Huntress

“Hello?”

“Guess who, Annie…”

Asp? Goddamnit. “You’re ringing me already?”

“What do you mean, ‘already’? It’s one past midnight, is it not? I’ve been waiting all day for this. Do you have the bag?”

“Yeah… just got it then. We’re on the ferry. What now?”

“Excellent. Now it simply has to be delivered.”

“Delivered? Delivered where?”

“The first one is simple. You need to take it past a place in Redfern, a little watch repair shop called Booker’s Clocks and Watches. Ask for Ronnie and give him the bag. He’ll know what to do.”

“And then?”

“Then I need you to take the bag – he’ll give it back to you – into Randwick, Arthur Street, to be specific. There’s a house there about halfway along the street with a red front door, which you have to knock on. Give it to... the lady of the house. You’ll have to improvise from there.”

“That’s all I have to do?”

“Well, no… if you’re still alive by that point come and see me. Phase three, so to speak. I’ll be at twenty-three Lombard Street in Glebe. Don’t bother turning up if you haven’t done what I asked. I’ll stop waiting in nine or ten hours or so.”

She hung up again and I gaped. She wanted me to do this now? I was exhausted and Challoner had probably already called the cops to report missing property.

But then the bag was burning a hole in my backpack. The sooner I got rid of it the better.

“Who was that?” Trent asked, apparently my best buddy now.

I shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. The words ‘if you’re still alive by that point’ had caught in my mind, though, so it was hard. “My anonymous taskmaster. It’s better if you don’t know, trust me.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” he yawned. “But do you want help?”

His offer was totally out of the blue, and I quickly weighed up the pros and cons. Pro – I’d have someone to watch my back. Con… I’d be dragging someone who is essentially innocent into something potentially nasty.

“Your choice,” I told him honestly. “It might not be pretty, but I could use an extra set of eyes. How well do you know Redfern?”

Trent told me he lived in Darlington, which is just across the main railway line from Redfern. I asked if he knew Booker’s Clocks and Watches and he shrugged.

“Maybe. I dunno, I don’t wear a watch. It’s probably somewhere around Turner Street – here.” He tossed me his phone which I caught awkwardly. “Google Maps.”

I tossed it back. “You do it.”

Obediently he typed it in and after a few seconds showed me the screen. “Eighteen Turner Street.

The ferry docked and we got up to get off. The rest of the boat was basically deserted except for another couple in their twenties fiercely making out and an older businessman holding a bunch of roses.

Quickly we bought tickets to Redfern and, when the train arrived for Central, hopped on. It was midnight and therefore inhabited by mainly druggos and shift workers.

“Will this place even be open?” Trent asked as we transferred onto a late-night train.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. As – I mean, they seemed pretty sure. Only one way to find out, I guess.”

“True.”

The rest of the trip was more or less silent, until we’d alighted at Redfern and were walking down the main street of the suburb, where the shops and restaurants lined the footpaths.

“Nine, eleven, thirteen… wrong side. Hey, look, I think that’s it.”

We crossed the quiet road and peered into the window of a hole-in-the-wall, dusty shop full of old, crappy-looking watches and clocks. A blue sign across the window read BOOKERS.

The light was on inside. “Looks like this is it,” I concluded.

We walked in, pushing the door open. An obscenely loud bell rang announcing our presence.

“Who is it?”

The voice from the back was raspy and tired, like the guy had one too many cigarettes or glasses of scotch in his life. When he appeared I was slightly taken aback by how clean-shaven he was.

“Ronnie?” I inquired, as politely as I could.

He looked at me warily. “Who wants to know?”

I undid the zipper on my bag and slung it onto the floor. The other, leather bag was inside it, in the pocket my schoolbooks had lived in last year. I pulled it out and showed him. “I do.”

Unfortunately no visible signs of recognition passed over his face, so I had to elaborate.

“I was told to bring this here… from Cremorne Point… no? Does saying Asp sent me make a difference?”

That got a response. “Ah. Right. Hand it over.”

He gestured for the bag and so I gave it to him. Immediately he took it into the back room and didn’t emerge again. All I could hear was out of time ticking and the occasional sound of a car going past.

Tick-tick-tick-ticktick-tick.

Eventually he returned – without the bag. By now I was getting frustrated.

“What’s the hold up?”

He gave me a look one could only describe as ‘steely’. “Not done yet. Piss off for ten.”

I considered protesting, but my stomach growled in hunger. Stealing things really gives you an appetite – you just don’t notice until the adrenaline wears off.

“Fine,” I replied, trying to make my own face into a decisive, don’t-mess-with-me expression. “Ten minutes, then we’re taking it.”

We headed out of the shop with another obnoxiously loud ringing of the bell. Occasionally, other lit shops dotted the street and I was extremely glad to find one of them was an all-night kebab shop.

They weren’t exactly doing a roaring trade – not at nearly one in the morning, anyway – so we got our food fairly quickly. Despite my best efforts to take a minute to eat and think slowly, almost in no time I was down to the soggy, dripping end of the kebab and ready to go back.

This time Ronnie had the bag and came out holding it when we walked in the store. Wordlessly he held it out and so I took it with a brief ‘thanks’.

“Now where to?” Trent asked as we once again walked toward the train station.

“Randwick,” I answered. “Arthur Street, about halfway along. Are the trains still running?”

We got back to the station only to discover the next one wasn’t due for another hour and a half. Personally, I didn’t want to be hanging around Redfern station for that long in the middle of the night.

Therefore when Trent said, emphatically, “Fuck that,” I had to agree.

Fortunately for us Sydney’s nightlife means there is generally a taxi around somewhere – you just have to look for it. After almost ten minutes of searching we eventually found one and rattled off the directions. Twenty minutes and a lot of money later we got out in the middle of Arthur Street.

“Red front door,” I directed Trent quietly, clutching the bag. It didn’t feel any lighter or heavier than it had been before… I wonder what that guy did to it.

I searched first down one side of the street, occasionally ducking in or peering around hedges or fences to see doors. Trent did the other side, working at about the same pace, checking facades.

None of them included red, I noted in frustration.

I got to a corner and almost growled with annoyance. Trent had one house to go and I could see from where I was that there was no red anywhere. Not even pink.

A single streetlight lit the corner, meaning when he joined me on my side we had multiple shadows cast in the orange glow. It was starting to get chilly and I was glad of my sweatshirt.

“I think it keeps going,” Trent said, pointing across the road I’d come to. “Maybe it’s up this way?”

I was sceptical – surely she meant this part of Arthur Street? It was longer, after all.

But hey, what have I got to lose, right?

“Fine. Let’s go.”

He quickly ran across the road and we assumed our previous positions. I began my slow inquisitive jog along the street, trying not to disturb any motion sensor lights like the last part of the street.

About halfway along Trent called, “Oi!” at me. It echoed.

Finally. I darted across the road, bag in hand, and crouched with him behind a smallish brown brick wall that made up the fence. It was topped with the sort of fencing spikes that look more menacing than they actually are.

Unless you happen to impale yourself on them from a great height, of course.

“Why are we crouching?” I whispered.

Trent looked uneasily over the edge. “There was a guy looking out the window like he was looking for something. All sinister and shit. Thought I better duck.”

I nodded. “Well, I’m going in, or knocking, or whatever. This is where our elusive leather friend belongs.”

As I said it I was suddenly aware of how awake I was – any tiredness seemed to have dissipated once my body realised sleep wasn’t an option. It was oddly energising.

Putting my hood down I stood up and, adjusting my backpack, opened the gate separating the two sections of fence. It made an excruciatingly loud creaking noise in the darkness.

No one seemed to hear, though, which could only be good. Couldn’t it?

Nervously I walked up to the door and knocked on the bright red wooden surface. Nothing happened for two minutes so I knocked again, harder.

This time it opened. “Can I help you?”

“Delivery!” I sang in the most fake, peppy voice I could muster in the middle of the night.

The guy who opened the door, who looked about mid-thirties but fit, raised an eyebrow. Despite it being the middle of the night he didn’t look tired at all.

“Delivery of what?” he asked, looking behind me like there might have been a Dominos car or something.

I slung my backpack onto the ground. A weird look crossed his face, like he thought there was a bomb in there, or something. Because I totally look like a suicidal terrorist.

“It’s for the lady of the house, actually,” I said, undoing the zip and hauling out the leather case. “And it’s not a bomb.”

Even as I said that, a sudden stab of doubt pricked me. Ronnie had had it for fifteen whole minutes, if not more – enough time to rig something to explode?

Slightly uneasy now, I handed the bag to the guy. He then proceeded to slam the door in my face.

“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.

About sixty seconds later it was wrenched open again and this time in the space stood a woman. A very tall, imposing and not altogether unattractive woman with dark red hair who looked at me like someone had thrust me under her nose and informed her that vomit was imminent.

Although she was wearing enough perfume to make me want to, I didn’t.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “And who gave you this?”

She held the leather case I’d retrieved so diligently in one hand. In fact, it looked like it barely weighed anything to her, which I knew couldn’t be true. That bag was not the lightest thing in the world.

“No one gave it to me, I… retrieved it… myself. Under orders. I’m pretty sure you don’t need to care about who I am.”

She studied my face thoughtfully, apparently disregarding the rudeness. “You stole it?”

As I nodded so did she, like she was impressed. Evidently the bag meant something I was totally unaware of.

“Come in,” she invited, giving me a hard stare with hazel eyes. The request took me by surprise. My first instinct was an absolute and decisive no.

I re-shouldered the backpack and shook my head. “I’d rather be getting home.”

“Not for long, there’s just someone who I want to… introduce you to,” she purred, this time with a smile. I didn’t smile back.

“Seriously, I’m tired, I’ve got places to be… I think I’ll just go…”

“It’ll only take a second. Please?”

It was the nicety that caught me off guard. This was not a woman who looked like she said ‘please’ very often.

I thought about the offer. There were a hundred thousand things that could go wrong with being in this house with these people. Half of them ended in me dead. Somehow this faded to the background as an enticing smell hit my nostrils. What was that?

Then I felt my feet moving forward, almost without my permission. “Alright, I guess…”

I followed this woman through a hallway and into a fairly normal, if largish, suburban house. It was darkly furnished and dotted with people every now and then. It looked a bit like a party, but something was… wrong.

The living room had the most people and the source of the delicious, spicy scent. It was strongest in here but I couldn’t see any food. What the hell?

“Eris,” the woman I’d been led in by called. “We have a visitor.”

I gripped my bag a little tighter. There were a fair few people in the room and none of them looked particularly friendly. All of them were staring at me coolly.

“What?” a woman’s voice called, quickly followed by her physique. I winced. ‘Eris’, or whatever her name was, was not taking ageing with the grace it required. She looked older, around forty or forty-five, but was wearing the clothes of a twenty-year-old.

The tan and bleached hair weren’t a good look either.

The first woman, whose name I still didn’t know, gestured toward me. The small smile that pulled at the skin of Botoxed cheeks disappeared as Eris looked me over.

“Who are you?”

It was the second time I’d been asked that and the second time I didn’t really want to answer. With the whole room (and others from nearby rooms) looking on, I couldn’t really defer it this time.

“Diana,” I told them. “My name is Diana.”

I could keep it to a bare minimum, though.

“Hm,” Eris said. Then she eyed what The Other Woman was holding. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Diana brought it for us,” was the reply, which didn’t really answer the question.

There were more speculative looks in my direction at this. Here, now, in front of everyone, my red-haired host decided to slowly undo the thick zipper of the bag to see what was in it. I gulped nervously, now really hoping it wasn’t a bomb.

The first thing she pulled out was a note on folded card. It must’ve been on top of whatever else was in there. With a flick she opened it.

“I don’t know what’s in there,’ I put in nervously.

I didn’t get a reply until, a minute later, she finished the note. Then she looked me over from the toes upwards, and started to laugh.

“What?” Eris demanded, snatching the note. She then performed the same little act as her friend – reading the note, looking me up and down, and laughing.

By now a grin was starting to catch on around the room, in everyone except me. I couldn’t understand what was so funny, and why they both had to laugh at me so unpleasantly. What was in that note?

My question was answered fairly quickly. “Dear Persephone,” the red-haired woman read out, loud and mocking. “Consider this a warning.”

The room tittered like she’d said something really amusing.

“The girl currently standing uncomfortably in front of you is about to become your downfall,” she continued with a snigger. Everyone else followed suit and I felt myself flush angrily. “Her name is Diana – but we knew that – and she is the only daughter of Belladonna Cross.”

Cross was my mother’s maiden name, I thought in confusion. But why did they call her Belladonna? Her name was Isabella.

Either way, everyone in the immediate vicinity – bar a few of the younger ones – seemed to recognise the name. I began to feel very, very nervous.

“She has come to claim her birthright,” continued Persephone, still in the same scornful tone. “And if you would be so kind as to give her a head start, I would consider it a repayment of the favour in this bag.”

She leaned close to me and finished with a whisper. “Love Asp.”

I recoiled a little in confusion and disgust. Her breath smelt of cigarettes and chocolate. As I started to regret my decision to come here very much, she stepped backward again and addressed the whole room once more.

“Finally, the long lost daughter of Belladonna Cross has found me. And what an imposing figure she is!” she laughed, gesturing toward my head-to-toe black and sullen expression.

“I knew it,” Eris said, pointing at me with a pink talon. “Look at the eyes. Can’t mistake it.”

“Asp must be senile indeed, if she thinks Little Goth Girl here can challenge me,” Persephone hissed nastily. “The Nightshade Throne is mine.”

Great, I thought. This is just what I need. More confusion amidst a room of potentially homicidal people. And what the fuck was the Nightshade Throne?

“I don’t want anything from you,” I started warily, ignoring the little-goth-girl comment. “Except maybe for you to let me go home.”

“Poor little Goth Girl wants to go home to Daddy,” Eris mocked. “Should we kill her now, just to be sure?”

I felt dislike and fear rear in my head. I cannot stand to be mocked, especially for nothing, but there seemed to be a slightly more pressing problem. Eris had reached into a little leopard print handbag on a nearby table and pulled out a gun.

Holyfuckingmotherofshit.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I said in alarm, taking a step backward. The fear was now winning. This is not how I wanted to die. “Let’s not be rash. I haven’t done anything to you -”

Eris, clearly a complete psychopath, shrugged. Then she cocked the gun.

Now, I thought, would be a really good time for a miracle.