A Mission

It seemed so noisy for so late at night. The city should be silent, the people asleep. But sounds seemed to flood the small alley as I shivered in the darkness. Singing and organ music drifted through the open window in the wall behind me, the people celebrating midnight mass as if nothing was wrong. As if the world would still be turning if I failed. As if the sun would still rise tomorrow, like any other day.

A parakeet’s warble called down from the window across the alley, four stories up. The files Xipe had showed me during the briefing ran through my mind, forcing the worlds and lives around me into only a collection of empty words. 

That window would belong to Mr. Walkins. Seventy-nine. Widower. He would be in bed by now, hearing aids removed. His latest audiologist report had been part of the file. He couldn’t hear a bomb going off, which, incidentally, had been how he’d lost most of his hearing. With a little luck, he would sleep through this. 

The plan was always for the normal humans to remain oblivious. I didn’t exactly have the best track record on the team, though. There was that time in Boston when the Redcoats heard me take out a target with my pistol and took that as their cue to fire into the mob attacking them. And then there was the time when I missed J-Booth and maybe might have hit A-Lincoln instead. Officially, my gun had misfired both times. My most recent misfire had gotten me put on desk duty for a solid century. My first mission back, I’d had the same hardware malfunction.

This time, though, I wouldn’t screw up. Thea had made that clear when she assigned me. I had only been assigned in the first place due “entirely,” she said, “to a lack of competent agents.” No mistakes. No malfunctions. No messy cleanups. But I had seen her already mentally filing my transfer. 

It just wasn’t fair.

Of everyone at the Service, I should have been the best. I had grown up normal. I mean, I’d know what I was since I was ten, but I hadn’t met others like me until at least a century later. That was when I had first seen the Service in action. Back then, Thea had just been another agent, not the stick-up-her-ass boss that she was now. She had been cool. Laid back. She even let me spit off a cliff once. Thoth had been in charge. He was the one who found me. The one who thought the curse running through my veins might actually be helpful. Or at least useful. He’s the one who recruited me.

I shifted the cumbersome hammer in my hand as I thought about whether he regretted it.

A clock chimed somewhere in the night. 1am. A single snowflake fluttered through the still air, landing softly on my nose. It was cold enough to burn. I turned my face to the cloud-blanketed sky, smiling as another white flake wound and bobbed through the air. Then another. Then another.

But something was off. I could feel it in my hands, the way Jizo said he felt the goodness of others in his heart or Rigan felt war in her bones.

I knew. Something was wrong.

A burst of wind broke through the moment of peace, carrying not the crystal smell of winter or ice, but the heavy scent of fire. I frowned and held out my tongue. A snowflake landed perfectly. I choked on the acrid, familiar taste of smoke and ash.

Fire. Something was on fire. 

I sprinted out of the alley and onto the main street, still full of cars at this ungodly hour. The smoke was coming from the building to my left, an old warehouse that had once made shoes or cigarette lighters. It had lain abandoned for the better part of a decade. Even the rats had vacated it. 

A small part of me whispered in the depths of my mind that it was just some human trying to make a statement or release the fire inside themselves. We didn’t deal with humans. They were too messy and helpless. 

But most of me knew that it was too coincidental. Here I was, on a mission, and the building right next door just happens to burn down? 

No. It was no coincidence.

Over the screams and shouts of the bystanders, I heard footsteps, distant and fading fast. No normal human would have been able to hear it. No normal human would know to listen for it. But had never been a normal human. 

I might have been raised by my father, but I was still my mother’s child. I had her ears, her eyes, her speed. I had her blood. But I wasn’t her. I was an agent of the Service. I hunted people like her. Demons, monsters, hell’s escapees.

Thoth used to say it was my destiny to be the best agent the Service had ever had, even better than him. As I chased after the click clack of heels on the cracked and broken pavement in the dead of night, I only hoped he was right.