ARC 2 / THE MONTH OF BLOOD
PoV: Sofia Falcone
I walk up to the exterior of the bar, and cringe.
Eugh, how does Daddy's territory even
have a place like this?
The exterior is crumbling, vines growing through the cracks in the brick. Two of the windows are boarded up with plywood, and they, along with every other square inch, is graffitied with Falcone gang tags.
Even the sign looks dilapidated, the plastic of several letters of the "Mooney's" cracked, and the apostrophe entirely missing, making it more "Muoııevs" than anything.
I push open the door, cringing as my fingers touch the soggy wood.
Oh God, the inside is
somehow worse than the outside: chairs with three legs, half the surfaces covered in vomit, and a single, solitary pool table in the corner with half the balls missing.
At the end of the bar, though, I spy the target of my search, nursing a beer. I let out a breath of relief.
Finally.
Argyra Morgan is
incredibly hard to track down when she wants to be.
I walk into the establishment, brushing past a man who looks and smells like he's spent the past three nights bathing in whatever fluid comes out of a dumpster on a hot July day.
Jesus, this place is a dump. How the hell can Yra stand to actually touch the tables? She's normally so anal about cleanliness.
I make my way up to the bar. The bartender offers me a drink, but I just look down my nose as him until he shrugs and turns away.
I slide up next to my former American History tutor, the girl I'd suspected of being some sort of cape for several months now… Holy fuck, she looks
rough.
Her skin is dry and cracked, and her hair looks greasier than I've ever seen it, like she hasn't washed it in days. I almost thought she was one of those new Bertinelli
suldati, with how red her eyes are, although of that might just be the contrast with the dark circles under them.
"Sofia" she says, voice low, scratchy. "Can't say I expected to see a Falcone in a place like this."
I raise my eyebrows, sitting down next to her.
"I didn't exactly expect to find
you here either, Yra."
She snorts. "Wasn't my first choice. I've gotten kicked out of every other bar on this block."
"You've been missing for over three days. People at school are wondering where you are."
She takes a swig of her beer. "Well 'people' can go fuck themselves. Only one I actually care about knowing I'm alive is Lonnie, and I already texted him to fuck off."
She doesn't talk after that, and I just sit there, watching her drink.
Eventually, she sighs. "Just spit it out already, you look like a constipated beaver."
I shoot her a glare, and she ignores me.
I swallow. Right Sofia, here you go. First recruitment, don't mess this up!
"I… wanted to talk to you about something."
She snorts. "Is it about how you tricked me into revealing that I'm a mage, and I was too stupid and distracted to see it?"
I blanch. "You…"
"Yeah, I figured it out about five bars ago."
Also,
magic? Damn, my money was on a metahuman.
Oh well, at least Jinx will finally have someone to talk to about all her weirdness.
She lets out a rueful chuckle, raising her drink to me. "It was
real well-done too. Juuuuust enough info that I would have been lost if I didn't have powers, but enough so that if I did have powers, I wouldn't be able to resist the prize. And
not enough to give me enough reason to hold myself back"
She nods at me. "Carmine's territory will be in good hands."
I sit down, eyeing her warily.
"Honestly, I didn't expect it to work. But when I heard about some sort of super-fight in a warehouse on the corner of Belmont and Leigh…"
Her lip twitches down. "Well, guess it's just your lucky day, isn't it?"
"You know" she says, taking a swig of her drink, "if I was a less agreeable mage, I'd kill you for trying to fuck with me like that."
She sighs. "Especially after… well, things didn't exactly go well after, to say the least."
Right.
That. "…I heard."
She swallows, staring into the mirror above the bar.
"You and Artemis… I don't know what the term would be, broke up? As friends?"
Her chuckle sounds like broken glass scraping over concrete. "That's one way to put it, I suppose. She no longer wants a damn thing to do with me."
She sighs. "Hells, I don't even blame her.
I don't want a damn thing to do with me. I'm a
huge piece'a shit."
She sighs. "Fated to be one, I think. It runs in the family."
Yra trails off, seemingly not even acknowledging the awkward silence between us.
…
…
Right before I'm about to interrupt her, she speaks.
"Did you know" she says abruptly, "that Teddy Roosevelt kept a
meticulous diary?"
"I… did not."
"Mhm. He did, every single
day he filled that thing out. All except for one."
She takes a swig. "When his mother and wife both died, within hours of one another."
"On that day, the only thing he put was a giant black 'x'."
She stares up at the mirror. "'The light has gone out of my life.' …that's what he wrote above it. Because he has something beautiful, and radiant, and then…"
She snaps.
"In an instant, it was gone. Forever."
She takes another drink of her beer.
"There's an American History fact for you. Consider it the last of your tutoring."
She sits there, staring at the wall, for the next few minutes.
"You know" I say carefully, "several people warned me not to go looking for you, when I was asking around. They said you had some sort of crazy angry meltdown at Brent's party and attacked a bunch of people."
She smiles wanly. "Yeah, sounds about right."
"So…"
"So, why am I sitting in a bar at the ass-end of the ass-end of the neighborhood? Or why am I not screaming at you inside of it blaming you for what happened?"
I shrug. "Both, honestly."
She sighs. "I got all my rage out days ago. Now I'm just…"
She waves her hand around. "Empty, on a Tuesday evening. Like this bar."
She raises a hand, and the barkeep slides her another beer. "I don't, you know."
I turn. "What?"
"I don't blame you."
"If I were a worse person" she says giving a mirthless chuckle "or well… at least a stupider one. If I were, I'd blame you for causing all of it, get real worked up into a steaming fit."
She closes her eyes, sighing, eyes wet. "But I can't. Because the curse of loving Truth is that you can't lie to yourself, even when you want to."
She waves her hand in the air. "All of this? It was…"
She swallows. "Well, those three bitches had their plans. It was weaved into the Loom already, because of everything I'd already done, and I was just too fucking blind and stupid to realize it."
"That's how it works, you know. Fate. No one's pulling the strings, puppetting you around."
"It's just… things happen, because they're the only thing that
can happen. Like me and Artie: we were too… too different, deep down.
She sighs wetly. "There was nothing we could have done but come apart."
"It might even have been for the best that it happened like it did" Her voice is tight, and I can feel how much she desperately both wants to and doesn't want to believe what she's saying.
"If it was inevitable… better to have it burn up now than sizzle down to nothing. At leas then… at least then you can know it was real. That it had
weight to it. Even if you only know because that weight is crushing your ribs."
She takes another swig, going quiet.
"There were…" she eventually continues "there were two normal human beings who had a normal human relationship. It was Eri and Artie, against the world…"
She sighs. "But those two people never existed. And two fake people can't have a real relationship."
"Turns out it was
always Silver Sorceress and Chryssa…" she says with a chuckle "And those two apparently fuckin'
hate each other."
I widen my eyes. "Wait, are you saying Artemis is-"
She snorts, cutting me off. "Oh, don't act like you don't already know."
She rolls her eyes. "I'm not an idiot, despite what you must be thinking with how easily you tricked me."
I pause, but eventually sigh. "
Fine. I had my
suspicions, but nothing confirmed. Then I heard of your breakup, and the fact that two figures were seen leaving the warehouse."
We both politely agree to ignore my attempted manipulation.
Shame, too, I could really worked the whole "revealed my ex-whatever's closely-hidden secret, what can I do to make you forget I said anything and not tell her?" angle.
She takes another drink. "You told your daddy yet?"
I grimace. "I…"
Look, I'm not betraying him.
I just want to…
control the narrative, let's call it. I don't want him doing anything rash, that might force a response he's not ready for.
Besides, Chryssa doesn't operate in our territory all that often, so it's not like she's actually all that much of a threat.
I shake my head.
"Good" she eventually says. "It's better he isn't tempted."
"What?"
She shrugs, staring at the bar wall. "I mean, it's better Carmine isn't tempted to do something. He's not the worst guy in the world, so I'd hate to have to kill him."
I choke.
Her tone sounds like she's commenting on the weather. "Wouldn't even be that hard, honestly. I checked out the wards on his office, they're shit. I'd just disable them, sneak in, and then…"
She mimes a stabbing motion.
"Bye-bye Carmine."
She hasn't looked at me throughout her entire monologue.
She… she just threatened to kill one of the most powerful mob bosses in the entire city, in the heart of his territory, directly to
his heir's face.
Does she even care about-
I swallow as I realize the truth. She doesn't.
I shudder.
Daddy always said that there's nothing more dangerous than someone half-clever with nothing left to lose.
"Oh, stop giving me that look" she says with a snort, "it's not like Carmine hasn't done worse, hundreds of times. I mean, if I was
really doing something karmic, I'd keep him alive and kill
you."
I scowl, irritation breaking through the wariness. "
Don't. Daddy would do a lot of things, but
never that."
I bite my lip. "He may be… he may not be
perfect, but he has a code: no wives, no kids, no one uninvolved."
She snorts. "Whatever you say, Princess."
"So," she says, cutting me off before I can respond, "I assume you're here to recruit me, or something? Set me up on a meeting with the big man?"
I nod.
She scrunches up her mouth, thinking.
Eventually, she nods. "…You know what? Fuck it, alright. I'll do it. Give me a day to prepare some, and you'll have your meeting."
She gives me a smile totally devoid of mirth. "Looks like it's time for this predator to return to her natural habitat."
AN: So, three day's post-breakup, and Eri's doing
great. Don't worry though, only one more sad-sack chapter (showing Artemis's reaction) before things begin to get a little better.
The poll has a mix of weekend and weekday votes, so I'm splitting the difference and doing Friday.
I'm planning on writing a series of interludes showing Eri and Artie before the breakup. Something like 1.2 or 1.5. Any thoughts on what they should be doing and/or discussing? Something like how in 1.5 they discussed Artemis's father, and gave Valentines gifts.
As always, discussion keeps me motivated, so please let me know what you think. I also talk about story stuff and get writing feedback on
my channel in the Gaylor Convention Center.
