01 – Celebrations

Glasses clinked together, cheers echoed around the fancy bar, laughter rang out, and Rick sat with his shoulders hunched and a cardboard tube clutched on his lap.

He felt sick. It wasn’t the alcohol—he wasn’t drinking anything but a plain, old-fashioned Coke tonight. He usually avoided drinking in public, maybe having one single light drink, but no more. Tonight was no different, not even with everyone around him in a celebratory mood.

The Adjustment stood on a table, knocking aside plates of fried food as she danced. It wasn’t a sexy, drunk kind of dance, but rather a folk jig from some alien culture. She used her extra limbs to bounce around, hopping back and forth. The Art kept trying to drag her back down, but she wasn’t having it, and neither was the crowd as they laughed and cheered at the antics.

There were too many people around.

If Rick had known it would be this crowded, he wouldn’t have come. Really, he hadn’t known what to expect when The Adjustment asked if The Hunters wanted to celebrate killing a god, but in hindsight, he should have guessed it would be more than a casual sit-down.

He jumped in his seat as the heavy thunk of a blade striking corkboard rumbled just under the din of the bar. A quartet of soldier-types laughed as one flicked knives at a target like they were playing darts—missing most of their tosses in their drunkenness. None of them seemed to mind.

Rick glanced around, trying to figure out where Erika, Leslie, or Anna were, wondering how he ended up left alone at the counter. He shifted on the stool, trying to be subtle and not draw much attention, only to lock eyes with a broad, bald man with a bushy mustache. The kind of guy who looked like he ought to be chewing on a toothpick at all hours of the day. Rick realized he’d stared just a moment too long as the guy stood up.

Rick quickly snapped back to facing forward and reached for his Coke. It was too late. The noise of the bar should have drowned out the footsteps approaching the bar, but they burned his ears nonetheless.

“Evenin’,” the man said, settling onto Leslie’s seat.

Rick drew in a steadying breath as he turned. “I’m… sorry. I’m straight.”

A loud snort quickly turned to a cough somewhere behind Rick, earning a glare from the man before he shook his head. “Me and the boys were having a bit of a bet. Wonderin’ if you would help us settle.”

Taking a quick glance back, Rick spotted five others at the table—two women and three men, despite his terminology. All five were watching with rapt attention, leaning forward like they were listening in despite being halfway across the noisy room. Given that one of them apparently heard Rick’s quip, he suspected that they weren’t as human as they looked.

There was still no sign of the other Hunters.

“I suppose I can hear you out,” Rick said, turning fully on the stool, making sure his arms were free and able to move, just in case. His cardboard tube knocked against his knee, feeling unusually hot and present in his awareness. The talisman under his shirt remained as cold as always.

The man wasn’t poised to fight, but without knowing who or what everyone was at The Eclipse’s private little bar in their tall tower, Rick wasn’t willing to relax.

He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He did not want to draw his sword. The talisman helped, but it didn’t get rid of his curse. Rick’s stomach churned, fingers tightening on the cardboard tube, as the overhead light glinting off the surface of his Coke brought him back to those dancing sparks from The Emperor’s mouth turned toward him.

Then Leslie’s face as he got in the way made Rick’s heart clench.

A heavy, firm hand clasped onto his shoulder, pushing him upright as it anchored him. “You alright there?”

Rick gritted his teeth. The bar, the party, the people. It had been over a week and he was still getting flashbacks.

Maybe it was time to reconsider Erika’s offer—get rid of the sword and become… just a regular guy? Leslie pulled it off. He didn’t have superpowers. It could be done.

Rick squeezed down on the cardboard tube, wondering once again whether it was him or it keeping him from asking for Erika’s help.

“Hey.”

Rick jolted, blinking as he found the man looking concerned. “Sorry, did you say something? Your bet, right. What was it?”

The man looked over him, frowning a little as his eyes drifted to Rick’s drink. Once again, Rick felt like he should have a toothpick sticking out from the corner of his mouth, but his gold-filled teeth were empty. “Barry,” he said, jutting out a hand. “Barry Carville. Master Sergeant, special forces.” He paused, then added, “Formerly.”

“Rick,” Rick said, reflexively taking the man’s hand. “Er… The Sword? Rick’s fine.”

“The Sword?” Barry said with a light chuckle.

Rick echoed it, a little weaker. “I got told to go back to the drawing board for that one, but… I don’t know. If I was still a teenager, I’d have probably gotten a kick out of it—like something out of a comic book—but while I still like comic books…”

“Bit silly, isn’t it?”

“Exactly.” Rick paused, realizing that Barry introduced himself with his name. “No fancy title for you?”

“Fae don’t bother with us regular folk. Human names don’t have the value supernatural names have, I gather. The Emperor enforces a strict contract on all fae in the tower anyway.”

“Are there many fae around?” Rick asked, taking another glance around the bar. He wasn’t sure what a fae would look like, assuming they were distinguishable from humans, but he was mostly looking for The Hunters. He spotted Leslie on the far end, talking with The Fool and The Aeon, but his back was turned.

“Never met a fae even once. Never heard of anyone who did either.” Barry looked around as well, as if this might be the first time he saw one, but turned back with a shrug. “Must be pretty scary if everyone goes around with their silly names to hide from them.”

“Strange sorts out there,” Rick agreed, getting a little more into the groove of the conversation. “You said you were a regular person? That sounds rude,” he quickly added, starting to backtrack.

Barry held up a hand, shrugging with a casual laugh. “They were my words, weren’t they? And yep. Human through and through.”

“And now you work for The Eclipse. Cleanup crew or something?”

“Or something,” Barry agreed, not delving into details even after Rick waited a moment.

“How do you get into something like this?” Rick asked the main question that had been on his mind ever since he learned that regular people operated with The Eclipse.

Barry laughed again, though this time, it rang hollow. “My unit operated in Bosnia, got tasked to investigate a disturbance at one village that had… Well, Bosnia wasn’t exactly a happy place.”

“Right…” Rick said, already regretting asking the question.

“Found a survivor. Lucid, spoke English perfectly like he had been born and raised in Texas. Our translator kept trying to translate for him, like we couldn’t understand him. That should have been the first warning. Dogs wouldn’t go near him. That should have been the second.” Barry turned to the bar, flagging down the bartender with a gesture. “Went out to take a piss one night, ran back at the sound of gunshots to find him chomping down on my buddy’s heart. Filled him full of lead; it didn’t take. Managed to slit his throat once he got close, that sort of worked, then took a shovel to his neck until his head came off. Vanished into dust.”

Rick pressed his lips together, torn between respectful silence and—his mouth started moving before he could stop himself. “That’s… a vampire?”

“Kudlak, which is a regional variant, I guess.” Barry shrugged. “Anyway, fucked me up for a while, got discharged because of it. But I’ve got some file in some database that marked me down as knowing a bit more than others. Eventually, that got me recruited. ‘You wanna know what really happened?’ kinda thing.” He turned in his seat, looking back over the room. “Similar stories for everyone. A detective followed the wrong case, a diver went a little too deep, Vicky there was an astronomer until she noticed something staring back down her telescope lens. Someone somewhere took note, put us on a list, and we all got offers to dig a little deeper.”

Rick’s eyes trailed away from Vicky, a muscular woman who looked like she could bench press three of him and not even break a sweat. “I take it the offer wasn’t immediate?” he asked almost rhetorically.

Barry snorted. “Eight years for me. Bit rude of them to make me scrape myself back together, but I get it. Can’t exactly run an op like this staffed only with Sec-8’s.”

The Eclipse knew about The Hunters long before the reverse, making him wonder if they also were on some list somewhere. Would they have eventually been brought in?

Rick wasn’t sure what to think of that. It would have been nice to have a little support, but everything sounded right out of one of his conspiracy theories—one of the more outlandish ones that he didn’t even really believe, but pretended he did to annoy Anna. People stumbling across things they shouldn’t who wound up brought into the conspiracy seemed almost too neat for his tastes.

“What if… What if you don’t take the offer to dig deeper?” Rick asked.

Barry sat back in his seat in a way that made Rick think he wasn’t going to like the answer. “Now, I suppose that depends,” he said, stroking the corners of his mustache. “If you’re asking if we silence them, generally no. One guy I tried to contact ended up being a danger to himself, my team, and everyone around him. Had to put him down. Generally, however, we just leave ’em be.”

“You… leave them? That’s it? What if they threaten to tell everyone about monsters and conspiracies?”

Barry shrugged, picking up a whiskey glass as the bartender slid it over. “Plenty of crazy people out in the world. What’s one more?” He took a drink, eyebrows popping up mid-way like he just thought of something. “I hear a group off in London developed some drug or device that makes people forget things. Pretty unstable right now, I gather, but maybe we’ll use that one day.”

“Huh. Not as grim as I was expecting,” Rick said, mulling that over. Of course, he couldn’t really trust Barry at his word. Rick was an outsider here, not the kind of person to tell damning secrets to. Even if Barry were fully honest, it was entirely possible that he didn’t know about some boogeyman who cleaned up the ones who didn’t agree after Barry left them.

Wise enough to know when not to speak his mind, Rick picked up his Coke and downed the last of it. As soon as he set it back down, he felt a heavy yet familiar hand clasp his shoulder.

Leslie stood, smiling at him. The smile was a bit lopsided; the right corner of his mouth remained flat and downturned. Thick black stitches ran in spiraling loops up the side of his face, stopping just before his eye, before continuing up his eyebrow and all the way to his hairline.

His eye survived thanks only to his slightly protruding bone structure. Every time Rick saw it, he couldn’t help but squirm.

Even now, a week and two days later, the entire line down his face was raw and red, inflamed. It didn’t bleed, thankfully, but otherwise, it looked as fresh as the minute he got it. The whole wound glistened with a specially made Vaseline mixture to help suppress the curse and enhance healing.

Rick wasn’t sure it was working.

They had been trying to contact The Castle, wondering if The Doctor could cook something up, but nobody was answering their phones yet again.

“Who’s your friend?” Leslie asked, hand absently reaching up to stroke his beard. He stopped halfway, half-smile twitching.

Despite the giant scar running from brow to chin, Leslie acted like the thing that bothered him the most was having his beard shaved off. If Rick’s stomach didn’t bubble with guilt every time he thought about it, he probably would have laughed about it.

“Barry,” Rick said, dragging his eyes away from Leslie’s face with effort. “This is Les—er, The Longshot.”

“Leslie,” he corrected, holding out a hand, half-smile returning. “Unless Barry is short for something like The Strawberry, regular names are fine.”

“Don’t think I’ve seen anyone titled after a fruit,” Barry said with a laugh, accepting the handshake. “Barry Carville. Was just trying to settle a bet here with your buddy.”

“A bet.” Leslie turned back with a definite frown. “Gambling again?”

“What do you mean, again?” Rick snapped, glowering.

Leslie’s frown immediately jumped back to that half-smile, and he jostled Rick in a joking manner. Rick accepted it, rolling his eyes, but couldn’t help the awkwardness underneath. Normally, Leslie wasn’t quite so touchy.

“Not a bet with him,” Barry clarified with a chuckle. “Me and the boys had a little hunch that your girl could beat The Emperor in an arm wrestle.”

“Arm wrestle? That’s the bet?” Rick laughed, shaking his head.

“It’ll never happen, o‘course. The Emperor has her image to protect and hanging around getting into bar bets isn’t on her docket. Still, a few of us watched your girl practically stand around in The Emperor’s fire without her eyebrows burning off. Got us wondering.”

Rick hummed a little, drumming his fingers against the counter as he gave it a little thought. Erika wasn’t cagey about her abilities, at least not anymore, but she occasionally did things that Rick wouldn’t have thought possible. Her firebreak technique sounded implausible, but she did it anyway. Even without her powers, Erika could probably pin everyone in The Hunters except Anna. Rick’s little twig arms would snap in half in a second.

But The Emperor was a dragon. Normally, she looked fairly scrawny, but during that fight with Jack…

“Does The Emperor have big muscly scaly arms at the time of this hypothetical match?”

Barry chewed on that for a second, looking again like he should chew on a toothpick. “Sure. If she needs it to win.”

“Emperor wins,” Leslie said after a moment of consideration.

Rick nudged an elbow into his side. “Traitor.”

Leslie shrugged, miming pinning someone in an arm wrestle. “Erika works out. I’ve seen her routine. But The Emperor, dragoned up, is simply too massive. She threw Jack around like a stuffed ragdoll.”

It felt wrong not to defend their own, and Rick was about to argue back, but something in the corner of Leslie’s eye made him hesitate. Years of knowing the man told him that he shrugged off the bet for a reason. “Maybe. I don’t think Erika’s got enough weight behind her,” he said, slowly agreeing.

“You boys wouldn’t be discussing the weight of women behind their backs now, would you?”

Rick stiffened, as did Leslie. Both turned slowly to find Anna standing behind them, bare arms crossed over her chest with a half-hearted glare leveled in their direction. She waited a moment after they locked eyes with her, then quirked an eyebrow.

Barry let out a long, low chuckle, clasping his hands to his thighs as he stood. “I think that’s my cue to get out of here,” he said with a small laugh as he turned to his old table. He raised his voice to be heard over the dwindling din of the bar, and said, “Looks like I might be out fifty bucks.”

That got a chorus of cheers—and one groan—from the group gathered there.

“You bet against your boss?” Rick asked with a much more genuine grin.

“And that’s my second cue to get out of here before word makes its way up the grapevine. Nice meetin’ ya,” he said, pulling a toothpick from his pocket and sliding it into the corner of his mouth like the gesture was a salute. “Don’t be a stranger next time we work together, you hear?”

“Sure thing, uh, pardner,” Rick said as he headed off, earning a look from Anna. “What?”

“Sometimes I can’t believe I know you.” Anna shook her head. “You boys about ready to head out? Seems like things are winding down.”

The bar was half full compared to twenty minutes ago. “The spider is still on the table,” he said with a frown.

Anna picked up a beer bottle from the counter, tipping it back. “Passed out on the table,” she said without looking.

“Yeah. Odd. Do spiders get drunk?”

“That one does,” Anna said, letting out a slight belch. “Come on, designated driver, get us out of here.”

“Alright, alright.” Rick stood and paused, glancing around the room again. “Where’s Erika?”

“Ducked out a bit ago,” Leslie said as they headed off toward the elevator. “Apparently, she’s off on a date.”

“I see,” Rick said, shaking his head as he pressed the button for the parking garage. “Ditched us, huh?”

“Still not sure I like that relationship.”

“You aren’t her mother, Anna,” Rick said with a small sigh.

“No, but when she inevitably pisses The… partner off, we might get caught in the crossfire.” She huffed. “Besides, her mother is possessed.”

Rick didn’t have much of an answer for either of her quips. The Stalker was definitely unstable—no pushback there. And Leah and The Fixer were certainly… something. He generally tried not to think about it too much.

“Anna,” Leslie said slowly once they were in the van—Rick’s third in as many months. “Do you think you could beat Erika in an arm wrestle?”

“Heh. Easy. But only about the first two or three times. And she’d probably end up breaking the table. Or my arm.”

“That’s about what I thought,” Leslie said, nodding slow and thoughtful.

Rick glanced to the passenger seat before putting his eyes back on the road. “Still thinking about that? Can’t believe you threw her under the bus like that.”

Leslie leaned back, grasping for his missing beard. “We might be sharing drinks tonight, but no need to reveal all our secrets. Besides, I wasn’t wrong. I think The Emperor would easily beat Erika.”

“But only the first time?” Anna asked, less as a question and more as a reassurance of her own thoughts.

“Just something I noticed,” Leslie said with a nod. “The first time Erika faces a situation, she has to stop and think about it. But once she’s figured out how her power works in that particular scenario, she can do it again almost reflexively.”

“Well,” Rick said, smiling as he looked up into the rearview mirror, meeting Anna’s eyes. “Why don’t you go challenge her to an arm wrestle when she gets back?”

“What? Why? The Mummy isn’t going to challenge her over the fate of the universe or whatever. Trying to get my arms broken over nothing?”

“You’re thinking too small, Anna,” Rick said with a shake of his head. “Next time we go drinking with The Eclipse, think of all the bets we can win!”

Anna flicked her knuckles against the back of Rick’s head, making him laugh.