The night's hold over the city finally broke when the morning's first light crept over Itheria's horizon.

I stayed outside the motel room, my breath escaping in white clouds as I drummed my fingers along the railing and waited. It was bitterly cold and ice crept from the eaves in translucent strands, the condensation pouring from my mouth thick with the dying winter's frost. 

The door clattered open as the huntress stumbled from inside, bleary-eyed and clothed in a thick jacket, a gun holstered under the puffy folds. She had a silver cross hung about her neck.

"Dang, it's cold," she complained, pausing when she saw my bare arms. "Ain't you freezing? Need a coat?" 

"No." I extended my hand for the car keys and, after a moment of confusion, Connie set them in my palm. "Is the witch awake yet?"

"Yeah, she actually already left." 

My eyes widened. I'd been outside for a few hours and hadn't seen Saule leave. She was wilier than she seemed.

The huntress and I departed, my shoes breaking the fragile layer of ice that had formed over the outer steps as I walked downstairs. "So, I did some thinking last night," Connie said as I unlocked the Jeep and we slid into the seats. "After you went on about plans and ideas and finding a way into this mage tower. I haven't had to deal with mages much, as I usually deal with the covens, not the syndicates--but Tiber has a bit knowledge about them, so I gave him a call."

My silence spoke volumes as the Jeep's engine revved to life.

"I didn't give him any...real specifics about what we're up to." She shrugged, crossing one leg over the other and sitting so the gun was within easy reach. "But I asked him for some tips and whatnot, for information we could make use of." 

In the lot's easement, I flicked on the blinker and went to turn right onto the desolate street--when Connie's hand shot out to touch my arm. I lowered my hands from the wheel and stared at the offending limb, contemplating slapping it from my person. 

"We're gonna want to go left," she said with a smile, hand lingering on my wrist. I hated to be touched, had always hated to be touched. It was something I'd never enjoy, not once through the unending eons of my life--until a certain blue-eyed mortal laid her hands upon me, and I realized my distaste came from an expectation of cruelty or treachery. It was a reaction of self-preservation, but with Sara I'd found that I...didn't mind it.

Sometimes, I'd caught myself wondering if she looked upon me as a woman looks upon a man.

I shook myself, snatching my arm away from the huntress. Worthless thoughts. "And? What trinkets of wisdom did your mentor impart? Why are we turning left?"

Connie settled her hand on the middle console. "Well, he reminded about the Cult of the River."

The Cult of the River, the ferrymen, the elite hounds of the syndicates and Blue Fire's favorite toy to send out after rumors of Sins. A chapter of the ferrymen could be found in most major cities and a few townships known for their supernatural populations. Amoroth's constant finagling with the syndicates had kept a chapter from forming in Verweald, though the neighboring chapters had been known to "pass through" the city on occasion. Lust usually sent home their bodies. Usually. 

Itheria's chapter of the Cult wasn't anything to toy with. 

"What about it?" I asked, not liking where this conversation was headed. 

"The Cult goes out and searches for criminals and vampire dens, which means we hunters run across them from time to time, and even work with them. Now, last night I started thinkin' about how you want to bust out a black mage, and I told myself, 'We ain't got the knowhow to go traipsing through them mage halls without getting ourselves in a mess of trouble.' Then, it hit me: we're gonna need a mage to outwit the mages." 

"This form of circular reasoning is illuminating, but I hope you have a point."

Connie exhaled, and still I didn't turn. No one waited behind us, and there was no one on the street. "Sometimes, the Cult of the River helps out the hunter enclaves--and, in return, the enclaves help out the Cult. We have one of them...symbiotic relationships. When the Cult gets real busy, like it has been these last few weeks, what with the vampires going out of their minds and the entire world fallin' to pieces, they toss the enclaves some warrants, and we go out picking up small time, petty black mages." 

I hummed as I thought over her words. The blurry static of the untuned radio filled the car. "I imagine the criminals the Cult relegates to mortal enclaves aren't much more than men with with a spark of talent, little embers even humans can quash under their boot." 

The woman nodded, strands of her red hair falling across her freckled face. "That's right. They're just petty thieves, usually. Or mages who didn't register a new spell and failed to pay the fine. Simple stuff, really, but that doesn't make them unlike human criminals, though, and if we go catch ourselves a little fish, we might be able to cast that little guy back into the water and see if something bigger comes snappin' him up." 

My lips thinned as I considered her sound, if reductive, explanation. "You think if we find ourselves a petty black mage with connections, we will be able to find a bigger and better black mage who is willing--and able--to assist us in breaking into the Facility."

Connie nodded.

"One must ask why a black mage would care about another black mage whom he doesn't know. Why would he bother helping us enter what is basically his version of Hell?"

The huntress faltered at that, but I did turn left. Her idea may have had flaws, but I was amenable to its potential. The mage may not be willing, but I wasn't above breaking the fingers of a few weak-willed underlings to get helpful information. It may even be therapeutic.

I drove on through the Itherian streets, rumbling along the empty commercial lanes still piled with wet snow and the dead vegetation of winter. Unlike in the west, spring wasn't here yet. The previous year hadn't quite died, and it clung to this coastal city with the tenacious grip of something bitter and greedy. Clouds set upon every horizon in a tonsure of white, gold, and gray, while the sky above was clear, freckled with dying stars.

Connie directed me the best she could, having to rely upon dated, second-hand information from her Aos Sí mentor. I had to consider that this enclave had met the same fate as the one in Oklahoma and the huntress wasn't sure if it had survived, either, but she knew it was larger, and more centrally located. There was less chance of it vanishing without a sound of protest.

I took into the industrial dregs of the city, the bay and the house of the mages long out of sight, the trees rising tall and sure around the metal buildings until they were all but invisible. Enclaves were by no means official or well-organized, but the huntress stated they liked the same iconography, that it helped them identify allies if they were wanderers, or if they found a stash of weapons out in the wild. It was well past dawn when he arm shot across my field of vision and I swerved, snarling, as she pointed out a sign.

"There!" the huntress breathed, jumping in her seat. "See that? That's a hunters' enclave!"

There was a wood sign with its paint peeling and its surface rusted from the iron post, peeking through the untrimmed trees. There were two arrows on the sign, lain parallel to each other, pointing down to the earth, both with red fletching on the end.

The building I found hidden behind the curtains of foliage and white drifts must have been a lodge at some point, meant for gentlemen to gather in and drink whiskey and smoke cigars. I remembered such places because they were often where hosts before the turn of the century would want to meet, somewhere public but more respectable than a bar, and I used to spend time in the darkened corners of the public rooms, drinking spirits that never touched my mind while I stole information from the snobbish fools who sat by the fires in the finery, spitting on the rest of the world.

A fitting place for Pride, really.

It should have been empty at such a ridiculous hour, but the lot was lined with cars, all the glazed windows bright with light. The vampires hadn't touched this place. Not yet.

I parked and left the vehicle, the huntress falling into step beside me--but I quickly faltered, letting the woman walk in front. I knew nothing of their customs and decided it best if Connie were the one to ask questions and attract attention. The humans here were just as reckless and foolhardy as the huntress, but among these sheep pretending to be wolves could be a wolf pretending to be a sheep: namely, someone who actually knew more about the Sins than the common layman.

Someone who could know the real face of the Sin of Pride.

Connie bounded forward like an overeager dog off her leash and I followed in her wake, surprised by the amount of people crowded into the place. The bones of the previous lounge remained, though a bar had been added, and a wealth of crooked tables where hunters laid out their weapons, their ammo, and their maps. Private rooms lined the back, places where hunters could sleep or meet with a client who needed a particular vampire executed. Two brutes at the far side of the room laughed uproariously, drunk before the day had even begun.

"Hi!" the redheaded huntress greeted as she bounded up to the rough bar and the man behind it filling taps for the evening's service. I could smell eggs cooking and hear bacon frying, and most of the stools at the long counter were taken by grizzled hunters eating their breakfast. "I'm looking for some work."

The bartender frowned. "We're not open to tourists."

Connie wasn't off-put by his tone. "I come from an enclave down in Arizona," she explained, pulling up the hem of her shirt to reveal two parallel arrows tattooed on her hip. The bartender was visibly stunned. "Me and my friend here are lookin' for a job, pickin' up a mage or something else simple while we're out here traveling."

The man leaned on the bar as the huntress adjusted her shirt and the others glanced in her direction. "Well...we have no shortage of jobs in the county....You and your partner are going to want to speak with Leanne." He nodded his head toward a burly woman sitting at the end of the counter drinking coffee from a steaming thermos. "She handles the stuff that comes through the syndicates."

The huntress thanked the man and skipped along the counter with me following in her wake. Her incessant cheer was a persistent wear on my nerves, but I chose to ignore her wheedling delight. The woman, Leanne, gave Connie a bemused look over--then spied me standing like a scowling sentinel in her shadow and gave a consenting nod.

"Alright. Come see what I've got for you over here. You know how to turn in your marks?"

"Of course," the huntress said with a grin. The other woman slid off her stool and strolled toward the far end of the lounge, where a majority of the hunters were gathered.

Out of Leanne's hearing, I bent down to ask Connie, "Why are you smiling?"

"Because this is exciting. I've never gotten a mark like this before."

"You realize this is not part of your...career?"

She didn't reply as we came into the main group and followed Leanne to an actual board of wanted posters and officials listings. My keens eyes found Cage among the sketched faces there.

"C'mon, Anne, why are you giving work to these hicks?" One of the drunken brutes I'd spotted earlier had lumbered over, smelling of stale sweat and cheap beer. His neck was a mess of chewed scars, deep circles under his eyes from lack of sleep.

"Go sleep it off, Bran," Leanne grumbled as she worked to unpin one of the official requisites.

"Have you seen these scrawny brats?" He poked Connie's arm with one thick finger, then reached for me. I leveled the fool an irritated glare and sidestepped his grip.

"Touch me, and you'll regret it."

Color burned the lout's sweaty face, and he again went to grab my arm.

Sucking air through my teeth, I dodged his reach, snatched hold of his ruddy wrist and hooked my foot behind his ankle, jerking his weight out from under him. He fell with a short grunt, and the downward momentum of his collapse twisted his own arm in my unmoving grip. I didn't have to do anything for the filth to break his own wrist, though the sound of his bones cracking silenced the room.

I put a foot on the man's throat when he thought to get up and turned my cold stare to the woman named Leanne. "I'm in no mood for this...posturing," I intoned, putting pressure on the man's neck. His fellow inebriate was now much, much soberer. I snapped my fingers and held out a hand. "Give me the mark."

Connie was as quiet as the rest, fidgeting with the zipper of her jacket. Leanne took down a marker and snatched it from her, giving the sheet a cursory glance to ascertain it detailed the identity of our required mage. It did, so I folded the page and tucked it into my pocket, letting my foot slide from the brute's throat. He coughed and sputtered, rolling to his knees.

"All is in order. We're leaving."

I turned on my heels and strode from the lounge, brushing aside those too careless to move from my way. Connie chased after me, and--as the main door swung out and the brisk air hit my face--I heard her say, "You know, you're kinda a badass."

I couldn't stop my cold, humorless laughter.