Hunter's Strike

“Blue, are you even paying attention?” Albert asked impatiently, gesturing at the computer monitor in front of her.

Blue focused her light brown eyes on the screen. Then she shook her head impatiently. “I can’t do this stuff, Al. Can’t I get back out into the field?”

Albert looked at her over his thick glasses. He was a middle-aged man, on the sqat and round side. He wore short sleeved T-Shirts all year long as he had a tendency to sweat in any weather. Through the shirt the brace keeping his back supported was visible.

His short black hair was messy, and plastered to his head damply. He wore an ever present five o’clock shadow that went down to his neck.

“You know company policy.” he warned her sternly. “Six weeks for chest injuries.”

“But I’m fine...” Blue protested.

“Oh yeah? Do this.” He lifted both arms straight out in front of him, then rotated his upper torso from side to side.

She gave him a sour look. “Why are you trying to teach me the computer stuff anyway?”

Blue was young, just barely out of her teens. She’d joined the company right out of High School, giving up the chance at college to pursue gainful employment. She had long brown hair that she kept in a tight braid. Her skin had a healthy glow from time well spent in the sun.

She’d never been one for a desk job, preferring instead to be out in the thick of things, actually doing some good in this city. Every day she spent inside was another night that her work went undone.

“We don’t have a retirement plan here, no life insurance.” Albert reminded her harshly. “You get benefits for as long as you work. Once you can no longer work in the field, then you have to be useful in some other way, or you’re out.”

Blue’s eyes went to Albert’s back brace. She put a hand to her ribcage, feeling the thick bandage under her shirt. “Show me how the code for the server again...” she said softly, putting her hands back to the keyboard.

They sat at a cubicle surrounded by many more, though it was night and they were the only ones there. All of the lights were still on, as if everyone was just out on lunch.

The double doors at the end of the room burst open and Blue and Albert both jumped, Albert leaning out of the cubicle to look down the aisle.

Silver strode into the room, a sour expression on his face. His long, dirty, brown coat and unkempt hair and beard were out of place in the clean office. Red followed behind him, looking bored.

Silver was by far the oldest in the group. His long hair gray and straggly, his beard matching. His brown eyes were hard from a lifetime of grueling work, driven by almost mad desire. There wasn’t a time when he didn’t carry the scent of whiskey on him, though lately it had grown stronger.

Blue stood up right away. SIlver had been her partner in the field until about five weeks ago, when she had been injured. “Silver, how did it go?” she asked him anxiously. He walked right past her and Albert, continuing towards the Manager’s office at the end of the aisle. “Silver?” Blue called after him. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Arthur!”

He paused and turned his head slightly, looking over at her. Then he turned back and kept walking.

Red lingered back, standing by the their cubicle. He was young, only a few years older than Blue. He had pale skin and narrow black eyes. His short hair was dyed bright red and gelled into spikes that swept back over his head. He wore black leather pants and a leather racing jacket, in black and red. Everything fit him just a little too tightly. “How’s it going, Blue?” he asked casually.

“What’s wrong with SIlver?” she asked, turning to him. “How did it go out there?”

“What’s RIGHT with SIlver?” he asked dismissively. “He’s never been right in the head.” Blue glared at him and he moved on. “The job was a total snooze fest, none of the leads panned out. Just a lot of sitting in the dark with a guy who smells like a liquor store.”

Blue’s hands clenched in frustration. “There was nothing?”

Red used one hand to slice horizontally through the air in front of him. “Nada. David Lucien is dead. He’s deader than dead.”

“What about the other Angels? The new ones he was associating with?”

He shrugged. “Silver says he killed one, but he’s still have Green run the prints. I don’t know what’s going through his head.”

“And the other? The one that used to be Katrina Riley?”

“She’s vanished completely, like a puff of smoke.”

“God dammit!” Blue swore loudly, banging her fist on her desk, making the keyboard jump.

“Watch it!” Albert cried.

The office door at the end of the aisle opened, but instead of Silver, Green exited. She walked swiftly up the aisle, her arms full of papers and folders.

“Green.” Red’s eyes lit up and he smiled warmly. “I was just thinking about you, and how much I miss our jobs together.”

Green was a petite woman, with long black hair that was so fine it drifted through the air in her wake. Her eyes were obsidian orbs, always flickering around, observing every movement.

She paused when she reached Red. His smile grew wider in anticipation. She pulled a few papers out of her stack and shoved them roughly into his chest. WIthout a word, she continued on down the aisle to the opposite door.

“Are those the prints?” Blue asked, leaning closer to Red, but not moving her feet.

“Hold on, lemme read.” His dark eyes scanned the page on top. “OKay, The Angel of Shrieks is heading back to California for a series of concerts on the west coast. She also, apparently, has a movie deal coming up.”

Blue rolled her eyes. “Ugh, can’t we just get rid of her finally?”

Red gave her an incredulous look over the papers. “You do realize how public she is, right? We can’t just kick down her hotel room door, guns blazing. She’s got security crawling around her all the time. Normals, too.”

“I just can’t stand it, though.” Blue gripped her hands in frustration. “How DARE she flaunt herself the way she does! She’s practically rubbing it in our faces!”

“Her music’s pretty good.” Red admitted. Albert wisely pushed his chair out of the line of fire.

“Duh! She’s cheating!” Blue spat venomously. “She’s using her voice to mind control every idiot in the country into buying her singles.”

Red realized he wasn’t going to be able to pull himself out of hot water if he continued, so he moved on, turning to the next page. “Huh. That’s weird.”

“What?” Blue snapped.

“Take a look what just pulled into the harbor this morning.” He handed her the page, which had a photo paperclipped in the corner.

“A ship?” She lifted up the photo, reading the words underneath. “There’s an Angel that sails? On WATER?”

“Just look at that thing.” Red pointed at the ship. “How old is that thing? It looks like a pirate ship, black flag and everything. How does he keep it in such good condition?”

“Sometimes, they just don’t bother hiding, do they?”

“They can’t help it.” Albert spoke up suddenly, not looking up from his computer screen.

Red and Blue both turned to him. “Pardon?” Red asked.

“They get set in their ways, just like normals do, except their habits go further back.”

“You’re talking about Geis?” Blue asked. “I always thought that was stupid, a rule that each Angel has to follow.”

“The older ones have it, they don’t have any choice.” Albert adjusted his glasses. “We have them too, habits that we fall into, rules we put on ourselves without realizing it. Smoking, leaning back in your chair, biting your nails.”

“Yeah, but we can break our habits.”

“A thirty year habit is easier to break than a three hundred year one.”

Red was on his last page now. “Ugh, no fingerprint matches on the Angel Silver took out. Why even print out a page?”

“Green didn’t want an excuse to talk to you.” Blue told him.

“She doesn’t want a reason to talk, to anyone, ever.”

“Are we sure she CAN talk?”

Albert spoke up again. “Green can talk just fine, she just prefers not to. It’s a habit. Have you tried the National database? Or just the local one?”

“Uh, local, the tri-state area. I guess Green doesn’t have access to the National one.” Red passed him the last page.

Albert looked at the number at the top of the page and typed it in. A box came up and he put in his name and password. A few seconds later he was printing out another page, which he handed to Red. “Looks like we found a match. From Alaska, of all places.”

Red looked over the page, his face going white. “What? What’s wrong?” Blue asked urgently.

The office door opened again, Silver stepping out, pulling the door closed behind him. Red looked over at him. “Silver, that Angel you took out, how did you do it?”

“Sunlight. He caught me by surprise, so I didn’t have much ammo on me at the time.”

“You saw him burn, you definitely saw it?”

Silver looked at Red warily, not used to the strain in the young man’s voice. “I stayed for the beginning, to make sure he was secured...”

Red’s hands trembled slightly. “No, sunlight wouldn’t work on him. He’s too old.”

“I thought he was new!” Silver snapped. “Didn’t Lucien turn him along with Riley?”

Red shook his head. “Not according to his prints. There’ve been incidents all over Alaska, going back a hundred years at least.”

Albert looked down at the printer under his desk. He hadn’t noticed it was still chugging away, churning out page after page. He pulled out the small stack while the printer kept going. “He’s got an Archive entry that goes waaay back, when the database was just a handful of leather journals.”

Silver’s mind went back, to when he was investigating Riley’s apartment. He’d met someone there that was entirely unexpected, when his own daughter had pointed a shotgun at him. She’d been at Viv’s place, too, but he hadn’t been sober enough to put two and two together.

Now he thought back, to the Angel that had been with her, like the one he’d killed, only younger. “How can you say that!?” she’d shrieked “He tried to kill you, remember? For three weeks he might as well have succeeded!”

He remembered looking up at her from the floor, his gun next to him. The young Angel had his arms wrapped around her when she dropped the shotgun, his cheek resting on her shoulder. His entire form was possessive, his glowing red eyes boring right into Silver. “Leave now, and don’t bother us ever again, or I will end you.”

That had been the Angel he had killed.

Silver stood, staring at Red, trying to find his voice. “What’s his name?” he asked roughly as his throat squeezed.

Red was pale as a ghost now. “The Angel of Death.”