, these sick little parasites couldn't function. You see? They have no life of their own. They are nothing more than their image and whomever they happened to be feeding off of lately."

Kairos turned then, to the vampire he had caught. "Isn't that right, asshole?"

Its eyes were wide with terror, and its voice a raspy squeak. "Master, I beg you -"

Erin never found out what the thing was begging for, as Kairos wound back and put a right hook through his skull.

The creature's head - it exploded. There was no other word for what happened. Snatches of hair and skin ripped through the air like dried apple chunks. Curiously, though, there was no blood, no brain, no bone. Though terrified, Erin was forcibly reminded of a broken pinata. The rest of its body crumbled to the ground, bits and pieces breaking apart even as it hit. Kairos blew the vampire dust off his right fist.

The night tore itself apart as every vampire in Galveston decided that any other place on earth was better than this one.

Kairos looked casual, practically uninterested, but his body moved with the unearthly speed she'd witnessed before. He plowed forward, hands diving into the retreating crowd and pulling back two figures. It was the old man and a young sharp-faced woman, and they wriggled like fish as Kairos dragged them back. The other vampires, caught up in their panic, paid no heed to the two unfortunates. Within seconds there was no sign of life beyond the four of them. Bits of the dead vampire blew between their feet like supernatural tumbleweed.

"You see, vampires can't fit into the world too well," Kairos said as he walked back to Erin. "That's why sunlight destroys them. They can't take the scrutiny. Same as how I took out little Lord Fauntleroy a minute ago. As soon as you realize their true nature, which is nothing, they get exposed as the paper-thin monsters they are. Vampires aren't human, they aren't alive - hell, the damn things barely exist. You should have more respect for mud or slugs than you do for them."

The struggling creatures in his hands looked real enough for Erin, but she could follow his logic. "You mean this has nothing to do with you? I could kill a vampire if I wanted to?"

Kairos smirked. "Try."

He pushed the young woman at Erin. Reflexively, Erin tried to bat the thing away, and her palm connected with the vampire's arm.

A high-pitched inhuman scream rent the air as Erin's casual swing snapped the creature's arm off at the elbow. The jagged stump scratched at Erin's hand, and the severed forearm flew end over end into the shadows. Erin had to watch it go - she couldn't help herself. She felt a bit like a dog observing a well-tossed stick ... or bone.

Kairos laughed. "Whoops! Someone hasn't had their milk today!"

Erin stared at the bloodless hollow end of the vampire's arm. She wasn't the only one - the vampire herself was gaping, mouth wide, at the jagged ruin of her arm. Tiny pale flakes of skin drifted lightly but constantly off of it in the evening breeze.

Kairos dragged the old man to Erin's side and clamped his free hand on the neck of the new amputee. "Better finish her off now. She won't last much longer as it is. Once they lose a limb like that, it just kind of spreads."

"Are you mad? I just - I - I can't ..."

"Look, she was ready to prey on your fears, and then of course your blood, until you were a helpless dried-out husk. After that she'd be wearing your face around. And if not you, then someone else. That's all there is to them. Don't go looking for tragic life stories or baroque princesses or whatever schlock they're selling these days. There is no moral quandary here. You were ready to kill whatshisfuck, right? Jimbo Wifebeater? Well he had blood, and skin, and life. None of that here. She deserves it far more than that jackass ever did. She just happens to be prettier."

The girl looked up at Erin, and their eyes met. They looked real, and deep, but there was that arm, and there were those little ivory points at the edge of her mouth...

"Maybe if I just- " She put her index finger on its forehead, and pushed slightly. The vampire moaned, and Erin saw to her surprise that a large dent was forming in the creature's head. Somehow that was more real to her than ripping off the girl's arm. Maybe because it was deliberate, in speed and intent. Erin closed her eyes and thrust her hand out blindly. It felt like ripping through old paper.

"Delicately done." Kairos voice was hollow as it bounced against the warehouse walls. She had no desire to open her eyes. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone kill a vampire with quite such elegance."

A long silence passed. Erin let her hand relax. Her fingers were gritty as they rubbed together, and a shiver ran through her. Her eyes fluttered unconsciously, but only a pale dimness made it into her vision.

"What are you waiting for?" This must be the old man talking. His voice was smooth with a slight lisp.

"I was wondering who I was talking to."

"You think I'd tell you that?"

Erin peeked. Kairos hadn't moved, but the remaining vampire had regained some of his composure. There was no sign of the girl except for a tangle of black cloth at her feet. She kicked it away, and a little puff of dust scattered into the air.

"Why don't you tell me your name, then?" Kairos said.

"Malcius. Much good it will do you, killer."

Kairos laughed. "Killer? Is that supposed to affect me? What are you doing here, Malcius?"

"We were only to observe your movements ... the master wanted us to shadow you at all times."

"Why did you show yourselves, then?"

"It was her," Malcius' eyes rolled to Erin. She felt her skin crawl. "She stepped out alone, and was such a delicious present."

Malcius' lip curled in what must have been intended as a sneer. "She'll be happy to find out that you have a little girl you're dragging around."

Whatever else the vampire had to say was lost as Kairos drove Malcius into the pavement, ripping him apart like so much papier mache.

There was a long, slow silence. Erin's neck hairs made a pathetically doomed attempt to relax.

Kairos surveyed the remains in the moonlight. "Ah, shit," he muttered.

Erin found her voice, though it was still a scratchy and uneven thing. "This sort of thing happen to you a lot?"

He rummaged through Malcius' coat, turning up bits of lint and paper clips from the dead vampire's pockets. "Dammit. Nothing. Hardly ever, as a matter of fact. Vampires tend to know better than to mess with anyone who really understands about them.

"No, someone sent these clowns. And that opens up a whole bunch of unpleasant possibilities."

Kairos stood, letting the last bits of Malcius drift through his fingers. He looked at her with a frank, flat look. "I wonder," he said, "do you want french fries as badly as I do?"

As he walked into the darkness, leaving her little choice but to follow, Erin asked herself desperately if anything would ever make sense again.

The bright noise of the diner jarred Erin. It was more than just her senses adjusting from the night: after what she had just seen, such an unabashed display of normality confused her. Darkness and exploding undead met SportsCenter and hash browns. Such wildly divergent realities shouldn't be allowed to share the same planet, let alone the same night. Her hands began to shake.

If such cognitive dissonance bothered Kairos, he didn't show it. He plopped himself unceremoniously into a red vinyl booth and immediately started to build pyramids with the creamers. Erin slid in across from him, though her eyes kept darting to the windows. She couldn't see anything through them.

Their waitress, Brianna, was younger than both of them but still called her 'hon' and said she'd be taking care of them. Kairos ordered fries and coffee, and sent the fake redhead on her way. "We'll stop by a bar or liquor store next," he smiled, "I know you could use a drink about now, but I really wanted some of these fries first."

Erin just stared, at the diner, at the diners. Everything appeared to be perfectly normal. To her left, a laughing young man with dirty hair squirted mustard across his table. Overhead, the radio started its Big Nine at 9 lineup.

All she could see were vampires' heads exploding.

"Vampires."

Kairos looked up from his construction project. "Yeah. Hey, think of it this way - that's one less thing to be afraid of, right?"

Erin did her best to fix Kairos with a level look, but it probably came out a little deranged. "Vampires."

"Um... vampires, yes."

"Vampires?"

"Listen, I think you should -"

"Vampires! Vampires vampires fucking vampires, Kairos!!" She swept her hand through the stacked cream packets, sending them scattering. Ok, now people were staring. Oh, screw it. "We got attacked by goddamned fairy tales tonight and all you want are some fries!"

"They season them here with something, I don't know what it is, but every time I'm in Texas -"

"Kairos!!" Erin's voice was an octave higher than it should have been on that last word. It caught his attention.

"Alright, yes. I get it. You're freaked out. I was going to talk to you about it, but thought you'd like a little food to calm you down first. Obviously that was a mistake."

There was now no other sound in the diner. Someone had even had the presence of mind to mute all three tvs. Brianna returned with the coffee, bravely performing her duties even in the face of two clearly insane customers.

"More cream, sweetheart?"

Erin shot a manic look that sent the waitress back a step. "Yes!" she said, "Yes I would like more cream! Give me all the fucking cream you have!"

Kairos reached across the table and took her hand. Erin forced herself not to flinch. "You need to relax now," he said, eyes locked on hers, "you're stronger than this. You're alive, and I'm alive, and we both came through that without a scratch, am I right?"

Erin took a deep breath. She'd been fairly calm earlier, hadn't she? There was no reason she couldn't be so again. Easier said than done, of course. There was so much time now, to think about those teeth, that arm, that forehead ... Erin sat in silence for a minute, just letting herself breathe and waiting for everyone else in the diner to decide once again that their own conversations were more interesting.

Kairos watched her with a practiced eye. "You feeling better now?" he asked once most of the color had left her cheeks. Erin nodded.

"Good. Can we talk about this like civilized people, or do you want to try yelling again and we can see if that will work?"

"We can ... we can talk. It's just hitting me hard. That didn't actually happen tonight, did it?"

"Hey, you were there. You saw it."

"But they're vampires! They aren't real!"

"Yes, they are. Ok, maybe not entirely, with vampires. You saw how easily they come apart. But the fact remains that right now there are packs of vampires all over the world just doing their thing. Right now."

She took another deep breath. "Let's just say \- just for shits, right - that maybe that's true. You've seen them before?"

He nodded.

"And do you - do you, like, hunt them or something?"

"Whatever gave you that idea? I personally don't give a damn about them. They usually know well enough to leave me alone. That's part of what makes tonight so weird."

Questions started piling up in Erin's mind. She wanted to blurt one out after the other for fear of losing any. "What about other things? Are there other monsters out there?"

"Like what?"

"Werewolves."

"Oh, yeah, I've seen a few of those. Ugly as sin, they are."

"Ghosts?"

"Yep."

"Mummies."

"What, you don't believe in mummies? You can see those things in museums!"

Erin scowled. "I meant the type that-"

"I know what you meant, I was just fucking with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty much anything you've read stories about is real. Humanity, as a whole, doesn't have a very good imagination," Kairos said, and then their food arrived.

The fries were thick and spicy and not at all what Erin expected. Kairos grinned at her enjoyment and ordered another plate.

"See?" he said, "have a few of these and your problems fade away." He held up a hand before she could reply. "I have to mention that I didn't expect you to leap right in with vampires. Thought maybe we could work our way up. Ah, well, jumping in with both feet and all of that, right?"

"So what we just went through-"

"Was real, yeah. And you handled it like a champ!"

Erin grunted, but he wasn't done. "I mean, not as well as I did, of course. Did you see me punch that guy? Ah, hell, that was groovy or capital or whatever you kids call it. Epic, right?"

Kairos grinned, eminently satisfied with himself, but something didn't sit well with Erin. "Hold on," she said, "If all this crap is real, how come it hasn't been found out by now? There's people everywhere, satellites, shit like that! How do all of these things stay hidden?"

"That's a good question," Kairos said, holding a mustard-tipped fry like a conductor's baton, "and I'm not sure, but it might be a combination of things."

"It might be? You don't know? Isn't this, like, your deal or something? Your world? How do you not know?"

"Do you know everything there is to know about South Carolina?"

He had a point. "You have a point," she said. "Sorry. Go on."

"Thank you. As I said, I think some of it is that you people are great at seeing only what you want to see. If it's not expected, you don't think it's there.

"And then also, there's a lot less of everything now that isn't human. Same with bears or tigers or anything that you don't eat or name. It's easier for anything to hide these days because there aren't as many of them as there used to be.

"Finally, most of 'this crap', as you put it, is incredibly dangerous. I get a pass since I'm so awesome, but even vampires can pretty much kill at will as long as they don't get found out. You want to call it my world? Fine. Most times that my world meets yours, we kill you. Kind of hard to get the word out when that happens. At least, that's what I think."

That didn't seem fair, and Erin said so. Kairos raised his arms. "Maybe not, but what are you gonna do?"

Erin didn't know what to say to that, so she ate her fries in silence. They really were quite good. Kairos looked out the window. What he could be seeing, Erin had no idea: the night was well and truly upon them.

"There is still the question of how they knew we'd be in town," he mused. "Vampires don't like to travel much - too much risk of getting stuck somewhere when dawn hits - so we can safely assume that they were local."

That caught Erin's ear. "Hey what's up with the sunlight thing anyway? You said something about scrutiny but it can't be that simple, can it? Daylight just kills them, nothing more?"

"Hey, it works."

"Yeah, but how? What's the mechanism?"

"I don't know, do I look like a fucking biologist?"

Erin tossed a fry at him. "You know what I mean. That explanation just feels a bit precious to me."

Kairos chuckled softly. "I suppose. I don't know why, but sun takes them out. Could be they're just that flimsy. I dragged one around once for about five hours just to see if the rumors were true." He leaned back into the naugahyde with his coffee cup. "Damn thing went up in a blaze of glory. Instant personal bonfire. Kind of nice, really - this was in early February and it was damn cold. You know how the wind knifes right through your clothes and your nuts shrink to pebbles? Heh- I don't suppose you do know about that."

"Hey, I'm a modern girl. I've frozen my nuts off before."

There was a slow silence from across the table. "I don't understand people," Kairos finally said.

Erin moved on. "That thing, that vampire thing, said it was watching you for someone."

He nodded.

"I don't quite get how that could be. Aren't you untouchable?"

Kairos drained his cup and looked out the window. "I think it's time for a stronger drink."

"Why?"

"Well," he said, reaching for his coat, "mostly because I need to tell you about how I'm not the only guy like me out there."

The Oil Derrick was surprisingly not a gay bar. Or maybe it was, but had surrendered itself to Texas reality on a Saturday night, Erin wasn't sure. A Longhorns night game dominated every one of their several dozen TVs.

They found a corner slightly sheltered from the roar of football and drunkenly yelled conversations. This took a moment, since the people already sitting there had to remember they meant to be leaving. Erin felt a little guilty about Kairos using his Jedi mindfuck powers on them, but only a little. She had to admit it was thrilling to get pretty much anything you want, at any time. She settled in as Kairos went off to the bar.

A minute later, after she'd already had plenty of time to grow bored with the bar, Kairos returned with a welcome mug in each hand. "I got you a beer," he said.

"What kind?"

"How do I know? I just pointed and hoped."

Erin took a sip. It was better than she'd expected, but she wouldn't want to drink it often. She assumed it was a local microbrew with a ridiculously cute name. "Let's not get off-track," she said. "What did you mean back at the diner? Are you seriously telling me that you're not the only crazy immortal magician assassin in the world?"

Kairos smiled. "I'm still unique. Does that help?"

"But just one of a set."

He took a drink. "What did you say you did for a living?"

"I'm a teacher. Why?"

"Ah. It shows. Ok. There's seven of us, but we all have our individual talents. Some of them seem to be shared. For example, I don't think any of us really need to worry about money or laws or things. But I'm the only one who's fast like I am."

Erin held up a hand. "Seven of you. With different powers."

"Yeah. I first met-"

"Let me guess. There's some guy with, like, super-strength."

"Actually yes. That's Yves, and -"

"And an invisible girl?"

"No ... he's a Japanese man, and it's really more like he makes you see what he wants you to, but the basic effect can be the same."

That was it. "Ok," Erin said. "Ok. Can I interject, just stop your little story here a moment? Look, you're gonna have to forgive my apparent ignorance about what must be your everyday life, but a day ago the world made a hell of a lot more sense. Santa Claus wasn't real, magic was for suckers and the human kind of monsters were damn well scary enough."

Kairos tipped his glass at that.

"But now! Jesus, man, you've got vampires and unicorns probably, but also a goddamn team of superheroes? Are you kidding me? I mean, you I have to accept and somehow I can even buy vampires, but superheroes? Fucking superheroes? What do you, team up every month to fight crime or some shit like that?"

A well-lubricated boy in a tight v-neck and white baseball cap sauntered over to their table. "Is this guy bothering you?" He said much too loudly.

"Piss off." Erin and Kairos replied simultaneously.

The double rejection left him open-mouthed a moment, but he collected himself enough for a "bitch" before wandering off in search of someone easier to hit on or hit.

"We aren't a team," Kairos said when he turned back to face her. "I like some of them, but we never work together. And we're not superheroes."

"You're faster than a speeding bullet."

"Cute. You know I've seen a lot of movies, and I've read a couple of those comic books, and I don't recall Superman making a habit of beheading strangers."

Erin had to give him that, especially as Kairos had lifted a basket of fries off the tray of a passing waitress. "Ok, fine. You're not particularly noble. And more fries, really? Jesus. Ok, if you aren't superheroes, then what do you call yourselves?"

"Huh? I call myself Kairos."

"Yeah, yeah, but do you ... I mean, you have to have a Job or something ... do something, like preserve the Balance or like that."

"Balance? What balance?"

Erin scrubbed her hair. "Like between good and evil, or keeping the vampires and stuff at bay. You can't have all these supernatural abilities and things without a reason! If this is your job, what's it called? What do you really do?"

"Mostly I kill people."

"Yes, I know that!" Erin wasn't getting through somehow. "Why??? What's your bigger mission? That can't be all there is to it!"

Kairos stood. "Calm down. You've read too many books, lady. I do what I'm told, and that's about it. I'm going to go get you another drink. You may not have noticed, but you just spilled yours."

He wandered off, leaving Erin to consider the possibilities. It was ridiculous, an utterly stupid idea to contemplate, but unfortunately every other bizarre statement he'd made had been borne out by monsters with blood fetishes and displays of speed that made a mockery of physics.

By the time Kairos returned, Erin had had enough time to compose a more lucid version of her question. She didn't wait for him to sit down. "You say you're just doing a job, and that's fine. But you show up on my door, break a few laws of nature, mix me up with vampires, and all the while you're chasing specific people down. My question is, why? Forget names or titles, why in hell do you do that?"

Kairos smiled, a little lopsided thing. "To be honest, I have no idea."

That was frustrating. "How can that be? What you're doing has to have some meaning.

"Well sure it means something. I mean I am a couple thousand years old, and basically impossible to kill. What does it mean, though? Beats the hell out of me. I just do what I'm told."

With that, he turned and looked out at the rest of the bar, sipping on the beer he had promised to retrieve for Erin. It didn't quite feel like he was shutting her out, but it was close. She guessed she'd hit a sore point.

They sat for a time, looking at the bar and the game on TV. It struck Erin that none of the carnival around her made the least bit of difference, not if the world was so much bigger than she'd imagined. Kairos seemed perfectly happy to drink beer and watch football, though. She caught his eye.

"Are they all as old as you?"

He paused only long enough to set his drink back on the table. "Nah, I'm the eldest by a long shot. The only one who even comes close is Christina. She's ... ah, different. The others are all fairly young, last two or three hundred years. Sometimes one of them will only stick around for thirty, forty years. There's always seven of us, though."

"Oh. Ok," she said, not knowing what else to contribute. He spoke in terms that didn't fit into her view of the world, and two days wasn't quite enough for her to make the transition.

Kairos must have sensed something in the air. He leaned in over the roar of an interception. "Should we talk about the other thing, then? The less pleasant part of tonight?"

"The other? What ... oh." Of course. Claudia. She'd almost forgotten, with the vampires. Or maybe she'd let herself forget. That uncertain, wary but vaguely hopeful look in Claudia's eyes came right back. She had been reading a book that would never be finished.

"Yeah," Kairos said. "There is no other way for you to understand what I do. If I'm told to kill someone, it doesn't matter who it is. I have to do it."

"Why?"

He looked down at the table. "I don't know."

"Then how do you-"

"If I don't," he spoke over her, "terrible things happen. And the people end up dead anyway."

This took Erin back. "What terrible things exactly do you mean?"

Kairos dug into his pocket for a few dollar bills and dumped them carelessly on the table. "Let's walk," he said quietly, leaning in so she could hear over the bar.

The night was warm, welcoming and peaceful after the noise of the Oil Derrick. They walked in silence for a time. The thought of vampires in the shadows made her uneasy, but Erin found her fear was a muted thing, almost as though it was there only by habit. She glanced over at Kairos, who was watching his shoes as he walked. He was in no hurry to talk, just as he'd taken his time when confronted by a pack of mythical bloodsucking fiends. Erin thought he must never be, if all of this was true. No death, no laws, just constant killing. Hmm.

Still, she'd never seen anyone quite so ... not calm, that wasn't it ... self-possessed. Erin wondered what he might be afraid of, then decided she probably didn't want to know. Not tonight, at least.

They stopped at a street corner to wait for a light, and that must have been enough of a cue for him. "I'd been doing this for a while, thirty years or so, and had gotten into something of a rhythm. You have to understand, it was a different life. Not nearly as many people around, and it took quite some time to travel anywhere. Unless I ran, of course. For a long time there was probably nothing on Earth faster than me, did you know that?"

He went on before Erin could respond. "That's not important. What I'm saying is, I didn't have anywhere near the workload I get today. Probably one or two people a year on average. Don't get me wrong, that still wasn't fun. I'm not a naturally violent person."

Erin raised an eyebrow and struggled not to interrupt. Not violent? She'd known Kairos for two days, but could say without hesitation that he was easily the deadliest person she'd ever come across.

"I did the work, though," he continued, "I did it because I'd, ah, been told it was important. I'd been told in a particularly convincing manner. So whenever I got the word, I followed orders. The rest of the year was mine.

"I was bumming around Rome one summer and I get a name, a little ways off to the south. Ok, it's been a while, I'm ready for this. I take off, and a little later I'm standing outside a house in a cute seaside town. All around me are people celebrating some holiday I can't remember, but I'm staring through the doorway. I can't go in. There's a woman in there, she was ... she reminded me so much of someone I had known once before.

"I couldn't do it. I couldn't. I put my blades away, said not today just like you would want, and I left. Actually I watched her for a long time and then took off. Got the hell out of there, ran a good hundred kilometers north. I didn't know what I was going to do, but my head was full of impossibilities. I'd find my boss and give up my knives. I'd return to her, somehow she'd welcome a stranger and ... I don't know. I wasn't thinking clearly. It doesn't matter now.

"The next twenty-four hours were some of the worst of my life. I was feverish, cramping. I lay down, but I couldn't stay still. My muscles twitched at the speed I use when I'm on the job, but they burned with every second. Terrible pain. Then, finally, a little after noon the next day, I vomited. Just blew everything out of me, expelled what felt like everything I'd eaten for a week. Instantly my body felt better. My body did. The rest of me was a wreck. I knew something awful had happened, something big. I tried to run back and see the woman again, but my legs weren't moving that well. I was still tired. It took me a full day to make my way to the town again. She was gone, and not just her. The whole city, wiped out. As if it had never been."

Kairos paused, and Erin looked around. They were alongside a major thoroughfare. Cars sped by in the night, but the noise seemed muted somehow. She felt a shiver. "What happened?"

"It could have been coincidence. It could have been, but it wasn't. Turns out I wasn't the only thing vomiting that day. In the Mediterranean we have a lot of mountains, but our fair share of volcanoes as well. One of them woke up, amazingly just after I'd refused to do my job. Two entire cities paid for my mistake. Buried, all of it, in the ash."

Erin shook her head. "You mean you think you ... wait, a whole town? You're not ... you can't be talking about Pompeii."

Kairos nodded. "That's the one."

"You can't be! That's not possible!"

"Why not?"

"Because - because I was taught about that! That's something that actually happened!"

"I know, I was there. It was my fault."

"No, no, that's not right. They built towns next to a volcano. That's just human stupidity."

"They didn't know that, but it doesn't matter. Problem is, everywhere is next to something that could create disaster. Earthquakes, floods, wildfires, monsoons - there's always a danger. You may not believe my story, but the others who are like me? They almost all have one exactly like it. Sooner or later we get tested, we run up against our own limits and we try to fight back. Every time, and I do mean every single time, we get put back in our place. I don't know who my boss is, but I know better than to fuck with him."

They walked quietly for a few steps. Erin thought he was done, but then: "If I have to kill a pretty young woman in order to keep a hurricane from wasting Galveston, I'm going to do it."

Erin touched his shoulder lightly. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't be. It was a long time ago. A long time. Besides, I didn't tell you that to fish for sympathy. The point is that in this job, morality doesn't matter. Whatever line you set will be destroyed. You just have to do your job and hope that's better than the alternative. I could give you a hundred more examples, but here's one you might appreciate: you remember a short German named Adolph Hitler?"

Erin shot her best sarcastic look at him, but Kairos stood silent, apparently honestly waiting for her response. She started as she was given yet another reminder of the vast difference in the way the two of them viewed history. "Uh, yeah, sure."

"Good. So he killed himself, right, just before he could be captured."

"Yeah."

"No. Little shit did not pull the trigger. Didn't even occur to him. Heh - he was shocked when the bullet hit. You should've seen the look on his face in that moment between him realizing he wasn't actually invincible and his greasy head smacking into the tilestones."

"You - you aren't telling me that you killed Hitler?"

Kairos smiled. "No, that wasn't me. I didn't get the job. But I did come along to watch. There are some people that we just know are going to end up on our list, and sometimes we'll let each other know. We call them 'people of power', and they can be annoying as hell."

"So what does that have to do with -"

"I wasn't finished. There were two of us on the job that day. Alessandra - maybe you'll meet her, great lady - she was pulling the trigger. Also, though, there was Yves.

"I don't want you to meet Yves. He's a scary fucker, not least because he works for someone who lets him do things like throw trucks around without breaking a sweat. Yves was born in Lorraine, and his family was Gitane."

"Gitane?"

"Romany. Gypsy. His mom fell for the doctor that delivered him - that's where he got his name, by the way. But when Hitler got going, his family was identified. Targeted by the Reich, sent away and all that. He lost two siblings and a couple nephews. Yves was itching to get the order on the guy, was damn tempted to go after him even with the repercussions ... probably would have if he hadn't been taught his lesson so well in Tunguska.

"Day comes, though, and Hitler has to die, but it's Alessandra ends up with the job. Yves has his own - he has to protect the pasty bastard. That's the other side. Sometimes one of our bosses wants a person dead, but another says no. It's up to us to sort it out. That generally means a fight."

Erin considered the idea of two immortal hit men with superpowers attacking one another. It might look good in a movie or be boring in a comic book, but it wasn't a prospect that she relished having erupt in front of her.

"We're compelled to do it," Kairos continued. "Our employers can have sick senses of humor. I never saw anyone try so hard to lose. We have this ... feeling ... that comes on us when we work, makes us try even harder to succeed. I'm pretty sure he found some way to let Alessandra shoot him, though I bet he'd deny it. Right between the eyes, him and then Hitler. Alessandra was as shocked as I was. She hates guns, and is lousy with them. I am too. I'm still trying to figure out bows and arrows." He shrugged inside his coat and peered across the highway. "There's a motel. Let's check it out."

"So wait. You mean he died protecting Hitler?"

"Who, Yves? No. No, he's still around. It'd take a lot more than a bullet to the head to kill him. What really shocked me that day was that he even noticed it."

Erin paused.

"I told you I didn't want you to meet him."

Notes - Group 3

Overall Group notes: Mixed inward-outward focus. Exclusively in North America, though first signs of departure showing. Clockwise movement completing for some, changing to directional push. The driver is Yves (weakening), the target remains strong in Christina. Feel of the agencies is preparation.

Individual Notes:

Kairos: Dispatch message delivered to Claudia Rains, Prime Movement. Used 80% speed, good clean kill. Met at site by group of vampires. Three fatalities. Same clan Christina was observed speaking with 22 days prior, fewer fatalities this time. No new target assigned at this time.

Christina: Dispatch message delivered to Elle Blackfox, as lateral move against other agencies. Brought a house down on her head. Created ten-inch gaps throughout the structure. Effort expended: 17%. No new target assigned at this time.

David: Drove to Las Vegas, NM. Dropped photos off in safe box. Received five proposals of marriage, accepted three of them. Current count: 643 wives, 122 husbands. Approaching the record. No current target.

Alessandra: Took a passenger train southwest to Lincoln, NE. Received preserve target. Name: Ryan Vanderbilt. Met him in suburban neighborhood outside Lincoln. No resistance met. Unusual assignment. Agency must be nervous about Mr. Vanderbilt. See also Group 2 notes re: Max/Deskae issues and attempts to corral them.

Nshange: Woke up, washed, played chess in Watkins Park. Her opponent was six: she let him win. She was wearing a yellow sundress, don't know when she bought that one. No sign of a new assignment for her, but she's fooled me before. No current reports in or due to Mound-Under-Mound. She did not eat today. Curious. Purchased a train ticket to Denver, CO.

Yves: Passed over U.S.-Canada border in Sarnia, ON. Made contact with Elias Harrison, human, age eleven. Probable motivation: recruitment. Received new target. Name: Marianne McDermott. Location: Sioux Falls, SD.

Ichiro: Travelled to Los Angeles and watched filming on upcoming movie. Might be good with the right editor. Received late target, left in a cab after dark. Name: Greg Statler. Location: Reno, NV.

Recommendations: Continued monitoring. No further action required at this time.

* * * * *

Chapter Three:

"It is indeed in many ways more comfortable to belong to that section of society whose actions are not publicly canvassed and discussed." - Murusaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji

They spent the night at the motel, listening to the sounds of cars on the interchange. The place wasn't great but it had two beds and cable, which Kairos happily flicked on the instant they were in the room. She fell on the bed, eager for darkness in her half-drunken stupor. Her dreams were of Ann, and of dents in foreheads.

The TV was still playing in the morning when she woke. Kairos grinned over at her in short sleeves and boxers, face blurred and gritty in the pre-dawn light. "One wonderful thing about progress," he chirped, "is that you always get new things to divert you. God I love this shit. I could watch infomercials for months."

Erin glanced at the local morning syrup and felt a jolt of nausea that had nothing to do with the fries from last night. "You know TV's been around for almost a century, right?"

Kairos shrugged. "On my time scale, that's like last week."

"Do they have coffee in this place?"

He nodded to the chipped-wood desk, on which two massive cardboard cups sat steaming. "I went out a while ago. Thought you could use a bit of help this morning."

Erin could have leapt on them, but she paused. "That was really nice of you, Kairos."

"Eh. I never run out of money or time."

"No, I'm serious. It was considerate. Probably the most considerate thing you've done since I've known you."

His eyes never left the television. "Ok," he said.

Ok. Well. She scrambled for the cup.

After her shower, Erin made an excuse and stole out to a corner pharmacy in a strip mall across the street. There was far too much in her head after the previous night, too many questions. And if the pace kept up, new concepts with rules and details would keep on coming. She knew it was too much for her to keep straight in her head. She was going to lose something, Erin was sure of it.

She prowled the aisles and picked up a thick little journal and a pack of pens. Two steps away from the register after paying, Erin ripped the wrapping apart. First things first - she bent over the journal and flipped it open. There on the cover page, she wrote two names: Martin Conte, Claudia Rains.

An expanse of empty white paper stretched out below the four words. Erin shivered, wondering how much the page would fill before she'd had enough.

She riffled the journal to the last page. There she wrote carefully and with small script, "one female vampire." She snapped it shut. With luck, Erin would never have to see that page again. Or write in it.

Kairos was fully dressed and looked more presentable when she returned. What little hair he had was wet; he must have showered. He stood as soon as she entered the room. "Good, you're back. Let's get the hell out of town."

"Is there a rush? I thought check-out was at noon."

She hadn't exactly unpacked the night before, but there were toiletries and socks to gather, the ever-present nagging certainty that she was forgetting something. Erin hated being hustled out of a hotel room.

"I'd rather not stick around. Vampires, remember?"

"They can't come out in the daytime. That's what you said."

"You're right. If you recall, though, there's someone or something that those idiots were working for. I can handle myself, but I don't particularly feel like dealing with it first thing on a Sunday."

Erin moved. She'd always thought of herself as capable, but she knew that word was on a whole different level now. When 'handling yourself' started with superpowers, she was happy to watch as long as she was safely off to one side.

As soon as they had gotten everything together and climbed into the car, Erin pulled out her notebook. She wanted to get as much of last night's events and conversations down, but almost immediately a question presented itself. "So wait, Kairos," she said as he merged onto the highway, "You think it was one of these other ... uh, magical hitmen that set vampires after you?"

Kairos nodded. Erin had let him drive because she wanted to take notes, but he already seemed to be having trouble keeping near the speed limit. He was biting his lip.

"Is that the kind of - Christ, man, you almost went up that guy's bumper! Just turn on cruise control, then you don't have to fight the urge. Is that the kind of thing they do often? The others like you, I mean?"

"Ahh, no. Look, you shouldn't worry too much. You're an innocent bystander and no one in the current group is too evil. They do their jobs just like me, they aren't going to go out of their way to target one normal human."

"That's flattering, and I'll be sure to tell the vampires that next time we run into each other."

Kairos shrugged. "I can't control everything. Besides, those guys were pussycats. If we run into anything meaner, I always have the Keryx blades."

"The what?"

He switched wheel hands long enough to pull back his jacket. At his side was a dark leather sheath with a dull, worn handle protruding. Gripping it with easy assurance, Kairos exposed one of the disquietingly shiny and sharp weapons at his side. They were longer than knives but shorter than anything she might consider a sword. Erin's neurons backed up for an instant as she realized she was judging whether something two feet from her could be considered a sword. This was the 21st century still, right?

"This is a Keryx blade," Kairos said. "They've been with me since the beginning. I have two of them. I got them ... ah ... as part of my job interview."

"They have a name?"

"Yeah. Well, that's how I think of them. It seems right, you know? Besides, they've never failed, broken or dulled in two thousand years, so you don't get to make smartass remarks about me naming them."

He flicked on the radio at that point. "Oh, nice," he said, "Billy Joel!" Erin had no idea if he was sarcastic.

They pulled off for breakfast at a truck stop late that morning. Kairos parked well away from the doors, and as the pair made their way between the trailers Kairos noted that he'd never driven a semi. He was well on his way to talking himself into stealing one before Erin reminded him that neither one of them were qualified to handle a rig. He merely shrugged, but when Erin pointed out that while she still had to worry about little details like death, he relented.

Inside, she looked down at her eggs and hashbrowns. A sharp craving for fresh vegetables and fruits struck her, and she made a mental note to insist on a trip to the next supermarket they found. Kairos was certainly enjoying his plate of doughnuts and pie, washing it down with a coffee more grey than brown. "You see a lot of Bill Murray movies?" Erin asked.

Kairos flashed a powdered sugar grin and stood. "Gotta see a man about a dog," he said and wandered off. Erin watched him go, the image of his eyes staying with her. They never changed, never showed emotion. As much as he smiled or joked, they were consistently empty. She shifted in her seat and pulled out her journal.

She glanced at what she'd written so far. Kairos came off as a simple man, and maybe he was. Erin wasn't sure, but she suspected that it was at least partially a facade. Anyone living amongst monsters and superpowers had to process a different level of reality, and that meant a certain amount of complexity. Granted, he didn't look complex as he came back to the table with his fly down.

Erin knew of no delicate way to let him know, so she just blurted it out: "You might want to, uh, wrap things up down there. Your pants."

"Oops," he replied, "thought I felt a draft."

He tucked back into his dessert breakfast. Erin glanced out the window. "We're well outside of Galveston now. We shouldn't have to worry about someone following you, right?"

"Maybe," Kairos said around a mouthful of pie. "I still want to keep my eyes open. Either somebody's been watching me or they know where I'm going to be. I don't like that. I don't like that at all."

"What could they do to you?"

"Ah ... they could make things annoying, for one. You know, tie me up with bullshit when I could be doing my job or taking a nap. At the extreme, I guess they could kill me."

"What?"

"Relax, that's not going to happen. It's the worst-case scenario. Or maybe the best. Heh. No one would be dumb enough to want to take over for me."

"But I thought you couldn't die."

"I believe I said I don't die."

"That's the same thing!"

Kairos pointed at her with his coffee mug. "Are you going to eat any more, or do you just like pushing that piece of toast around your plate?"

Erin looked down at the ruined mess that was the remains of her meal. She felt no desire to eat more. She let the over-buttered toast triangle slip from her hands to flop onto the plate, then snatched a napkin from the tabletop dispenser. It quickly surrendered to the grease on her hands, ending up a torn moist wad. "Let's go," she said. Infinite money supply and the guy wanted to eat in the cheapest places. Didn't make sense.

As they walked out, Erin tried again. "You aren't actually invincible? You can die?"

"Yeah, well I mean everything dies. I'm really, really hard to kill, how about that."

"Ok, but how would they do it?"

He looked at her with one eyebrow up. "Making plans? You feeling murderous again?"

"Ha ha. I'm interested. Never met a, a" she wouldn't say superhero, she wouldn't, "guy like you before. Christ that sounds lame but you know what I mean. That one guy got shot in the head and you said that shouldn't have even slowed him down. Well, what would? What would do it?"

"Look. There has to be some very special circumstances to take me out, and that's generally a lot more work than anybody would want to put forth."

She turned away, frustrated. "You didn't answer my question," she muttered.

Kairos made some kind of response, but Erin missed it. Ambling toward her across the concrete, not fifteen feet away, was a pudgy slate-gray buzzard. It had one eye focused on the two of them.

The bird stopped when it had crossed about half the distance between them. Erin noticed that a black, wet, stringy strip of what she hoped was meat hung from one side of its beak. Apparently it had interrupted lunch to come and investigate. She hadn't the first idea whether such birds were native to the area - she had spent her entire life quite happily east of the Mississippi.

"Um, Kairos - I, well, there's a buzzard."

He joined her. "Oh shit. Not again."

"Is this common?" she asked tentatively, not sure if she wanted to scare the bird off or not. Kairos' entire life seemed to be one grand, dark absurdity. His next words didn't do much to dispel that image.

"Eh, it happens from time to time. Once I had an albatross trail me for eight years. I was almost sad to see him go."

"What does it mean?"

"How should I know? I don't speak bird. Maybe I smelled like fish. All sorts of odd things happen to me every day. Eventually you get used to it. After a few thousand years, you get used to just about anything."

Erin cast an eye back at the vulture. It hopped heavily and cocked its ugly head. "I don't think I like it."

The bird shat noisily. Erin turned away. "Ok, now I know I don't like it, but I think I can tell why it's following you around."

Kairos grinned. "Speak for yourself. Nasty little thing, isn't it?"

They gave the buzzard a good berth and walked on. It waddled after them, following until they climbed back into the car. Erin kept watch on it through the side mirror as they drove off. It reduced to a dark clump as the road opened up, but she was sure it was still looking right at her.

They made their way northwest, stopping occasionally to check out a national park or any roadside attraction. Kairos may have been humoring her or giving her something to think of besides monsters and vultures. Of course, pulling away from The Amazing Mystery Spot, Erin had to admit that he could simply have bad taste. Whatever the motivation, she was willing to take up the offer.

Normalcy helped, and a free road trip was welcome, and Kairos was turning out to be oddly good company. There was no sense of urgency whatsoever. Kairos talked of plans to see if his mystery stalker made any other moves, but immediately after that he began waxing rhapsodic about Arrested Development. He obviously wasn't too worried.

They switched cars whenever they felt like it. Erin was growing used to stealing cars. It became almost a game, and didn't feel wrong to her, though she couldn't give a reason why. Perhaps her own sense of morality was beginning to erode. If so, she thought, that would have begun when she bought the gun and the bullets meant for Martin.

It helped that it was so easy for them to take cars. Besides being able to talk people into new memories (at least for a bit, he claimed), Kairos was quite handy hot-wiring a vehicle. As he put it, it turned out that getting to see the entire development of electrical equipment and automobiles had a few advantages.

Erin found herself growing oddly comfortable in Kairos' presence. Maybe it was his straightforward nature, or that he'd seen so much and yet wasn't judging her. Whatever the reason, she was soon feeling quite at ease in the company of the world's oldest serial killer.

According to Kairos, the killing certainly made up the bulk of his duties, though she didn't see much of that in the next few days. For his next job, he merely had to sit down with an elderly man - Patrick Murphy - for half an hour and talk about basketball. There was also an afternoon in Norman, Oklahoma, an event that confused Erin for years. Even after she finally discovered the true meaning of Kairos' job, the truth of his real nature and that of his benefactor, this moment still stood out in her memory. Erin had convinced an obviously bored Kairos to check out the art museum on campus, and was trying to explain impressionism to him. Art was obviously not something he had concerned himself with in his life.

"The thing to keep in mind about Manet's work was that he had only one leg, so he had to paint at somewhat of an angle," she was saying when her yawning companion suddenly turned round, eyes unfocused.

A skinny girl with three colors of hair stood behind them. Without warning, Kairos leapt at her, landing a fist across her cheek. She went down in a heap of charmingly artsy clothes. Kairos straddled her, looking down venomously. "That's for Leslie!" he shouted.

Turning to Erin, he came back to himself. "We're done here," he muttered.

When they left Norman minutes later in a stolen van, it was without another word spoken between them.

As they traveled, Erin documented as much as she could. She started with her own observations and what Kairos had told her in Galveston, but soon moved on to basically playing the role of an interviewer. He found the whole process amusing. Kairos would willingly submit himself to her questions, but his answers weren't always helpful. When she asked about what it was like to live through, say, the Dark Ages, his response was 'slippery.' It turned out his main memory of the time was a day in which he got caught in a mudslide in South America.

"That's what you take out of several hundred years of history?" she'd demanded. "A mudslide?"

Kairos at least had the grace to look embarrassed. "I don't know. I could probably think of some other things. It was a long time ago. What do you remember from when you were four or five?"

Later he'd recalled that he'd been spending a lot of time in those years learning languages. "It's easier when the words are changing at about the same rate you are," he said with his newscaster accent.

That led down another path, as each of Erin's questions seemed to. By his own count, Kairos could speak twenty-two languages more or less fluently. He was perfectly happy to give a demonstration, though Erin didn't have a clue what he was saying. As he flowed from what he told her afterwards was Japanese to Greek to Tagalog to Hebrew to San, she could only marvel. He also told her later he'd been saying all sorts of filthy things about her. She didn't care, she was impressed. "You can speak that clicking language?"

"San, yeah. I had almost two years off work once, and I was in South Africa at the time. I hung out with a family group for most of that. They really liked me - I think it was because I don't have much in the way of needs, and since I can run anything down. I was sorry to say goodbye. Duty called, though."

That was the way of most of her conversations with Kairos. They began with him doing something amazing and devolved quickly into mundanity. Always, always, it ended with him doing his job.

The latest car - a Buick Seville, what the hell had they been thinking - broke down just past Liberal, Kansas on an empty road. The day was bright but still mild, and Erin sat on the trunk to wait for Kairos to come back with a new vehicle. She had opted not to join him after he had stomped about in an exceedingly grumpy mood. Her steady stream of jokes about Liberal had probably not helped.

He was still in sight, trudging back the way they had come. Why he wasn't using his super-speed, she had no idea. The buzzard dropped out of the sky, landing in the weeds with all the grace of an obese figure skater. It grunted at her as it waddled over.

"Hey, asshole," Erin called out. That seemed like a perfect name for the disgusting creature, so she modulated her voice. "Hey, Asshole," she said in greeting.

Asshole burbled a high-pitch giggle that gave Erin a little chill. It hopped around the car like a fat avian mechanic, occasionally letting out little burps and clucks. Erin thought she could smell something dead in the air.

"I don't like you, bird."

Burble.

"And I don't trust you. You're weird and you've been following us. Whatever Kairos says, I think it means something."

Chirrup.

"I'm going to find out what it is."

Squawk.

"Will you stop looking over our car? Kairos went that way, Asshole! He's taking his damn time, too!"

The vulture hopped from in front of the hood into the road, one eye trained on the disappearing figure in the distance. Ah, shit, it understood her? With one last satisfied noise deep in his throat, Asshole bobbled off down the road after Kairos. Erin stared after the pair of them. "I hope you get run over," she muttered, not quite sure to whom her comment was directed.

Her good mood was evaporating rapidly. The day was warming, and it struck her that she really had no better explanations for why she was stuck in Kansas waiting on Kairos. "Ok, world," said. "You have a lot to account for. Last week I was a substitute teacher. Sure I had to deal with snot-covered little bastards all day but I could forget about them and go out or play video games. I lived with my sister, and that was great. Great! But now - now I'm yelling at vultures and following an immortal assassin across the country for God knows what reason. The way all this weird crap has gone, I bet Ann doesn't even remember I exist! So I just want to know - what the fuck?"

Her voice died quickly in the flat landscape, but Erin felt strong and open. She was standing on the trunk of the car, she realized, but she didn't give a shit. She wanted an answer. She deserved one.

Of course, there wasn't one coming. A light breeze played with the edge of her shirt; a car passed by, too fast to take any meaning from. Slowly, the energy of her rage began to fade. She had agreed to every step, after all. And she did want to know more, wanted it more than she had wanted to know anything else. There was more to the world! There was a hidden side of everything, but why did it have to be so damn strange and useless? What was the point of magically erasing people's memories or moving faster than the eye can track if all you did with it was chop off the heads of abusive boyfriends and pregnant women? And why did everything else have to feel so normal, so familiar? Even Kairos - he could walk calmly in front of creatures Erin had been sure were fantasy nightmares, but she could also smell the garlic coming out of his pores after a trip to Olive Garden. "Just like Mom used to make," he'd said, but she was sure he was bullshitting her that time.

Ann preyed on her mind. Erin hadn't so much as considered shedding a tear for poor departed Martin, but his death had to have hit Ann hard. Add a suddenly missing sister and she would be a wreck. If she even remembered Erin, that is. The effect that Kairos had on people's memories - how far did that reach, and for how long? The only solace was her grandmother. Ann had always been close to Grandma Sadie, and the two of them had weekly Scrabble games over iced tea or something stronger. Erin loved her Grandma, sure, but they'd never been knit tight like with her sister. Erin was sure that Ann would reach out to her for support.

Nothing to be done about it now, though. Erin knew the lie instantly, but chose to keep believing rather than face the truth: she wasn't going back home because she didn't want to. Not at all, not yet. Not when there was an entire new world to discover. That this world filled with impossibilities still felt as pedestrian as her own even was irrelevant.

A while longer. Another week, another city. Ann could wait, would still be there after this was all over. So Erin stayed troubled by thoughts of home, but not enough to make any kind of a change.

It was just over the Colorado state line that Kairos announced he had another target. He had been napping across the back seat when he shot up with the news. Earlier, he had confessed to not actually needing sleep. Much like food, he merely enjoyed it. "I once tried an experiment," he'd said, "long time ago, just for the hell of it. I was bored and decided to see how long I could stay awake without passing out or going nuts."

"And?"

"After seven months I took a nap. I wasn't particularly tired, even then, but I wanted to dream again. Besides, I'd proven the point to myself."

Erin had been suitably impressed at the time, though since then she couldn't help wondering if he took naps in the car because he found her conversation boring.

"This one will be different," Kairos said now as he roused himself.

"How so?"

He clambered back into the front passenger seat, catching Erin's shoulder with a knee as he did so. "Oops, sorry. This name I have is a protection job. That is, someone's out to kill him and my boss doesn't like that much."

"So that means a fight?"

"Likely, yeah. I'll let you decide if you want to sit this one out. There's no way of knowing who I'll be up against."

Erin was having a hard time feeling bad when the weather was so nice. "But you'll take them on no problem, right?"

He grinned. "I knew I liked you."

Colorado slid by, and the line of the Rockies rose up before her. They had to head to the northwest, and after they passed Denver Kairos told her there'd be a change of plans. "I don't want too many surprises here," he said. "We'll pass through Boulder on our way, I think. I want to stop there and talk things over."

"We can't talk now?"

"Not with you, as much as I enjoy our conversations. I have to talk with Nshange."

"Nshange?"

"Another one like me."

"Oh. I see. And you know that this Nshange is in Boulder."

"You'll see."

That's all he'd say at the time. You'll see. You'll see. Erin got the feeling Kairos wasn't terribly fond of this Nshange person. Either that, or she made him nervous, but she'd never seen him nervous and thought it might not even be possible.

They were talking about decapitations when Erin pulled off into Boulder. She'd asked why he had cut off Martin's head instead of, say, just running him through like a gentleman. Kairos had told her that's how he always did it. "Always works," he said, "you stab someone in the chest, maybe they die maybe not. Maybe it takes a while. Cut off a head, though? Everything gets killed. Done, job over, let's get a drink."

"You have a really morbid job, you know that?"

"I realized that twenty centuries ago, lady."

She looked at him and felt a stab of pity. "Sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"It's ok. Hey, there is one redeeming thing about all the killing. I've never once had to take out a kid."

"Really?"

"Yeah. My boss must have a soft spot, because all this time, there's never been a little snowflake with one too many heads. Teenagers aplenty, but no tykes or princesses."

"That's a relief, at least."

"Mmm. Yeah. My abiding joy. There's a parking spot, let's get this over with."

They dropped Erin's bag in a cabin-style motel across the street from a hiking hill and walked into downtown. Erin appreciated the chance to stretch her muscles, but the closer they got to this presumed meeting, the more wound-up Kairos looked. She tried to lighten the mood, but soon gave up and took to watching the town. It had all the self-conscious artsiness and studied indifference that she'd associated with a few college towns she'd been to. As grungy as she was from days of travel, Erin felt overdressed.

A goateed young man in a too-tight shirt called out a few lines of bad poetry as they passed: "my ancestors dance me/within an inch of my heart's surrender/their faces nothing like mine/my eyes full of the hard lines and soft touches that never pictured theirs."

Kairos produced a tissue from somewhere and blew his nose severely.

Erin laughed and touched his coat.

"Not the poetical type?" she asked, grinning. "Or maybe it's just youth you can't stand."

Kairos kept walking.

"Oh come on. What, do you need vampires for your day to feel complete? You've been out of sorts ever since we got into Boulder. What's wrong?"

"I'm in Boulder."

"You really don't like this place. That bad?"

"It's just a statement I need to make. I am Kairos and I am in Boulder."

Erin stole a glance at a bicyclist passing by. His pants were absurdly short. "I'm glad we cleared up that mystery."

"I want to talk to another one of Us. That's why I said I was here. I have to make the announcement. You know, 'I am" blah blah 'and I am in' blah blah blah. When we do that, we all hear it. Kind of like an intercom system. And no, I don't know how it works so don't ask."

Erin closed her mouth. She had been going to ask. Kairos continued. "Not actually necessary with Nshange, which is who we're going to see, but it is considered polite. Come on, let's go get lunch."

With the prospect looming, Erin wasn't sure she wanted to meet anyone else like Kairos. She stopped by a t-shirt stand and pretended to study the overly clever messages printed on them.

"You set up a meeting?"

"No."

"But we are meeting."

"Yep."

"Well, how will he know where to meet us?"

"She, not he. And she'll know because she'll know. That's what she does. Hell, she'll probably beat us there."

"Where?"

"Wherever we choose."

"Where we're going?"

"Exactly."

"But we don't know where we're going."

"Right."

"So she'll be -"

"Wherever we go."

"Which we don't know."

"But we will."

"And that will be?"

"Anywhere!" And Kairos stomped on ahead.

"I thought anywhere was on second?" Erin muttered. She couldn't help it.

She followed in his wake for a few minutes. Kairos would walk a block, then stop at the street, shoes hanging out over the curb. There he would sway, almost with the wind, before moving on. Sometimes he'd turn, or walk through traffic, but there didn't seem to be a method to his choices. Erin began to suspect that Kairos was jerking her around, and she asked him as much.

"Yeah, I suppose. Kind of. I don't have much of a place in mind. But it does always help to get a bit lost if you want to meet another one of Us."

"I still don't get it."

"The person we're going to see... Nshange. Well, Ms. Nshange, but either way - she'll know we're coming. That's her talent, to see the future."

"So she's like a fortune-teller? Like a psychic?"

"Like an psychic, yeah. But she's better than any fortune-teller or magician you've ever paid a few bucks to. They're her shadows, where they aren't outright frauds."

"Her shadows."

"Don't laugh. Every psychic you've ever heard of is like a pale reflection of Nshange. What she can do is downright eerie."

"So who are your shadows, then?"

"Me?" He laughed. "Ask her. You got me. I hope I don't have any."

Erin sighed. "Ok, well. In any case, my feet hurt. If she's going to be anywhere, she might as well be here. I'm going into ..." she glanced at the row of tasteful storefronts. "Chrysalis."

She swung open the screen door to an airy restaurant with lots of plants and frog-shaped lights on the tables. Kairos followed her in, and pointed casually across the room. "That's her standing at the back."

"Holy crap," Erin whispered, "it worked."

Notes - Group 3:

Overall group notes: Strong grouping tendencies observed. Directional push now evident, jump becoming imminent. Final destination likely Washington, US, or British Columbia, CA. Target fluctuating between Christine and Kairos, the driver is now Alessandra. Mix of lateral and Prime movements.

Individual Notes:

Kairos: Received preserve target. Name: Arthur Robbins. Location: Ft. Collins, CO. High probability of lateral movement. Conference with Nshange.

Christina: Arrived in Seattle, WA. Set up at 26th floor of apartment high-rise, looks to be settling in for some time. No new target at this time.

David: Took a plane from Las Vegas, NV to Denver, CO. Received new target. Name: Arthur Robbins. Location: Ft. Collins, CO. Likely unaware of possible resistance, as it has been three years since he has faced other agencies.

Alessandra: Drove to Park City, UT. Destination unclear, probably to her as well. No current target.

Nshange: Spent the morning at Denver Zoo. Lingered over polar bear exhibit. Later bought breakfast for and convinced Daniel Cody, human, to give her a ride to Boulder, CO. Probable motivation: kindness. Conference with Kairos and Erin Dawes (human) afterwards. Told two lies according to report filed afterwards with Mound-Under-Mound. Uncertain as to what end, but Prime Movement almost a certainty. She feels both bear further observation.

Yves: Dispatch message delivered to Marianne McDermott. Used 80% strength, crushed her with a bank vault. Interpreted as gas leak. Likely acted in such a way to impress Elias Harrison, re: possible recruitment. No new target at this time.

Ichiro: Dispatch message delivered to Greg Statler. Acted with full invisibility. Received new target at scene, but lingered in the house to eat popcorn and watch a movie. Passed out before the end. Remained in Reno, NV.

Recommendations: Continued monitoring. No further action required at this time.

* * * * *

Chapter Four:

"In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy" \- Lao Tse, Tao Te Ching

Nshange was not a tall woman, but she had a sleekness to her that gave Erin the impression of perfect proportions. Her skin was a deep dark brown that drew shadows in around it, and tight curls made a thin knit cap across her head. As they came to a stop before her table, her face broke into a dazzling smile and she held her arms out as if for a hug.

"Kairos! It's been too long you filthy bastard!" Nshange's English was heavily accented, in marked contrast to Kairos' near-perfect midwestern. She was definitely African, though Erin wouldn't want to guess beyond that.

Kairos smiled but didn't move. His whole body went flat, and instantly the air had the same thin feeling that Erin had begun to associate with horrific violence. Erin could almost see him going over different possible attacks. On impulse, she stepped forward. Diplomacy had to be given some sort of chance. "Hello, um ... my name is Erin, and, well, I'm glad that you're happy to see-"

Nshange lifted her palm. It was a short gesture, but it held enough power to cut Erin off. When she smiled this time, it was a much smaller, tighter creature.

"Thank you Erin. I appreciate your attempt. But I will not change myself just because Kairos has his immortal killer face on. I know he's outlasted us all, but I can be a right bitch too."

She shrugged, an incongruously cute movement against the hardness in her eyes. "So if you have something you want to say, Kairos, you're going to need to do it yourself."

"I know." Kairos' voice was still and empty. "I thought you might bring it up first, but this is fine. I had some trouble three names back -"

"The vampires -"

"Yes, and one of them -"

"Said he'd been sent to watch you -"

"Right, and it occurred to me -"

"That no one should know who you are except one of us -"

"Or the people of power that sometimes crop -"

"Up and there's all the mythical crap -"

"But still no one should know where I am -"

"Unless you explicitly announce yourself -"

"Which made me think -"

"Of me."

A quiet moment drifted past. Erin discovered that during that jigsaw conversation both Kairos and Nshange had come together and were now sitting opposite one another. A waiter appeared with a dark beer, a light tea, and a water.

"Isn't it so much easier when you just let it happen? I ordered these earlier. You get the tea, Erin. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid it won't be pleasant."

Kairos had his hand on the glass infuser before Erin could blink. Nshange sighed. "No trust at all, eh? Very well." She pulled herself up even straighter and stared directly into Kairos' eyes. Erin was happy to be off to one side. "I swear by the Mound-Under-Mound and the Mystery within that I bring no harm to her."

A short moment, then Kairos nodded. "Good. Drink up kid, it's probably good for you."

That did little to make Erin feel better, but she found herself doing as she was told. With the two of them there, she felt very young and very small.

The tea was bitter, gritty and oily slick in her mouth. Erin thought it was tinged with metal. It felt like licking a metal railing. Still, she forced a swallow down.

Nshange was eyeing her sharply as she lowered the cup, and laughed at her expression. "Distinctive, isn't it? Try swimming in it. Best to just relax your throat, and let it all down at once."

Erin barked a laugh, then cut herself off. That might not have been a joke.

"Can we get back to business?" Kairos asked testily.

The next words were crowded out by Erin's attempt to drain her cup. Her gag reflex was ready for the drink, and it took a supreme effort to force the large swallow down. At the end of it, her face was sweaty, her throat hurt, and Kairos and Nshange had moved on. He was stony-faced as she spoke.

"Where there is one, you know that others will follow."

"I was hoping for more than that," Kairos said, scowling.

Nshange spoke something under her breath, then took a sip of the water. After a deeply contented sigh, she continued.

"It is my choice to tell you this. You were both right and wrong to search me out."

"That cryptic shit doesn't help me, Nshange. You know that."

"Of course not! But maybe you should consider why I am responding to you with 'cryptic shit'! Where do you go every fourth midsummer, Kairos?"

Erin perked up a bit more. There were all sorts of undercurrents here, weren't there? She wondered how similar these two really were.

Kairos waved his beer like he was swatting a fly. "That is for me alone. It has nothing to do with you, or this."

"Really."

"So what, you're saying that ... wait a moment..."

Nshange chuckled softly and turned to Erin. "For someone as fast as he is supposed to be, the man sure can drag at times. I suppose we should give him time to collect his thoughts. They are much older than we, and move at a more leisurely pace."

Erin had no idea what was going on, but she couldn't help but smile. Nshange struck her as someone she would have been friends with out of college, perhaps, sharp and easy and not too concerned with herself. It was difficult to reconcile her and the empty ancient power of Kairos. The question just kind of popped out. "Do you really go around killing people too?"

"This is from - from one of Them?" Kairos had apparently caught up with Nshange, though Erin was still lost.

"And you wonder why I can't give you answers. Kairos, I had nothing to do with the vampires. I know who set them on you, but I can't tell. You think I wouldn't if I could? As much of an ass as you can be, I still kind of like you.

"The power I represent has decided to support you. We see the future, get it? But there's only so much I'm allowed to say or do. Now why don't we enjoy our drinks? I hear they have a great avocado wrap at this restaurant. You'll love it, I promise. And yes, Erin, I do occasionally have to end someone's life, though not nearly as often as your new friend here. He has far more blood on his hands than any of us."

Kairos grunted. "I've been around a hell of a lot longer."

"True, but your boss isn't terribly subtle, is he?"

The waiter returned with a bill and a bulging brown paper bag. Nshange smiled. "I couldn't help myself, I ordered for you. Try them, they'll be fantastic."

Erin had to ask. "You really can tell the future? Like, everything?"

"Being able to see things and remember them extremely well is a better way of putting it," Nshange replied. "I know just about all you'd ever want to know regarding the past and the present of this little planet. As for the future? No. I can't see the future. Maybe I shouldn't tell you this, but I want to. The future ... it's constantly changing, so who can say with certainty? My boss may be able to, but all I have is an extremely educated guess. It gets fuzzy the further out you go. Short-term, though, I'm as close as you can get."

Erin frowned. "I don't get it."

"Here's a quote for you, then. Perhaps it will help. Are you familiar with John Henrik Clarke?"

Erin shook her head and glanced at Kairos. He raised his palms in surrender.

"Shame," Nshange said, "he was an interesting guy. American, though I don't hold that against him. He said something that encapsulates pretty well what I do: 'The events which transpired five thousand years ago, five years ago or five minutes ago will determine what will happen five minutes from now, five years or five thousand years from now. All history is a current event.'

She tapped the side of her nose with a finger. "You call it seeing the future, I call it looking at the world more clearly."

Erin opened her mouth to say more, but Kairos beat her to it. "Even when you're being straightforward, you don't make any sense. Why do I talk to you, lady?" he said.

Nshange ignored the jab and stood, stretching. "Now, should you pay or should I?"

Kairos grunted in what might have been a grudging laugh. "How about her?" he muttered with a finger jabbed in Erin's direction.

Nshange laughed again, a spilling tinkle of sound. She splashed some bills onto the table without care. "You really are a shit of a human being, Kairos. That's a compliment."

She took a step toward the door, then paused and bent down to retrieve a dime that had been left there. Nshange held it up for them to see. "Hey, look, a dime," she said. "I always enjoy American money. E Pluribus Unum, right?"

Nshange flicked the coin to Erin. "What do we do with a coin when we need to make a decision? We flip it, right? We flip it."

She leaned forward. "That's what you do, see?" Erin hadn't the first idea what was happening.

With one more smile, the immortal Nshange left the restaurant. Erin thought she must be on her way to open minds and deliver cryptic pronouncements; she discovered later that in actuality, Nshange was meeting a male prostitute twenty minutes up the road. There was plenty of time for other, more fitting activities later on.

It was also much later that Erin learned of the dark truth to being the world's greatest fortuneteller. One small corner of Nshange's head kept up a regular countdown. 1858.125 hours till her most probable death. Five years, one month, two days, three hours, seven minutes. Every time Nshange's conscious mind heard that ticking, a little stab of panic at the drawing of time stopped her. The blade plunging into her flesh, and then the brilliant flash of light as she reached out ... but this was part of the job she took. The immortal Nshange had known for years that she wouldn't live a long life.

At the time and for their part, Erin and Kairos were left with a marbletop table, two avocado wraps, and a foreign tea digesting between them.

Kairos paused in the street, eyes darting. A motorcycle swerved by and a string of curses dopplered down the road. "Well we're getting a right tour now, aren't we?" he muttered.

Erin waited on the curb. Kairos would either join her momentarily or do something impossible. Maybe both. Nearby, Asshole the buzzard landed. It squawked and eyed a little girl in what was surely an unhealthy manner.

Kairos swung around to stare at her. His eyes were a bit more focused than she would have liked - it was unnerving. "What did you notice in there?" he demanded.

"Um ... other than the cute lady who knew everything? I'm not sure - they have some terrible tea, though."

Kairos was at her side instantly, and in a manner she didn't like. There was something old and evil in his eyes. "No jokes right now. This is important. Tell me what you saw, and what you think. And don't dare lie."

"I ..." what was this? Why was he acting this way? Erin's fear gave way to anger. "Hold on, Kairos! I'm going to lie to you? What happened to you in there? I saw what you saw. I'm in your corner, remember?"

"Tell me, now!"

Her heart flickered. "It was - god, stop this! It was you and her, and you were talking about things that obviously made sense to you but had no fucking meaning for me! That good enough? Oh, yeah, and I drank some Alice in Wonderland crap that will probably change me irrevocably, but what the hell, I'm in this all the way, right?"

Kairos breathed in once, twice, hard. "Ok. Ok." And he was gone. For a moment she thought she saw him running, a brief freeze-frame in time. A plastic grocery bag and a discarded plastic water bottle stirred up, pointing in the direction he had gone, but Erin wasn't sure that she cared. Let him freak out over a problem that had nothing to do with her. She trudged back to the room they had rented with steps that seemed to take too damn long. When she arrived, Kairos was asleep and breathing deeply. The television wasn't on.

The breakfast waiting for her in the morning might have been a peace offering, or it might simply have been him making himself useful. Erin didn't much care. She was getting a bit sick of his nonsense. If she didn't get an apology, she decided as she dried off after her shower and dressed, then he could go on his own damn way and she'd be back to South Carolina. She didn't want to go, but she damn sure wasn't going to hang around someone if they flipped out over nothing.

Kairos could have been taking lessons from Nshange, though. He sat down on the bed across from her as she pulled on her socks. "I need to tell you something," he said. "About yesterday."

"What, that you were an ass? Cause I worked that one out by myself, thanks."

He took a breath. "Ok. You're upset. And you should be," he added quickly when he caught the look on her face, "but what I want to explain to you is why I snapped. You deserve to know that."

Erin waited. She bit into a slice of pear. It was delicious, but she didn't let that show.

"I might have mentioned something about this before, but it wasn't actually me that was upset yesterday. I wasn't fully in control."

"What?" She'd heard the whole 'devil made me do it' excuse plenty of times, including once when the guy truly believed it, and she sincerely hoped that wasn't where Kairos was headed. She could think of several less-than-flattering things to say about him, but she didn't think he was an utter jackass.

"See, when I have a name to take care of, there's something else that takes hold of me. David calls it the Rage, and that's exactly what it is. The feeling ... it's like every instant of hatred, anger you've ever felt, all slammed into one moment and stacked together.

"I worked with a good fellow by the name of Selim a long time ago. David has his job now. He came up with an idea about it, and I tend to think he was right. See, what he thought was, when we're actually performing our jobs, we're also feeling what our bosses feel. He called it the touch of Allah, but then he was one of only a few of us to still keep hold of a faith somehow. Either way, same idea. It's too big for human emotion."

Erin crossed her legs under her and her arms in front of her. This wasn't quite what she'd expected to hear, and her anger was starting to melt in spite of herself. "That doesn't sound like fun," she said.

"I've gotten used to it over the years, mostly. The many, many years. When I'm on a job, I'm ready for it. It can still come on unexpectedly, though, and that's what happened yesterday."

"Why? Why did it ... come on you? We were just having a lunch."

"I think my boss heard something he didn't like."

Erin shivered. "Wait. What? Your boss - can he see you, like all the time? Does he watch you, listen to you?"

Kairos rubbed his face tiredly, with a hand too young for such a gesture. "He must. I get new assignments in my head, no matter where I am. Remember the one time I disobeyed? He certainly knew then. And I always get a little mental twinge when it's time to come back home. He knows. He always knows."

"Is he watching now, listening now?"

Kairos looked at her. "All the time."

Erin was split between wanting to hug him and wanting to get the hell out of there. Indecision won: they stared across the carpet at one another. Kairos cleared his throat. "So. I'm sorry. I was not a professional yesterday. I wasn't ready for it, I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

"It's ... I didn't know. Thank you."

"Just the same. Won't happen again."

"I think, um, I think a person shouldn't have to feel a thing like that. I think it isn't fair."

Kairos let out a sound that might have been a sigh or a laugh. "Part of the job, right?" he said.

On impulse, Erin stood and crossed to the other bed, sitting next to Kairos. They both looked ahead at the beige wall, sharing an awkward silence. Erin put one arm around Kairos and gave him a short hug. After a second's pause, he reciprocated.

It wasn't much, but it helped.

Kairos broke the moment first. He stood and looked down at Erin. "Ok," he said, "Are we good then?"

She nodded. "We're good." Why did her voice have to come out so scratchy?

"Then let's go save some poor bastard's life."

Erin let Kairos drive, and the morning air did him good. It was a clear, bright, warm start to the day, the sort where Erin couldn't comprehend being uncomfortable. His mood lightened by the minute. At one point, she caught him whistling.

Erin didn't want to spoil anything, but as he drove he looked so relaxed, more relaxed really than she remembered seeing him. She should have let him drive more. In any event, she might never get a better chance than now to ask the question that had been on her mind for days. "Kairos," she said, "how did you ... become this? Get your job, I mean?"

He took a minute to answer. "You want a story, huh?"

She curled her legs up as best she could with the seatbelt. "If you don't mind, that is."

"No, it's ok, I guess. Not my favorite story, but I have no problem recalling it. I killed someone, that's how."

They passed a farm in silence. Whatever had been growing there had already been harvested. Eventually he spoke again.

"We had a farm, my family did, and after my parents died it was just me and my sister. It wasn't too bad - we had a good spot for barley and a few other things, and we had lots of time on our hands. You moderns have everything easier except time.

"Unfortunately, I did with leisure time what most young men do: I got myself in trouble. I met a ... a someone. She was, um, strong, and, ah. Very pretty.

"We ran off in secret because her parents thought I was an ass - they were right. After a few months she told me she was going to have a child, and wasn't that amazing?"

He fiddled uselessly with the air conditioning. "It was the pregnancy that killed her. See, I told you I did it - in a way. Having a baby then, we didn't have great medical care, and you were either built for it or you weren't ... I knew from the start that she wasn't. Didn't matter. It was an equal mix of dread and hope, just getting through those months. As it turned out, dread won. She - what do you want me to say? She died.

"And I went kind of crazy, for a while. Took to all sorts of things that these days would be labeled self-destructive behavior. And one of those - ah, hell. I heard a rumor about an old man, right? Showed up every four years on a hillside, taking on all comers. Supposed to be blessed by the gods. I was an idiot. Dying that way sounded noble or some shit. So I traded away most of what I had for a cheap sword, and I left home to get myself killed. Wish I had."

Kairos leaned the seat back and peered out at the Rockies. "Anyways, I found him. Scraggly little guy, gnarled and dirty as hell. Only clean thing about him were his weapons. He was waiting on a hill at this old temple, and he came right after me as soon as I crossed a ring of small stones around the building. It was some kind of threshold. I didn't know it at the time, but he had the Rage on him."

He reached down and lifted one of the Keryx blades. "These little knives almost took my head off before I knew what was happening. I jumped backwards and ran. Lucky for me there were lots of places to hide in those days."

"What do you mean?" Erin said.

"It was a curious little temple back then. Had a main building right up on top of the hill, but also a couple of stone labyrinths curling around the sides. Nothing difficult really, but unusual at the time, with walls maybe four feet tall. It's all crumbled to nothing now, of course, though somehow I haven't. Maybe I should have taken care of it. Never had the heart to care.

"Anyways, he came at me, and I just threw myself back into one of the mazes, trying to get behind a wall. Bastard still caught me in the back of the leg. I've been on the wrong end of the Keryx blades many times over the years, but that was the worst. The pain. He opened my leg right up. And I was sure that I was a dead man.

"So was he, actually. I limped away as fast as I could, whimpering and crying, while he was laughing his supernatural ass off. The old man probably could have finished me without a problem, but I think he wanted to have some fun with me. I must have looked like such a jackass, young idiot strutting up there only to crawl away sobbing."

"You won, though."

"Yeah, I did. Obviously, right? I realized I didn't have a chance in hell of taking him in a fair fight, and I was losing blood fast. I did the only thing I could think of. I hid around a corner and waited for him to get close.

"That part wasn't hard," Kairos said with a grin, "he was taunting me and laughing as he came. I knew exactly where he was. So I tried to time it. With my sword out, I leapt up and tried to - ah - leapfrog the corner, I guess."

Kairos must have seen the excitement in Erin's eyes, for he held out a palm and shook his head. "It wasn't graceful or pretty. Or exciting. And I've seen a lot of movies, and I promise you it wasn't in slow-motion either. My body basically flopped over the corner and onto him. I was damn lucky that I was a tall guy for that time, or else I would have missed him completely. As it was, he was able to bring one of his blades up to slide right into my chest. My own sword happened to catch him in the neck.

"We both hit the ground, and then it was all a question of who would die first. As it turns out, he did."

Kairos yawned, eyes on the road. "And that's how I got my job."

"As you lay dying?"

"Yeah. Funny, huh? The two of us there, gasping for breath on the ground. Soon as the old man of the mountain gave up the ghost, everything felt fine. Sure the metal in my chest was uncomfortable, but I just climbed off the dead guy and pulled it out. No mess, no problem.

"There's a spring near the top of the hill - forms the headwaters of quite a pretty river, in fact, the Pineios \- and when I washed my wounds in it I discovered I didn't have them anymore. So I picked up the Keryx blades and I got to work."

"And you just - knew what to do?"

"Nah, there was this great big booming voice in the sky there to tell me."

Erin wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic. "You're telling me you heard the voice of God?"

"No. Well I thought so at the time, but I know better now. It was a voice, though, that's for damn sure. Came out of nowhere after I took up these weapons. I was having my first meeting with the boss, so to speak. Let me tell you, you can't ignore an earthshaking voice coming out of the clouds. I've never been much for worship, not even before I took this job, but I was on my knees then. Only time I've ever heard him. Had I known better, I'd have told the bastard to suck on it and let him kill me then. Instead I pissed my pants as he told me I was now the "chosen agency" for his will. Then he ran down the deal: I do what he demands, perform a little ritual every four years, and I get the eternal life, godlike abilities, all that.

"He didn't really put it as a choice, but then I guess I'd made my decision clear when I stepped past the ring of stones to confront the old man. That's the way it is with us, being stupid or unlucky enough to stumble into this. Until, one day, someone else comes along to give us a beautiful retirement gift. Well, all except me, apparently. Two thousand years, I may never get to put these knives down."

A minute passed, then two. Erin made notes as best as she could. She wished she'd had a tape recorder. Another thought struck her.

"You said it was a him? That spoke to you?"

"That's how I remember it. Of course, you have to keep in mind how loud it was. When I say booming voice, it was literally that. I thought I'd see trees uprooted, the building crumbling, just from the force. I'm wondering now if the sound was only in my head, but I didn't have time for thought then."

He looked around. "The world is a lot louder these days, but I've only heard a few things that can top out that sound. At that volume, it could have been a damned toddler and it would be authoritative. Who knows if it was a him or a her or a what. Never heard it since. Even with things being a lot louder now, and a lot faster. Used to take me a hell of a lot longer to finish off jobs. I can run and run, but it starts to drag on me after a bit. Used to be I could take a month, two, six to kill somebody. Now that I can get most anywhere in two or three days? I'm lucky to have a week off. Here we go, Fort Collins. Now let's see if I can track this guy down, huh? Congratulations, Mr. Arthur Robbins, your personal fucking savior is making a house call."

Kairos pulled into a long, winding driveway. Thirty seconds later, they found him. A compact cottage nestled up against the trees, with a tiny curl of smoke drifting out in the afternoon air. A prefab shed nearby spoiled the image somewhat, but the whole place screamed money well-hidden.

A red-faced portly man of middle years was busy unloading cloth sacks of groceries from a light blue hatchback. He started visibly when he spotted them, but quickly recovered, one hand reaching for his belt.

Kairos used his usual empty tone to address him. Erin thought of it as his work voice. "You're Arthur Robbins?"

"Who wants to know?" His eyes lingered on Erin.

Kairos turned his back on the man, contempt plain on his face. "This is why I hate jobs in America," he growled softly to Erin, "everyone thinks they're such a hardass."

He turned back.

"Ok, so that's you. I'm having a shitty run of things right now so I'll make this simple for you. Someone's going to try to kill you today."

Mr. Robbins laughed. Kairos stared at him, waiting. The laugh bounced around the clearing once, then died. An awkward silence took its place. Robbins shifted his feet.

Somewhere, a buzzard croaked.

"Um... are you a cop or something?"

"No. Person coming for you, you don't want cops. They wouldn't do any good."

Mr. Robbins' laugh was much more nervous this time. Kairos pushed on mercilessly.

"If I hadn't shown up right now, you would have already bled out."

Erin piped up. "Do you know who it is, then?"

"No, but all of us tend to end up with lots of blood in the air."

Arthur Robbins sat down heavily.

"Look, I'm going to protect you. I'm going to stop them - I'm very good at this."

Erin watched in fascination. She wasn't sure if Kairos was using mind tricks or if it was his utter competence, but she could see acceptance working its way visually onto Robbins' face. Maybe it was a natural process affecting him in the same manner as it would a zebra brought down by a lion.

"What - what do I have to do?"

Whatever force was at work, Arthur Robbins was now ready to place his life into the hands of a complete stranger.

Over the next ten minutes, the three of them cleared everything out of Robbins' shed. There were lots of new tools in there, and several cardboard boxes that Erin wasn't allowed to look in. She had no real desire to, anyway. Her nerves were jangling lightly.

Kairos had him lay down on the rough wood floor. "Good. Now stay there. This should all be over in about half an hour or so."

There had to be some mystical aspect to this, Erin decided as they locked Arthur Robbins into his own shed. Either that or the man was mentally unstable to begin with. Well, he had said he was a writer.

Kairos surveyed the clearing as Erin snapped the lock into place. "You know, it might be best if you join him in there."

The idea of a half hour in the dark with Arthur Robbins did not appeal to Erin. It brought up high school memories she would just as soon lie dormant. "Are you telling me that I'm not safe with you?" she asked with a smile.

In answer, an echoing crack split the air, and something sunk dully into a tree a few feet off. Kairos' head swung around like a dog.

"Gun."

She heard him growl the word out, but he was already gone. Ripples of fallen leaves tracked a line to the southwest. That must have been where the shot had come from, though how Kairos had known so quickly was beyond her. She imagined that came with experience -

"Anything happen while I was gone?" Kairos drew up from nowhere, knives out and bloody.

"I, uh - no. Should it have? You were only away for a -"

"Be right back."

And he was gone again. In the violence of his passing, blood flicked off the blades and misted over her.

"Thanks."

There went those damn leaves again, marking his path. Erin watched them settle, wondered if she really should join the writer cowering in the shed. Erin dug through his groceries and found bottled water. Perfect. She rinsed the blood off her face and arms as best as she could.

Every few moments the man in the shed called out, a muffled "what's going on?" or "you sure you're not CIA?"

The quiet noise of the woods settled softly over her. A nuthatch called out. Something out of sight snuffled around in the trees. Except for the thought of Kairos out there somewhere killing people, it was almost peaceful.

Erin should have known better. She did, really, but she let nature lull her. It always does.

With a terrible screech, something fat and low and brown ripped out of the underbrush.

Erin yelped as it tore past her, a glint off dull claws catching her eyes. She turned to stare in horror as it slammed head-first into the shed, shaking the whole structure and flopping to the ground.

"The hell?" She could see it clearly now, a bull raccoon with flecks of spit and blood dripping from its mouth.

It stood again and backed up. The impact had obviously injured the creature - it was favoring its left side heavily. Still it flung itself back at the door.

Erin didn't bother to consider her actions. Spotting a thick downed branch, she hoisted it onto her shoulders and approached the crazed raccoon. Bloody cracks and gouges stood out on the door of the shed - a low whimpering from inside could be heard in the few instants of silence. A slick of red coated the ground under the creature's head. It paid no attention to her whatsoever.

Erin shook at the force of her branch impacting the raccoon's skull. That first swing downed the animal. On the fourth, the branch broke. She stared hard at its unmoving form while little sounds from the other side of the door reminded her of a small helpless animal. She supposed that he was, at that.

"It's ok," she panted. When had she lost her breath? "It's dead now."

"What the hell just happened?" came the shaky response.

Erin considered telling Arthur that both a sniper and a crazed woodland animal had tried to kill him. Somehow the words couldn't reach her lips. She leaned against the shed, wondering how many of these conversations Kairos had had, and how he would respond.

"Not to worry. Everything is still under control."

A gust of wind against her back told Erin that Kairos had returned. "Someone out there can act fast," he muttered, "cause there's about - what the fuck is this?"

Erin didn't know why she turned around. She knew what she'd find - yep, there was Kairos, looking like Death in the Afternoon, staring down at the bloody pulp of an innocent raccoon. Of course she had gotten bored and decided to bash in the heads of Bambi's friends.

"It, uh..." her face felt very hot suddenly, "it kind of came out of nowhere and attacked... the door..."

Kairos nodded as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "Yeah that'll happen."

He quietly wiped his blades off on the raccoon's back. Erin hastily reminded herself of why she had agreed to come along with him in the first place.

"We all have ways of influencing other people, sometimes other animals. I can only do people, and even then just for a short time. A couple of us are better - hell, with David it's all he does - but we've all used intermediaries in the past. It could be anyone, really, though I suspect it isn't Yves. Not his style."

"No?"

"No. He'd have been in here already, throwing trees around. And he certainly wouldn't have rounded up the army of about fifteen to twenty well-armed townies that I've been taking care of out there."

Erin scanned the trees apprehensively, but Kairos seemed unconcerned. "If I had to make a guess - I'd say David. This feels like him. Could be Christina, I suppose, but she would have had to spend a long time putting this together. David can make friends in a hurry."

"So what happens?"

Kairos slipped his knives back under his coat and fell to his haunches. All with maddening calm - this was just another Friday to him. He ticked fingers off one hand.

"Well. We've seen potshots, sideshows, and a show of force that's either unnecessary if I'm not here or useless if I am. I'd guess now that we get the main attraction." He grinned. "Good luck for you, eh? You get to meet another one of Us."

The prospect, while not thrilling for Erin, held appeal in the back corner of her mind. She had to admit to herself that being around people of such raw, uncaring power was - well, it was interesting, was what it was. "And when they show up? I don't suppose you'll talk it out like adults?"

Kairos grinned. "Depends on who it is. There's always a strategy, though."

So they waited.

It was actually a pleasant day, in those moments that Erin could forget the dead raccoon and the feel of blood on her face and the immortal assassin coming to kill the man locked in a shed behind her. There weren't many moments like that, but when they came, it was a nice day.

"Not too bad out today."

"No. For Colorado. It's not home but it'll do."

"Hey - Kairos?"

"Yeah."

"What kind of place did you grow up in?"

Kairos scratched himself and laughed quietly. "It was like nothing you'd recognize. I love how you can remind me of that. Except for the people: the people were just the same. But the way we lived, it was ... well, I'll try to give you an idea of it later. Our guy is here."

And he nodded casually.

"That's me." A tall, slim dark man in a sharp gray suit stepped into the clearing. He was oddly clean and unwrinkled for having trekked through the woods. His face was movie-star beautiful, nearly impossible to look away from. Erin was surprised to find herself liking him immediately, and warmth crept all over her body. Maybe like wasn't a strong enough word. He rattled off a phrase in Greek, then turned to her. "Good afternoon, miss."

Beside her, Kairos nodded and stood. "Hi, David," he said, turning to the shed. "You can come out now, Mr. Robbins."

Even after Kairos had swung open the doors, Arthur hung back: flinching at the light, at them, at the raccoon corpse. He glanced fearfully at all of them, Kairos most of all. Erin agreed - Kairos was certainly the most dangerous person here.

"Get out here, Mr. Robbins. I want to be able to see you at all times."

He came to the lip of the shed but stopped there. "It's over then, is it?"

David smiled warmly. He must have regretted being forced to participate in such a barbaric activity. "It may as well be, sir. You are very fortunate in who is protecting you - the man you're with is perhaps the best in the world."

Erin felt her esteem for the other man rise. Even in the face of his defeat, he remained gracious, charming even. Why Kairos had to be so rude and rough all the time she couldn't understand. She'd thought it was the demands of the job that had made him so graceless, but that was clearly not the case. David lived with it perfectly well. With elegance, even. But Kairos \- Erin would have imagined that thousands of years of life could teach anyone some manners. Apparently not.

Then Kairos went and proved her point. With his usual toneless empty voice that obviously reflected his soul, he demanded to know "just what the hell you think you're doing, David."

"Oh, my old friend. Not that I begrudge you the distraction, but Όλοι κάνουν λάθη, eh?"

David's smile deepened. Kairos whipped out his knives, but Arthur was already pulling a handgun out from his pants. He had a handgun? When had he done that?

Twin shining arcs of metal flashed. Erin thought she could see the Keryx blades, for a moment, like catching a hitch in a movie projector. Before she could even register this, though, they connected around the gun. With a light drumming, the fingers from Arthur Robbins' right hand hit the leafy ground. The gun bounced once before Kairos punted it off into the brush.

"English while you're in this country!" Kairos snarled. "Your Greek is terrible. It hurts my ears."

There was a small, quiet moment, which lasted until Arthur began screaming.

"That would be the shock and the pain," David said kindly. "Please, let me -"

"You're doing nothing. Don't presume to be able to affect me." Kairos kept himself between the two, one hand waving a blade at David as if shooing a fly. His other hand reversed grip and swung out again with the pommel. Arthur dropped bonelessly, his scream fading into nothingness. Erin heard a small squeal and suspected it came from her. A moment later, she discovered she was shouting.

"You were supposed to protect him, not kill him!"

Kairos straddled the fallen man, making deft cuts with his blade. In moments, Robbins' ample belly was exposed and Kairos held strips of cloth cut from the man's shirt. "He's still alive. I just stunned him. That keeps things simpler, and he won't thrash as I bind his hand. Should have done it before."

Rage blossomed behind Erin's eyes. That could just as easily have been her on the ground! "Do you care anything at all for anyone, Kairos? Are we all just jobs to you? Do you still have a spare scrap of humanity left in you?"

Kairos' eyes narrowed, and he swung back around to face David. "Let her go," he said, and there was nothing toneless about him now.

David smiled innocently. Really he was so beautiful, so perfect. "Kairos, you know I would never dream -"

He was cut off as one of the Keryx blades slammed into his shoulder joint. It drove through David with a dull thunk, lifting him off his feet. David caught himself, barely, from falling in a heap. "Fucksticks!" he cried out.

At that moment, a curtain that Erin had not even realized was there lifted. It was as if a slow blurring had instantly been corrected. She'd felt a similar confusion on meeting Kairos, but nowhere to that degree. She'd been ... she'd fallen in love with him in seconds! And where had her thoughts been leading? Everything had made sense - kind of - as it happened, but had she begun to consider violence against what now had to be her only friend within a thousand miles? She looked warily at David.

He didn't seem so tall now, or clean. He was still an agreeable sort, with lightly rumpled hair and a smile even while struggling to pull a large knife from his chest. "Do you concede?" Kairos asked.

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "My concentration's gone to hell now. I concede."

"Good. Here, let me help you with that."

Kairos walked to David, all animosity gone, and the two worked to navigate the Keryx blade out from between his ribs. Erin caught Kairos' eyes, who nodded, saying "It's over now."

She approached the other man. She wished she had her notebook or a camera on her - he wasn't bleeding in the least.

Soon enough, she was face to face with him. "You did something to me."

He grunted as the blade scraped bone. "Yes, and I apologize. But we all have our gifts, and we have to use them in the best way that we know."

Erin shook her head. "I don't like you doing that to me."

David laughed quietly and met her eyes. "And you are?"

"Erin Dawes."

"Ok, Erin. If it helps, you resisted very well. I think I know why Kairos likes you. There's quite a will you have in there, if you ever decide to use it. Most people would have been fighting him to the death with as much as I put on you."

Kairos had retrieved his weapon by now, and slipped it back in the sheath under his coat. "How've you been lately, David?"

David swung his arm around as if testing to make sure everything still worked. "Not too bad at all, lately. I had a great stretch in Mexico. Four months with no assignments whatsoever. I could follow my own interests."

"You mean racking up wives? How many is it now, nine hundred?"

David blushed winningly and glanced at Erin. "He's exaggerating."

Kairos barked a laugh and slapped David in the back like they were on the same baseball team. Erin kept thinking she was ready for anything, but this was weird. A minute before they'd been ready to kill one another. Hell, Kairos had skewered the man! Now they were frat brothers?

"I'm just messing with him. David here," Kairos said, "is actually one hell of a photographer. I know because Alessandra and Nshange keep telling me. I don't have an eye for it myself. I'm an ancient Greek: if it's not on an urn, it isn't art to me. Right, David?"

"It's just a hobby," he said, grinning. "What about you? Just the normal?"

"Eh, this and that. I met up with some vampires."

"Assholes," Kairos continued just as David said "dicks."

Kairos laughed. "Yeah, well. Saw Nshange just yesterday."

David brushed back his hair. "Ah, that had to be fun."

"You know her."

"I do. Listen, I ought to get going. You might be flush with victory, but I screwed my first job since April. Stings a bit, you know?" He turned to Erin. "It was such a pleasure meeting you. For someone like you, I have to give a gift."

He reached inside his suit coat and retrieved a few photos. "Good thing you didn't pierce these, Kairos, I would have been upset," he said as he rifled through them.

David reached one he must have liked, for he studied it a few seconds before handing it to Erin. "For you to remember me by," he said.

It was a photo of the outside of a house, square and unadorned. The walls were constructed with tan bricks, and on the dirt in the lower left, a girl no older than five crouched over two Barbie dolls, one in each hand. "Where is it?" Erin asked.

"That's Cairo. My home," David replied. "The girl is Zahra, my great-great-and several more greats- niece. My connection to the world that still lives and grows. She's nineteen now; you remind me of her. I hope you keep it."

Erin's throat caught, a little. "Thank you," she said. "I will."

"Then I can leave happy, even if I lost today."

Erin looked up at him. "You're not ... you're not using any powers on me now, are you?"

David shook his head, and Kairos chuckled. "Good," she said.

With a last smile back at Erin, David ambled back down the drive. Arthur was beginning to stir and moan, and Kairos motioned that it was time to leave. They walked in silence until reaching the car. Behind them, a wail of pain and disbelief began. "So," Kairos said, "that's my job."

Erin reached out and touched his arm. "Do you like doing this?"

He grinned. "What's not to like? My life has been a two-thousand-year-long slaughter. Hooray, right?" He looked away. "Hey, at least now there's TV."

Erin wanted to say more, but Kairos was walking again.

Notes - Group Three:

Overall group notes: Very tight clustering in western United States. Almost uniform northwest movement. Christina solidified and affirmed as target, Alessandra now driver. See Kairos entry for possible P.O.P. (nonstandard). Conflict opportunities rising due to geographical constraints.

Individual notes:

Kairos: Preserve message delivered imperfectly to Arthur Robbins. Speed totals ranged from 70-95%. Higher number in one burst. Companion Erin Dawes aided in delivering message, and showed high resistance to influence. May not be the first time. Further inquiry necessary to determine if she is a previously ignored or undiagnosed Person of Power.

Christina: Spent day reading at coffeeshop in Marysville, WA. No apparent messages to be delivered. Possibly reached terminus for North American push. Some Pacific tendencies detected. Bears close watching as she is clearly leader for current group.

David: Dispatch message to Arthur Robbins failed. Attempted four-pronged assault. Good preparation, but intervention of Erin Dawes prevented execution. After job, talked himself into a ride to Denver, CO. Received six offers of marriage, accepted them all but did not go through with any wedding ceremonies. Current count remains unchanged.

Alessandra: Listless throughout much of the day. Unfocused. Attended two movies, walked out of both of them. Likely affected by Agency. At end of day, attempted to get high with group of 18-year-old humans. Unsuccessful.

Nshange: Took a long bath this morning. Completed two crosswords, then soaked. Sublime. In the afternoon, traveled to Park City, UT, and made contact with John Henderson, human. Probable motivation: Prime Movement (did not report). Talked with him three hours. He was crying for much of it. Within conference distance of Alessandra, but no contact made. Intentional? Must keep an eye on this.

Yves: Took a train out of Sioux Falls, SD, to Cheyenne, WY. Preserve message acquired. Provided Elias Harrison with money to return home. Recruitment possibly failed, or Harrison returning with an offer. Further examination required. Harrison to be diagnosed as well, re: Person of Power likelihood.

Ichiro: Spent most of day visible. Took a tour of several churches within Reno, NV. Probable motivation: nostalgia. Received new target, and took an airplane to Casper, WY.

Recommendations: Continued monitoring. No further action required at this time.

* * * * *

Chapter Five:

"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart" \- Marcus Aurelius

It looked like getting drinks was an after-work ritual with Kairos. Erin had wanted to go through her journal entries, but that had meant letting him drive and so they ended up outside a bar. The trip back into town had been a distracted one for her. Quite outside the raccoon and David and the fingers, something Kairos had told her was nagging at her. She couldn't put her finger on it, but it felt like a hairline crack somewhere in his story. Where was it?

Erin paused on the step with the bar's door still open and in her hand, shaking her head in an effort to dislodge the thought. She peered after him. Actually, all other questions aside, it seemed that getting drunk was less a ritual and more like his only hobby. Was this what every evening had looked like for twenty centuries, of was it merely an attempt to entertain her? She resolved to add it to her list of questions. Her notebook was filling up fast.

As she stepped inside, though, the dim and the noise engulfed her. Memories of smoke and college reared up, an even mixture of danger, sweat and exploration. Kairos set them up in a side booth with fries and craft brews. During one of their long drives, Erin had asked him about eating. What he'd told her was it wasn't really necessary for him, but it was a lot of fun.

"So," he said when they'd settled in, "Did you like David?"

Erin paused, but then Kairos chuckled. "It's ok. I'm not insecure. Of course you did, everyone does. That's his thing. I don't know who his employer is, but they must have some mojo."

"Mojo?"

"What, isn't that the sort of word you moderns use? I'm not allowed? Think he liked you, too. Not usually quite so gracious after getting his ass handed to him. Must not have wanted to look bad in front of a beautiful woman."

The bar's sound system had to have been creating audio distortions. "Kairos, did you just compliment me?"

He snatched another beer off the tray of a passing server. His first was still mostly full. A long drink, his eyes never leaving hers. "I'm not allowed to?"

Something uncertain stirred within her. She laughed quickly, brushing nonexistent hair back from her forehead. "You just need to warn me before dropping a bomb like that. I could have had a heart attack."

"I'm sorry," he said, casual, "but I didn't think that was a compliment. Anyone can see you're beautiful. There are millions of beautiful women out there, though."

"I think I should say thanks, but I really don't want to."

"Look, I have a bit of a different perspective on this, kid. I've been alive for a long fucking time, right? A word like beauty is really only a description of taste. That's a function of time and society, and so changeable and useless."

"Wow. You really know how to make a girl feel good about herself, don't you?"

"Oh, relax. You'd be beautiful most of the time and in most places. That good enough?"

Erin pointedly sipped her beer. "I guess I should trust you."

"What does that mean?"

"You said it yourself! Two thousand years is a long time, with plenty of opportunities. Throw in the mysterious stranger and world traveler vibes? You had to have had your way with some of the great beauties of the ages, right?"

Kairos sighed. "Look, it's not as simple as all that, ok? Attraction can be malleable, and standards change. I'm not immune to them. It's surprising how much your own perceptions can change with the times. I don't expect you to understand. How about this. There was a time six, maybe seven centuries back. I'm traveling through Japan at the time, trying to hustle through my jobs so I can get back to Greece, and I run into a woman ... damn. I'll remember her for another thousand years, at least. Kinu.

"I spent a year with Kinu. Ah. She was made from fire. I thought briefly that she might actually become one of us. Marcus - he's had two replacements after him, his job's held now by Alessandra - Marcus met her and was trying to get her to come back to Spain with him. Glad she didn't. No one deserves it."

At the next table over, a skinny, studiously scruffy college kid was talking loudly about the creative value of selfishness. In the pause while Kairos took a long pull on his beer, Erin caught three pop culture references. She hoped she had never looked like the girl sitting rapt across the table from the self-proclaimed artist.

Kairos put down his beer. "But that woman had teeth as black as my coat here."

Erin choked. "What?"

Kairos nodded, leaned back further, obviously pleased with himself. "It was the style, you know? And after a short time, I understood it. Appreciated it. See? Everything changes."

With a screech, the back legs slipped out from under Kairos. He went down in a spray of beer and epithets.

Erin sniggered. "Behold the immortal destroyer of men! Good God, Kairos, I thought that after the first couple hundred years you might have learned not to do that!"

Scattered applause broke out from the neighboring table. Kairos poked his head back up. "That's it, we're done here."

"Oh, but you haven't made a complete fool of yourself yet! We have to stay and finish the job."

He glared at the youths one table over and climbed back to his feet. They were as self-satisfied at his misfortune as Kairos had been right before his chair gave out. "I could make all these people forget what happened, you know."

"Oh, that's hardly sporting."

"I could make you forget, too."

"Are you trying to take advantage of me, Kairos? I don't think you could."

He barked a short laugh. "You help out on one job and now you're ready to take on the world, eh?"

"It's true," Erin continued. She was going to ignore that last comment. "You tried it on me once, and look how well that went. And now that I met David I've been tested against the master, right?"

Kairos narrowed his eyes from across the table. "How do you know I don't still have you under my thrall?"

"I seriously doubt I'd be giving you this much shit if I were."

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled, and took in the remains of his drink. He held up the empty glass and surveyed it mournfully. Something else was muttered, but all Erin caught were dissatisfied incomprehensibles.

She grabbed his hand from across the table It was rougher than she expected. "Come on, don't pout. You're still a superhero, right? We can go. We'll find the nicest hotel around and make them wait on you. Sound good?"

"You're mocking me, aren't you?"

Erin had to fight to keep a smile off her face.

"Well screw you, American lady. That's exactly what we're going to do."

"Only if I can laugh at you the whole time."

"Deal. Grab your jacket and let's get this over with. They'd better have good room service."

Erin tried to keep the joke going as they walked to the car, but their conversation in the bar simmered in her head. The hotel exercise had the feel of pretense, and she'd never associated that with Kairos. She didn't want to draw attention to it, though, and wondered which of them was more reluctant to say what was really on their minds. As a result, the drive to the hotel they settled on took place largely in silence and awkward glances.

They stood in the climate control as the desk clerk checked in a family. Outside the sun was still up, but the tinting of the windows gave the parking lot the appearance of preternatural twilight. Kairos grinned. "This is what I think of now when I hear 'America'. Clean hotels."

The key card worked without a hitch, and the bathroom was well-lit and scrubbed. Both of them admired it awkwardly, and made small exclamations over the coffee maker. Kairos did not turn on the television, which for some reason made Erin uncomfortable. Something had shifted. She cleared her throat.

"I have a question for you, Kairos."

He had dropped his coat on one of the beds, effectively claiming it. He stood in a black t-shirt and slacks. He pulled at the leather straps across his chest, pausing after he slipped an arm out from under one. "Shoot."

"Do you remember when we met?"

He smiled. "So long ago, right?"

"I wasn't finished, jerk. When we met, I shot you, like, a lot of times."

"Yeah, that kind of thing tends to stick with me. I never did thank you for that. I liked that coat."

"I guess ... does that sort of thing happen often? Because it seems like most of our jobs haven't involved much in the way of bystanders. They've been fairly easy."

Kairos laid the sheathes, blades and all, on a dresser next to her bed. "Easy, huh? I haven't seen you chop off any heads."

"You haven't given me a chance, have you?"

He chuckled, and turned to her. He was much closer than she expected. "You're right. It doesn't happen often."

"What was it? Were you not doing your job right, or, or -"

"Or was it something about you that made you notice?"

"Yeah."

"So what you're really asking is, are you different? From the rest of them out there?"

Erin nodded, not trusting her voice of a sudden. Kairos' eyes were all she could see. "You are," he said.

She was about to ask why, but his mouth was on hers. After the instant of confusion it took her to realize what was happening, Erin gave as good as she got. "About time," she murmured when they broke apart.

Kairos grinned and pulled her back.

They took their time with the clothes. Every button, every zipper and clasp was a game, and Erin thought at times that he was deliberately waiting till she couldn't stand to have fabric between their skin. Of course, she thought at one point, he has all the time in the world. Erin didn't. She pulled at his pants.

And there they were, both of them in the half-light of the evening, in danger of slipping off the bed. One of them had left the bathroom light on, and it lit up the right half of Kairos' body as he held her. She looked down at him, her fingers failing utterly to twine themselves into his buzzed hair. He ... sometime in the past two thousand years, he'd learned a few things. Erin pulled his head back up to hers. She wanted more, now. She shifted her hips, and Kairos let her take him in her hands. "Yes," she said.

Kairos pushed into her, slowly, and Erin gasped. She locked eyes with him, drew him closer. "Kairos," she whispered, "don't you dare use your magic speed now."

That brought him up short. He paused awkwardly on top of her, and Erin burst out laughing. As she wriggled beneath him, Kairos rolled off her. "That's how it's going to be, is it?" he said.

"Oh, come here. I won't make too many jokes, I promise." She leaned over and kissed his skin again and again, working her way down his chest. "Promise. Now come back."

He did, and they did, and the evening deepened around them.

After a time it was over, and the two were laying quietly next to each other once more. Erin felt Kairos shift against her once, twice, then relax into the bed. She slid her legs across his hairy skin down there, enjoying the friction, and wondered how long it would take for his smell to fade from her.

Erin lay easily, letting her body cool off. She stared at Kairos in the moonlight as he began snoring softly. At that moment, he looked like every other man she'd known. He looked smaller, and sadder somehow. She snuggled in close to him. "I'm going to help you," she whispered. "I'm going to help you."

Later she fell asleep and dreamed of the ocean. Kairos dreamed of a woman he had known from a thousand years before. Asshole the vulture didn't dream, it merely watched them from a tree outside the window and prepared its notes.

Erin woke the next morning and felt a momentary panic. Sex changed things: they'd made several of her old boyfriends clingy or distant. In one case, he'd disappeared completely after they'd finally gone through with it.

The worry lasted until she spotted Kairos, naked on the edge of the bed and watching cartoons. His light brown skin glowed in the anticipation of a new day. Erin shifted under the sheets, trying not to get too far from the warmth. She didn't want to say anything. Sunlight barred its way across the foot of the two mattresses. Erin buried one eye into the pillow and stared at him with the other, small lines crinkling as she smiled.

How did he know? He turned, a ghost of a smirk dancing over his lips, and his flat flat eyes flipped to her. Maybe Erin was just getting used to Kairos, or maybe something beyond the physical had changed in the night, but she knew to read more in his mouth now than his eyes. A surge of energy coursed through her, and Erin slipped from the comforter and pounced on his back, pulling him to the floor. Kairos yelled in protest about the show he'd been watching and called her crazy in at least two languages.

"It's all you get for not bringing me coffee," she pointed out when she reached an impasse. They had wrestled their way into a comfortable tangle back on the bed. Kairos freed a hand and pointed at the desk, where steam was drifting from the coffeemaker. "Oh!" Erin said brightly. She kissed him lightly, then again with more passion. "Well good morning, then!"

He laughed, "Morning," he said. "We have someone to kill today."

From anyone else, Erin would have found such a pronouncement in terrible taste if not downright creepy, but for Kairos it felt like a blessed return to normalcy. Erin bounded out of bed like an excited eight-year-old. Only with his grin did she realize she had no clothes on.

The day was warm and bright as they stood in the parking lot, and Erin looked over the assembled vehicles with a practiced air. Toyotas, Chevys, Nissans, Volvos - ah, god, why had she ever considered actually buying a car? "You know what?" she mused, "I kind of feel like a Honda today. I'm not sure why... but that's what I want. Kairos, I demand Honda for the trip to deliver God's terrible fury."

"Not today."

"What? You deny me Civic goodness? I want to speak to your manager!"

"We're walking. He's very close." Kairos pointed towards a gas station across the street. "In fact, I'd bet he's there."

The walk gave Erin a chance to vigorously defend her desire. They would be moving on anyways, and the man they were killing was in the middle of a freaking gas station anyways. Now they would have to walk over, end his life, walk back, steal some other car because the one she wanted would no doubt be gone by then, drive back over to fill the inevitably empty gas tank, and then be on their merry way in a vehicle that Kairos didn't care about and Erin didn't want. Didn't it make much more sense just to steal the right car now, kill whoever it was while the tank was filling, and then get on the road before McDonald's stopped serving breakfast?

He just kept walking. Logic had no impact on some people.

The gas station must have been a regional or even local chain, something Erin rarely saw. Except for the name, though, "Top O'The Shop" looked like every other depressing fuel pump in the world, somehow staying dirty on the clearest of days. As Kairos led the way around the inevitable convenience mart into the rear parking lot, she felt a slick of imagined oil coat her hands and knew that reason aside, she would have to wash before going near food.

There were three vehicles in the back lot. Erin suspected that the guy they had come for owned the middle one, largely because that was the only one with a fat black man drinking a beer on its hood.

"Isn't it a little early?" Erin murmured, before she could catch herself. He was about to die, after all. What could it hurt?

Next to her, Kairos had slipped into professional mode. "You John Henderson?" he asked quietly.

"Who wants to know?" the man roared expectedly, but then he burst out laughing. It was a rolling laugh that warmed Erin and then shamed her for feeling good. Soon he would have no head, after all.

"That's good enough for me," Kairos shrugged, but before he could move - somehow before he could move, John Henderson was speaking again.

"Aw, Kairos, I'm just messing with you!"

The Keryx blades were already halfway out of their sheathes, but Kairos let them slip back easily. "What?" he said softly.

The beer bottle slipped from thick fingers and smashed across the concrete. John favored them with a smile revealing bent white teeth. "You know, I like this. I was depressed for a long time. Wife left me, you know. My daughter - she's still my daughter, I'm the one who raised her, dammit - ah, she thinks it was my fault. Who knows, she may be right.

"Long time I thought about dying. What it would be like, how I would go. Sometimes I wanted it and sometimes I didn't. But you know what? I never, never figured I'd be chopped in two by an immortal assassin while a hot chick watched." He grinned and reached back to where a new beer waited.

For his part, Kairos looked utterly taken aback. His hands actually shook as they let go of the blades. "I don't ... who are you?" his voice sounded high. The morning suddenly wasn't as friendly as it had been.

John laughed again. "I thought you already knew that, Kairos! I'm John Henderson, of course. The next name on your list! Another day's work!"

Kairos shook his head as if trying to shake away a fly, or maybe doubts. "No, you're not! How do you know my name?"

John's thick finger scrubbed his neck and he gave Kairos a long, knowing look. He sighed, shaking his jowls. "I had to see it to believe it. How long you been at this, man? And still, all this time, and you just don't know much of anything, do you?"

A low growl rose in Kairos throat, more emotion filling it than anything Erin had ever heard coming out of him. With one possible exception.

Twenty feet away, John Henderson couldn't have heard it, but his hands came up anyways in some sort of protective gesture. "I'm just playing with you, Kairos. Who knew I'd get punchy when my time came, huh?"

"How do you know my name?"

John poured himself off his hood, new beer splashing around in his hand, and fixed Kairos with a look only drunk older men can convey. "I know all about you, Kairos. I know it all."

In a flash, Kairos was behind him, one blade out and pressed into his neck. Again, it flickered before Erin like a flip book, one image blinking to the next before he came to a halt. "You better tell me what the hell you're talking about before I do this," he said.

John kept smiling. "Your friend Nshange came to see me."

Kairos let the blade go slack. "Nshange? Nshange?" he repeated stupidly, then "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!!"

Kairos stomped around the parking lot like a kindergartner that didn't get cake. He flung one of the Keryx blades into the bushes, where it hit unimpressively with the flat end and dropped to the ground. The other blade he pulled out as if to throw it as well, but visibly gained control of himself and pointed it at Henderson. "Tell me," he said, "tell me what she told you."

John took a long, slow drink. "Aw, Kairos," he replied, "she told me everything."

Kairos barely breathed. "That bitch."

"You're telling me. I've barely had a day to take it all in, but you know what? It all makes sense! All of it. My life, yours, even Erin over there. Hey, girl - don't think you're out of this conversation!"

Erin blinked. "What?"

But John had turned back to Kairos. "She told me all of it, man. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for you, and I'm sorry for me, and I'm damn sorry for that girl over there. I know why you do this. I know what it's for. And yeah, I know why I'm next to go. I know - exactly - why. All of it. And you're going to kill me without learning these answers, you know. That was her price for telling me, and from what I understand now, there are worse things than dying, even after death. So you'll have to keep on killing without me. But before you do it, there's a question I need to ask you. Just for me."

Kairos didn't move, didn't respond. He was frozen, one hand half-raised, mouth open. Henderson leaned forward, genuine interest on his face.

"When did you stop asking why?"

A pause. Kairos looked down at the ground, nodded, and turned back to meet the doomed man's eyes. "About sixty years in," he said quietly, "I was used to this by then, but still. The why, right? But I did my job."

John held out the bottle, and Kairos took a long pull on it. "Then after I kill a young woman one day I'm watching the family pile in, all screaming and crying like everyone always does."

Erin wondered how much ripping grief was just a part of his everyday life. She had begun to get numb to the idea.

"In they came, aunts and sisters and grandmothers. Big family. Lots of those around. It was the oldest, a gnarled old grandmother that did it for me. I don't know how she had lived so long - maybe that was part of the joke, right? Must have been. See, I knew her face, I'd always know her face. It was Hebe."

"Hebe?" the word slipped out of Erin's mouth unknowingly, but Kairos just nodded.

"My sister."

Kairos stood with his head down and eyes closed. Erin stood feeling the morning chill around her. John swayed slightly, head bobbing. "You killed your own kin."

Kairos nodded.

"I guess that would do it. Answers a few things." He looked up at the sky, a thin bright Colorado morning. "So there's a message Nshange told me to give you."

"What's that?"

His eyes snapped back down. "There's always another layer."

And then he smiled a broad open smile with his bad teeth.

A moment later, Kairos had taken Mr. Henderson's head, and Erin was walking back to the hotel. There was no conversation. All the way back, though, she couldn't help but wonder why the man had been looking at her when he spoke his last words.

Notes, Group 3:

Overall notes: Significant geographic divergence evident. Lack of targets suggests reformation uncertain at this time. Note David entry re: fogging. Merits special attention. Driver is Ichiro, target fluctuating between Kairos and Nshange with the abdication of Christina and David.

Individual notes:

Kairos: Dispatch message delivered to John Henderson. Speed used 15%. Henderson appeared to be willing. Kairos shows repeated but brief contact with animal familiar. King vulture. Origin unknown, signs point to a Group 2 energy source. Merits further investigation. See Group 2 notes re: Max/Deskae. Had sex with Erin Dawes, human. She's quite pretty.

Christina: North American push all but officially ended. Boarded yacht in Marysville, WA. Spent day traveling south down the coast. Terminus almost certainly San Francisco, CA. Airline tickets reserved on flight leaving for Tokyo. No current target.

David: North American push ended. Boarded flight for Amsterdam, NL by way of Chicago, IL. Received new target, name and location fogged by agency. Curious. Fogging has only been reported in three previous cases.

Alessandra: Traveled to Carson City, NV. No current target, and no possible motivation seen for travel beyond boredom. Likely cut loose from agency as new strategy is devised.

Nshange: Spent entire day in meditation. Still as a statue, but I know her mind was running strong. One hundred six days since the last time this has occurred. No current target.

Yves: Spent evening under bridge in Cheyenne, WY. Was attacked by three homeless men, all now dead. They were incredibly stupid. Stole an SUV and drove to Laramie before dawn. Preserve message prepared, likely delivered within 36 hours.

Ichiro: Arrived in Laramie, WY. Immediately went invisible on entering town. Possibly suspects resistance, is taking no chances. Set himself up in the downtown apartment of one Holly Belknap.

Recommendations: Continued monitoring. No further action required at this time.

* * * * *

Chapter Six:

"Had I knowledge of the unseen, I should have abundance of wealth, and adversity would not touch me." The Qu'ran, 7:188

Erin tried more than once to broach the subject of Mr. John Henderson, but Kairos seemed determined not to discuss it. The first time was back at the hotel parking lot, where \- of course - someone had driven off in the tan Honda that should have been hers. They were standing awkwardly in the parking lot, staring at the assembled cars and the one glaring empty space. Erin thought to fill the silence. "So what happened back there, Kairos?"

Her only response was a studiously apathetic shrug and then a descent onto a bright red Kia with broken air conditioning.

Kairos drove, Erin opened up her notebook.

"There's always another layer," she murmured.

"Fuck that," he responded.

Erin looked out the window. Fuck that, eh? A small herd of black cows slid by. They were wandering a meadow more or less aimlessly. Whether the cows knew it or not, they were all destined for the knife, just like whatever poor soul came up next on Kairos' list. The cows made sense, though. Frustration built up inside her, and she doodled fiercely on an empty page. Erin wished she had at least a crossword to distract her. Most of the drive was taken in silence.

They climbed out of the car for a stretch after reaching Laramie. The day was warming up, and Erin had begun the work of folding Mr. Henderson's words into her larger picture of Kairos' life. There was something real going on, a mystery he had missed, but she wasn't sure how to get him interested in finding it.

Lunch cured both their moods. Erin found some delicious corn chowder and Kairos, being Kairos, wolfed down thick waffles engulfed in whipped cream. The food worked like a tonic, and both were soon joking around and feeling easy with one another again.

"I get sick of running sometimes, you know. And the sooner I reach someone, the sooner I have to move on to my next job," he was saying as they left lunch. Erin had her notebook out and was attempting to write while walking.

He still found the idea of documenting his life amusing, and their walk to the next car theft (Erin had gotten sick of not having air; they had briefly considered taking an ice cream truck conveniently parked just down the corner from the restaurant. They chose not to, but still bought some treats from a pleasant bald man in his seventies) had her asking why they even needed to go through such a charade. After all, he could pass on foot anything on the highways, so why not just run from place to place? "But let's say I do run, and I want to take you along with me. You'd be rubbing up against my back, or my chest, or whatever - however I was carrying you."

"Ok."

"Yeah. See, I've tried that. You know what happens when you rub two things together really, really fast?"

Erin stopped. "I'd guess a lot of friction."

Kairos nodded, taking another bite of his ice cream sandwich. "Exactly. Damn these things are good. I've tried it before, you know. Good way to kill someone actually, but terribly painful for them. Whatever force my boss gives me doesn't extend out past my clothes. Hell, I'm just grateful it goes that far. Anything that holds on to me while I'm running bursts into flames pretty damn quickly."

"Have you ever -"

"Yep. Before I figured it out. Shame, too. I liked some of those people." Kairos shrugged. "Oh, well. We all die eventually, right?"

Erin wanted to ask more, but a scream of air being torn aside interrupted her. A streak of brown, a bone-crushing crunch - and Erin was alone in the street. Kairos had \- what had he done? At first she thought he'd taken off again after someone back up the street, but something was wrong. She looked back.

A pair of legs in familiar pants jutted lifelessly out from under a pile of crushed rock. Small avalanches poured down to the pavement. Something had happened. Something had happened to Kairos.

And a moment after that thought, one much worse: where had it come from? Erin glanced back over her shoulder, hoping desperately that nothing would be there.

A second rush of air tore past her as another tan stone chunk slammed into the ground. Rocks sprayed back through the street, and Kairos' body flipped like a ragdoll end over end to land twisted and broken up against the curb. Erin's legs took over, and she pelted across the street and huddled behind a parked Uhaul. Whatever was causing this must not have cared about her, for she made it to the questionable safety of the curb unmolested.

Though her heart was attempting to beat its way out of her chest, Erin realized she was less afraid for herself and more for Kairos. He had to be ok, didn't he? He was immortal, he'd said, or near enough not to matter - but that was before two chunks of earth had slammed into his face. And there were those 'special circumstances' he'd mentioned, the ways he could die. He hadn't looked too invincible being flung onto the sidewalk. Still, he -

"I thought you were supposed to be fast!" A giant voice ripped her thought away. It was rough and reverberating, a lion's roar given words. Erin's scalp crawled as a deep instinctive part of her desperately scanned the savannah for safe haven. What the hell was out there?

Her back plastered against the truck, Erin edged her way over to a corner. Slowly, fighting the fear within her for each inch, she peeked around the truck to take in the scene up the street. Immediately she wished she hadn't.

When Erin had first met Kairos, he had looked mysterious, quiet and a little shabby. Nshange had struck her as warm and full of a sharp humor. David had been entrancing. This creature was something else entirely, and Erin was sickeningly grateful that it had been Kairos to show up in her backyard.

He was massive. He stood at least seven feet tall, and every inch of him appeared to be composed of boulders packed under overstretched skin. In South Carolina Erin and her friend Leann used to occasionally pick through bodybuilding magazines, just so they could laugh at the images of stuffed-up bodies on every page. This creature put all those to shame, but had none of the sense of bloating that hung around the oiled-up models. Every muscle on his hulking body looked weathered, well-used and perfectly capable. He carried a large chunk of a bronze statue in one hand without any apparent difficulty; Erin later realized it was Ben Franklin's head. He was terrifying.

Oddly, he wasn't wearing shoes.

He was also stalking his way up the street toward Kairos. Cracks ran across the asphalt where he stepped, and once Erin swore she saw his toes rip a new pothole into the road. His teeth, incongruously small in such a huge face, shone as he grinned. Then came that primeval, gritty voice again. "It appears the reports of your talents are... well, what's the opposite of premature? Overblown, yes?"

He was getting very close to Erin's hiding spot. She glanced back to Kairos and her heart leapt to see his legs twitch, and then kick. Immortal or no, he should have been pulp. His clothes certainly were in tatters. But he wasn't dead, he wasn't leaving her alone in the street with a monstrosity. "Yves?" Kairos mumbled stupidly, and then, as he pushed himself up, "Yves! You asshole!" It sounded like rock dust had gotten into his lungs.

Yves hoisted the founding father's head. Kairos raised a finger. "Yves, you throw that thing at me, and I swear to fuck I'll spend every spare moment tracking you down on your day."

The mountain paused, but did not set the head down. He drew level with the edge of the truck. If he knew Erin was there just two feet away, he gave no sign of it. She froze. He was blocking out the sun. "You just keep your distance. I see a hint of a blur and I crush you. I know where you'll be going, remember."

Kairos stood up and studiously brushed powder and tan pebbles from the folds of what was left of his coat. Two small plumes of grey shot out of his nose. "Yves," he said, "what exactly are you doing here?"

The gravelly rumble that came out of Yves might have been a laugh. "I thought I was putting you in your place with pieces of the courthouse. What did you think I was doing, old man?"

"Ok, smartass. Yes. I can see that. Would you mind explaining to me why you're coming after me like this?"

Without looking, Yves stretched a massive arm out to a petrified Erin. His gnarled hand clamped down on her arm like a vise and pulled her into the street. "Stay behind me," he rumbled, and Erin found herself pushed back and away from Kairos.

"What?" Erin knew she'd said it, but Kairos echoed her.

"I slipped on the release last time, but I won't make the same mistake twice. Walk away now, Kairos, and accept defeat. I have the drop on you."

Kairos adjusted his ruined shirt. It made no difference. "Yves. I really wish I had some idea what in hell you are talking about."

"Oh, it's some amazing coincidence you're here, is it? Don't try to lie, you don't have a talent for it. Get over it - she's going to live."

Erin struggled against Yves' hold, but the effort was worse than useless. Her logical side admitted that anyone strong enough to hurl a man-sized boulder like a javelin could easily hold onto her, and that she should save her strength. The problem was, every other part of her was screaming to get away from this monstrosity.

A few of his words were starting to hit the parts of her brain responsible for language, though. Those words met up with her terror, and the two didn't have a pleasant meeting. Something was discordant here.

Kairos looked the way she felt. "You think I want to hurt her?"

"Yeah, I do. Why else would you be here?"

Kairos hitched his shoulders. Could he actually be embarrassed? "We're ... you know how it is, Yves. We're traveling together. You know, for a while."

Yves swung his head on a nonexistent neck to look at Erin. He had small, squinting eyes. "That true?"

Erin nodded, gulped. "It's been two weeks now," she said.

Those hard little eyes flicked back up the street. "She isn't your name?"

"Of course not!"

Yves stared across the pavement at Kairos. A quiet breeze streamed rock dust from Kairos' shoulders. The ancient shifted. "Come on, Yves. When have I ever lied to you? I don't respect you kids enough to do that."

The grip on Erin's arm tightened, painfully. "But she's my name on a protection call."

"She's ... wait, what?"

The meaning of Yves' words and the blank look on Kairos' face hit the other at the same moment. Both of them turned to study the rest of their surroundings. Erin realized that there was no one else in sight.

"Shit shit shit!" Kairos said. "This is bad."

Yves spun in place, pulling Erin with him. "There's two of us," he rumbled. "That's got to be giving them pause."

"Maybe," Kairos replied. "I'll be right back."

He took off in a streak, leaving Erin with the most grotesque person she'd ever seen. The silence was awkward. Yves paid her no real attention other than the occasional glance.

After it was clear that Kairos would be some time returning, Erin had to venture at least an attempt at conversation. "My, uh, my name is Erin."

"I know who you are," Yves said. "Erin Dawes."

"Yep. Yeah. And you're Yves, is that right?"

His head moved; she took that for a nod. Erin briefly considered asking what it was like to take a bullet for Hitler, but there were much more pressing issues. "Yves, do you think it'd be all right if you let go of my arm? I can't feel it much anymore."

He scanned the unchanged, deserted street scene once more, then released the clamp he had on her. Blood coursed painfully back through her forearm and fingers. She flexed them, making sure they still worked.

"I'm a little unclear," she said while massaging her wrist, "what exactly is going on here?"

"Someone is about to kill you," he said.

"You can't-" he couldn't be serious. A black pit opened up inside her. He couldn't be! There had to have been a mistake, she was hanging around too many of God's kill squad and her name had gotten mixed in with those who were actually due for the afterlife.

"No, no, you don't understand," Erin said, "I'm not involved in any of this, I can't be. I'm just - I'm like a companion, or a sidekick. Oh Christ that sounded bad, but I'm not a part of your ... thing. I'm not!"

"I'm sorry," Yves replied, sounding not very sorry at all. "You are. I am not mistaken in this."

"But how is that possible?"

Yves shrugged and pulled a chunk of pavement out of the road. Scanning the scene, he crumbled the rock in his leathery hands.

Idly he flicked pebble after pebble at cars, buildings, the ground. A casual toss by Yves still held enough power to punch through metal, and was more than enough to convince Erin to hold her tongue.

Kairos slid to a halt in front of them. If she hadn't been so frightened by circumstances, Erin might have commented on how he often moved like a living cartoon. As it was, she gulped. A return meant news.

Kairos wasn't looking at her, though. His eyes were locked with Yves'. "There's no one out there."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I was careful. There's no one out there."

"Shit."

Both of them turned to Erin. "We're being watched," Kairos said.

"I thought you just told him -"

"Yes. Look, I can explain later, but these things are pretty well-timed. If Yves is here, it's a sure bet the other guy is, too. Get your back up against the trailer."

"The other guy."

"Ichiro, unless I miss my guess."

Ichiro. Some man she'd never met was out to kill her, sent by a mysterious power, and his name was Ichiro. She'd heard that name before. "Wait, he's the invisible man, right?"

Kairos nodded. Yves was throwing rocks with more purpose now, as if he could pick off his opponent through dumb luck. It had probably worked before.

"What can we do?"

Both immortals were peering intently around the street. "Continuity," Yves muttered.

Kairos elaborated. "His hold isn't perfect, not with us. We look for things not quite matching up, edges not lining up. He has to recreate the whole street in our minds. That's not easy. Hopefully he slips up."

Hopefully? That word didn't inspire confidence. Just the same, Erin scanned the building around her. If she wasn't going to submit to fear, she would have to make herself useful.

The sun passed behind a cloud. There was a flicker, like an old movie skipping a frame. Erin rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her vision.

An instant later, a dull thunk announced the arrival of a thick bronze knife into the side of the U-haul. It missed her by less than a foot. The world burst into action, and Erin didn't know where to look. Above her was quivering sharp metal clamoring for attention. To the right, Kairos had taken off. She caught flashes of him, Keryx blades out and swinging, as he doubled back and forth through the street. To her left, Yves stomped forward and began to - hop? He was. He was hopping. Erin's attention was definitely caught. Why in God's name was he hopping?

Her confusion didn't last long. On the third jump, her legs were knocked out from beneath her as a tremor shook the street. The next rattled her teeth and kept her down. Yves was pounding the entire neighborhood like a normal person might a table, and the cars and people unlucky enough to be in the area responded just as forks and half-empty glasses would.

Kairos tripped up a few times, she managed to notice as his movements snapped in and out of focus. And there was something else, closer to her. For a moment Erin was sure she spotted a small man on his back. The next instant he was gone. She chose not to doubt herself.

"There," Erin coughed, and then, gathering all her breath, "There!" She flung a pointing arm out across the street to where she'd seen the man, lying by a mailbox.

Kairos saw her, Kairos heard. As Yves was still on the upward trajectory of a new jump, the Greek ran on a beeline to the spot she'd indicated. His blades poured sparks behind them as they dragged across the ground.

At the point she'd caught sight of who she thought was Ichiro, Kairos tripped over an unseen object. He flipped onto his back, but his legs were instantly windmilling to bring him back to his knees. He whipped one Keryx over his head and brought it down with a yell.

It slammed into nothing, at least for an instant. Then a middle-aged Asian man in jeans flicked into view, impaled on the end of Kairos' weapon. Even from across the street, his shock was evident.

Kairos shot to his feet and straddled the man. "Do you concede? Do you concede?" His voice was a hoarse shout, the free Keryx blade at Ichiro's throat.

"In God's name, man, what's the matter with you?" Ichiro squeaked.

"I can't kill you, not here, but that doesn't mean I can't chop off your head and toss it in the ocean. You want that? You want to spend years looking for your own damn face?"

Ichiro pushed himself into the concrete as far as he could. "What's got into you, man?"

Yves stomped up. "I have this handled, Kairos. It's my job anyway." He squatted next to the pair and laid one meaty paw across Ichiro's chest. Kairos stood up, but slowly. He didn't sheathe his knives. "The scary bastard's right, though," Yves continued, "You ought to give up."

Kairos backed off, sliding his blade free. The man on his back looked relieved, though why anyone would relax around a creature like Yves Erin could not fathom. "Do you have a smoke on you?" Ichiro asked.

Yves sighed. "Yeah, that's a fair trade."

"Then I concede."

The two relaxed. Yves helped the other man up, and they sat together on the curb and shared a cigarette. Erin would have found the scene comical if one were not a seven-foot monster and the other only moments removed from an attempt on her life. As it was, she just wanted to put some serious miles between herself and what had just happened. She made that clear to Kairos, and after a short muted conversation with the others, he rejoined her. "Let's get the hell out of Wyoming," he said. The words couldn't have been sweeter to hear.

"Wait," came a rough call, and they turned to find Yves lumbering up behind them. Ichiro watched them all silently from the curb, face unreadable. "We shared an experience today. For better or worse, thank you. Until we meet again." He stretched out a hand, and Erin offered hers with little hope of ever seeing it again. The small bones of her hand ground against one another. Aside from the pain, it was a curiously sweet gesture.

She stole one glance back as she walked away. Both Yves and Ichiro were looking after them. A chill descended on her. "What happened?" she'd been saying that a lot lately. Kairos shook his head and offered no answer.

He stole a fast car one block over. Inside, Erin started shaking violently. One implication after another slammed down on her. She was in it, now. She was vulnerable. She was one of Them - one of the names. An ancient, incredibly powerful entity had singled her out for death.

Kairos sensed her discomfort, but then he'd have had to be an idiot not to. "Don't worry," he said. "Now that Ichiro has officially given up, he can't come after you again."

"That's comforting. What about someone else?"

Kairos stopped with the keys an inch from the ignition, as if that was a new thought he'd never considered. Maybe it was. After a moment, he shook his head. "I've never heard of that happening. It may be one of the rules."

That didn't help. Erin fixed her gaze on the street ahead, willing them to be out of town faster. The sooner this was behind her, the better. The better. Her breath started to ease once they pulled onto the ramp for the freeway, and energy drained out of her. Maybe things could return to normal soon.

Kairos flicked off the radio. "I have to ask you something."

Maybe not. "What's that?"

"Back on the street - you pointed Ichiro out to me."

She nodded.

"How did you know he was there?"

"I saw him. Well, for a moment I did."

Kairos frowned. "That doesn't make sense. When Ichiro's invisible, no one can see him. Not even me. We watch for mistakes, but we never catch a real glimpse of the man."

"Well I did. It was like how I can kind of see like a snapshot of what you're doing when you're running."

Now he was staring at her. He turned back just before she demanded he watch the road. "You can see me run? Since when?"

Erin opened her mouth, but realized she didn't have a good answer. It had simply started, the fleeting images in her eyes as he worked. She'd assumed it was just a natural outgrowth of her being used to all of this. Maybe not. She thought back as best as she could. It had started after they'd reached Colorado, well Boulder really, after ... The hairs on Erin's neck rose. After the meeting with Nshange, after she'd had that strange tea. Erin chose her next words carefully. "I don't know. I could be imagining things, I guess. Seeing what I want to see. Maybe Ichiro screwed up, let his guard down."

"Maybe. In any case, we're getting you out of here."

Erin curled up into the seat. Her panic had more shades, now. It felt like going out for a night swim in a pool, only to discover she'd slipped into the ocean instead. Anything could be down in those depths, and it was too late to get out.

Kairos drove throughout the day and most of the night. They kept the radio loud and conversation quiet. The night miles eventually sent Erin to a bumpy sleep, and when she awoke they were in Spokane.

Notes - Group 3:

Overall Group Notes: Reformation of group fully in progress, location for regrouping remains uncertain as yet. Activity of David outside of standard parameters. Target is Nshange, driver fluctuating between Ichiro and Kairos.

Individual Notes:

Kairos: Traveling; drove from Fort Collins, CO to Spokane, WA. Participated in delivering preserve message for Yves involving Erin Dawes, human. Unusual. Probable motivation: affection. Results from inquiry re: undiagnosed nonstandard P.O.P. not yet returned. No current target.

Christina: At sea. Disposed of crew after taking their memories. Obviously in no hurry to reach San Francisco. Probable motivation: ordered deliberation by agency. No current target.

David: Remained in Amsterdam only long enough to wait for new plane trip to Cairo, EG. Outside of normal travel patterns, not due to return to The Tomb for 18 months. Name and location of current target continue to be fogged.

Alessandra: Took train into Boise, ID. No current target. Agency has been unnaturally quiet. New strategy almost certainly being developed.

Nshange: Flew into Spokane, WA. Attended book signing for Ken Wilbur, human. Probable motivation: unknown. In close proximity to Kairos, but did not make contact. She looks tired lately.

Yves: Preserve message delivered to Erin Dawes. Almost failed, as he originally mistook which agency was delivering dispatch message. Acted without hesitation once real resistance was identified. After delivery, stowed away on freight train bound for Salt Lake City, UT. No current target.

Ichiro: Dispatch message to Erin Dawes failed. Attempted to take on two others from Group 3, was not expecting such resistance. Good focus, still spotted by target. After failed attempt, traveled to Denver, CO. No new target at this time.

Recommendations: Continued monitoring. No further action required at this time.

* * * * *

Chapter Seven:

"God is at home. It is we who have gone out for a walk." \- Meister Eckhart

Erin was sore after a night of car sleeping, and Kairos was more than willing to stop moving for a bit. The overcast day wasn't helping with energy levels, either. They found a hotel near downtown and brainwashed their way into a suite. While taking the elevator up to their floor, Erin was seized by a restless energy. The events of the past day were raw, but not overpowering. Not nearly as relentless as a new desire to uncover the reasons behind all the killing. If she was going to be a target, she had a right to know why.

Their room was sterile and humorless. Kairos flung himself across the king-sized bed to the remote and flicked on the TV. A talk show was on featuring lots of guests with bad teeth and worse hair.

Erin flopped down on the bed with her bag next to her and sat cross-legged as Kairos settled in. He didn't so much as glance her way. Ok. She pulled out her notebook and opened it in her lap. There was that first page. Without thinking, she read the names aloud. "Martin Conte, Claudia Rains, Patrick Murphy, Arthur Robbins, John Henderson..."

Kairos rolled onto his back and squinted across the bed at her. "Who are those people?"

Erin paused. "Are you serious? You can't be." He just looked at her. "Kairos, you killed them. Well, three of them, and you also took a few pieces off Mr. Robbins."

"Ah..." he nodded sagely. "I thought they sounded kind of familiar."

"Kind of - Jesus, man, it's been like two weeks!"

He brought up his palms and twisted back over onto his stomach. "It's just a job. I'm not going to kill myself over remembering every single head I need to chop off."

"I might have been one of those heads!"

Kairos snatched the remote and turned the volume up enough to make conversation difficult. That was just fine with Erin. She had work to do, and getting distracted by Kairos being a dick wasn't going to help. Even if he was kind of right.

The problem, though, was that her notebook was full of information that may or may not be helpful, and she had no idea which was which. She had a serious problem with context. How could she expect to know what was important?

The more she thought about it, the more Erin was convinced she needed reference points, needed to look for patterns. She couldn't do that with just a book and a pen. She stood and used a complimentary scrap pad next to the television to make a list. This must have interfered with Kairos' enjoyment.

"Down in front!"

"Excuse me. I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat right now. I'll only be a second, then I have errands to run. You have the second room key card, right?"

"We just got here."

"Yeah, and sitting around isn't going to solve my problems. I've got a notebook full of clues and I intend to work through them."

"You know this has been going on a long time, right? You came along of your own choice, right? It's not about you.

"No. That invisible guy made it about me. And if I'm mixed up in this now, I am damn well going to figure some things out."

Kairos rolled his eyes. "And how exactly do you plan on doing that, Sherlock?"

"For one, I'm going shopping. Give me some money."

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Shopping? That's how you solve problems? Are you a living stereotype?"

"Come on, I need supplies."

"Do supplies include tequila?"

"Ha, ha. I'm serious. Fork it over, pal."

"I'm not made of money."

"Oh thanks, Dad. And yes you are! Money and murder."

Kairos grudgingly reached into his pocket and flung a few bills at her.

"More," Erin said after she'd counted.

"More? The hell are you getting?"

"You could come along and find out, you know."

"I can't do that. I have to see if Brandon is the father."

Erin pocketed the cash. "Suit yourself. I'll enjoy the day myself."

"Get tequila!" Kairos yelled as the door swung shut.

Shopping was refreshingly normal. Her interactions with clerks and fellow consumers followed expected social scripts. No death, no magic, no surprises. Of course, she caught herself in a grocery store thinking of the people around her as 'fellow consumers' and the things they said as 'expected social scripts' and remembered just how odd the last few weeks had been.

Halfway through her list, the clouds opened up and transformed Spokane into a soggy mess. Erin hunched her shoulders and hurried on, though a part of her enjoyed the small panic of getting out of the wet. It definitely beat out the bigger panic of having an invisible assassin after her. She finished her errands as quickly as possible, but she did so with a smile on her face. She ducked into an electronics superstore and set about finding a good laptop.

Kairos lay across the bed, dribble on his chin as he watched Nicolas Cage search for buried treasure in New England. He didn't turn as Erin fumbled her rain-soaked way past the door, or he would have seen her laden with a half-dozen bags, including an especially awkward one with a long plastic tube protruding. "I don't know if I've ever met anyone as clever as the characters in these movies," he said in greeting. "Did you get my booze?"

Erin had, at the end. It was the last thing she bought before finally picking up an umbrella. She'd considered forgetting the liquor out of spite, even though she wasn't sure what kind of lesson that would teach him. The problem was, after she'd dropped fifteen hundred dollars on a new computer, Erin's sense of guilt and responsibility had kicked in. Sure, Kairos never ran out of money, sure he didn't give a damn where it came from or how much he spent, but Erin wasn't used to such freedom. He'd just financed a major piece of hardware, so tequila was back on the list. "It's in here somewhere," she said as she dropped herself, bags and all, onto the mattress.

"Hey, you're getting the blankets wet," he protested. "What the hell did you buy?"

"Buy? Open your eyes. If you'd look away from the tv once in a while, you'd see that it's raining outside. It does that, from time to time. If you want to help me out, you could brew up some coffee in that dinky little thing. I'm cold and wet and depressingly uncaffeinated."

"And if you truly wanted to spend your afternoon doing something productive, you could join me to find out what happens to the Declaration of Independence. You're American, aren't you? You should care about this."

Erin snorted. He looked back at her. "Or we could turn it off and find a different activity to pass the time."

She smiled, but shook her head. "I'm all ready to get to work here. I'm going to solve this mystery."

"Mystery."

"You got it."

Kairos pulled himself up on the bed and dug through the bags, ripping one apart in the process. "You want to know what the mystery is? I can give you the secret of life. You know what I learned, watching you people?" He pulled his bottle out triumphantly. "You get a minute, maybe two ... when you're beautiful, and smart, and brave. And then: pfft! You're gone. Like you were never here. And as much as people may love you and cry for a day or two after your passing, the world keeps grinding on and on."

Erin stopped, looked at him. That was really depressing, and she said so.

"What do you want? It's the truth. I don't know where all you people came from. I don't know where you go, but I do know that your time here? It's nothing. And you will be utterly forgotten except by fools like me. I should know, I've been watching a long damned time."

"I'm still going to look for answers. You can ignore them if you like."

"Suit yourself," he said, already turning back to the movie. Erin sighed. She'd have to make the coffee herself.

The hotel suite came with a large dark hardwood desk that she claimed as a research center, positioning her computer, notebook, and a dry-erase board on it so as to make the setup feel dynamic and powerful. At least, that was the idea. Erin stood back and surveyed her information hub. It wasn't terribly inspiring. "Ah, well," she said, "What's important is getting the answers, right?"

First things first: making a list of the victims on the dry-erase board, along with any pertinent information she had on them. She started with approximate age, but that was no help. Claudia Rains looked the youngest, but Patrick Murphy was a grandfather. No pattern there. Profession didn't seem to help much, either. She wrote Martin Conte's job as 'asshole', and Claudia was unemployed. Erin was about to turn to the internet for help when she caught Kairos sneaking a peek at her setup. "Care to help?"

"Only enough to tell you it's hopeless. I've killed thousands of people, and you expect to figure out why from, what, five of them?"

"You're saying I should give up?"

"I'm saying there's a special on in a bit about dinosaurs, and you should come and keep my company. They're scary beasts - do you know we used to have to ride those things?"

Erin let that pass, but her little dry-erase board did look rather shabby. She dipped back into her supplies on the bed.

"How about this, then?" Erin pulled the long tube from a plastic bag and unrolled it across the floor. It was a map of the world. She caught Kairos eyeing it before he pointedly looked back to the television. She plowed on regardless. "So, we are here," she said, jotting down a little 'x' with her marker as best she could in Washington. "We've gone here, here and here."

She connected the points with her marker. They made a crude, inverted checkmark. "Now, where was your last job before you met me?"

No response.

"Kairos." Nothing.

"Kairos." Nothing.

"Kairos!"

"What?" The word was dragged out of him.

"You could expend just the slightest effort here. I'm trying to figure out why I was almost killed yesterday."

"But you weren't killed."

Erin ground her teeth. She was not going to have one of these conversations. "Yes. I know that. I am quite pleased about that, in point of fact. Oddly enough, I still want answers. Call it curiosity, Kairos, though I know that must be foreign to you. Now, if you would, please. Where was your last job before you showed up at my door and brightened my life?"

Kairos groaned, but gave in. "Boston."

"Thank you," she said, and added under her breath, "was that really so damned hard?"

In this manner she traced Kairos' travels over the last year. Moving backwards, the track ran north into Quebec, skipped the Atlantic to Glasgow, then wound a serpentine route through Great Britain, France and Italy. He refused to give any information about where was before that. "That's plenty for you," he said, "the rest is my business. Besides, I want food. I'm getting a pizza."

Kairos stomped out of the room with a scowl on his face, leaving Erin to wonder why asking eight or nine questions could put someone in such a bad mood. She didn't protest his leaving, though. He could be as cranky as he liked; she was going to press on. The feeling of the wind as that ugly bronze knife struck metal over her head was not one she wanted to replicate.

Erin stood back to look at the map and the plotted path upon it. It looked like ... it looked like... nothing. Shit. It didn't look like anything. There was a general flow to it, she supposed, but it gave all the impressions of being nothing more than the wandering path of a traveling killerman on his rounds.

So maybe that train of thought wouldn't work. Maybe she could find something on Kairos himself. Erin turned on her new laptop and put some time into setting it up. It was brand new, but already needed updates.

Eventually it was ready, but by the time Kairos returned with his prize (complaining of the rain as if it had been a surprise), she'd only had time to search a few terms. A Google search on Kairos brought up mostly church groups. There was a moment of hope when she came across something called "The Kairos Society," but when she clicked on the link there was nothing but a student entrepreneurship non-profit. Nothing about killing there, and none of the Christian groups seemed to preach a message of beheading to their faithful. And when she entered "immortal assassin" into the search field, all she got were video game blogs and a romance novel.

Kairos gave her a smile stuffed with cheese and olives as she pushed the laptop away. She'd have to spend more time checking up on him, but not with the man right next to her. Besides, his reappearance tickled a quiet thoughtful part of her brain. Something he'd said yesterday wasn't sitting right.

New tactic then, for now. Erin shifted focus back to the map. "What about location. You say there's only seven of you, right?"

He grunted, and she took that for an affirmative.

"I've met five of you now. Nshange, Yves, David, Ichiro."

"Eh? Who's the fifth?"

Erin stared hard at him. "Oh. Right." Kairos actually blushed. She felt a surge of pride. "Yeah, ok," he continued, "what's your point?"

"Each of you travel the entire world, but you all just happen to be in the neighborhood? I bet the other two are still within two states of us. Doesn't that seem odd to you?"

"Oh, that, yeah. I thought it was weird for a while. Then I got used to it. It's the norm. That's how it's always been, you know?"

File that under suspicious, Erin thought, but she didn't know what else she could do with the information. It obviously spoke to purpose, but gave no hint of what that purpose might be. It could be something as simple as keeping tabs on a colleague ... or competitor. She drummed her fingers. If only Kairos weren't so relentlessly apathetic about the whole matter. He had to be in a better position to learn what was going on. He was the damn superhero, after all.

At the moment, the superhero was digging through her remaining purchases. The sodden brown bags fell apart in his hands. "What is all this other crap you bought?" he asked as produce spilled across the bed.

"I went to a supermarket. I thought a salad might be nice. There's a couple knives I got too."

Kairos rubbed his chin. "Actually, that does sound pretty good. I'll get to chopping." He rummaged through the ruined grocery bags again. "Yeah, this is good. The pizza was disappointing. Didn't have that famous Washington crust. Why buy knives though? I can use the Keryx blades just as easily. Oh, hey, you got a deck of cards! Thanks!"

His delight at the cards must have distracted him, for he cracked open the kitchen knife she purchased. Erin let out a tiny relieved sigh. She was used to so much of this now, but her stomach clenched at the thought of those blood-drenched tools preparing her lunch.

As he chopped, she considered the information she'd acquired. It all hinted at something more, but after offering a few tantalizing clues - powerful beings seeing at least a ways into the future, the whole kill squad essentially traveling together - she kept running into dead ends. Her dry-erase board with its list of targets was looking shabbier by the second.

Maybe she was looking at this from the wrong direction. If she knew more about the people fighting and killing their way through life, perhaps she could get a glimpse of why.

"Can you tell me more about the others, then. You know, David and all of them? Does it work the same? They have to kill their successors and all that?"

Kairos looked up from the vegetables. "I'm not sure. Maybe some of them. We don't talk about it too much. I mean, there's a few stories here and there - some of the new guys have been real talkative. Nshange was pretty much told from birth that she was gonna be doing her thing, but then you have someone like Ichiro who totally stumbled into it. Nasty shock for him."

"What do you mean?"

Kairos dropped a paper bowl overflowing with salad on the bed next to her. That was quick; he must have sped up a bit in the chopping. "It was just dumb luck, or maybe bad luck. He told me about it the first time we met. Guy was a devout Christian, right? From what I understand, he was also a pretty savvy businessman back in Osaka. Hold on, I'll get you a fork. So what he wants to do is go on this trip of a lifetime, like a religious pilgrimage. Been planning it for years. He gets all of his financial loose ends in order, waves goodbye to his wife and kids, and then takes off for the holy lands. The way he told it, I think it was supposed to be a year-long trip, covering just about all of the Bible. Poor guy never made it out of Genesis.

"He's on a hike up Mount Ararat, right? Going to stand where Noah did after the flood, though presumably not to get drunk and naked. Well ... didn't quite work out for him. He got separated from the tour group, wound up stumbling around the mountain on his own for six hours.

"Somehow, he finds this tiny little path leading down to what he hopes is civilization. Instead, it leads to a little round ledge clinging to the side of the mountain.

"Najat's up there, doing his ritual thing. Pleasant enough guy, not terribly bright. Sure wasn't expecting company. He'd been at the business for a good four hundred years. Najat is walking back to a chair he's brought, he just took a leak. He has a book in one hand and a Coke in the other, not paying any attention. When Ichiro asks for help, Najat gets startled so bad he trips backwards over a stone. Cracks his damn head open. Whoops.

"Now, there's no one around, Ichiro's lost as fuck, and he never exactly received medical training. Dude tries to help, but within half an hour or so Najat's gone. That would be bad enough, right? Then, of course, Ichiro gets his next big surprise."

He opened the tequila as he sat down to salad and solitaire. "And that's pretty much that." He held up the bottle with a smile. "Do you think I should use this as dressing?"

Erin took another bite, and a carrot fell onto the map. New Zealand was obliterated. A few feet away, Kairos cursed quietly and threw back a shot of tequila as his game quickly went sour.

The map stared up at her, and she could swear it was mocking her. Somewhere upon it lay the answers to the questions that dogged her - somehow it made sense. It had to, didn't it? Erin had discovered a world beyond anything she had thought possible - didn't it all have to come to some kind of ultimate meaning?

Her eyes caught on Turkey. Mt. Ararat, really? Such a site was awfully ... religious, meaningful. "Kairos," she said, "where did you say your temple was? The one where you killed that guy."

"I didn't."

"Could you point it out to me on the map?"

He speared a slice of green pepper and chewed it thoughtfully before answering. Erin knew well enough to let him take his time. Finally: "You planning a trip?"

"I'm exploring possibilities, is all."

"Then let's just say it's somewhere in Greece, leave it at that."

Somewhere in Greece. Not too helpful. "Oh come on, man! I'm not going to tell anyone."

"Good," he said, and pulled the cards in to shuffle, "because neither am I."

Erin climbed onto the bed behind him and twined her arms around his waist. She felt him smile, but he never paused in dealing cards out in an unfamiliar pattern across the comforter. "Please? What's the harm?"

He laughed bitterly. "Plenty. Sorry, lady, professionalism at work here. The others may not be as careful, but I don't intend to lead anyone back to my little slice of heaven."

"The others? You mean you know where they - where their bosses are located, not just Ichiro's?"

"Course I do. Well, more or less. I've seen a lot of them come and go, right? Some have been real dumbasses."

Erin suppressed her excitement. "Do you think you could show me?"

"If I do, can I go back to my game?"

That was good enough for her. She let go and rolled off the bed, almost giddy at the thought of picking up more clues. Kairos eyed her skeptically as she bound back over to the map. "I don't have exact spots, mind you. Pretty good guesses."

"Hey, I'll take what I can get." Erin held the marker poised over the map, ready to strike. He shook his head.

"All right, all right. Let me think. I told you about Ichiro. There's David, of course. He's somewhere in southeast Egypt. I've had confirmation on that from him and from when I used to hang out with Selim. There used to be a time when we weren't nearly as busy, you know that? We could get together from time to time, knock back a few. Well not so much with Selim, not a big drinker that guy, but you get the idea."

Erin x'ed off the spot on the map. "Great. Let's keep going." If Kairos was feeling helpful, she didn't want him to get too distracted. "What about Alessandra?"

"Oh, yeah. She's originally from Malaga, in Spain. That's her spot. Somewhere in the city; I think it's one of the larger buildings. Don't know for sure, but she's dropped a lot of hints. I almost think she wants me to find it."

"Does she now?"

"Hmmm? I guess. Some of them like to play games, and the two of us have talked a lot. Why?"

"Nothing. You know, you people aren't exactly spread around the world. Seems like awfully tight clustering in one part of the globe."

"Two thousand years ago, going to Spain felt like hitting the ends of the earth."

"Just the same. You're sure there's only seven of you?"

Kairos laughed. "How long have I been doing this again? I think I'd know. No, sorry, it's just us. And if we're all from one part of the world, well - who cares? It's just the way things are."

Erin was getting sick of that sentiment. Perhaps mind-numbing apathy was one of the job requirements.

"Fine, moving on. What about Nshange? I don't suppose she was willing to give you a straight answer, was she?"

He laid out a new game. "I don't interrogate these people. I know a few things about manners, I simply can't be bothered to use them around you normals."

Erin glared at him. "If you call me a 'normal' again, I'll brain you with a Gideon's. I bet you'd melt or something."

He stuck his tongue out at her. "Try it. A mild burn, that's all I'd end up with. But you know what I'm saying: there's times in conversation when people throw details out here and there. After you've been around as long as I, you start to build up a picture."

She gasped in mock surprise. "Kairos, for a second that sounded like you may have been paying attention!"

"Do you want my help, or are you content with abuse? Only there's plenty of other things I could be doing."

"You mean solitaire? No, sorry, don't get huffy. A joke, man, it was a joke. Fine, tell me about Nshange."

He narrowed his eyes, but continued. "Nshange. She grew up in Niger. Raised by some kind of religious group. Don't ask me who, I don't know. But she's mentioned some town ... um, Djado, maybe? I think. Somewhere near there.

"She's a funny one. Nshange knew what was going to happen to her since she was three or four. Not because of her psychic stuff, that's from her boss. No, the people who raised her told her. Right from the start. You know, a lot of us had crappy lives before we got into this, but at least we had lives of our own. I can't say I envy the way they do things in her Mound-Under-Mound."

"Mound-Under-Mound?"

"That's the name of her place. They all have names, you know: The Bleeding Rock, Open Moon, Stone Garden, what have you. It doesn't come up often."

"What's yours called?"

"I call it 'the shithole'." he gave her a grin. "Official name, though? It translates basically to 'The Sky Labyrinth'."

Erin considered that. The Sky Labyrinth wasn't what she had expected, but then what would be? She looked back down at the map. Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Niger, Spain. Two more to go, and unless something unexpected came up, they would be in the same region.

"Ok, then. Yves."

He leaned back and balanced his plastic tequila cup on his chest. "Yves - yeah, I know his spot. He told me a story all about that, back in the twenties. We'd both been attempting to get as drunk as possible, which is damn hard in our cases. Another hard-luck case. His mom ran off with the doctor who delivered him, dad decided that was the best time to drown himself in alcohol, so he was left in the care of extended family. Grew up basically a nomad in Europe. Takes to it pretty well, but one day in his teens he falls in love and guess what? The girl breaks his heart. Yves gets it into his head that it's all mom's fault, tracks her down in Alsace near the Swiss border. That's when shit got weird for him.

"Turns out mom had been busy. Yves is what, seventeen at the time? When he shows up, all of a sudden there's three new brothers he didn't know he had. Oldest one is fourteen. Quite a shock."

"What did he do?" Erin thought she had the location now, but she was also drawn in. Kairos downed his tequila and sat back up, pouring another before continuing.

"He flipped out on his mother, for one. He blamed her and the doc for just about anything that had gone wrong in his life. Not completely true, but can you blame him? Then he demanded money and stormed out. Never left town, though.

"See, as pissed as he was at her, his brothers held some fascination for him. Especially the eldest; the guy could have been him, I guess. So he hung around town. Started following the kid. Eventually they talked, and surprise surprise they found they liked one another. Yves didn't want his mom to know, and that helped make it exciting for the kid. They were like secret brothers.

"And that was good, cause his brother - kid's name was Xavier - had a secret of his own. A year before, he'd been approached by a strange man, a giant. Albrecht. Yves' predecessor, and one of the funniest guys I've ever known. Seriously, the dude was frickin' hilarious. I guess that's not important. At the time, Albrecht had been directed to try and recruit Xavier to take over for him. His boss saw something in the kid."

Erin broke in. "Recruit. You've mentioned that before."

"Yeah, some of us look for our own replacements. I don't. The others must have different ways of passing on the job, I don't know. I don't want to know, either."

"Have you ever been directed to ... to look for someone like that?"

He shook his head. "Nah, my boss doesn't work like that. Alessandra, Yves, Nshange: those three come from lines that do. There's a lot of turnover with them." Kairos stretched. "Where was I?"

"Xavier. He was being recruited."

"Oh, yeah, right. Hell of a thing for a kid, huh? But now he has a new big brother there, and a terrible secret ... you can see where this is going. Little guy confides in Yves, tells him all about the weird man that's promising him magical powers."

"Ewww." That didn't sound good to Erin.

"Right? Yves' been around the block a few times and does not like what he hears. Xavier wants it to be true, what adolescent wouldn't, but he's scared at the same time. So Yves says, tell you what. Next time mystery man shows up, I'll be along for the ride. Hiding and watching, following, that kind of thing. If there's trouble, I'll save you. It wasn't the best plan in the world, but remember these are teenagers we're talking about here.

"Xavier knows Albrecht will be back on the summer solstice, so they have a timeline. Day comes, bang, and the giant pulls into town. Not just a casual visit. Turns out this was more of a do-or-die moment. Either Albrecht or his boss was tired of waiting. Does he want the job or not? Xavier says yes cause he has no idea what to do or what he's in for. They head to a thicket a little ways outside of town. Yves is following, and if your pedophile alarms are going off, imagine how he felt. It was a different time, but still.

"Xavier and Albrecht disappear into the thicket. Yves waits. And waits. Ten minutes pass, and he can't stand it anymore. He hasn't heard any sounds of distress, but it's definitely weird; he plunges into the trees. There's a clearing not too far inside that he comes across. Albrecht is in the center, on his knees, head in hands and crying."

"And Xavier?"

"Xavier ... he's pretty much spread around the rest of the clearing. In pieces."

Erin put a hand to her mouth. "Jesus."

"Not even close. Can you picture it? See, there's some kind of test that Xavier had to undertake and, well, he didn't measure up. No way for Yves to know that, of course. He just sees the blood, and ... things. He sees Albrecht there still alive."

"What happened?"

"He claims that he doesn't remember. Later on he's standing over the mangled remains of Albrecht, and the whole voice in the sky business starts up. There was obviously a whole bunch of murder in between, but he still can't own up to it. Still. Pretty shitty way to get the job, if you ask me."

"And that's ... he has to keep going back there?"

"As you might imagine, it's not his favorite place on earth."

"But he still -"

"Just like the rest of us."

"Christ." Erin let the story sink into her skin. Kairos seemed content with the momentary silence, surveying his game of solitaire with a practiced eye. "Don't any of you have, say, a happy life story?"

He laughed without real mirth. "In this business, sooner or later everything goes to hell. When it does, it never gets better. You see why I might not want to chat about it every day?" He swung off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

Erin lay back into the carpet, eyes closed. What was she doing? The world that Kairos walked in - it was weirder and more magical than the reality she'd known, but it all seemed geared to bringing cruelty and misery into the lives it touched. Either you were facing instant death or dealing it, and even those meting out the violence were victims themselves. Slaves. Did she really want to dig deeper into such a world?

But then, could she stop? It was compelling, and images swam up through her mind: Ann, Claudia, Arthur, even Martin. John Henderson. There was more to it all, and if she wasn't going to make at least an honest attempt to understand, then the slaughter would continue unchallenged and pointless. No, no. It was too big to be without a meaning worth pursuing.

A toilet flushed. Erin opened her eyes. The ceiling, blank and tan and empty, stared back at her. Back to work.

She rolled upright and marked an 'x' on the map for Yves. She'd suspected it would be somewhere around there: the locations were describing a kind of lopsided circle. If it kept up, that would put the next person somewhere in Eastern Europe. Greece didn't quite fit the mold, but she'd deal with that later.

Kairos was back on the bed. "We done? I'm going to play cards for the next eight or nine hours."

"Kairos, if you don't mind ... there's still one more."

"Yeah, Christina. She's never let anything slip so far as I can remember, but then she's tight-lipped and weird about everything. Fortunately, her predecessor wasn't nearly as careful. Lucky for you, too, cause there's only been the two of them since I started. Christina got her job only three, four hundred years after me."

"Christina. What does she do again?"

"She can ... how do I put this? She can make things happen."

"Ok ... that's helpful."

"I don't know how else to explain it! Things around her fall into place, or come into being. I saw a rhino fall out of the sky once on some poor sap. I couldn't protect him against that. It's bizarre; she's bizarre, and so was the other guy who had her job. I hate it when I have to fight her."

Erin sighed. "Then can you at least tell me where she does her business?"

Kairos knocked back his drink. "Moldova. Near the Ukraine."

Erin hunted it down. Now this was much more promising. All of them were, in fact, in the greater Mediterranean area. The more she looked, the less the figure resembled a circle; it was more like a hexagon. Of course, the locations could be connected in different configurations. Idly she drew a line from Yves' hometown to Nshange's - what had she called it? Mound-Under-Mound - then back to Mt. Ararat. In fact...

"Oh fuck." Erin's breath hovered in her chest, not wanting to leave. Her hand trembled as she plotted out lines of connection on the map. It was plain as day, winking up at her. "A Star of David?" she hissed. "A Star of fucking David?"

The lines made too much sense. And right in the center, protruding into the sea and surrounded by an ancient mystic symbol: Greece. "What the hell?" she asked of the map. There was no response, so she asked again loudly.

From the bed, Kairos took another pull on his tequila. "And here comes another fantastic revelation, I'm sure."

"Kairos, you all form a Star of David."

"What?" His face was twisted amusement. "Star of David? And we form one - what are we, assassins on ice?"

"No, I'm serious!" She was too excited to take the bait. "Not you as in people. But your points of origin - where you come from! Look, see! There's a pattern here! It's a fucking Star of David! Well, with you in the center. That can't be coincidence. Look at the map! It's a hexagram! Or a, or a, I think they call it a, uh, merkaba."

"And?" He didn't get it. He didn't get it.

A wild recklessness took hold of her. This was too much, too obviously symbolic. "It's not just Greece and leave it at that, is it? What do you want to bet that your place is on the Peloponnesian?"

She looked over, smiling broadly in the flush of discovery. Kairos had one hand around the tequila bottle, the other paused in mid-air with a playing card. His face was a picture of shock. "What? What did you say?"

Erin twisted on the floor. He was staring at her with his usual empty gaze, but she felt a twinge of apprehension nonetheless. "I ... I'm right, aren't I? Don't you see? The bunch of you plot out a mystical symbol across the Mediterranean! Don't you think that's just a bit suspicious? Don't you think that means something!"

He was on his feet and next to her before she could blink. Tequila splashed out of the bottle in one hand, and he glared down at Erin's map with her marker gripped in his other. She hadn't even seen him reach for it.

"Listen," he muttered, scribbling out the symbol. His voice grated across her spine. "I don't know why the hell I tell you anything. You know what I do, right? I kill people for a living. Sure, occasionally I get a break from that, but when you get right down to it, all I do is kill people. All the time, all year long, forever. Those others out there - they do exactly the same thing. So sure - we have superhuman abilities and it's damn hard to kill us and all of that, but let's not forget: all we do is kill people. Don't go looking for more meaning than that."

Erin clenched her fists. She'd heard all that before, and it was meaningless. She was onto something here, dammit! "Christ, Kairos. How can you ignore this when it's right in front of your face?"

"Easy! I've had plenty of practice. Now why do you keep insisting there's some great mystery behind what I do?"

"Because there is! There so obviously is that a fucking child could see it. But not you, no! Why would you? You've only had two thousand goddamned years to figure it out. Jesus, what a waste!"

The bottle smashed into a wall past Erin's head, and Kairos' hands shot to his sides. For a second Erin thought he might actually draw his blades. Instead he just stood there, shaking with rage. His voice was barely controlled. "If that is how you feel," he said.

Kairos opened his mouth to say more, but must have thought better of it. For then, in a short burst of wind and the sharp report of a hotel door slamming, he took off. Erin was left staring at an empty room.

Notes - Group Three:

Overall Group Notes: Reformation ongoing. Two group members have already abandoned a North American push. One in Africa, the other Asia. Low message counts at the moment. Target is Nshange, driver is Ichiro.

Individual Notes:

Kairos: Spent most of the day in hotel in Spokane, WA. Ran to Seattle in the evening. Probable motivation: unknown. Signs point to him nearing terminus for North American push. No current target.

Christina: Arrived in San Francisco. Boarded a flight for Hong Kong. No other passengers aboard. She has always liked space. No current target, reason for travel uncertain. New strategy possibly being pursued by agency.

David: Returned to The Tomb. Highly unusual activity: both outside standard return time and inviting vulnerability unnecessarily. Activities fogged on entrance to The Tomb. Name and location of current target remain fogged by agency.

Alessandra: At end of the day, announced herself. Received phone call shortly prior to announcement. Possibly related. Two other Group 3 messengers observed on telephone at that time: Ichiro, Kairos. No current target.

Nshange: Spent day in coffeeshop in Spokane, WA. In continued close proximity with Kairos, again no attempt at communication. For some reason, she is monitoring him closely. Started and finished book ("City of Dreaming Books") whilst sitting at the table. Probable motivation: pleasure.

Yves: Arrived in Salt Lake City, UT. Received new dispatch target. Name: Marisa Alburn. Location: San Bernardino, CA. Lone change in direction from others in group. Motivation: unknown. Possible final pickup, but potential for agency going off-course should be examined. Probability very low.

Ichiro: Took flight from Denver, CO to Vancouver, BC. Terminus for North American push likely not yet reached - Canada has not been visited much of late by most agencies. No new target at this time.

Recommendations: Continued monitoring. No further action required at this time.

* * * * *

Chapter Eight:

"You know my method. It is founded on the observation of trifles." Arthur Conan Doyle, The Boscombe Valley Mystery

Kairos didn't return that night, or the next morning. Fine. He was throwing a tantrum. She could wait him out. The sun rose, though, and soon enough Erin could hear vacuum cleaners start up down the hall. She wasn't willing to book a room again yet, not with real money. Damn. He would just have to find her in the neighborhood.

Erin wasn't sure if she'd need to actually check out of the hotel now that Kairos was gone, but it didn't seem worth the effort either way. She packed her bag quickly, deciding to toss in the knives in case she ran into him while in a foul mood. With her bag in one hand and the laptop in the other, she snuck out the back. She left the room littered with a marked-up map, a smashed tequila bottle, and a pizza box still mostly full.

Yesterday's clouds had been swept away, leaving the morning bright and clean. The air still felt wet, as if the last of the rain hadn't quite made it to earth. It was a good, crisp feeling that instantly gave Erin's spirits a boost.

"Ok," she said, surveying the street, "He's gone, but I'm not. And I still have work to do." It wasn't like Kairos had been much help when he was there. She set off to conduct research.

Finding the mystical symbol on the map had given her a shot of confidence, and she felt better now about tackling the possible connection among targets. Martin Conte, Claudia Rains, Patrick Murphy, Arthur Robbins, John Henderson, Erin Dawes. Six seemingly unconnected individuals. The last time she'd been checking out six people, she'd found a Star of David.

She set herself up in a bright, friendly coffeehouse with handwritten signs everywhere. The barista was a sharp girl with multicolored hair who called out her sugary order much too loudly. Erin took her prize and slunk off to a table, sure that everyone else was judging her. Within moments, though, she was only one of a dozen people with laptops out and a mug of coffee-ish drink slowly cooling. She felt utterly invisible.

Erin opened the laptop and pulled out her notebook. "Ok. Let's see if this eternal secret can survive the internet."

She flipped to an empty page and got out her pen. It occurred to her that the computer could be used just as easily for taking her notes, but she'd gotten so used to the journal that abandoning it now felt wrong.

Erin started with a few simple searches on names, but the internet was not feeling helpful, at least not at first. Most of the time she couldn't tell if the information she got searching out the names of the dead even pertained to the right person. Couldn't they have had more unique names?

Trying to track down the Murphy family led to Erin looking up name origins. It was a long shot, but maybe Kairos' boss just had a thing against the Irish. Not much luck there, either. Rains could be English or French; Conte was probably Italian, maybe; Henderson could be Scottish. Most depressing, as one clear-eyed post stated, the vast amount of intermingling between cultures meant that for any individual person, a surname could have only a token connection to heritage. She remembered what she knew of her own ancestry: a jumbled mess of English, Catawba, German and French. So much for that.

As she worked, Erin asked herself again and again if she even wanted to find Kairos again. She knew the answer to that, of course: there was no way now that she could turn her back on the kind of world that she knew was out there. The map, the powers, all of it; it was too much to abandon. As for him personally, she ... she wanted to be around him more, wanted to feel him next to her.

Still, it would be so much more satisfying if she could make him find her instead. She was sure that he wanted to ... maybe. The passion in his voice at times couldn't be something so easy to put away, Erin didn't care how long he'd been alive. Trouble was, the longer they were apart, the harder it would be to reconnect. What if he got a new target? Erin wished she'd given him her phone number. Another thing that had never come up.

She shook her head and turned back to the computer. One problem at a time. That would become her mantra over the morning.

She tried mixing in other details to her search, locations, professions when she knew them, anything to try and create a clearer picture of what the names in her notebook had in common. What they had in common with her, now. That gave better results:

Martin Conte had run a landscaping crew. She knew that already.

Claudia Rains had studied geology until her parents had died, leaving her saddled with debt. She'd once been a cross-country runner.

Patrick Murphy, retired, was attending the wedding of one of his granddaughters. He was an amateur woodworker now.

Arthur Robbins wrote scripts for promotional newscasts. He'd suffered a recent accident at his home involving an electric can opener. A recent Facebook update had simply read "What the hell, universe????"

John Henderson had been a truck driver. He was survived by a daughter, Rose, 15.

Reluctantly, Erin wrote her own name down in her notes next to the others. This wasn't enough information. Erin Dawes, substitute teacher. How did she know what connection she shared with the others? She was American, that was true. So were 300-odd million others, though, and the map of Kairos' travels over the last year showed that that didn't matter anyways. Beyond the basics, though, what? Their locations, ages, professions, attitudes were all disparate. It looked like names picked out of a hat.

Except it couldn't just be random. When Kairos had a name, he also had a place. He knew where they would be at the appointed time, could almost sniff them out. That meant that whoever or whatever was supplying this information had some knowledge of the future. At the very least, they were like Nshange, and had an exceptionally clear understanding of the world.

Erin paused, considering ramifications. If these powers that directed Kairos and the others knew where and when the targets would be, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume they also knew something of what the targets would be doing in the future? Could these assassinations be more preemptive in nature than anything else? What if it wasn't something the people had done, but rather what they might do or become later on? That would certainly make it harder to find connections in the here and now.

She found herself returning to Claudia Rains, the only other woman on the list: young, energetic and bright. Erin could have been her, but with the exception of dead parents, the two of them had ended up in vastly different circumstances. Erin was basically securely employed, financially capable - subbing didn't pay well, but her parents had been well off before they died. She sure as hell wasn't pregnant. At least, she hoped not. Kairos had been the first in a good long while, if not too long.

Erin froze with a mug at her lips. She wasn't pregnant. Claudia had been. The girl had been a college student until the death of her parents, and everything had come crashing down. With no other family to turn to, she'd wound up on the street. Before Kairos had showed up, she had been ready to pop.

Erin brought up Arthur Robbins' Facebook page again. A status update from a few weeks back showed him entering into a relationship.

Martin Conte had moved in to the Dawes house a couple of months back. He'd attacked Ann in a drunken self-righteous rage after discovering her birth control pills.

The most peaceful interaction she'd seen between Kairos and a - a client? - had been with Patrick Murphy, a man pushing eighty. He lived in a big old house with his youngest child and a flock of teenage grandkids. They'd talked basketball, about universities - Erin had just assumed it was because one of the kids had been shooting hoops in the driveway when they arrived. She'd only heard bits and pieces. As they'd left, old Mr. Murphy had pulled the boy aside. Just what kind of advice had Kairos been giving?

Something John Henderson said came floating back to her, as he broke down his failed marriage: "She's still my daughter, I'm the one who raised her." The girl from the obituary, Rose, wasn't his.

Kairos said he'd never killed a child before.

And Erin: on her own for so long, just now getting together with Kairos. They hadn't considered or had time to think about condoms that night. When the moment came, he hadn't hesitated and she had somehow assumed that the laws of nature didn't work with magical supermen.

A weight dropped into her gut. She knew. It wasn't proven, but she knew just the same.

"It's about children," she whispered, "It's about who has kids and who doesn't."

Erin sat back into the chair, hands going up to the sides of her head. The world had just tilted on her.

A friendly older woman one table over caught her expression. "You all right, honey?"

She made some kind of response, more a couple of grunts than any actual words, but it seemed to do the job. The woman went back to her computer and scone.

Erin stood. She didn't know what else to do, but she had to move. She had to act on this somehow, had to externalize the shock inside her, but it would be crazy to pace back and forth in a coffeehouse. Her body fell into a more acceptable routine. She packed up the laptop and walked back into the sunlight, her head spinning.

Cars crawled along the street, window shoppers chatted about trivialities. Sunlight streamed across the buildings, creating strong lines of light and shadow. The city looked utterly ordinary, but the same time it was all foreign now. Erin had always thought of herself as a reasonable person, not given to wild conspiracy theories or magical thinking, and now ... now she'd found a real, supernatural struggle for the future that had been taking place for at least two millennia.

She turned, uncertain where to go next, and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window of the cafe. She looked leaner than she remembered, and dark circles had made themselves comfortable under her eyes. Her hair stuck out on one side; she made a half-hearted attempt to smooth it down. She could feel doubt creeping up on her.

She'd done it, she had; made real discoveries that Kairos had missed. Alone in Washington, though, what could she do with them? She had to admit that without access to him, she was left adrift in the world as it appeared. Where was he?

Kairos had to come back now, now that she'd found this. He had to! Erin scanned the street, a part of her half-hoping, half-expecting to see him holding a lamppost and bearing a sardonic smile. "Nice job," he'd say, "you passed the test. I was wondering when you'd work things out."

He wasn't there, of course. She picked a direction at random and started wandering.

As she passed through Spokane, a sad little fantasy ran through Erin's mind. She would take up residence in the city (which, admittedly, was quite pretty), picking up whatever job she could. She'd spend her days alternating between trying to forget the magical events she'd witnessed and pining for Kairos to come back to her. She'd grow old, never giving up hope for the day of his return.

Perversely, Erin found herself enjoying the mental self-flagellation for a while. It had a certain tragic zest to it. She might have spent some time filling in the depressing details had she not been caught short by a trio of huge stone columns on a lawn by the sidewalk. It was a public sculpture, and they towered above her head, capped by round marked rocks. She stared at them for minutes on end, stepping onto the grass when other pedestrians wanted to get by. Something about them made her think of Kairos.

With a start, she realized why they put him in her mind. Jutting out of the earth, uncaring in how far removed they were from the ground. And the lawn grew around them, in their shadow yet unaware of their existence. Erin felt like a blade of grass that had happened to look up, and these assassins, these agents of higher powers, they were the ones bestriding the world.

Surely there was some way of finding them?

Erin was seized with a new conviction. If he was going to stay away out of spite, then she would just have to track him down. She had the information now. "My cause is just," she declared before glancing around to make sure no one heard her say something so nerdy.

She only wished she had some idea how on earth she could accomplish that. Oh, sure, he was probably somewhere in the western U.S., but no one who saw him would remember who they had seen.

Already out of the hotel room they'd shared, with him probably moving on to another town, how would he even know where she was? Why didn't he keep a phone on him? That would make things so much simpler. He said he occasionally wanted to talk to other people, why not take such a simple step? After all, she wasn't an immortal, she couldn't just call out and make him show up -

Wait a moment. Erin smiled. Was it really as simple as that?

She turned from the sculptures in the afternoon light. An incantation. There was no real reason it should work, but it was as good a guess as any. He had done it, why couldn't she? It was worth a shot. After all, she didn't have any other ideas. She raised her arms and tried to speak clearly. "I am Erin Dawes and I am in Spokane."

And just in case it only worked for superheroes, "I am Kairos, and I am in Spokane."

Two young kids in jackets and backpacks stared at her frankly from down the sidewalk. Erin tried to ignore them, but the gaze of a third-grader can be penetrating. She dropped her arms and spun around.

Yeah, the arm thing was a little silly, but the occasion called for something. Erin was attempting to effectively conjure a person out of nowhere with nothing but his name. She stifled a giggle at the thought. "A magic spell," she muttered, "what do you know?"

Five minutes later Erin had to admit that as magic went, it wasn't that spectacular. She had no idea whether the words had worked, and wouldn't know until and unless something happened. So Erin kept busy. She wandered into an aggressively independent bookstore and picked up a newspaper, thanking herself for letting Kairos spend his mystical money instead of hers. She picked up a new change of clothes, fed up with recycling two outfits for weeks. She returned to the cafe for coffee and a crossword.

At one point in the park Erin glanced over to find herself studied by a fat little sparrow perched on a brick planter. It was no more than three feet away. She smiled before the thought bloomed that she might be attracting birds the way Kairos did. Maybe this meant she was on the right track, maybe - oh, no, it flew off. It must have been there looking for muffin crumbs. With a sigh, Erin left to go sit in on a horrendously smug CGI kids' movie about smartass talking animals. She left the theater at dusk with a reinforced determination to leave the mundane world behind.

No matter what Erin was doing, every hour on the hour she announced herself: I am Erin Dawes and I am in Spokane; I am Kairos and I am in Spokane.

She would not get discouraged - that's what Erin told herself over and over. It became harder to believe as afternoon became evening with nothing otherworldly occurring, but she kept the litany going nonetheless. She booked another room at the same hotel while whispering the words. A chant after dinner, a chant before bed, even a chant when she woke up late to use the toilet.

It was while she was peeing at two in the morning, head in her hands and eyes half-closed, that she heard her hotel room door shut. Hope surged in her. "Kairos?" she called out, but there was no response. An unsettling silence greeted her. Something in the other room had made that noise, though.

Adrenalin brought her alert instantly. Erin stood and pulled up her pants as silently as possible, holding a foot against the bathroom door to keep it shut. After a moment of consideration, she flicked off the light, leaving her with only a tiny glow of incidental light from under the door. She might have been mistaken; she often got paranoid in the middle of the night. This was a hotel as well, where night noises were to be expected - but this had been so close and so defined.

As seconds passed and her eyes acclimated, she became more convinced that she had let her imagination run wild. There was no intruder, right? She'd check, prove herself right, and get back to sleep while there was enough night left. She reached out for the doorknob.

Something bumped the door from the other side. Erin sucked in her breath and jumped back a step, staring. Whatever it was, it damn well didn't belong. A rapid sniffing and shadow ran along the bottom of the doorframe, and a stench that was equal parts wet fur and rotting meat crept into the air. She gagged, locked the worthless bathroom lock, and backed away to the far wall.

Would it stay out and leave her alone? Erin didn't think she could take that chance. She was trapped in a tiny box with no way out except past whatever was making more and more insistent attempts to get to her.

She cast about for anything she might use as a weapon. Towels, shampoo bottles, a tampon: nothing. Her eyes stopped on the toilet and its solid porcelain tank cover. That would do.

The door was being actively pounded now by whatever was out there.

With a yell, she threw open the door and swung the toilet cover underarm. It was a slow and heavy attack, but it connected with a dark furry shape and shattered.

She couldn't see what it was, but it was low and stocky and the glint of teeth reflected lights outside the window. They were curved and sharp, sitting in a wild creature's mouth that looked sickeningly like it was smiling. The smell was worse out here, far worse.

Erin didn't want to stick around and study it. She ran for the door, but halfway across the room something slammed into her side and knocked her to the bed. She rolled on instinct, feeling it climb onto the mattress with her. She was by the pillows, and her wildly speeding brain remembered that her bag was on a nightstand now within reach.

Erin lunged for the bag and pulled it close. The creature paused, cocking its head this way and that in the darkness before deciding to advance.

Her hand closed around a wooden handle. Erin yanked the knife free of her bag as the thing trundled across the blanket. She raised the blade in defense, but before she could strike the beast was upon her, knocking her sideways off the bed and onto her back. It followed her down, slamming her into the carpet and pinning her arms.

Rancid breath washed over her, and Erin could see the outline of a face that lay somewhere between human and warthog. It was heavy and flabby, and she could feel little legs scrabbling against her body. And then the worst: it spoke. It was a low, broken voice, hesitant, unsuited for human speech. "Give it to me," it growled out, "give me your will."

Erin couldn't think, couldn't bother with its words. There was a more pressing matter. She'd managed to wriggle her knife arm free. She brought her hand around with all her strength, and the metal punched into the side of its head, through skin and bone and brain.

The creature let out a short, high shriek, and something wet bubbled across her knuckles. It collapsed on her; Erin heaved it off without thinking and rolled across the floor away from it. She came up against the wall and stayed there catching her breath.

Eventually she stood. The lumpy shadow on the floor drew her eyes, and she stared through the gloom at its unmoving form. She hadn't the first idea what it was, or what it had been. She shook her head and made her unsteady way to the sink.

It took a lot of time and soap to wash the sticky dark blood from her hands. After, Erin shut herself into the bathroom with a chair propped against the handle. She fell asleep in the tub an hour later after a long shower, keeping the lights on all night. When she awoke late the next morning, she studiously avoided looking at the wet dark mass on the floor. She grabbed clean clothes, worked out the kinks in her back as best she could, and got the hell out of there. Just the same, a dark determination had seized hold of her. There was no way on earth she was going to give up now. The first gravelly words out of her mouth announced her location once again.

At the coffeeshop she'd visited before, the barista recognized her and knew her order. Erin sat with her drink, trying not to think about details from the night before. To occupy herself, she ran numbers in her head, calculated how much money she needed to get home. She figured she should be able to afford one more night in Spokane before she'd have to find a way back home.

Erin was debating making her hopefully magic statement every half hour when she caught the prickly feeling of being watched. A quick look around confirmed it. A thin, willowy woman with short wispy hair was watching her over the lid of a burgundy mug. Not Kairos.

Erin broke her gaze, unnecessarily embarrassed, but when she glanced back the woman was still watching. Staring, really. It was unnerving. Had she done this woman some unknown wrong, or ... maybe her announcements had attracted attention from some other source.

Erin stood, steeling herself. She'd wanted results, right? She covered the distance between them with what she hoped was a confident step, though her heart was picking up speed. The other woman merely watched, one foot idly bouncing on the other.

"Hi," Erin said. "I'm-"

"I was just wondering," the woman cut in with a low voice that was uncaring to the point of cold, "when you had had your sex change, Kairos."

So she was one of Them, whatever they were. Darwin's Assistants, perhaps. And it had worked! The lady was probably annoyed by all of it, but an explanation should help. "Yeah, um, sorry. I'm not him, but I had to, well, say it. My name is Erin, and -"

"Oh I know who you are, sweetheart. Kairos told me all about you."

"Ah. Well, see, it's important that I be able -"

"How old are you?"

What? "What?" she said.

"You're an infant. Twenty, thirty, huh? How can you conceive of what is important? Your entire life is an afterthought."

Erin was rapidly losing any will she had to like this person.

"I see. Well, I still need to find him -"

"No. No you don't. What you need is to go home. You people don't get to go out and find us. We find you, and you better pray we never do. That's the way it works, understand?"

Erin opened her mouth, but the woman just kept going. "What you've been doing with Kairos is a bad idea, right from the start. And this? Impersonating him just to get back in his arms? That's outright stupidity."

"Get back in his...? I'm not trying to do anything of the sort!"

"Sure you tell yourself that."

Erin realized she was clenching her cup tightly enough that it was starting to crumple. She forced herself to slowly set it down on the table. She took a seat while she was at it; if this other woman wanted to be rude, she could play the same game. "Which one of them are you, then? Kairos never mentioned you," she asked.

A cold smile met her. "I am just about ready to kill you where you sit, little girl. You have a real mouth on you, you know that?"

A few weeks ago this would have taken Erin aback, but she had become numb to the way these people talked. Ichiro hadn't fucked around with threats; he'd thrown a knife at her face. If the lady wanted Erin dead, she'd be dead. As it was, the purpose of the visit was obviously nothing more than abuse and intimidation.

In fact, why had the woman even shown up? If someone else was messing with Kairos' name, why wouldn't that be his problem to deal with? Shouldn't he have come himself?

Oh. Of course. Yes, he should have, unless he was being his usual self. And unless someone else was willing to pick up the slack. This person was ready, after just one day, to run this errand? They must have met up fairly soon after her first announcement. Erin nearly gave herself a facepalm. She caught herself, though, and smiled.

"Quite a pleasure meeting you, miss. Please tell Kairos to quit being a coward and talk to me himself if he really wants me to stop."

The other woman was almost growling. "You're never going to be his equal, or mine. Give it up. I should kill you now just to save him the trouble."

"You won't though, will you? He wouldn't like that."

"He'd get over it."

"Sure? I'll bet you've never really upset him, have you? Your name's Alessandra, isn't it?"

Now the stranger's hands were white around her mug. "If you say that phrase one more time, I'll take you apart."

"Really?" Erin stood. "I am Kairos and I am in Spokane. Let him know he can meet me this afternoon."

Erin felt like bursting as she turned and left the coffeehouse into the bright morning light. There was no response from behind her except the audible grinding of teeth. She'd done it! Faced an immortal crazy woman, figured her out and called her bluff. Even more, she knew now that her guess about announcing herself was right, was working and would show fruit. If Kairos was already annoyed and presumably embarrassed, he'd have to show up sooner or later.

She walked to a park. The day was steadily improving. The sun was out and warming. Children ran and climbed and fell on a nearby wooden playground, parents followed worriedly or stared at their phones. She repeated her magic phrase four times in rapid succession, then wandered off in search of a hot dog vendor.

After lunch, she sat on a recycled plastic bench on the edge of an old residential area. She'd made her latest Kairos announcement not ten minutes before, but one more couldn't hurt. "I am Kairos, and -"

A familiar voice cut in. "You can stop doing that now."

Erin spun around as best she could on her seat. There he was, face unreadable and hands dug into his pockets. She was seized by the twin desires to smack him and pull him down on top of her. Overriding what her body said, though, was a sudden sharp excitement: she had another shot at this mystery. She tried to reign in the energies roiling inside her. "Oh, Kairos, it's nice to see you again."

"What in the hell do you think you've been doing?"

"Oh, very well, thank you. And how've you been?"

He didn't get the hint. "You know, I've had to listen to you go on and on for the last day and a half. It became tiresome by about the third time you did it."

"You should have come earlier, then," she said sweetly. "Here, why don't you sit down? I don't want to get a crick in my neck."

He hesitated. "Oh, come on," Erin continued, "you've already proven plenty well that you can take off at a moment's notice. I just want to talk. Don't tell me you're afraid of me?"

"I just ... what exactly do you want?"

"I want a talk."

"And for that you've hijacked our way of communicating with one another."

"I did what I had to do."

"Well congratulations, you've made fools out of us all. And what were you hoping to accomplish with your little stunt?"

She refused to feel shame. "This, actually. I needed to talk to you, and you aren't listed in the phone book."

His mouth twitched, though whether in anger or amusement she couldn't tell. "You know," he said, "you're lucky you didn't attract attention to yourself from other sources. There are certain things out there that like to feed on people, supernatural predators or whatever you want to call them. Vampires you've met, but there are worse. Broadcasting a name and location is a damn good way to get them to notice you."

Erin stayed silent. She didn't want Kairos to know about her attack, at least not yet.

"Anyway," he continued, "you want to talk. Why should I listen? Are you just going to lecture me again?"

Erin resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. "Relax," she said, "I'll forget about you being a prick if you just sit down and listen to me. I have something important to tell you."

"Which is?"

"I know what you're doing, you and the others. The killing. I don't know the why, not yet, but I have the what."

Kairos frowned and stood up. "I told you, there's nothing to figure out. I don't care about any of that, all I want is to do my job, -"

Erin was trying to be delicate, but she couldn't let him talk himself into a fit again. "Kairos," she cut in, "I've met almost all of you now, and you know what I think? What y'all remind me of, more than anything, is children. Children playing a game, but none of you have ever bothered to ask how to win! Now I know you don't give a shit about the big picture, but you can't tell me you're not competitive."

Kairos paused. He was obviously intrigued, and Erin waited to see if that could overcome his pride. Eventually he lowered himself back onto the bench, never once looking her in the eyes. "Go ahead," he muttered.

Erin smiled. It was an opening, at least. "You're fighting over the future," she said, and laid out her theory. He listened, at least, as she talked. Erin wasn't sure if he bought any of it, but she knew he had a longer frame of reference. Surely if she could put together a picture from a few weeks of observation, he could apply it to two thousand years. Maybe.

When she was done she leaned back and waited for a reply. It felt right to her, it did. Still, it was a real relief to hear Kairos say, "Yeah ... ok, yeah, I can see that."

"Ok. All right, progress. So we start with that and move on."

He held up a hand. "It's not definite, you understand."

"Of course not! But that's what I'll be able to find out. I think. See, now that we have a hypothesis, we can put it to the test! Fortunately or not, you never run out of subjects."

"What exactly is it you want to do?"

"The same thing as before. Go with you. This time, though, I'll be doing it with more intention. I want to figure it out, I do, but you also need to understand that I'm trying to help you, Kairos. I care about you."

Kairos waved her off. "You care about me? You've known me for less than a month."

"I'm aware of that. Still the truth, Kairos, though over the last day or two you've made me question it. I'm really not into casual sex, and it's wonderfully rude of you to make me spell that out. You care about me, too. Don't deny that - I've seen it every time another one of you scary immortal guys shows up. I'm good at keeping my eyes open."

Kairos rearranged himself on the bench, arms and legs moving presumably just for motion's sake. He glanced at her, then fixed his gaze on a line of trimmed bushes across the street. They must have been fascinating; he was staring hard at them. A long silence stretched out. Erin tried again. "Look, I'm sorry I snapped at you the other day. I wasn't thinking. With me - I need to know things, that's part of who I am, and I can get lost in that. I understand that you have a different perspective."

He hunched his shoulders against the words and spoke softly but quickly. "Well I'm sorry too then."

Erin was tempted to press him further, but decided that apology was probably the best she was going to get. Instead she gave him a bright smile. "Sending Alessandra to talk to me wasn't one of your best ideas. She damn near took my head off."

"I thought you too would get along."

"Guess you don't know us that well."

"She's always been nice to me," Kairos protested.

Erin laughed. "Oh, I'm sure she has."

She laughed again when she saw his brow furrowed in confusion. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Oh lord, if you have to ask, I'm not going to tell you."

Erin stood up before he could pout or raise an objection. The day was far too nice for any more confrontations. "Come on," she said, offering her hand, "let's take a walk."

Kairos looked up at her dubiously. "Will this walk end up with us discussing the secrets of the universe?"

She didn't want to push too far, too fast. "Not just yet. It's a beautiful day, after all. Let's just enjoy it. Unless you have someone to kill. No? Then let's have a day."

Kairos looked up at her, silent. She traced his jaw with a finger. "Hey, I bet no one's ever thought of using your own trick, have they?"

He laughed as if the sound had been forced out of him. "I can't honestly say so, no. I'm sure the others think you're hilarious. Your theory better be good."

"We can talk more about all of that tonight." She smirked. "Or maybe in the morning."

His hand took hers as he stood. Kairos nodded, and a little smile played with the idea of showing itself. "Tomorrow, then."

"Yes."

Notes - Group 3:

Overall group notes:

Group fully fragmented, will likely reform in Europe or Africa. Three trajectories pointing into Canada, three others making landings or remaining in Egypt, Delhi or Rome. Note Yves' notes re: newly diagnosed P.O.P.. Final destination for Christina remains uncertain. No current geographic target (favoring David and Nshange), but driver is Ichiro.

See Kairos notes re: Erin Dawes. Her actions are far enough outside the usual to merit special attention. Request committee to determine if on-scene investigative/preventative force necessary.

Individual notes:

Kairos: Spent first part of day in Portland, OR; returned to Spokane in the afternoon. Reason: called by Erin Dawes. Very unusual: co-opting of communication lines has never been seen among any groups. Related - test results returned on Erin Dawes. Negative - no mistake made, she is not a previously unidentified person of power (P.O.P.). Further observation merited. Received dispatch target. Name: Cynthia Hong. Location: Seattle, WA.

Christina: Did not remain in Hong Kong. Took another plane, this one to Rome. Created rain of frogs over Turkey. Probable motivation: unknown. Destination for resumption of duties unknown. No current target at this time.

David: Remained in The Tomb. Continued highly unusual activity: both outside standard return time and inviting vulnerability unnecessarily. Activities fogged inside The Tomb. Name and location of current target remain fogged by agency.

Alessandra: Made contact with Erin Dawes, human, re: Kairos. Probable motivation: request by Kairos/jealousy. Spent day in Spokane, WA. Resisting target, though some weakening seen. In late afternoon, stole a car and drove north towards the Canadian border.

Nshange: Unexpected North American departure. Arrived via plane in Delhi, IN. Visited Gauri Shankar temple, spent several hours inside. No current target.

Yves: Dispatch message delivered to Marisa Alburn. No resistance met, stove in her head with a piano. Afterwards, wrote letter and mailed it to Elias Harrison in Sarnia, ON. Contents of letter uncertain, but ongoing recruitment almost certain. Results of diagnosis returned on Harrison. Results: positive for Person of Power (P.O.P.) designation. Continued monitoring of Mr. Harrison required whether recruitment is successful or not. Observation Team dispatched to Canada for closer on-scene presence.

Ichiro: Received and delivered dispatch message. Name: Eileen Jamison. Location: Vancouver, BC. Was visible entire time. Feel of the entire exercise was that of an afterthought. New strategy almost a certainty for agency. After delivery, spent evening at a restaurant attempting to get drunk. Middling success. No new target at this time.

Recommendations: Continued monitoring. No further action required at this time.

* * * * *

Chapter Nine:

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." \- William Blake

They stood down the street from the home of a Cynthia Hong. Kairos was here to kill her, but a few things had to be taken care of first.

Erin peered down the block. The top of a dark A-frame house could be seen poking above a thick, high hedge. Kairos had taken a run-by and reported Ms. Hong as planting garlic in her garden.

"Kairos, when we get in there, I need you to follow my lead."

"Your lead. You do know that I've been at this for some time, right? I have a pretty good idea how it works."

Erin held up her notebook. "I need answers first before you do your chopping thing, ok? Now I think I can talk to her for a bit but I may need you to perform your Amazing Kreskin act to keep me covered."

"So what? You want me to abuse my power for your amusement?"

"Of course not. If I was asking you to get us into Hollywood parties, that would be abuse. Pimping you out as a running back to an NFL team for millions, that's abuse. This is legitimate investigation."

"That ends in plenty of blood."

Erin had to give him that. "I know, I know. I'm used to it now. I'm ready."

Kairos slid a blade free and offered it to her hilt first. The weapon was lighter than Erin expected, and cool in her hands in the morning chill. She looked down its length - he waited past the tip, empty eyes intent on her. Just beyond the hedge was Cynthia Hong, soon to be removed from the gene pool. It would be this edge that would take her life, perhaps. Holding it gave Erin pause, as if she were the one to be severing through skin and spine. She silently amended her statement: she was used to Kairos killing people. "I guess I don't know how," she said aloud.

"How what?"

"You make the swing, how you can kill so easily. In a fight I could, I've proven that to myself at least, but like this? As a flat-out execution?"

Kairos picked a leaf off the bush and shredded it under his fingers. "Would you rather see the whole area devastated by a nuclear accident?"

"No. I get it, I get that. The calculus of it all, at least for you. But the ... the actual swing of the blade. How do you cut through someone's neck like that?"

Leafy remnants drifted around their feet. "The speed helps," he admitted. "I feel like it's nothing more than moving through air when I've got my speed on. That and lots of practice, I'd say. You can get used to anything with enough time."

"So it never bothers you anymore?" She leveled the Keryx at him, point just pricking his shirt.

Kairos smiled and took hold of the metal. Erin let him. He leaned in for a kiss. "Of course it still bothers me. I'm not an emotionless nothing. Still, I had to make my peace with it. If it wasn't me doing this, it'd be someone else. Would you really want someone with my abilities around who enjoyed killing?"

He walked away, rounding the corner of the hedge. "You better ask your questions quickly. There's a reason I don't usually chat up the people I'm sent to see."

Erin hurried after him. He was committed to it now, and she wanted to set the tone of the conversation. She caught up with him as he entered the front yard. Cynthia Hong was on her knees in a garden bed, a slender young lady in ripped jeans and a pixie cut. A saucer of garlic cloves by her side and trowel attested to a fall gardening project. She looked up in surprise and distrust at their appearance.

"Good morning, ma'am," Erin said. "Are you Ms. Cynthia Hong?"

The woman eyed them skeptically as she pulled herself off her knees. She looked down at Erin. "I am. And who would be asking?"

Erin had put some time into a cover story. She and Kairos were researchers with an organization that was hopefully both vague enough to be plausible and obscure enough not to be recognizable. She introduced herself and Kairos (or Dr. Jason Carson) as researchers in the Family Genomics Division of the Institute for Global Determinants. Erin ignored the eye roll from her partner and pushed ahead with a story of collecting brief surveys of family histories in the area. Cynthia took off her gardening gloves during the speech and tossed them in the dirt.

"Do all researchers dress like you?" she asked when Erin had finished.

"I ... we at the Institute keep a fairly casual dress code."

Ms. Hong wasn't buying it. "Can I please see some ID?"

Kairos cut in. "Everything she told you just now is true," he said, jutting a thumb at Erin.

Now the woman bought it. Damn mind tricks. Erin was grateful for them, knew they'd be necessary, but she'd worked hard on crafting the institute's name.

"What can I do for you?" Cynthia was asking. Her brow had softened and a pretty smile welcomed them.

Erin led the woman to a patio table and the two of them sat for an almost pleasant interview. It helped that Kairos was there - the woman was pliant and responsive to Erin's questions. How many brothers and sisters? Two brothers, both older (by four and seven years). Did she have any children? No. Could she conceive? Yes, in fact there'd been a scare the year before. Did she have a husband? No, but yes to a boyfriend; they'd been going out for two years.

Erin asked any question she could think of that might prove or disprove her hypothesis, anything that might be important. After the first few queries showed that yes, Cynthia Hong fit the profile Erin had set up, she cast a wider net. Just in case. How long had her family lived in Washington? Since she was four, or so she'd been told. Politics, religion, profession, tastes, desires, dreams. Erin rapidly filled three pages of her journal. Her hand started cramping.

Kairos wandered the garden for a few minutes, occasionally lopping off the head of a late-blooming flower. After that he must have gotten bored, for he went inside through the sliding patio door. Erin caught a glimpse of him playing video games before turning back to Cynthia. His brainwashing must still have been holding strong; she was utterly untroubled by a stranger in her living room using her PlayStation.

Eventually, Erin realized that she was stalling. Cynthia wasn't terribly interesting but she seemed nice enough, not the sort of person to deserve the decapitating hand of god. Nevertheless. Kairos wouldn't wait forever. With a sigh, Erin tapped on the glass of the door. He was there seconds later. "About damn time," he said. "Those video things drive me nuts. I swear it's always the same game, and I seem incapable of doing anything without falling off a cliff. Don't know why I bother. Did you get what you need?"

Cynthia had a quizzical look on her thin face, but had not been stirred into action. Erin nodded.

"Good. We can be on our way. Do ... do you want to wait by the street, or what?"

She almost said yes. She wanted to. If she was going to figure this thing out, though, she had to be willing to face it. Right? "No, I'll stay. Just let me talk to her for one more moment, ok?"

Kairos shrugged. He unsheathed a Keryx blade and slashed the air with it idly.

Erin sat back down across from Cynthia, taking her dirty hands. The gardening gloves hadn't stopped the woman's nails from becoming encrusted with mud. "Listen," Erin said, "What happens next is going to hurt, but only for an instant. I don't know why it has to happen, I wish I did. I promise you I will find out. I promise. Do you understand?"

"No. What do you mean, what are you saying? What's happening?"

Kairos' grip on her mind must have been slipping. Erin squeezed her hands and stared deeply into the doomed woman's eyes. "Just look at me. Just look at me. Do it fast, Kairos. Just look at me."

There was a rush of air, an instant of movement. A tiny spasm jumped inside her clasped hands. Erin gently withdrew and stood up. Above a rapidly spreading red line, Cynthia's head still sat on her shoulders.

They left, then. Erin couldn't look back now.

As troubling as it was to see, Erin was convinced the results would be worth it. She had started to think of the victims like soldiers on a battlefield; each one working to advance the cause, even if they die in the attempt. It was less disquieting that way. After all, she couldn't stop the process.

Erin was still eager to gather more information, but Kairos' target list had unexpectedly dried up. His boss had apparently decided it was time for a break. For days they bummed around the Pacific Northwest, spending days in parks, movie theaters, playing games or not leaving bed. Whatever came to mind, there were no barriers. They stole a boat in Seattle, went to the racetrack in Monroe. Kairos actually took to the track long enough to lap a few cars, though no one except Erin noticed.

For the first time, it felt like a true vacation. Time and money were no object. A month before, she would have been able to give herself to the fun and enjoy the new sights. Now her pleasure was a hollow thing. Anxiety grew day by day. She had been onto something, a secret, a great mystery. Delay only aggravated.

It was six days since Cynthia Hong's death. Erin had checked the papers the following morning and found a small story about a carbon monoxide leak. The article now lay taped inside her notebook. Erin glanced at the journal on the hotel nightstand as soon as she woke. Morning reassurance of its presence had become her habit. That little book was her most prized possession.

Across the room, Kairos was up and chopping peppers. He'd neglected to put on pants. He held up a bowl as Erin pulled herself upright. "Pasta salad," he said, "thought we could drive to the ocean this morning, have a picnic."

Erin stretched, hunted down her bra. "No news from up on high?"

He grinned. "Sorry to disappoint. Another day without murder."

She stumbled off to the shower. Another day without getting closer to answers, more like.

The beach took some of her frustration away. It was a gorgeous mix of low dunes and dark boulders that as if they had been carelessly dropped by some colossal toddler. The day was warmer than she'd expected, and a light breeze set her hair to dancing once she stepped out of the car. Miraculously, the place was virtually deserted. A family could be seen walking in the far distance, and two sunbathers lay on the sand reading, but otherwise the coast was theirs.

Kairos joined her with a cooler and blanket. "And then we came to the end," he said quietly.

"Hmmm?"

He stretched. "Nothing. I always get the same feeling when I reach an ocean. Like the world has run out, you know?"

"I hope it hasn't."

"Just a feeling I get. I don't know why. Where do you want to set up?"

Erin knew just where she wanted lunch. A breakwater composed of huge jumbled boulders reached out into the water like a giant finger. She pointed it out, but Kairos seemed less than impressed.

"You sure? We might get wet."

"Nah, it seems fairly calm out today. Come on \- we'll have a picnic right on the water. It'll be great."

He grunted agreeably and the two set off across the dunes. They'd just reached the first boulders rising from the sand when he stopped in his tracks, dropping the supplies. "Oh, crap! I forgot drinks in the car. I have a six-pack and a bottle of wine back there. Be right back."

He took off back across the beach at speed, raising sand-devils as he went. Erin looked after him, momentarily struck that watching such a display could feel commonplace now.

She hoisted the food and set off down the breakwater. As a pleasant surprise, the rocks were broad and easy to traverse. She had to step with some care, for gaps opened up which were easily capable of swallowing a foot. That actually made it more exciting for her. It was the tiniest touch of an adventure.

Kairos caught up with her before she'd made it ore than twenty feet out. He slid up next to her, a strong wind on his heels. Erin laughed as her hair blew out in a cone past her face. She tapped his hand. "You didn't think that through too well, pal. I'm not going to open any of those beers, that's your job now. Far away from me, too."

"Oh, hell."

"Yup. Have fun. I'll take the wine."

They set up the blanket on a huge flat boulder will in from the water's edge and halfway down the breakwater. Lunch was fresh and delicious, and Erin was able to put aside her need to know for an hour or so. She told Kairos about her old life in Chicago after graduation, and he tried to describe a movie he'd once seen about French cannibals. It was good.

After she tired of eating, Erin lay back on the rock and let the sun warm her. She'd had two glasses of wine and was feeling nicely toasty. She thought she could easily take a nap, if she wanted to. Not now, though. Maybe. She closed her eyes, just for a moment. Such a nice day.

A change in the air woke her. She couldn't have been out for more than ten or fifteen minutes. Kairos had left the blanket; he was perched on a rock close to the water. He looked about ready to dive in. Erin tried to clear her head. "What's going on?"

"It's a name. A new target."

Erin's head cleared instantly. She levered herself up onto her elbows. "You're getting back to work?"

"I ... maybe. I'm not sure. It's weird." He scowled out at the world.

"How - what do you mean?"

"There's a name coming, I can feel it. I'm not sure, though. I can't pinpoint it, there's a, there's, there's just this weird vague tugging. Just a damn tugging! It's never been like this before!"

Kairos stood. He took quick steps across the rocks, bare feet slapping carelessly past the gaps. He scanned the ocean as if the answers would be borne in on the breakers.

"Is it just that we've run out of land?" Erin ventured. "What do you usually do after chopping your way through a continent?"

"I catch a plane or a boat," Kairos said absently, scrubbing at his face. "There isn't often - there's almost never a problem ... with ... with it are there flies around here or something?"

Erin glanced around. The ocean pounded, but the air felt clean and empty as far as she could see. It was the sort of day that she could have sworn was given a good scrubbing just before she arrived. If there were flies or mosquitos about, they must love Kairos, for she was unaffected.

He waved is arms as if to shoo away the offending bug. "Some damn thing is buzzing around me. Hell. By the looks of it, I'll be off to Korea or Russia, I've gone on a similar route before, but you never know. I could double back, or head south into Mexico. Could be given a year off, though it's been too long since that's happened. I'm just a dancing puppet, right?"

"A puppet with two long, sharp knives."

"Doesn't help me cut my strings," he noted.

Erin smiled in spite of herself. "Cute," she said, but as he lapsed into silence Erin felt more sad than anything else. He stared at her, at the water, back at the half-eaten food. After a long, oddly uncomfortable minute, he spoke.

"Where are the Keryx blades anyway?"

Erin stared at him, then back down at the picnic before her. Both blades lay in full view, right next to the grapes. "Uh, Kairos," she said slowly, "you starting to feel your age? You set them down on the blanket. Right in front of your face, man. Behind the beer, in front of the fruit."

"Ah," Kairos replied. He stepped over and retrieved one, staring at it as if unsure what to do next. His arm was trembling. He took hold of the weapon with both hands and extended it slowly.

"Kairos," Erin said, "you all right over there? Maybe some late, late, late-onset Alzheimer's?"

"It's odd," he said, and his voice was small and hollow, "but I'm trying desperately not to kill you right now."

"Huh?" Erin hadn't heard that correctly.

"I think ... I don't think ... I'm not me ..." he trailed off into nothing. For the first time since she'd met Kairos, sweat was visibly beading on his forehead.

"What are you ... is this some kind of joke?" Erin glanced around. They were alone on the breakwater. Down the beach a quarter mile, a fat woman in white walked while her dog romped in the surf. The sunbathers had left. No one else was in sight.

"Please," he said around gritted teeth, and an edge of panic tinged his voice. "It's best if you get away from me. There's something here, inside me. It wants you dead. Take the other blade and go. Go!"

Erin drew her legs back under her, wrinkling the fuzzy blanket and spilling the fruit bowl. Grapes bobbled their way across bare rock to disappear in the waves. Muscles stood out on Kairos' arms in sharp relief. He was straining hard. She looked in his empty eyes and thought she might see something new them - panic.

The glimpse of his fear took all confidence from her. Erin lunged for the unclaimed Keryx blade. The sudden movement triggered a reflex in Kairos; he lashed out with his sword, yelling wordlessly. It slammed into the rock not four inches from her outstretched arm. "Run!" he cried as she sprang back with the second blade.

Erin ran. Her bare feet slapped against the rocks; her sandals lay forgotten on the blanket. By some small miracle, she made it back to the sand without slipping between the great boulders or smashing her toes.

Her luck ended with a leap off the end of the breakwater rocks and into the sand. Erin landed badly, turning an ankle and falling flat on her face. The Keryx flopped across the beach to land several feet ahead. She twisted, wincing at the pain, and for a moment thought Kairos hadn't moved at all. He stood seemingly frozen, a tiny figure against the sky. The metal in his hands caught the morning sun.

The stillness was a lie, she quickly saw. He was struggling, flicking forward and then back at speed. Erin wanted to hold him, help him, but at the same time she doubted she could run far enough away to be safe. Not that she could get far on her now-throbbing ankle; Kairos had the car keys.

It looked like her survival was utterly dependent on Kairos fighting off whatever was attacking him. "Shit," she muttered. That impotence was more infuriating than terrifying, and she refused to accept it. If there was someone trying to take him over - it had better not be David or Nshange, she liked them dammit - then they had to be around.

Well fuck that. She pulled herself up roughly, blood boiling, and collected the fallen weapon. Erin trusted Kairos enough to turn her back on him and scan the landscape. The beach sported large rocks and low dunes, plenty of places for someone to hide. She addressed the world at large, not even trying to keep the rage from her voice. "Get out here! You goddamn coward, show yourself! What's the matter - invincible superhero's afraid of me? Show yourself!"

Empty beach. A gull hopped toward her cautiously, looking for food. Asshole the buzzard alit on a half-buried driftwood log thirty feet away. That was enough for Erin - she stalked toward the damn thing. It was involved somehow, its death could only help.

A wrenching cry spun her around. Kairos was on his knees out on the rocks, but Erin knew somehow that he was looking right at her. The sound hung too long above the pounding of the surf, and then he was coming at her. A sick pounding in her gut told Erin he had lost his fight.

She saw him running, saw the blade raised for a strike as he raced back up the breakwater. Erin didn't know if he was holding back or if her vision had taken another jump. She saw his face twisting with effort, his legs pumping. It would be quick.

And she saw what she didn't expect. One of his steps fell differently, just enough; he leaned inwards, just enough. It was his final attempt to regain control. Kairos launched himself off the boulders and out over the ocean in a low arc. His leap would have made an Olympic athlete soil themselves. The sun caught the edge of the Keryx blade one last time before he smacked into the water. From that distance, it sounded to Erin like a plum thrown at a sidewalk: short, juicy, and final.

She stared. The surf rolled on. "What?" she asked of no one. "What?"

The fat woman with the dog was getting closer. She struggled to hold onto a sun hat that was doing her no good, and it slipped through her fingers and out over the waves when she caught sight of Erin staring at the water with a huge knife.

Erin didn't pay any attention. The lady was obviously harmless. Let her freak out, take a long way around the dunes. Kairos had just disappeared into the Pacific. She knew him well enough to be sure he was fine. That didn't mean he was coming back, currents could play hell with something as small as a human body. She hobbled her way to the edge of the surf.

"Kairos! Kairos!" Her brain told her it was useless, but Erin didn't know what to do besides yell. Waiting on the tide was simply too passive.

Fortunately, she didn't have to wait. There he was, twenty yards down the beach, a small dark figure emerging out of the water. He sloshed his way through the breakers, cursing with every step. His Keryx blade was gone. Erin ran to him as best she could on her ankle, but brought up the weapon in her hand just in case.

"Are you ... you?" she called.

He nodded and spat. "Plowing into the water shook the bastard free." He cleared the water and immediately started stomping back toward the car.

"What happened?"

"Fucker took over my mind, or tried to. Thought he could play me like some goddamned hillbilly." He shot two steps forward in a blur. "Little shit's gonna pay!"

"But what about your other sword? It's in the Pacific somewhere!"

His voice was harsh and cold. "I'll come back for it, wherever the hell it went. Not now. One's all I need."

Erin struggled to keep up with him. He kept surging ahead in little bursts of ten or fifteen feet, as if unable to keep his speed in check. Perhaps he wasn't. "I don't get it," she called out once after a particularly long jump. Maybe if she got him talking he'd regain some self-possession. "I thought you people were immune to that kind of thing."

Kairos looked over his shoulder at her from atop a small rise. "We are. We're supposed to be. This has never happened to me before."

Erin gulped. "What ... what do you think we should-"

He was back in an instant, face inches away and full of rage. "You don't understand. Never! Not in two thousand years. This - shit - doesn't - happen, get it?"

"Then how...?"

"I intend to find out. I'll have a little chat with him," and his smile promised it would not be a pleasant conversation. "Before I chop his damned head off. Let's get in the car."

"Who was it, though? Who did this?"

"David," he said. "It was David. He should have known better than to fuck with me. I'll take the son of a bitch apart!"

"How can you? What about your other duties?"

Kairos met her eyes, and Erin took an unconscious step back. "You don't understand," he growled with malicious joy, "my boss and I are in complete agreement. That target I knew was coming, but couldn't put my finger on? It just got real clear. David's the next name on my list."

Notes - Group 3:

Overall Group Notes: Intra-group attack attempted, possibility of splintering now evident. Control teams preparing for insertion. Precipitated by David, launched on Kairos. Reason: dispatch message for Erin Dawes. Message failed. Strategy was placing Kairos under Tomb will. First time this has been employed in history of Group 3. Response likely.

Large-scale fogging across the group a further indicator of splintering. With one exception, trajectories all converge on Africa. Control group will be ready and observing within 12 hours. The target is David, the driver is Kairos.

Individual Notes:

Kairos: Resisted intra-group attack launched by David. Threw himself into Pacific ocean; lost one of the two Sky Labyrinth totems. Additional monitoring may be necessary in case totem is recovered by outside source/other agency. Received dispatch target, name and location fogged by agency interference.

Christina: Spent day in Vatican City, gained audience with The Pope. Probable motivation: unknown. No previous history of seeking out high-profile humans. Destination/timeline on resumption of normal duties unknown. No current target at this time.

David: Dispatch message for Erin Dawes (likely) failed. Actively tried to seize control of another agent. First time such activity has been recorded in Group 3, most recent example overall since 1864 CE. No concession made. Either received or confirmed dispatch target. Unable to determine which due to widespread fogging. Remains in The Tomb.

Alessandra: Arrived in Vancouver, CA, but immediately left again. Received dispatch target, name and location fogged by agency interference. Boarded plane bound for Cairo, EG.

Nshange: Departed Delhi, IN. En route to Cairo, EG. Not currently communicating with Mound-Under-Mound. Further investigation required to determine if this is by choice or is a technical issue.

Yves: Received preserve target, name and location fogged by agency interference. Purchased airline tickets bound for Cairo, EG.

Ichiro: Received dispatch target, name and location fogged by agency interference. Boarded plane bound for Cairo, EG. Invisible, on same flight as Alessandra.

Recommendations: Enhanced monitoring. Prepare report re: possibility of splintering. Control team on standby.

* * * * *

Chapter Ten:

"There were giants in the earth..." \- Genesis 6:4

The plane sat on the runway in the dark, waiting for clearance. Inside, a hundred and twenty-odd passengers fidgeted impatiently, but none more so than the immortal killer Kairos. Erin had seen the look on his face many times now. He was in professional mode. He had a job to do, and couldn't wait to see it through to its execution.

From the window seat to his left, Erin was rather more settled. Truth be told, she was conflicted about the journey. On the one hand, there had been another failed attempt on her life; she was starting to take those personally. On the other, this was David. He'd tried to take over her mind once, sure, but after that he'd been kind and gracious and damned charming. She knew, at some level, that all the superhumans like Yves and Nshange and David had no true choice in what they did. Still, she had a hard time reconciling that smiling man with someone out to kill her.

Just the same, she was glad to be coming. There had to be some way out of this, some way to settle what had come up between the two. Maybe. The panic in Kairos' eyes had been a fearsome thing - what if he came under attack again? And why were these people forced to do such horrible things, even to one another?

The drive from the beach had been uncomfortable, to say the least. Kairos' red rage had slowly leached away, to be replaced with a hard determination. Erin had cupped her head in her hands, trying to slow her breathing. "It doesn't make sense," she said. "It doesn't make any sense.

"It also doesn't matter." She hadn't been looking for a response, but he had gone ahead. "All that matters is soon David will be dead and all this nonsense over with."

"But you can't be killed - he can't be killed!"

He passed a car viciously. "Not under most circumstances, no. But if I have his name, my boss thinks I can do it. Off the top of my head, I know of one really good way it could be accomplished."

"What's that?"

"You're the map girl. You plotted out where we're all from, right? So those places ... our homes, basically? When I'm at mine, I can be cut down as easily as the next guy. I'm guessing that works the same way for David."

"So we're going ..."

"To Egypt. I think he's waiting for us there. I'd tell you not to come, but I don't trust any of these bastards anymore. Safer if you're with me."

"Why is this happening, Kairos?"

He stared out at the road without responding. She tried again. "Do you think-"

"You don't get it, you couldn't," he cut in forcefully. "This ... this sort of attack doesn't happen. Novelty ceased to exist for me a long time ago. We don't go after each other, never. We don't go after a person more than once. There is never uncertainty. Do you understand me? This is all - there's something truly messed up going on, and I have no idea what the fuck it is!"

Erin hadn't known how to answer that, so she had let him drive in silence.

On the plane, while still full of energy, Kairos was now at least under control. What gave away his inner turmoil most was the way he kept unsheathing the Keryx blade and checking its edge. Getting past airport security had been as simple as an afternoon stroll, and there'd been no question of tickets. He'd merely checked the flights, made a choice, and that was all there was to it.

It was only once they were on board that they'd run into a snag. Now they sat grounded until the skies cleared; evidently his influence only extended so far. Erin was regretting not shoplifting an airport paperback or at least a newspaper.

She tried to make conversation with Kairos, but all he wanted to talk about was killing David. It was a half-hearted attempt, really. Her own mind was full of uncertainty about what might be coming next.

Eventually they were able to take off, and Erin settled into the monotony of an overseas flight. Soon enough, her head was nodding. She felt herself drifting, made no effort to stop it, and the next thing she knew her face was pressed into Kairos' arm. "Sorry," she murmured into him, pushing back up.

"Don't worry," he said. He stroked her hair. "We have a long flight ahead of us. Get some sleep. I'll let you know when we get to Paris."

Permission, though it wasn't necessary. Erin let her head go, and for a time she drifted in and out of consciousness. She was unable to truly fall asleep; she never been able to on a plane. Her dreams were broken and unnaturally loud: Erin faced a parade of accusers and she kept trying to explain something important, so important, but they wouldn't stop yelling back at her. Cynthia Hong, her head held in one hand. John Henderson, his laughter mocking and cruel. A pretty young girl with an unnatural dent in her head, screaming on and on. Ann, eyes full of tears and voice full of blame. They didn't understand, none of them understood. Erin couldn't explain what was driving her on, not to them.

At the end Kairos appeared, and he was the worst. He didn't yell or accuse, he merely walked to her. Even in a dream Erin's arms ached, but he never reached her. He moved as if through a solid fog. The Keryx blades were held loosely in each hand, and blood flowed off them to pool on the ground as a slick, a pond, a sea, a vast dark ocean about to engulf him. He didn't see it, didn't know what was coming. Erin screamed and clawed her way out of sleep.

She woke up sweaty and afraid, even though she couldn't name her fear. She pressed her eyes shut tight, not wanting to go back to the nightmare but not wanting to face whatever waited for her in the waking world.

Next to her, Kairos was talking quietly. When she heard him speak, she could not initially determine if it was the dream Kairos or something real. "It's her, isn't it? Everything new has been since she showed up. But she's - she's not a person of power, I would have known that by now. She's nothing but human. Isn't she?"

Erin cracked an eye, and was given a glimpse of Kairos' hand through her eyelashes. It was shaking. She tried not to think of what that might mean.

The rest of the flight was uneventful, and the short layover ensured that they'd make it into Cairo in good time.

She had no idea what to expect from Cairo, and under any other circumstances she'd be delighted to be touching down in Egypt. She never liked to think of herself as a tourist, but who could visit such a place without seeing the sights? Apparently Kairos. From his comments, Erin had a feeling he wouldn't want to stick around long even if his boss gave him time off.

Of course, coming in at four in the morning, it resembled just about any other city: a sprawling mass of lights in the darkness. They debarked well before dawn, and Kairos roused a sleepy cabby to take them across the city to a hardware store.

Kairos, as expected, was unimpressed by Cairo. He hadn't bothered even looking out the window during the drive, and paid off the fare without looking "Let's find some supplies and get this shit taken care of," he said.

Erin yawned. "I don't suppose they're open at this time of day."

"Does it matter?"

She shrugged. It didn't anymore. Since she'd met him, her mind had divided the world into 'things I need' and 'things I don't have'. There was no overlap between them.

Kairos ran at speed and smashed one of the doors in. Erin followed him in and let herself get lost in the gloom. He had already disappeared down an aisle, and she could hear him picking through a box of what sounded like metal. Dim unfamiliar shapes drifted past her on the shelves. All of this - robbing, killing, immortals doing battle - had been going on her entire life, and she'd never so much as imagined it.

Yes, she admitted, there were undoubtedly thousands of people engaged in similar activities around the world at that very moment: thieves and criminals the world over. Nothing supernatural about that. Who among them were as outside the bounds as Kairos, though? Not just human law, but natural law. It was worth remembering.

Erin shook herself. They were here for a reason. "So what do we need, provision-wise?" she called out. "Will he be hard to find?"

"Not hard, no. I don't know what will be waiting for us, so I'd rather be prepared for anything."

"He's not here in the city, is he?"

He shook his head. "No, we're going to have to track him down at home. And that's to the southwest."

"We're heading into the desert?"

Kairos rounded a corner in front of her, a darker shadow against all the others. He flung an arm out. It quivered like a compass needle, pointing at an angle to the back wall. "That way. Let's get some rope, flashlights, all that stuff. I understand some of these places can be difficult to reach."

He had found some heavy canvas packs, and they set about filling them with whatever they thought might be needed. Erin couldn't conceive of hardly any of it being truly useful, and was finally unable to bite her tongue when he packed a length of PVC pipe. "Seriously? Exactly what kind of plumbing emergency are we going to run into?"

He didn't give any details, just an evil grin.

Once their bags were full, they stepped back out onto the street. Either her eyes had adjusted or the predawn light was beginning to emerge, but she could see the two policemen stepping out of a dark SUV quite clearly. The cops could obviously see them as well. Kairos held up a hand patiently as the pair scrambled for their guns. He turned to Erin.

"When we met, you shot me pretty well. Think you could do that again if you had a gun?"

"Shoot you?"

He smiled without warmth. "Let's hope not. My question is, was that a freak accident or can you actually hit what you aim for?"

"I practiced some before we met."

"That'll have to be good enough."

He pivoted and walked to the police, arms up and face friendly. This must not have been what they were expecting. They called out when he was around twenty feet away, keeping their guns trained on him. Kairos answered in Arabic, and in a moment the weapons were put away and everyone looked like they'd known each other since childhood. Laughs, exclamations, slaps on the back. Erin didn't understand what was being said; she didn't have to. Three minutes later the policeman were ambling down the street, happy and confused. Kairos returned with a pistol and the keys to the SUV. "Just try not to shoot me again, ok? I'm going to be busy with David."

The police vehicle had plenty of room in the back, so they loaded it with extra fuel and water from a nearby gas station. "This shouldn't take long," Kairos said while toting a five-gallon jug, "but I've seen 'shouldn't' turn into reality too many times."

They took off when the sun was just a hint of pink smudge on the horizon. By the time morning was truly upon them, the city had been left behind, replaced by a wonderland.

It was the desert, real and all around her. The sands and rock ran on forever. She'd expected vast - after the Rockies, she was ready for size. She knew the scale of the Western Desert, but knowledge was on an entirely different planet from experience. The mobile constancy of the land, complex but elementary: it captivated her. Sand, wind, rock. She gave herself over to wonder for a time, trying not to think of what was coming.

It helped that the day was quite pleasant, even mild. The sun looked gently down on them, sand drifted easily past the road. A catchy techno song in what she guessed was Arabic bounced through the car. Only Kairos was out of place in this picture - his lips pressed together, brow furrowed, hands latched on the wheel like a vise. Erin reached over and rubbed the back of his neck. He flinched before pressing back to her touch. "Hey," she said, "hey."

He knew what she was going to say next. "We're getting close, I can't relax now. The Rage wants me, and David wants to take me again, and you're still in danger. I can't relax."

Erin sighed and leaned back into the seat, her hand still resting on his neck. Maybe when this was done, they'd be able to ... what? She couldn't finish the thought. What could they do? And more, would it ever be over? So far, she'd just become more entangled in his world, with no end in sight. There's always another layer, that's what John Henderson had said. No. She corrected that thought. Nshange had said it; Mr. Henderson was just the messenger. She watched the sand slide by. Look what that had gotten him.

Shortly after noon, Kairos turned off the road. The shudder of the tires hitting rocks and sand brought Erin's head up. She must have drifted off while watching the scenery. Air travel never gave her enough real rest. She took in her surroundings while trying to get back up to speed.

The land was gorgeous. Huge rock walls rose up and dived back into the earth like breaching whales. Sand still ran across the ground in waves, and dunes dotted the land. It looked so well-placed, for a moment she thought she was inside a movie or a video game. "Ok, if I had a hidden fortress it'd be here," she admitted to herself.

Kairos cut the ignition, and the sudden silence pressed down on them. For a long, quiet minute, no one moved. Erin didn't want anything to change, but she could sense it coming. Somewhere nearby, perhaps just out of sight, David was waiting for them. "Is it time?" she asked quietly when she couldn't take any more.

He nodded. "Yeah, it's time."

They got out, and Erin stretched in the warm afternoon sun. It wasn't nearly as hot as she'd expected, but then Egypt had to have its own seasons. She supposed that darkly handsome Bedouins wouldn't also be pounding past on horseback, either. Ah, well.

Within five minutes of leaving the car, Erin was giving thanks she'd thought to pick up a compass. While each formation appeared unique, the twists their path took and the sheer blank size of the land ensured that her sense of direction was almost worthless.

Kairos wasn't paying attention to his surroundings, following an internal pull. Of course, he didn't need to worry about things like getting back to the car, to the road. Erin kept her own rough estimation of where they'd traveled.

After twenty minutes, he pulled up short. "It's close. Very close. I can't quite put my finger on it, there's a sort of ... a sort of fog to my sense of direction."

Erin glanced over, alarmed. "Fog? Is David -"

"Not like in Washington," he said. "My mind is my own. It's just ... I don't know, it's weird. I've never tried to seek out another one of our homes before. That might be it."

He closed his eyes, bringing one hand up to his forehead. "It's like a damn buzzing in my head. I'm close, I know it. It's like..."

Kairos trailed off, looked ahead and pointed to a crack in one of the rock walls. "There," he said.

"What, that?"

"Unless I miss my guess, that's where we're headed."

It didn't look like much from the outside to Erin; an irregular split in the rock just taller and barely wider than she. Fist-sized rocks lay scattered in the sands, as if the cave had recently been formed. Had she been here for any other purpose, she'd have guessed that the shadowed back wall was within arm's reach.

Kairos pulled one of the flashlights from his bag. "Glad I got these now, huh?" he said, obviously proud that one of his suggestions was bearing fruit.

"Flashlight - I'll give you credit for that. When you find a use for the paint swatches, then I'll be impressed."

"I'm going to check it out. Hold one just one second."

He stepped gingerly through the opening, disappearing around a corner after just two steps. Erin glanced around at the day. Sky, rocks, sand. More sky. "Oh, there we go," his voice drifted out. A moment later Kairos reappeared, a grim smile on his face. "This is the place. David calls it The Tomb."

"What makes you think so?"

"For one, the cave is a sham. It opens right up in there, and the walls have all been worked with tools. Way too even.

"He's also got your mystical sign etched into the stone on the floor. You know, the star on your map. It's a fucking welcome home mat."

A thrum of pride ran through her. Dismiss her ideas all he wanted to, she had been right. She held out a hand and asked for the second flashlight, but Kairos laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. "I don't think you should come. I'm going to be honest, I have no idea what it'll be like in there. David has to suspect I'll come for him after the shit he pulled, and he's had some time to prepare."

"You think I'm going to wait up here and do nothing? I thought you said it'd be safer if I was with you!"

He grimaced. "Yeah, up to a point. I mean, with the others all nearby back in North America it was. Here it's just me and David. See?"

She didn't. "No, Kairos, I don't. I think I've taken care of myself pretty well so far. I know I don't have superpowers, but give me a little credit. I'll be fine."

"Look, I don't want you to die today. Get it? As far as I know, he could have set a trap for you in there. I'd rather not find out."

"You can't handle him?"

He ground his teeth. "I'm saying I don't know what's in there, so why take chances?"

"But if you go in, can't he come out?"

"No. Not without me knowing it. I'm getting a handle on him now. If I follow the fog in my head to where it's thickest, I'll find him. He's in there, right now."

"So I should -"

"No! Please. Just, please. For me. Stay out here now. Tell you what, if I get in there and it's boring, I'll come back for you. Deal?"

Erin crossed her arms over her chest. "You aren't being fair."

He smiled and backed away from her. "I knew you'd understand."

Kairos gave her one more look when he reached the threshold, then stepped inside. Erin looked around. The sun was high in the silent air. She didn't know what to do next.

She could go back to the SUV, of course, though that was a nice hike. There was the cave. She'd never actually told Kairos she wouldn't follow him. Erin decided to make a compromise. She wouldn't go in - for five minutes. After that, all bets were off.

Five minutes wasn't too bad. Granted, Kairos could probably run halfway across Egypt in that time. Just the same, the hole in the wall was quite small. She'd see anyone coming or going.

To pass the time, Erin climbed to the top of a small dune and looked out across the landscape. It was gorgeous, but the desert felt oddly toothless to her. She supposed she'd been expecting a constant fight for survival, a desperate search for water like in any of the movies she'd seen. She laughed lightly at herself, forgetting for a moment all the people who had tried to kill her. A slow breeze toyed with the ends of her shirt, and lines of sand drifted lazily past in the yellow light. Any life that included a sight like this was a full one.

After what she judged to be enough time more or less, Erin made her way back down towards the rock wall with the suspicious crevasse. Her supply bag slumped off to one side, and she rummaged around in it. She didn't want to take the entire kit inside. Lugging the pack in the sun had quickly grown tiresome. Kairos had gone overboard, wasn't thinking straight. Really, beyond light, water, maybe a gun, what could she need?

Behind her, the light shifted. Or perhaps a small rock scratched against another.

Erin froze. The small hairs on the back of her neck were on end. A change had touched the little stretch of desert behind her, and she had her back to it. Slowly, not sure if she wanted to see, Erin turned.

Nothing. The desert was empty and beautiful, just as before. She narrowed her eyes. She'd started trusting her feelings much more of late, and at the moment they were telling her something wasn't right. Something was there.

Keeping her eyes on the landscape and trusting to touch, Erin pulled the flashlight from the bag. It was a long, heavy metal outfit, and she held it from the bulb end. If there was a person or a ... an anything out there, it wouldn't find her defenseless. With her free hand she touched the grip of the gun at her side.

Flicker. A man in linens stood observing her not forty feet away. Another flicker, and he was gone. When he showed up again an instant later, Erin recognized him: Ichiro. What was he doing here? As she watched, he fuzzed in and out of vision like bad reception on an old television.

"The hell...?" she muttered, a slow nervousness creeping up on her. The last time they'd met hadn't been pleasant. He started toward her, in no hurry, snapping in and out of view. As he approached, his image came into clearer focus. There couldn't be a single good reason for his presence here and now.

Ichiro pulled his shirt aside to reveal the ugly bronze knife that had almost skewered her once. He pulled it out casually, apparently confident in his invisibility. "You have got to be fucking kidding me," Erin muttered.

She considered running inside after Kairos. She had plenty of time, Ichiro was essentially ambling toward attempted murder.

His appearance made her angry more than anything else, though. At fifteen feet away, Erin disabused him of whatever notion of invisibility he had: she crossed wrists and fired four bullets into his chest. After her history, Erin knew it wouldn't kill him, but maybe she could get him to reconsider whatever he was planning.

Ichiro stumbled back, looking stunned. "I can see you!" she yelled helpfully. "Give up now, you've lost your one advantage!"

That gave him pause, but then he raised a finger. "Except, of course, that you cannot really hurt me," he said.

Ah, crap. That was true. She should have found Kairos. Maybe there was still time.

Before she could move, a deep hoarse shout rang out and something blocked out the sun. Erin twisted around. She recognized Yves silhouetted against the sky - he had just vaulted off the rock wall above her. He hung in the air for an impossible instant, a lumpy ungraceful gliding bird. Then, of course, he crashed to the ground.

She dropped to her knees instinctively and only bounced a little from the reverberation of his landing. Ichiro danced back several steps. Yves looked down at her, annoyed. "Again? Someone is here to kill you again?"

Yves took hold of the rock wall, presumably to rip a chunk of it out. If that was his intention, he failed miserably. Instead he strained and grunted before giving up. "What in hell is happening?" he asked.

Erin thought she knew. "That's the entrance to David's sacred place," she said. "You might not be able to rip it apart."

He scowled. "Why are we here, Mam'selle?"

"Kairos and I - dammit, there's no time right now," she said, "Ichiro's over there, and he's after me again."

She pointed him out, but evidently Yves couldn't see him. Nonetheless, he nodded and scooped her up in one arm. He loped away with her, back to the dune she'd been standing upon earlier and dropped her unceremoniously. "Cover your eyes," he commanded, and she had only a moment to obey, certainly not enough time to say she'd been able to see the other man just fine before. Between her fingers, she saw him kneel and sweep sand with one massive arm in an arc around them. The spray went up like a tidal wave. Grains of sand sparkled in the midday sun, millions of tiny lights and shadows dancing an impossibly complex pattern.

Above her, Yves was staring hard. The sky was filled with a coat of grain, except in one patch of air. There was a hitch, a discontinuity. The cloud of falling sand didn't quite match its surroundings. Erin could see Ichiro through it, but this was the clue Yves had been looking for. "There!" he crowed.

He dropped his shoulders and charged the seemingly empty space. Ichiro rolled out of the Frenchman's path, and Yves must not have noticed. Either that or seeing the smaller man was another odd phenomena manifesting solely to Erin, for Yves showed no sign of knowing what had happened. He punched the ground. "Where did you go?" he yelled. He looked back at Erin. "Run! I've lost him!"

She hadn't. Ichiro had flickered in and out of view as he ran right up to her, knife raised for the strike. Erin lashed out with her flashlight, catching him across the arm and then again in the face. Evidently being immortal and invisible didn't train someone how to fight. For good measure, she brought the pistol back up and shot him again. "What?" he asked dumbly, taking two steps back. This time he must have been fully visible. Between his confused response and Erin's shot, Yves had plenty of time to barrel into the man. It looked like a train plowing down some unlucky desert livestock. Ichiro was lifted right off his feet and thrown end over end into a nearby hill. Yves was right on top of him, yelling at the top of his voice. "You conceded before! You damned liar!"

Ichiro shook his head as if to clear it of sand that may have gotten into various orifices. Perhaps that's what he was doing, but he was interrupted when Yves pounded Ichiro with his foot, driving him two feet into the ground. "Conneries! I have to do this again? What is the matter with you?"

If Ichiro made a response, it was buried in sand. Yves reached down to pull him out, and hoisted the man over his head with no real effort. The giant man walked back to Erin with his opponent held at arm's length above him.

"How do you keep finding me?" Ichiro cried out. "This is insane!"

"It's her," Yves replied with a voice like rockfall. "She's doing it."

Ichiro fixed Erin with a leery gaze, which was fairly difficult considering he was being held sideways ten feet off the ground. "That's who I was talking to. It's hardly fair," he said.

"Do you concede?" Yves demanded.

"I don't know. I guess. Is she related to Nshange or something? It's not fair at all. Don't know why in God's name I got her as a target again."

"You didn't answer. Do you concede?"

"Fine, yes, I know you never tire. I concede. Happy?"

If Yves was satisfied, he gave no sign. He turned his little eyes on Erin. "Why must I travel half the world to save the same person twice in two weeks? Where is Kairos in all of this?"

She pointed back to the shadowy gap in the rocks. "There."

"Why?"

"Don't you know?" She wasn't sure if she should elaborate, but the words just popped out. "He's here to kill David."

"What?" Yves gasped, and above him Ichiro cried out in Japanese.

Without thinking, Yves set the other man down. Ichiro dashed to the entrance and peeped into the darkness as best he could. "I hear nothing," he said after a moment. "It could be over."

Yves hadn't left Erin's side. "Why is he doing this thing?"

She gave both of them the short version of the previous day's events. The two exchanged glances.

"This is bad. Yves, I think we should -"

"Yes," he nodded, and the two men turned their backs on Erin.

"Wait," she said, "what are you going to do?"

They didn't stop. "Talk them out of it, or try to." Ichiro said.

"We should never kill one another."

Yves had to hunch and suck in his breath to get inside. Ichiro paused and turned on the verge of the shadow. "It would be best for you to stay outside. Safer."

Erin wasn't sure which was more frustrating - that she kept receiving such useless advice, or that the man who'd offered it had just tried to kill her.

Five more minutes, then. That's all, and then she'd be down there, assuming another little fight over her didn't happen first.

This time she waited by the entrance, ready to run in if anyone showed up. The first minute passed without note, and the second. Sweat trickled down the side of her face.

Cursing shouts echoed from the interior. The sound was weak and distant, but there was definitely a struggle taking place somewhere within. Screw five minutes. Erin flicked on her flashlight and plunged inside. There was a rough opening chamber five or six feet deep, followed by a sudden turn into The Tomb proper.

After being out in the sun, mild as it was, the air inside was downright chilly. Erin shone her flashlight around. The walls straightened, extending out and down into shadow. The ground was hard-packed earth, broken occasionally by a line of cut rock. As Kairos had pointed out, a six-pointed star graced a flagstone at her feet. Lines radiated out from the center to each point on the design. She couldn't help but see Kairos' face in that middle point. He was down in the dark somewhere; it was past time for her to rejoin him.

The passage sloped downwards, shadows begging to take Erin's flashlight away. As the floor ramped down, the ceiling grew farther off, until Erin got the feeling she was walking through a thin underground cathedral. Every now and then, little side-chambers, mere nooks really, popped up along the tunnel. Whether they had been used to store or display objects at one time, she had no idea, but all of them were empty now. Still, someone obviously had been through here many times. Erin hated the thought of the attention she was calling to herself, but there was no way she was going down this hallway without light.

After a hundred yards or so - at least as far as she could guess - the tunnel split in two. Both options appeared equally bleak, empty dark corridors to nowhere.

She sighed. There was no use delaying. She chose the left-hand side.

She followed that for another hundred yards, ran up against another split. "Crap." Erin picked left again.

This time, after a short distance a man's voice pierced the darkness. "Give me a -ungh!- goddamn break!" she heard as she approached. Erin smiled; it was Kairos.

And there he was, sprawled off in one corner of a small nook. He was alone, and had obviously run into some trouble. At the moment he was pinned to the floor by a massive trident. The three tines had neatly speared him and plowed into the ground underneath. His arms strained mightily against the huge weapon in a futile attempt to get free, then dropped in the light as he strained to see who might be coming.

The sight of Kairos was enough to lift a weight off of Erin's heart. No matter what hardship he might be under, she couldn't help thinking that everything would work out as long as they stayed close. On the other hand, he had a giant metal fork driven through him. Even knowing all she did, that was a hard sight to take in. "What happened?" she called out.

Kairos twisted as far as he could, which wasn't much. "Who is that?" he said, "Alessandra? That you? Everyone else seems to be here in this damn place. You come to be useful or to pile on?"

Erin jogged over. The damn trident must be twelve feet long. It was not at all what she'd been expecting. "How on earth ..."

His eyes widened when she came into view. "I thought you were going to stay up top!"

"You didn't actually expect me to not to follow you, did you? Come on, Kairos, you know me better than that."

He grunted. "Can you get me out from under this goddamn thing?"

She knelt down to get a better look. "So I take it this means you found David."

"No. I wish I had. I was wandering around this damned place, must have taken a wrong turn or three. I was coming back down this way when I got skewered."

"Yves and Ichiro, they were going to ..."

"Oh, Yves and Ichiro? You don't say! Who do you think did this? Yeah, they were down here. Fat lot of good they are. Tried to talk me out of killing David, like there was a chance of that. Ichiro distracted me long enough for Yves to wander off and find this monstrosity. He came out of nowhere with it, speared me like I'm a damned lobster and said he would be back when I've changed my mind. Took my flashlight too; I'm glad you brought light. They were going to find David next. I think they hope I'll concede since I'm stuck here."

Erin paused. "Will you?"

His mouth twisted. "Never. This is the sort of crap my boss won't ever forgive, and I wouldn't if he did. The Rage has ... it's never been like this."

"Ok. I'll help you out if I can, just ... try to stay yourself, all right?"

"I'm still me, darling. Don't worry. I got three giant holes running through my stomach to keep me reminded."

"Not for long. Oh, but Kairos, I don't think anyone actually spears lobsters. It's more of a trap-type thing, you know?"

He glared at her. "Do you honestly think I give a shit if my figure of speech was accurate? I have a trident in my belly!"

Fair enough. "The important thing is getting you out. I'm not going to able to lift it, I'd say, but maybe we can pry you loose."

Erin set to work on getting him free while he grumbled. The weapon had been well driven into the ground, unfortunately. Of course, if it hadn't he wouldn't be stuck there. Pulling it out would be useless. "Can you, I don't know, kind of lift your torso enough for me to see under you?"

"Oh, sure! No problem!" Kairos wrapped his hands around the spear's shaft and pulled himself up. He hung there six inches up as Erin examined the floor, a disgusted look on his face the whole time.

The ground under him was hard-packed sand. Little mounds were piled around the entry point for each metal tine. Maybe ... it wasn't much of an idea, but perhaps they could be knocked loose. Erin hunted around the tunnel for a good rock while Kairos let himself back down.

"You could cut me in half," he offered as she shone the flashlight around the floor.

"I don't even want to think about that. Has that ever happened to you?"

"Not yet, but I thought I should mention it."

She found a good solid rock the size of her head. "Here we go. Let's hold off on chopping you up until I see if this works. And you know, leaving me outside wasn't one of your best ideas. It wasn't safe at all. If I'd been here, I might have been able to keep you from getting trapped to begin with."

He grunted but didn't contradict her. Erin situated herself as best she could to make a strike at the pole, though unfortunately that meant resting one foot on Kairos' chest. "Ok, just hold on," she said, and swung her arm around with all her strength.

The shaft shivered when struck, but did little else. The result was the same the second, third and fourth times.

"Any other ideas?"

"I could dig you out if you pull yourself back up, but that might take a while. I don't exactly have good tools on me. Something faster like knocking it loose would be better, but I'm not sure. I need ... what I need is better leverage. Hold on a second." She climbed up onto the trident. The flashlight wasn't on Kairos at the moment, for which she was grateful. She had a feeling he was giving her a nasty look.

On cue, his voice came up out of the shadows. "You remember we're trying to get me out of here, right? Not drive this thing further down."

"Quiet. I'm trying something."

Keeping hold of the pole, she rocked back and forth, trying not to picture what she looked like. "This is too weird, Kairos. All of it. Underground, giant trident, everything. Too damn weird."

It was starting to give. Erin poured more energy into it, rocking the thing back and forth like a madwoman. Back home in South Carolina there had been a couple of crabapple trees, and at the end of the season she and Ann used to hug the trunks and try to shake loose as many dried-up, worm-ridden fruits as they could. She laughed manically. Hopefully Kairos wasn't worm-ridden.

With a shudder and a thud, the massive weapon jolted and came free. Kairos pushed himself off the blades and lay on the ground. "I feel like fucking salad," he said.

Erin tried to catch her breath. "Fucking salad? I really hope that wasn't a verb just now."

From the ground, Kairos laughed helplessly. "You asshole," he coughed out eventually. Erin took a seat next to him and ran her fingers through what little hair he had.

"You're free, that's what counts."

Kairos stuck a hand through one of the new holes in his clothes. His skin had already closed up. "That's better." He pushed himself to his feet. "It doesn't bug me anymore, getting chopped up. Still nice to be back together."

"So where to now?"

He gestured further down the tunnel. "That way." He stood and stretched his back. "I explored the other side first - it turned out to be a massive loop. Not much use. If this one's the same thing we'll have to rethink our strategy."

They set off together down the hall. Erin felt oddly happy. She glanced over at him and smiled. "This is how we should have gone in to begin with."

"Hmmph." He didn't argue more.

The tunnel stretched out before them, and she thought she could detect a certain curve. When she brought it up to Kairos, he frowned and said it wasn't the same as what he'd already explored. He grew quiet as he walked, and one hand rested on his remaining Keryx blade.

After what felt like several minutes of walking, he stopped and gripped her shoulder. "There's light up ahead."

Kairos was right. A low glow lit the walls some distance up, a warm and moving light, natural rather than electric. Something new. They approached silently.

The tunnel was opening up into a massive rounded chamber, lit by four torches stuck in the ground. The back wall and ceiling were lost in shadow, but a short wide circular platform dominated the room. The walls curved around to meet the rear edge of the structure. It was perhaps fifty feet across, and in the center, sitting peacefully in a meditative pose just at the edge of the darkness: David.

Erin felt Kairos tense. His right hand clenched his sword's pommel so tightly that the leather squeaked.

"Bastard." The word danced across the stones.

Off to the right, Yves and Ichiro squatted near the step. Ichiro turned. "Ah, great. You're free, that's wonderful. You won't stay still, David won't move."

Kairos paid no attention. He growled and rushed forward to the edge of the platform, eyes fixed on David. The Keryx blade came out of its sheath. "You ready, pal?"

If David was upset, he gave no sign of it. He sat complacently on the stones, not bothering to move or respond.

Something in his manner must have triggered an alarm in Kairos' head. He paused with one foot in the air. A step up into the circle would be a small thing, but it gave him pause for some reason. He stared down at the polished stone rising out of rough floor, glanced over to Yves and Ichiro. David watched calmly.

Out of nowhere, Kairos chuckled and drew his foot back. "Oh, I get it. I see. That's clever, David."

The Egyptian nodded. "I do what I must."

Erin looked between the two of them, confused. "What are you talking about?"

Kairos nodded to the other man. "This circle here is where his boss lives. I hadn't thought through all the implications before I showed up. We're playing for keeps."

She frowned. "I know. I thought that was the whole purpose of coming here."

"No, you don't understand ... I mean both of us."

David spoke up. "Whosoever comes onto this circle risks their own life. In here, time is not stopped for any of us, and all our other attendant gifts are rescinded."

"So if you go up there -"

"It's just two guys trying to kill one another, no magic or bullshit," Kairos finished for her. "That's fair. I've done it before."

"So have I, I'm sorry to say," David replied.

"I will take you, David. I know that as well as you do, speed or no speed. No matter what this place means to you, I'm the one who won't hesitate."

"That may be. You may take my life, it's possible. I obviously hope you don't. I may also take yours. Please, Kairos." He stood up, palms held outward. David had no visible weapon. "I don't want trouble between us. Neither one of us should die today; this fight is not needed. Walk away, walk away now. We can all go back to normal."

Kairos laughed, and the sound was rough and evil. He drew his blade. "Normal? You think my boss will take normal now? You threw out all the rules! You can't go back after what you've done to me."

"My old friend," David said, a crease of honest confusion in his brow, "why do you keep thinking this is about you?"

Kairos cocked his head, not immediately understanding. Erin did. The truth had been circling for some time, and now it struck. A sick feeling overtook her, and she backed into the wall. Whatever had happened in the last weeks, she'd done a fine job of drawing the wrong kind of attention to herself. Nshange, Ichiro, David, Yves ... that was most of the world's supply of supernatural assassins, all focused at one time or another upon her. What had she jumped into? The feeling of careless invulnerability that came from being around Kairos evaporated. There was a price to pay, apparently, for curiosity.

She met Kairos' eyes; he'd come to the same conclusion. "No," she heard him whisper.

He turned back. "No," he said, with more conviction this time, "I won't let you kill her."

"Seems an odd time for you to get sentimental."

"She has nothing to do with this! She can't! There's no reason the gods should have such a bug up their ass about one little life."

David stepped closer into the light. "But if they do, what do you care? That's one person, Kairos, one quick quiet life. A little life, like you said. Balance that against ... what? Possible disaster? Your own existence? Mine? You've made that decision so many times. Why not now?"

Kairos' face had grown darker by the word, and he glared across the room as he paced the edge of the platform. "Don't tell me my job."

"I'm not! All that's needed is for you to allow me to do mine."

He laughed roughly. "Stand aside while you kill my friend?"

"I am your friend, as well."

Kairos tapped the platform with his blade. "Yeah, my great friend. Tried to take over my mind, and now you're on the wrong side of my sword."

David's eyes tracked the Keryx blade, and Erin could sense nervousness coming off him. "If you step inside that circle, you damnable fool, you're just as vulnerable as I am now -"

"I thought we've been over that. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference in the end. You know what? You get past me, you can kill her. I won't stop you. Right now, there's only one thing I need to remember."

"And that is...?"

"I have a job of my own to see to."

David sighed, bowed his head. "Then I suppose we have no choice."

Kairos smiled. "We've never had one." When he spoke, Erin could swear she heard the echo of another voice, one old and full of wrath.

He stepped onto the platform, and a hum of electricity shot around the room, like a wired cello string plucked. He called out around the chamber. "Anyone else gonna be a part of this?"

Silence. Yves back away with hands raised. Ichiro watched silently with one hand over his mouth.

Kairos turned back with a smile and hefted his Keryx blade. "Just you and me then, David."

The other man smiled sadly. "I am afraid not."

A rumble. A crack that ran down the spine. Movement: sand pouring like a waterfall from one wall. "As you have your blade, I have my own weapons," David said, untroubled. "I am never alone in this house. There are secret springs known only to those of old. It has always been here, ready to defend this holy place when necessary."

"What did you do?" Kairos called over the noise.

David backed away. He said something, but it was becoming harder to hear with whatever was happening back beyond the torchlight. Erin thought he said "I warned you."

And then they saw it.

"Oipho!" Kairos cried. His mouth kept moving, but any further sound was drowned out by the avalanche of debris. Something was alive in the darkness, parts of the shadows themselves were breaking free.

Erin's first impression was of an ivy-covered brick wall coming loose. It was as tall as a two-story house, thick as a gnarled baobab tree, and covered in twisting leafy vines and branches. With a shock, she saw that it was, in fact, made entirely of thick, leafy branches. It was a living colossus bursting forth. "My god," she whispered. Such a thing should not exist.

It was suggestive of a person, if falling drastically short. It had two arms and two legs, with a green misshapen head sitting atop its shoulders. There was a rough approximation of a face, just enough to be horrifically inhuman. The whole thing was brutish and clumsy, like God had gotten tired and given up. Two dark pits must have been intended to be eyes, and they sat immediately above a gaping hole between inward-curving vines that served as a mouth. Its entire head looked squashed and absurd, the shape of a rotting pumpkin, and was greener and leafier than the rest of it. Though it appeared to be composed primarily of plants, there was nothing soft about the creature as it broke completely free from the wall.

Chunks of rock, parts of the wall perhaps, had lodged themselves in the crooks of its body. Like any good plant, it had simply grown around and incorporated them. There seemed to have been intention to the growth in this case: both arms ended in knobby hands that had collected an impressive concentration of boulders. Whether they were knuckles or claws was uncertain, there was no real symmetry. It didn't matter. They looked deadly.

It shook its farce of a head, and a few last showers of sand poured from it. It squared its feet, facing Kairos as much as a nearly faceless plant giant could.

"All right, then." Kairos said grimly, and rushed the beast. He didn't hesitate, Erin had to give him that. Before the last fall of sand had splashed to the ground, Kairos was dashing in at it. He was as tall as one of its knees. The Keryx blade flashed out in the torchlight, slamming into one massive ropy leg with a dry thunk.

He stood there a moment straining, and Erin realized the blade had gotten bound up in the creature's wooden body. The giant-thing reared back, arms up and making a high keening sound. Kairos must have known he had only half a second, for he leapt out of the way of the arm that crashed into the platform floor. Several of the stones cracked under the impact, tiny jagged shards shooting into the darkness. The Keryx still protruded from its leg, but if it caused the giant pain it didn't show. It stomped after its prey.

It wasn't fast, that was a blessing. But then, without his speed Kairos seemed dangerously slow as well. He looked ... vulnerable. He knew it, too. He was matching his opponent movement for movement now, looking for some kind of opportunity. Erin couldn't imagine what he might be able to accomplish even with his weapon. Unarmed, the best he could hope for would be to put off the inevitable. Erin considered running back for the trident, but it was too far off, too heavy. She was certain this would be over by the time she returned. Whatever happened now, she knew she had to witness.

David paced the far end of the platform, trying to stay out of everyone's way. Erin considered trying to get to him herself, but he must have foreseen that. He kept himself well away from her, from Yves and Ichiro. "Concede!" he yelled. "Concede and this will be over and done!"

"Go fuck yourself!"

The giant didn't say anything. It swiped at Kairos, who had to drop to the ground, and then roll out of the way to avoid getting stepped on.

Coming back to his feet on the left flank of the monster, Kairos had his arms out on both sides. "What the hell am I supposed to do?" he yelled in frustration and fear. Behind the giant, David shook his head. Ichiro started to rise, but Yves laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

On the platform, the beast had picked a boulder half the size of Erin's body from its back. It reared back and whipped the rock across the stones at Kairos, who scrambled out of its path. The missile left a jagged line of destruction in its wake, and smashed into a wall with a reverberating boom.

"My God!" Ichiro exclaimed. "Kairos, give up, please - we can settle all of this together!"

Kairos glanced around, hatred plain on his face. Whatever was happening inside his head, surrender was no part of it. Erin sincerely hoped, and sincerely doubted, that his will was still his own.

"I wonder, David," Kairos yelled, trying to keep his distance, "How will it do without you?"

"I dare say that you won't find out," David replied. He still made sure to have the plant-thing between them.

Kairos pelted back to face the beast, coming to a halt directly in front of it. The creature naturally took a swing at him, but this time Kairos was prepared. He dove forward past its legs, scrambled to his feet, and dashed ahead towards David with murder in his eyes.

Kairos may have thought he had an opportunity as he pelted forward, but the beast swung deceptively quickly. It brought one arm back around, crashing diagonally toward the floor. The rock-tangled mass of branches at the end of its arm would take a man's head off.

"Kairos, down!" Erin yelled out, and he dropped to the floor. A warmth shot through her; he hadn't doubted her word for an instant, ducking in time to avoid the blow.

Before another one could come, the giant pulled itself back and up. Its inhuman attention had turned. Wood groaned as it swiveled, empty eyes focusing upon her. David stared at her as well, shock painting his face. She realized another little electric hum had been sounded.

Erin looked down. In calling out to Kairos, trying to reach him, she'd stepped onto the platform. "Oh, shit," she whispered.

The colossus took a hesitant step toward her. She wanted to back away, to run, to never again see anything like what was before her. Her legs weren't responding, though. Her body had no intention of following any reasonable suggestion at the moment.

The giant twisted its head, almost as if it were trying to take her in. "Now!" came a voice that might have been David's. One gargantuan arm filled with boulders came whistling at her head, filling her vision. Erin merely gaped and watched it come.

Something hard and crashed into her, but it wasn't the creature's arm. This came from the side, and came with a familiar scent. The tackle shook her loose from whatever had been holding her. Holy shit! That fist could have killed her! Erin pushed herself onto all fours and tried to take in the situation. Kairos, the constant smell of him filling her nostrils, had rolled to a few feet away after knocking her off her feet. David stayed back, between the legs of the monster out to kill them.

Kairos called out. "Get the hell out of here!"

His words galvanized her, but not to the intended action. He hadn't given up; she couldn't either. Erin jumped up and snatched one of the torches out of its stand. The giant was recovering from its swing, empty eyes searching. If she was going to die, she was going to go down swinging, damn it. She sprinted forward, torch in one hand and flashlight still gripped in the other like she was a damned subterranean Olympian. Even as the beast tracked her movements and reared back for a strike, Erin jammed the torch into what might have been its inner thigh and ran past it, pelting across the stones.

Flames licked up its side, curling leaves and choking the room with acrid smoke. A popping, crackling sound filled the chamber. With a better fire or more time, it might have worked. As it was, the creature battered itself with its arms, smothering the fires under tough, sap-filled wood. Scorch marks ran up its abdomen on the left, but otherwise it seemed quite unaffected. It certainly moved just as freely as before, and its attention was most certainly centered upon her now.

With terrifying efficiency, it covered the distance separating them. Kairos sprang forward, trying to wrap his arms around a leg. Whatever his plan may have been, it didn't work.

The monstrosity flung an arm out as if swatting a fly, and Kairos spun back to the floor. It was focused entirely on Erin now, and she stumbled backwards. One foot went off the edge of the platform, and the short drop was enough of a shock to take her legs out from under her. She fell heavily back onto the packed sand, one shoulder catching the back wall. The flashlight bounced from her grip and skittered across the floor. The beast loomed above her, its head lost in the shadows.

Erin cast desperately around for a weapon, anything that could push away the doom bearing down on her. There was nothing. She was up against the wall, out of chances. One unnatural hand uncurled and reached for her.

Kairos looked up from the floor, one arm bent unnaturally at the shoulder, and his face was full of rage. "You won't take her!" he roared, and flung himself at the unholy thing as if his soul depended on it. He covered the distance between them as if he still had a touch of his powers, caught hold of his weapon and ripped it free in one tremendous pull. The monster didn't even notice. It was reaching for Erin. David's mouth was slack, his body leaning forward.

Kairos caught the outstretched arm as it passed. How his left arm could work at that moment with what was surely a dislocated shoulder, she had no idea. The creature paused, uncertain for a few short seconds. That was all Kairos needed. He pulled himself up, yelling in Greek, and leapt at its head. One hand caught a vine at the top of its excuse for a mouth, two feet landed on its chin. The plant-rock monstrosity reared back in confusion and anger.

Before it could react further, Kairos leapt into its maw. Gripping his weapon in both hands, he screamed incoherently and plunged in and up. Erin gaped.

"No!" cried David, and everyone stared up into the gloom at the edge of the torchlight.

The dark nothing of the creature's eyes widened. It shook its head as if trying to shake off an unexpected rain, its body shuddering from top to bottom. A huge deep yellow mass resembling an overgrown cauliflower tumbled from its mouth to splatter across the stones below. And Kairos leapt out, Keryx blade in hand and body dripping with a light thin substance.

He dropped in a spray of vines and splintered wood, landing on all fours and breathing hard. Leaves drifted in and out of shadow as they spiraled to the floor.

The brainless body of the beast stumbled back, whatever life remaining within acting on instinct and pained confusion. David threw himself out of the way, narrowly avoiding a crushing foot. It passed him, moving blindly, and crashed into a wall. The floor bucked with the impact and a massive boulder was shaken loose out of the ceiling, crashing into the remains of the creature with a terrible crunch.

Kairos looked up. "Never killed a giant before," he said as he rose to his feet. He was breathing hard but his voice was steady and cold. He stalked toward David with one arm dangling. The other man backed slowly away under his gaze. "But without a brain it goes down just as easy. This day's getting better by the second."

"Kairos..."

"So what's next, eh?"

"Listen, wait-"

"Oh, that's right, the son of a bitch that brought all this on himself."

"You don't know what you're about to do, man!"

"I think I've got a pretty good idea."

"I'm a slave the same as you! I'm just doing my job, you stupid shit!"

"So am I," Kairos said, and slammed his blade into David's belly.

Someone gasped. The two men on the platform locked eyes. For an instant, all was still, as if time were resisting what came next.

Time lost. David dropped to the ground, blood spilling. An agonized scream ripped out of him. Kairos followed him down, and he was shouting even in the face of David's cries. He was asking a question, repeatedly: why?

Eventually, David stopped screaming, but Kairos kept up the question. "Why? Why?" By the wall, Yves had his face averted. Ichiro stared horrified, his mouth wide.

David squirmed under the blade, his shirt darkening by the second. "You know damn well I didn't have a choice," he choked out.

"But why? Why risk yourself? You bastard! All of this, pointless, just ... why?"

"Don't kid yourself, Kairos. My boss doesn't kill without a good reason. Compare that to you. Hardly a day goes by anymore that you don't slaughter some unlucky fool. Ask him about pointless."

"Give me a good reason, then. Give me a reason for her!"

"Her? You have to ask? Half of the powers want her dead! It's only mine that was willing to break the rules, go after her even though she'd been spared, to go after you. Doesn't that tell you something? She's dangerous. They're afraid of her. She changes things. If you were smart, you'd kill her yourself!"

Kairos twisted the Keryx blade. "Not good enough."

Blood coursed out of David, soaking into the stone. His voice grew weak. "Ah, God! You don't have to do that! Isn't that obvious? I'm just doing my goddamn - unnhhh - duty..."

"Kairos, stop." It was a familiar voice that cut in, accented by a childhood in Niger. Erin spun around and Nshange was there. She had a long, wicked-looking scythe in her hands. The blade was a deep red. "Honestly, you know better. He doesn't deserve this. Stop, my friend."

Kairos turned, and threw his hands up. The blade was left inside David, who was making tiny rattling noises in his throat. "Perfect! Wonderful! What in hell are you doing, Nshange?"

"I'm here on a protection call."

He spat. "A little late. You think you can stop me? He's bleeding out already."

Nshange hoisted the reaper, studied down its length. "I didn't say I was here for you," she murmured, and turned on one heel to plunge it into the giving floor. A muted cry drifted up from where it struck. Nshange looked up and met Erin's eyes. "David and Ichiro aren't the only ones wanting you dead," she said. "There was a latecomer to the party."

She twisted the scythe in her hands and drew it up like she was netting a fish. On its blade, dragging out of streams of sand and rock, came Alessandra. She was hooked through the collarbone. Nshange knelt on one knee. "You've never seen me use my totem weapon before, have you?" she said conversationally. "Stings rather a lot, yes? You're stuck there until I let you off the blade, by the way."

Alessandra didn't bother speaking. She hissed and lashed out with a pair of small curved knives. One slashed through Nshange's cheek, spraying bright blood across the shadowed sands. The scythe didn't budge. If Nshange noticed her wound, she was untroubled by such a triviality. "Do you concede?" she asked, coolly straightening out of reach.

"Give her to me!" Alessandra cried.

"Do you concede?"

"No, she's mine! Devil take you!"

Nshange shifted her grip on the scythe, lifting Alessandra to her knees. "Do you concede?"

Alessandra cried out wordlessly, a sound full of frustration and hatred. She screamed past Nshange and Kairos, David and the dead giant and all the old history and power in this room. Erin shivered; Alessandra was screaming for her. For her blood.

When the echoes finally faded, it was replaced by a quiet sobbing. "She was supposed to be mine. She was!"

Nshange bent over her captive, relentless. "Do you concede?"

When Alessandra admitted defeat, it was in a bare whisper. Nshange was good enough not to force her further. She withdrew the scythe from the other woman's shoulder and stood aside.

Alessandra fled, running right through the walls of the tomb, but not before shooting Erin a look filled with venom. Erin realized she'd never known what the Spaniard's ability was.

Kairos had stepped away from David, transfixed by the exchange. "All of this, all of this for her. Why? We've never ... it's never been like this."

"Two thousand years is a long time, Kairos, but it's hardly never."

"I suppose Christina will show up next. Why the hell not?"

Nshange peered back up the tunnel. "No, she's nowhere near here. She's in Rome, and headed east. Christina's playing her own game right now, one just as dangerous as this. I think she may have abandoned the rest of us."

"Of course. Everything's falling to pieces, isn't it? Do the rules mean anything anymore?"

"You have to understand that things have changed." She set down the scythe. "The powers, the agencies we represent, they're acting as they feel they must."

"That doesn't tell me why!" He spun back around, anger returned, and ripped his weapon from David's abdomen. David jerked, once, but made no sound. He was beyond hearing. "Tell me!" Kairos roared in the man's face. The only response was a glassy stare.

Nshange reached a hand out. It was a symbolic move, ineffectual - he was well out of her reach. "Kairos," she said, "Kairos, stop. He's dead. Kairos, you should have killed him clean."

He looked down at David, and all the rage-fueled energy drained out of him. The end of the lone Keryx blade clanged dully on the stone floor. "Fuck me," he said. "Why the hell, David?"

Erin had her hands over her mouth in horror, but she couldn't look away. All of this pain; she didn't know who to hate, who to feel pity for.

Across the room, Yves stepped onto the platform, giving the room another little twinge. Kairos looked at him with resignation. "You too?" he muttered, but Yves made no move to attack. He walked past the Greek to kneel behind David's head. With one massive hand, he closed the dead man's eyes.

That acted as a trigger, breaking tension and draining the violent energy from the room. Ichiro and Nshange stepped up as well to pay respects to David's body. Erin felt very much an intruder.

When Nshange stood after lightly kissing David's cheeks, Kairos turned to her. He held the Keryx blade carelessly in one hand; it plotted a bloody arc across the stones as he moved. His voice was pleading. "Is it done? Is it done?"

She nodded. "Yes. Be easy, Kairos. Ichiro and Alessandra - the agencies they represent have withdrawn from claiming her. As far forward as I can see, they will adhere to that rule. Unless something changes, Erin is safe. No one else is coming after her right now."

He dropped to his knees, slumped over. "I'm so tired," he murmured. "I'm so tired of killing all the time."

No one had an answer for that. He looked up and met Erin's eyes, and something holding her back was released. She ran to him as he pushed himself back up. He almost fell into her arms. Erin hugged him as tightly as she could. "I need -" he said, then pulled his face back. "I need to leave. This place ... I can't be here any more."

"Let's go," she murmured, and the two of them turned their backs on Nshange, Ichiro, Yves, and what used to be David.

They stumbled out together, and Erin didn't know who was supporting whom. The tunnels passed under their feet in a blur. The two of them spilled out of the doorway and collapsed into the bright day. Erin never wanted to go back in there again. Kairos was crying.

She reached out for him, and all of a sudden they were kissing. Kairos felt soft and salty against her, and when he withdrew it felt like an hour had passed.

She looked up at him. He really was quite beautiful, even with sand scrubbed across his face and wet tracks running from his eyes. "I always thought your eyes never showed emotion," she said, "but that's not it, is it? There's just so much sadness in there, they don't have room for anything else."

He kissed her again, hard. A painful rush of love raced through her. "I can help you, Kairos. I know it, I can get you past all of this. Let me."

He shook his head. "No, no. All this - all this novelty. It started with you. I don't know how, Erin, but it did. This isn't right. Everything has gone crazy."

Erin couldn't feel her breath. "Kairos, you said my name."

"... yes. Yes, Erin, Erin, I did. I like saying it. I should have before now."

She rubbed her chin on his chest. "You should have. I like hearing it."

She could feel his breath, shallow and uneven against her. His heart beat fast but softly, as if it didn't want to make itself known. His voice came from a dim space far above, and she heard the echo of it in his chest. "I like saying it, Erin. I do, much more than I should. But... "

But. A sliver of cold pierced her. Kairos pulled back, just an inch, enough to break contact. No, you're not going to do this, no. "Kairos, listen-"

"But I can't see you any more. I can't take all this change, Erin. Nothing is making sense. I need you to leave me alone."

"What? What are you talking about? How can you-"

"I have ... I have perspective here. Everything's gotten twisted around since you showed up, and that's ... I can't deal with that."

Sand was stinging her eyes. "Kairos - no, Kairos, I know that, that-" What? That everything had been wrong since they'd met? And now a two-thousand-year-old man was making the same point? Maybe she couldn't explain it, maybe a rational person would tell her to cut her losses and get out, but all Erin could feel was the present slipping away into nothing.

He kept on relentlessly. "Besides, you remind me too much of who I am," he said.

"Don't give me that," she said automatically.

"It's true. You're making my life new again, but I hate my life. All of it. Hate it so much... ask me why I'm always trying to get drunk. Wouldn't you, knowing the person you had to be in the morning?"

Erin found she didn't have a good response.

He plunged a hand into his pocket. "Listen, you need money," he muttered, "lots of money, for anything you could want." He pulled wads of money out of his pocket and pushed the bills at Erin. "You need to be able to get back home," he said, "or, or wherever you need to go."

Erin glanced down. They were all hundreds.

"If you leave," she forced out, loudly, "I'll just find you again."

"Not again, Erin. I answered when you called me last time, but I can't do it again. It would be the end of me. This time I'll be gone for good. It's too much." His lips brushed her cheek.

There was a gust of wind, the hint of the words "I'm sorry" in the air, and Erin was alone in Egypt.

Notes - Group 3

Overall Group Notes: Splintering avoided - only one agency suffered a fatality. David's death means The Tomb currently unrepresented. Irregular but not unheard of. Control team insertion unnecessary, and dispersal of agents suggests a return to previous patterns. Fogging no longer a concern. New South Asian push likely, though no targets assigned as of yet. The group is largely outward-looking. The target is Christina, the driver Yves.

Individual Notes:

Kairos: Dispatch message successfully delivered to David. Did not use speed, was almost certainly impaired by effects of The Tomb. Defeated The Tomb totem weapon. Still has only one of the two Sky Labyrinth totem weapons. No current target at this time.

Christina: Remained in Vatican City, but appears to be preparing for exit east. Spent long periods of time with three other individuals: Arturo Bonetti, human; Penka Todorov, human; and Gerald Forester. Probable motivation: unknown. Worth further investigation. No current target at this time.

Alessandra: Dispatch message to Erin Dawes failed. Attempted to vibrate through the ground, prevented by Nshange (see note re: multi-d weapon usage). After, continued west toward the coast. Destination unclear, though possibly Medina, SA. No current target at this time.

Nshange: Preserve message to Erin Dawes successfully delivered. Use of Mound-Under-Mound multi-d weapon noteworthy. Hope it was authorized. Still out of contact. No current target, but report is well overdue.

Yves: Preserve message to Erin Dawes successfully delivered. Aided in large measure by Erin Dawes. Afterwards, observed dispatch message delivery to David. No current target at this time.

Ichiro: Dispatch message to Erin Dawes failed. Fully invisible until shot by Erin Dawes, likely broke his concentration. After message failure, observed dispatch message delivery to David. No current target at this time.

The Tomb: Fogging dispersed. Energy of the agency largely intact, although totem destroyed. No sign of a likely candidate for replacement. Tradition suggests Kairos, but action was taken at the wrong time (date of agency return not for eighteen months).

Recommendations: Continued monitoring. No further action at this time.

* * * * *

Chapter Eleven:

"Gamble everything for love, if you're a true human being. If not, leave this gathering." \- Jelal'uddin Rumi

TWO YEARS LATER

It was hot and still when Erin stepped off the plane, but she hardly noticed. At last count, her heart had been racing for a good four hours, ever since the final connecting flight had taken off. There was the ground beneath her feet and the racing in her wrists, and very little in between. Two small black notebooks sat in her travel bag, and she touched them through the fabric to remind herself that she knew what she was doing. It didn't help much.

Erin had two stops to make in Athens. At the first, she bought a pistol and a hunting knife off of an unpleasantly tall man. Erin knew she was going well outside the law with her purchase, but it all felt very casual. At her second stop, she picked up several bottles of wine.

She was ready. It was time to head into the countryside. Erin had a map and a set of GPS coordinates, but even after two years her Greek didn't go much beyond Yassas and Xena. She hoped that was enough to get her to where she needed to be. Midsummer was here.

The drive out of Athens was pleasant, if long and awkward. The taxi driver kept making comments in Greek or awkward English that could have been an honest attempt to make conversation, but was more likely a string of pickup lines. Still, the sun beat harmlessly against the air conditioning, and the rocky landscape reminded her happily of Kairos' personality. Not that she had been thinking of him. Not that she had devoted every day for the last few years to making sure that she could give him what he truly wanted. She thought it was his greatest wish, at least. She hoped it was.

She left a good tip with the confused driver at an empty field eighteen minutes outside of a small town clinging onto its existence. Kairos had been too specific for accidents. A river whispered nearby. He had wanted her here, at some level he had. She'd had some trouble because of multiple Greek rivers with the name he'd given, but eventually it had all come together. She turned south and stalked up a sloping path through the high grass.

It struck Erin that she might be trespassing, but almost immediately she dismissed such concerns. Kairos came here, had been coming here every four years for millennia. Surely the land was as completely forgotten as he.

It wasn't long before sweat broke out across her forehead. The day had grown hot and the path was not easy.

The footpath she'd been following by the river - more of an animal track than anything else - flattened and broadened. Turning a bend, she stopped. Here was something new. A broken arch, a path overgrown with weeds yet somehow still recognizable as a space claimed against nature. This could be it; he had to be up ahead. The timing worked. If he wasn't, she'd come back next year, and the year after.

Erin examined the fallen stones sticking out among the growth. One in particular caught her eye, and she breathed deeply. It was half-buried in the earth, but what showed was enough: an etching of the same six-pointed star she'd seen in Egypt, complete with radial lines emanating from the center. Kairos had ... she shook her head and smiled ruefully. He had known, that bastard.

The sun was bright against the grass and the rocks when Erin stepped past the arch, up a low slope. Every now and then a broken step poked out of the weeds. This must have been a stone path at one time or another. The midsummer sun picked out every detail of the landscape for her. There was a lightness in her brain that made each moment seem to spin a bit.

A rough ring of trees met her as the hill leveled off into a rough plateau. Beyond the trees lay a jagged line of low stones curving off in each direction, and the vine-choked remains of a small building clung to the mountainside slope. In the middle of the field, a few feet past the line of stones, sat a bored and hungry Kairos.

He looked exactly the same as he had the day they met. Clothes dirty, shoulders slumped, his face a picture of utter boredom as he absentmindedly bit into an apple. Erin took in the sight of him, her mind flying. She was doing the right thing, wasn't she? She was. She was. It was a conversation she'd had with herself hundreds of times since Kairos had run from her in Egypt, since she'd had the time to sit down and think everything through. She was.

There wasn't enough moisture in her mouth. Erin swallowed hard, letting out a little cough when her throat didn't quite follow her instructions. Kairos looked up at the sound and their eyes met.

Oh crap, she thought, there's no going back.

Kairos' face dropped. His mouth hung open, his shoulders sagged, the apple he had been munching on rolled forgotten down the hillside. Erin had never seen anyone look quite so overtaken, let alone an effectively immortal hit man. Little noises came out of his throat, but they didn't make sense in any language she had ever heard.

"Hi, Kairos," she forced out. Her voice scratched at her throat.

He stood slowly, looking as shaky as she felt. "Erin?"

"It's me."

"What ... what? What are you doing here?"

"Weren't expecting me, huh? It's good to see you."

He was starting to regain his composure. "I haven't had a visitor here in over a thousand years."

"Then I'm glad I could break the monotony."

"How did you find me?"

She drew out her old journal and waved it for his benefit. "You told me everything I needed to know. You wanted me here, Kairos - didn't you." She tapped the canvas of her backpack. "I brought some wine if you want."

Kairos laughed. "You came here to get me drunk, did you? That's too kind."

"If ... it was only a thought. If you want."

Kairos walked to the edge of the stones, studying her. "What are you doing here?"

She paused. Now the hard part. Erin forced herself to meet his eyes. She'd had this conversation so many times in her head. "I thought about you, Kairos. A lot. What you have to go through all the time, the weight you bear. It isn't right."

He frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"After you and - after David, what happened?"

"Do we have to go back over this? I told you. I had to go. It wasn't easy, but-"

"No. After that. After you left. What did you do?"

"I..."

"You got right back to work, didn't you?"

"I don't see how that matters."

"Kairos, when was the last time you had a real sense of peace? Do you have any recollection of what that even feels like?"

"I told you, I'm used to this. I made my choice."

"That's not peace."

"Fine, good. It's not peace. So? There never has been, there never will be. Still my job, no other poor slob should have to deal with it."

"Kairos. Neither should you. You've sacrificed yourself for so long. Let it go."

He laughed bitterly. "In case you hadn't been paying attention, there's only one way I'm going to get out of this job, and ..." he cut himself off abruptly and went very still.

Erin reached into her bag for the pistol. "I'm going to help you, Kairos."

His eyes tracked her movements. "What are you planning on doing, Erin?"

She didn't want to answer. They both knew. He stepped back. "Are you going to kill me, Erin?"

There was her name again. It stung, but she reminded herself quickly that this was all in his interests. It was her sacrifice she was making, right? It had been an easier notion to contemplate back in the States, working out the rationale for her plan. With him right in front of her ... no, she had to. She couldn't let him carry an eternity of grief. There had been the other discovery, as well.

He wasn't done yet. "A gun? Do you think it's so easy? You'll have to come inside the line to hurt me, you know. That's the nature of this place. This 'sacred' place, eh?" Kairos gestured at the ruins around him. "And even if you come in here, you won't have a chance; I'll kill you before you've taken two steps. Listen to me, Erin. I kill. I kill everything."

"You'd kill me?"

"Of course! It doesn't matter what I want or don't want, don't you see? You come in here, you're my next target. The Rage will be on me, and directed at you. Turn around, goddamn it. Turn around right now and forget this place."

"You won't have your speed."

"I won't need it!" Kairos' voice was tinged with desperation. "You know how many people I've sent to the hell at the end of my blade? I'm really fucking good at it. Do I have to remind you of what happened to David? Don't come in here!"

She'd expected this and thought she was ready for it. "Do you know what I've been doing the last two years? Learning to fight, learning to think. Every day, all day, I've been focused on this moment."

His harsh laugh mocked her. "Two years you've been practicing? I've had two thousand. You know this! What the hell are you thinking?"

Erin didn't answer immediately. What could she say? That her cause was just, that there wouldn't be any peace in her own life knowing that Kairos and his kind lived in a superhuman slavery? It all sounded flat and ridiculous. There was only one response he might accept. "I've made a choice with my life," she said.

"Don't do this, Erin ..."

"I've made a decision, and if I'm making a mistake -"

"You are! You are! Goddamn it lady, don't step inside this circle!"

"It's mine to make."

He grabbed at his head, pulled his fingers down across his face. "Please," he begged, "please don't."

Erin closed her eyes against the sight of him. She'd come this far. There was only one more choice to make.

She stepped inside the circle.

A low tremor ran under her feet, but Erin didn't feel it. She opened her eyes. Kairos was staring at her silently, shaking, one hand with a fierce grip on the pommel of his blade. Perhaps he honestly hadn't expected her to take that step, but he wasn't attacking, not yet. She saw him more clearly now, like a layer of film had been peeled away. He was stretched out, empty, living through nothing but a terrible will, a conviction that no one else should ever take up his awful mantle. Erin thought she could stare at him for days.

She knew she should bring up her gun and fire. It was a simple thing. She should have done it already. Her recurring mantra for weeks had been "don't hesitate". Never hesitate, or she'd be lost. Why was she waiting? At the moment she'd committed to her decision, Erin found she couldn't lift her arm.

Kairos took a slow step toward her, and the footfall echoed through her nerves. Her body didn't care; it wouldn't respond. What had happened? Why was she unable to act?

Before she could even finish asking the question, he was at her side. She didn't dare meet his eyes, knowing the Rage she'd find in them. She felt his breath on her neck. Her pistol was wrenched painfully from her hand.

"What have you done?" he whispered. The sound grated in her ear. "You're dead now. The Rage will see to that. Do you understand?"

She did. All the training she'd gone through to get to this moment, and she'd thrown it all away with her inaction. Shame threatened to buckle her legs.

Kairos tossed the gun into the brush beyond the circle.

"Run," he grated out, "run now."

Erin's legs responded, but not in the way Kairos must have hoped. She ran - toward the old temple. Enough of her plan remained that she could not give up on him yet. She could hear him cursing behind her. She ducked behind the remains of a wall that barely reached her chest. She had to crouch to stay hidden, though she had little doubt Kairos knew where she was. Had he once hidden here, waiting for death to find him?

Her right hand slipped into the backpack and found her hunting knife. She was breathing hard, from much more than any physical exertion. She needed just a moment to recover and catch her breath. A moment, then she would act. This wasn't going the way she'd planned, she thought. Another part of her thought, you're taking too long.

Erin's legs were knocked out from under her. Kairos had reached her unheard and unseen. She hit the grass hard.

He loomed over her with his face contorted and the Keryx blade held high. Erin scrambled to pull out her weapon, already knowing it would be far too late. He had her; she'd failed.

Kairos screamed and drove the blade down. Fire, a blast of jagged heat consumed her left arm. Erin gasped and kicked against the pain. She looked down and saw a disgusting expanse of metal protruding from the meat of her upper arm. Sweat poured down her face and panic tried to steal her mind. It would have, had she not caught a glimpse of Kairos' face in that instant. He was horrified, even with his hands still around the weapon in her arm. Through the pain, she realized he should have killed her. There had been no way to miss her heart, or her neck.

It must have been ... he'd tried not to kill her, held back the Rage enough to spare her life for at least a moment. Another part of her brain reminded her that she now held the hunting knife in her good hand.

Kairos fell backwards onto his knees, releasing the Keryx from shaking hands. "I'm sorry," he moaned, "I'm sorry, I didn't want-"

She couldn't pause, couldn't hesitate. Not now. She owed it to him.

She lunged forward and slashed out, catching Kairos across the midsection. He cried out and stared down in amazement. Blood poured freely from the wound. "It's in me too, isn't it?" he said. He sounded relieved. "Thank you. It's been so long..."

His face twisted in a lopsided smile, which froze as Erin plunged her blade into his heart. The metal throbbed in her hand. Their eyes met. Erin wanted to tell him how sorry she was. She wanted to tell him that she loved him. She could see, though, that he knew it. And it was his mouth that opened. "Erin," he wheezed, "stay human..."

He might have had more to say, but she couldn't stand it any more. Erin bent over him and kissed Kairos hard, trying to will all of her passion and love and regret into one moment of connection. She felt his lips move against hers, straining, before they slackened.

She let him go gently, softly onto the quiet grass where he'd sat for so many centuries. His face was wet, and she dried it with her shirt. Her left arm felt whole, untouched.

The sun started to descend. In the distance, a buzzard called. Erin wiped the tears from her eyes and drew the Keryx blade from her arm. It felt warm.

Special report on the events at The Sky Labyrinth, Summer Solstice:

As referenced in individual notes, Kairos was replaced by Erin as the agent of The Sky Labyrinth. Despite confirmed negative testing as a P.O.P., she has repeatedly engaged in or precipitated high-novelty events. The death of Kairos is a certainty to increase group instability, especially in light of Christina's recent activities.

The location of the second Sky Labyrinth totem weapon remains uncertain. Current Company surveillance is too limited to find the item. Nevertheless, no likely option is positive.

Considering the history of Max/Deskae in Group 2 and Erin's record of seeking novelty, there is now a clear and imminent threat of splintering. A conference has been called, but time required for all participants to reach a meeting place is too great. A possible second splintered group threatens cohesion for all activities on or related to this planetary sphere. Immediate action is required and has been ordered.

Actions: Unacceptable risk of full-group splinter. Control team activated.

END OF PART ONE

About the Author

Jesse D. Green has never been able to tell if he enjoys writing or acting more. Besides bloody little books, he also writes absurd comedies for the stage. Jesse is hard at work on more novels (including Hunters, book two in the Shadows series) and releasing his plays into the ether. He lives in the wilds of Michigan with his two children and a small flock of chickens. He doesn't eat them - the chickens or the children. Jesse hates writing about himself in the third person.

Contact me:

www.jessedgreen.com

twitter.com/alwaysanother

Plays by Jesse D. Green

The Poet and the Urn

This is a Play

The Alchemical Annulment

The Fabulous Life of Cliche Rinpoche

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland*

Adam's Rib*

Everybody Wins at Theatre!

The Case

A Torturous Night of Community Theater

*adaptations

Acknowledgements

I should spend several pages thanking Ben Green and Trisha Kosloski, the two people at the core of my reading group. Their feedback was invaluable, and they saved the book from some truly awful decisions. Ben Green also designed the cover image. Yeah, he's pretty damn cool. Many many other people provided support of one kind or another - Dyne, Phin, Mom, Dad, Catherine, Mark, Katelynn, Erin and Rikki: you know who you are. Ben and Trisha changed the book you've just finished, though. If you see them, let them know they kick ass.

* * * * *

Hunters

book two in the Shadows series

a special preview

Marcus stared at the plain metal doors before him, trying to will his hands to stillness. The trembling was slight, likely unnoticeable, but he felt like there was an earthquake raging through his body. He wasn't ready, he couldn't be ready. Yet here he was. Sweat slicked his forehead. He didn't dare make eye contact with anyone else in the hall, just stared miserably ahead.

There was nothing overtly sinister about the doors: slate grey, simple knob and lock. Nothing that would be out of place in a warehouse, say, or the back hallways of an office building. He'd passed similar on the way to class at Wahta Community College or when he had worked at the distribution center for Seventh Nation Books. It was what he knew lay beyond the doors that had his breath coming in shallow gasps.

Next to him, John shifted weight and grunted. The packs that they shouldered were bulging and heavy. Marcus didn't mind that much, being used to the drills he had to run while on the basketball squad at WCC, but his friend often complained. Marcus thought he'd never met someone who enjoyed being upset as much as John did.

With the exception of the occasional small noise from someone in the group, it was quiet in the hallway. Conversation had died ten minutes before, once they'd set out for the elevator to take them down to the basement level. He shifted his feet in the short, soft grey professional carpet. It felt out of place considering what he was about to do.

A chubby, officious little woman bustled past them, pulling a lanyard from around her neck with practiced efficiency. She had a key on the line and she bent to unlock the set of doors. The first time he'd seen this, Marcus had wondered aloud why there wasn't better security than a simple lock. She'd laughed, a short nasal explosion. "Heavy security is all for the room with the controls in it. If someone busted in here without taking the computers, the most they could do is get themselves killed in a thousand horrible ways. Have fun with that."

It was just one of any number of moments that had effectively erased what self-confidence Marcus had had before joining the Company.

Here was another: the doors swung open, revealing a huge shadowy space within. Aheeta marched in without hesitation, as a good team leader should. She stalked to the center of the room in her usual stiff manner, then spun around and stared at the rest of them as if daring them to stay back.

That got them moving, and Marcus let himself get carried along with the pack, even though his mind had started whimpering.

Marcus knew of another set of doors leading into the room: large overhead-type monstrosities on chains, allowing enough room for trucks or other large equipment to pass through. He'd never seen them, though. Once inside the room, only one thing took up his attention: the floor.

It was empty, deep black and freezing. The cold ate through his heavy boots on the first step into the room, and his breath frosted in the light spilled from the hall. No lights or heaters had been installed inside. They wouldn't have done any good, and likely would need to be replaced every time the space was used. Besides, the Company had never put much emphasis on comfort.

It wasn't just the darkness or the cold, though. It was the way both moved, somehow. Down, down somewhere in the floor were darker shadows that occasionally drifted to the surface. The temperature, too, was inconsistent. It was always frozen, but at times a sharper cold tried to catch at his legs or face. Marcus couldn't wrap his mind around how that was possible, but it was best not to look to long at the floor anyways. After more than a second spent glancing down, he always felt himself falling.

This was his fifth crossing, and the third on a live assignment. It was a killing mission this time. Marcus wasn't ready, he knew he wasn't ready, but somehow the higher-ups had faith in him. As much as he dreaded what would come next, he was grateful for that confidence. He'd seen what happened to those that the Company lost faith in.

Somewhere on the other side of the room - if the space could be called a room - a set of engineers sat at computers behind reinforced glass. Right at this moment he would trade places with any of them. If his test results had come out differently, perhaps ... but it was far too late now. It had been too late the instant he'd signed his name to the contract.

Neal was the last of them to enter. The double doors slammed shut behind him, and darkness overtook them. An ominous clank, magnified by the emptiness of the room, meant they were now locked in.

After a moment of tense silence no one dared break, mechanical clicks and whirrings echoed in the nothing. On tracks running around the edge of the space, he knew, protective titanium plates were now sliding into place. They were not there to protect Marcus and his team, but the rest of the world. If something else was on the bridge, it would not be able to break free before various other, more deadly countermeasures could be applied. As for the poor souls already inside ... they were on their own.

Focus, he thought. Focus, dammit. It didn't help.

A low hum rose around them. Marcus swallowed. "Here we go," someone said, and someone else cursed quietly. Marcus tried not to look down. What was happening there was best not seen.

It started gradually. There was a slow sense of tackiness to the floor beneath him. Marcus resisted the urge to pull away or even shift his feet. The more you fought, the harder it was. Knowing that didn't make things easier. It didn't make it easier to stand still and breathe slow when he could feel the creeping blackness curl around and into his feet. That's what was happening in truth. The floor - the bridge - had begun to move, to claim him. It was a cold that intended, that wanted to melt him. He clenched fists, trying to block the thought, but it wouldn't stay away. The dark beneath him had desires, had thoughts, and what it wanted most was him. That was almost the worst. Almost. The worst was that Marcus was expected to allow it to take him.

The darkness pulled at him, harder and faster now. His feet, his legs were stretching, changing, they weren't his anymore. Something had worked its way between his muscles and bones and claimed them, taken them apart and run alien fingers through the core of his being. Everything below his waist was turning and running inside out and had never been and now the dark crept up towards his hips, his chest his heart. Thoughts fled and the scared boy inside him took over. He was expanding, losing his skin! Marcus tried to squeeze his eyes shut against the force taking him, trying to deny it even as it ripped him apart and plucked his eyelids away. He had to stare into the face of the dark, even if his eyes no longer had a brain to connect with. Arms lifted him and ripped apart his ruined body like dogs fighting over a corpse.

His distant ears heard a scream, and it came from a throat that might once have been his. This wasn't right, not right not rightnotright-

Heat and light slammed into him, and he stumbled on a rock that twisted beneath his feet. Marcus dropped to his knees, gasping. His knees. His feet, his legs, his body - he had them all once more. He was breathing air again instead of the other way around. He was through. Marcus scrubbed his face, adding dirt more than anything else. He didn't care, he needed to touch his skin - dark and pliant and gloriously his - just to be sure it was there. That crossing had been a bad one.

He glanced up at the rest of his team. Neal and John were also on their knees, but rest had kept their feet. Most were staring at the changes surrounding them. They'd landed on a slope somewhere in the wilderness. His ears felt muffled. That happened sometimes, he'd been told. He breathed deeply, trying to get the sense of being fully human back.

His name. Why was he hearing his name all of a sudden? Marcus peered around, confused, and found Aheeta staring at him. "What?" he asked through a head full of cotton.

"Walker! Give us a bubble right fucking now!" He'd never seen her look so upset with him. He obviously wasn't the only one feeling nervy.

Her command was a familiar thing, and he responded. His training kicked in. He should have started the instant they'd landed; that was what he'd been taught. Marcus had made it through the crossing, now it was time to put that behind him and get to work. He drew himself up from the red dirt, ran one hand over his dreads, and began. Focus. That had always been his greatest strength, and the Company had put it to use. "Ok," he murmured, "time to make us disappear."

He looked around, taking in the land: high grasses sprouting amid large striated boulders. To his left, a slope led gently up to a stand of gnarled trees; to the right, open meadows dropping away to the horizon. A road snaked through the grasses maybe a kilometer away. A cloudless sky overhead and no appreciable wind made for a hot day even in mid-morning. Ants swarmed over a small dead something near his feet.

Marcus let the image of the world around him soak into his mind as his ears cleared. That was the easy part; it would be there after he'd made his few changes, and so required nothing more than keeping his eyes open and his mind clear. He stood up and walked in a rough circle surrounding his companions. His path would describe the edges of the bubble Aheeta had asked for, but he needed a good look around to make sure he didn't forget anything.

Once satisfied that he knew the area, Marcus turned his attention to the rest of the team. He had to construct every element of the scene separately in his mind so that the various pieces could move independent of each other. If he'd simply tried to take a mental snapshot of the camp, the illusion would be shattered the first time any of them so much as shifted their weight. For a long time in his training he had been afraid he'd never learn to perform this tricky bit of mental gymnastics, but he'd kept at it. And one day, it'd just come. It wasn't easy - it might never be easy - but he could manage.

Marcus looked at each member of his team to lock down their images. This was a really only a cursory matter. He'd quietly studied each of them ever since being assigned to the group.

John was the easiest. Just over two meters tall; stick-thin and with spiky, consistently wild red hair - he was distinctive enough to stand out in anyone's memory. He had his sleeves rolled up, exposing long thin scars down each forearm. As one of the team's two primary weapons, John had a relationship with his Shadow that Marcus didn't like to dwell upon. Still, the markings helped create a mental picture. Even if the two rookies hadn't been roommates through training, it would have been the work of a moment to bring him to mind.

With Aheeta, too, it was less a matter of visualizing her and more letting her image in. There was nothing specific that should have stood out about her: blocky face, light brown hair cut above the shoulder. Marcus had a couple of centimeters and maybe fifteen kilograms on her ... but she was hard. When she moved, people got the hell out of the way, whether they knew it or not. And her eyes; those were just flat-out scary. She'd seen a lot of service, and he'd heard rumors of an operation twenty years back that had taken the lives of everyone but her. Whatever had happened, it showed. Her eyes reminded him of a stalking lion.

To his right, Nash knelt down to unzip his pack. Marcus enfolded the image into his mind. Their primary dampener was short and thick, with a long face and longer ponytail. He was also still silent, which was totally out of character. Nash always had something to say. The crossing must have gotten to him as well.

Next to Nash, Neal was regaining his footing. Neal kept his hair high and tight, and he'd impressed Marcus as someone who went out of his way to fit in and not make waves. While Nash defied expectations of what a dampener should be, Neal met them perfectly.

Anders was the only one nearly as tall as John, but he'd spent more time in service and it showed. Though he was in charge of communications and rarely took part in anything physically demanding (to hear the others tell it) the man didn't have an ounce of fat on him. He looked solid, like a chunk of rock. He also had a sick three-point stroke, which Marcus had been frustrated to discover one afternoon. It probably shouldn't have been a surprise. Many field agents had competed in one sport or another at at least the collegiate level, though not so many as had military backgrounds.

Marcus saved Gianna for last. That may have been a bit of selfishness on his part - she had a wicked smile and a body that fit a bit too well into her fatigues. She was grinning at him now as he paced the camp, but Marcus was a long way from feeling comfortable around her. As much as he liked looking at her, he also knew she could kill all of them in a matter of seconds if she wanted to. That detail kept popping up in his head for some reason.

There was actually another member of their team, but he'd remained back at the Hub. Raisa would keep in contact with all of them through Anders. Updates on their target's movements, activities, or any other necessary information could be conveyed to them instantly. It was an unusual precaution and the greatest single power expenditure on the trip, requiring the full attention and energy of a Shadow. More than anything else, it had been this detail that made Marcus realize how serious the assignment was.

As an afterthought, he brought up his private image of himself. It wasn't as important to get all the details correct as it was to make sure he captured the feel of the team as he pictured them. It was his own head after all, his thoughts that were going to protect them. He'd learned early on that perception was paramount. If he saw in his head what he saw with his eyes, so would everyone else.

He smiled a bit at the last thought. The work he'd done, along with the gift he'd been given ... danger and discomfort aside, moments like this filled him with pride. He could make the world see whatever he wanted. It felt meaningful.

Marcus knew the others had the same sense of power, even though the mechanics differed. Together, they worked. All of them. That's what he'd been taught. Not one of them was any match for what they might be facing, but a team working together could take on anything the Company had found in almost a thousand worlds.

Marcus took those images then carefully imagined a yellow glowing dome surrounding them all. From the inside, all would appear as it truly was. But to any eyes looking in from beyond, the landscape would be empty, serene.

He held that image in his head as hard as he could, and slowly, carefully, reached out to that part of him that had been changed. It was part of the contract he'd signed, and while he didn't regret it, he wasn't comfortable yet with the new presence inside of him. Hell, he didn't even know - didn't want to know - which Shadow it was.

Marcus felt the connection, the change. A stillness expanded out from him, along with a sense that he knew and could touch every speck of dust around him. Within the dome, he was everywhere. He could list and describe each fold of fabric on Gianna's jacket, each tiny line etched around Aheeta's eyes. This feeling was his favorite part of the job.

He looked up. Aheeta met his gaze and nodded slightly. Her lips were pressed thin, just as always, but Marcus saw a hint of approval. It could have been his imagination. Perhaps it was what he needed to see for the sake of his confidence, to help him feel he truly was a part of the control team. Whatever the case, he'd take it. His part was done, for a bit. They had an hour or two now, to plan and take in whatever intelligence they could. That would give them all some extra confidence. Marcus knew damn well that all of them needed to be at top form if they were going to be able to find and kill this Erin Dawes person.

* * * * *

