“Now,” a familiar voice said from behind me.
Elders Sanrin, Hirani, and Claude were all standing in my kitchen. They wore identical dark cloaks with deep hoods and seemed amused by my surprise.
“How did you get in here?” First the transport, now the elders. It looked like my secret hideout wasn’t very secret or secure anymore.
“This place is proof against most,” Sanrin said, “but not against the likes of us. How are you doing, Jace?”
Sanrin and Hirani came into the sitting room to greet me, while Claude busied himself going through my cabinets and cupboards.
“I’m all right,” I said. “Pretty good, actually. Though I wanted to talk to you about—”
“I’m making coffee,” Claude called from the kitchen. “How do you all take it?”
“Black,” Hagar called.
“A spot of cream,” Sanrin said.
“None for me,” Hirani called, “stuff makes me jittery.”
“Black, too,” I called. “Anyway, what I was saying was—”
“We have a very important job for you, Jace.” Hirani took my hands. The cloak hid her hair, but it couldn’t conceal the stunning beauty of her face. Her eyes flashed even in shadow, and the touch of her fingers against mine made my breath catch in my throat. “It is not, however, a very pleasant one.”
“Okay, but—”
“We’ve discovered how the attacks are coordinated,” Sanrin said with a frown. “The heretics have an informant inside the Empyreal security apparatus. We need you to silence him.”
I felt sick to my stomach. They wanted me to assassinate another Empyreal?
“Don’t misunderstand us,” Hirani said quickly. “We don’t want him liquidated. He is still useful to us, and will be even more useful if you can convince him that working as our agent will be much safer and healthier than working for the heretics. We’d like you to deliver that message to him. Forcefully.”
And that was how I found myself sitting in a very expensive apartment, shrouded in a creepy-looking black cloak that masked my face in a veil of shadows. The elders had assured me that this would prevent anyone from physically identifying me, and my veiled core would protect me spiritually. I had no connection to Hagar this time because my handler was concerned that surveillance gear near the target’s location would intercept it.
For the first time, I was all alone on a mission.
My target was a middle-aged desk jockey named Albert Hughes. The elders had teleported me across the world to his apartment in the Paris overcity, and I’d been waiting there for him to return ever since. Albert must’ve been a workaholic, because it was almost eight o’clock in the evening when I heard his key in the door’s lock. The three hours I’d spent waiting for him hadn’t improved my mood.
I waited for the portly man to close and lock his door behind him, then strode out of the shadows to greet him.
“Mr. Hughes?” I asked.
The poor guy almost bolted out of his skin. He spun to face me and slammed his back against the door. The chain rattled next to his head, and his eyes shot left and right like a mouse trying to escape from a hawk.
“Who are you?” he gasped, his heavy French accent making the English words almost unintelligible. “How did you get in here?”
“Albert, I need you to relax,” I said. “I’ve been sent here because you’ve been a very naughty boy. My bosses say you’ve been telling stories you shouldn’t have to people you definitely should not be seen with.”
Recognition blossomed in Albert’s eyes. His jowly face and paunch told me he wasn’t much of a fighter, so I wasn’t surprised when he whirled around to fumble with the chain in a futile effort to escape.
Before he could open the door, I grabbed him by the back of his coat and used a bit of jinsei to boost my strength. I flung him across the room to the couch, which broke when his not inconsiderable weight hit it at speed.
Albert’s short legs churned the air as he tried to right himself. Flustered, he attempted to roll over and regain his feet that way. When that succeeded in tangling him in his cloak, he gave up and lay still.
My Eclipse nature recognized prey when it saw it. The temptation to strike the fool down and savage his core was almost too great to resist. I watched Albert pant and gasp, tangled in his coat like a fish in a net, and I struggled to force the darkness down into its cage.
I was glad Albert couldn’t see me. By the time the urge finally passed, I was shaking and soaked with sweat. It took me several cleansing breaths before I trusted myself to speak again.
“I want you to understand that my employers don’t want you dead,” I told him as I sat on the edge of the coffee table in front of his battered couch. “But we need a promise from you, Albert.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He finally wormed free of his coat and managed to take a semi-dignified seat on the broken couch. “I’m only an auditor. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Ah, but you have,” I said. “I’m going to cut to the chase so you’ll know that lying to me is a waste of your time and mine. You have been selling important information to the heretics. They’ve been using that data to coordinate their attacks against the Grand Design.”
Albert deflated and sank back into himself with every word out of my mouth. Now that his secret was in the open, he was broken.
“It’s not like that,” he said. “We’re trying to save the Grand Design from itself. There’s something much worse coming.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’re the hero here, Albert?” I said. “That seems unlikely, don’t you think?”
“I’m no one,” Albert said again. “I give my handler the information he asks for. They use it to stop the real threats.”
It was time to get serious with Albert. He didn’t seem to be getting the
