At this point, Bliss couldn't care less if her two fellow travelers disappeared into some bottomless pit deep beneath the surface of the earth. As far as companionship went, both of them had been predictable and for the most part harmless. Neither complained about the fact that they were far past a day's travel to the nearest city by car, with little indication that their “treasure guide” knew a damn thing about what she was doing besides that they should 'shut the fuck up and trust me, damn it.' The artifact shop in Heissel had funded this escapade on Samael's request, and her findings had been the means to fund it. If the fact that the junk she managed to scrounge up sold for enough of a pretty penny to pay for a car, sixty liters of fuel, and enough equipment to go hundreds of feet underground didn't convey the point, they could kiss her ass.

  Bliss sighed and stopped to wipe her brow. Something tugged at her, urging her to push deeper even when little sign of human exploration existed. There was no clue that anything might lie hidden here, but her gut didn't lie to her; she always followed where it took her. Oh, and on the topic of following...

  “You two keep yapping 'bout your sweaty balls, and I'll kindly blast 'em all over the walls so you can have a bloody gaping hole where they used to be, an' you won't hafta worry about it anymore. Please do make some snarky comment 'bout a bloody gaping hole while you're at it. Maybe I'll be extra generous and make one out the back'f your damned head. What part of 'shut the fuck up' did you not understand?”

  “Calm your tits, woman. Maybe if you-”

  Bliss guessed that there must have been thirty paces between herself and the absolute waste of oxygen that responded. She had crossed half of that before he caught himself mid-sentence and closed the rest before he could brace himself. Had his 'friend' been made of finer substance and attempted to intervene, she might have concerned herself with him. As it was, she met no resistance as the butt of her full-auto pistol caught Liam right under the tip of his nose. A crack resonated from the impact, and the man went toppling.

  Samael refrained from commentary; his comrade bled like a stuck pig and from the floor let slip a series of what he must have felt were unique and original expletives and attempts to slander her name. She spun on her heels and resumed her stride.

  One hundred paces now separated herself and her flunkies.

  What was funny was that she had held back. It amused her how mouthy men could be when their pride was wounded. She much preferred to remain quiet when she felt slighted. Oh, just one of the lessons you managed to engrave into my soul, dear mother. How much do I have to thank you for how much you've twisted me?

  Liam was still staggering behind her, hands pressed to his face to stem the flow of blood from his nose. The shopkeeper must have had a hard-on for him because he could recite the characteristics of every precious stone and metal and.... that was about it. Some might have found him dashing, but his lack of intellect on any topic except valuable materials was apparent in every useless word he spoke. His only redeeming quality was that he could carry his body weight in gear. Most importantly, she knew where his awareness happened to be at any given moment. A little extra sway in her step, a little bounce and jiggle, and she had his undivided attention. He was harmless, cowardly, and utterly lacking in any particular useful skill. Hand him a broom and he could probably sweep the shop clean in an hour. Other than that, the boy seemed destined to be a waste of resources and space.

  He was not, of course, without his merits. A little brush of a hand along his arm or a coy little smile made any request or command all the easier for him to follow... alone. As evidenced a moment ago Samael had proven to be an awful influence on him, and it was now like twisting teeth to get either of them to do her bidding. Samael had it stuck in his head that lacking a dick also meant that one lacked any intelligence or common sense. She had reminded him numerous times that her experiences with bandits and other nasty sorts exceeded his tremendously, and allowing him to stand watch while she and Liam scooted down the rope so that he could get cut down by rifle fire or a careening buggy did none of them any favors. One lone person standing tall in the middle of nothing did not mark them as a figure of authority. If anything, it was a mark of stupidity.

  The path narrowed as they descended, the air cooling. Bliss brushed a hand through her hair, wondering if they’d been followed. There had definitely been dust rising from the road behind them.

  They paused at a junction in the tunnel. Bliss tested the air, feeling for that familiar pull. "Which way?" Liam whispered, clutching his pack.

  Bandits crossed her mind as she considered their options. They weren't always terrible, in her experience. Some were just scavengers like her, looting the already dead. "Left," she decided, moving forward.

  As they walked, she recalled encounters with roaming groups. Most fled when she gave them trouble, and a few actually attempted to pretend to be honest merchants. One particular man, by virtue of wit and and such pretty looks that even his fellow bandits admitted to doubting that his only career had been roaming the wastes, actually brokered out a deal that left her with enough relics of her own to collect a profit. It hadn't hurt that the sex was good, and that not being jumped by all the rest of his goons was part of the deal. The murderous lots bothered her, but they also were easier to handle since taking loot was rarely their gig.

  Bliss was so lost in thought that Samael actually had to grab her wrist and pull her back from strolling right off a ledge. She yelped, fell back against his chest, then turned in his embrace and shoved him back. She heard a few rocks tumble over the edge, and didn't hear them hit bottom. Had she simply taken that plunge, she would have fallen to her death.

  “Get off me!”

  “Figured you didn't want me to let you fall, and you weren't listening,” Samael said with his usual cocky grin. “I'll get my light. It's so dark that-”

  “No. Any more light'll just ruin my night vision.” Bliss sighed loudly. “You two broke my concentration. It's down below.” Bliss slipped off her bag and tossed it down to the ground. She needed to get her mind back in the game and stop letting it wander.

  “So we're stopping to have a picnic while you try to explain, again, why we're following you to who knows where for who knows what is down there while we stroll behind you with our thumbs in our asses?”

  She ignored him, instead pulling out a pair of binoculars and a flare. She crawled over to the cliff's edge on her stomach until she just barely crested it, her head and the least little bit of her shoulders pushed past the edge. She turned her head away as she twisted the cap and pulled to ignite it. She dropped the brown stick, waiting for it to fall far enough. She peeked over her shoulder at the other two. Neither of them had apparently pondered pushing her to her death.

  Once she was convinced that the flare had either fallen far enough down to land or simply disappeared into darkness, she took the binoculars to peek at where it should have landed. For a few moments, she stared at the very slight amount of illumination before sighing and pushing herself back. She put the binoculars away and put her head into her hands. Fuck.

  “What?” Liam asked.

  What did she tell them? Your lovely, smart, and totally prepared guide has managed to lead you two to a dead end. The treasures you are looking for are hundreds of paces down below us, and I don't believe there's a way to get down there. To make matters worse, I'm pretty sure the surface down there isn't made out of rock, but something softer and much more difficult to navigate. How about we go back, have a few drinks, perhaps even fuck and forget? Ha, that last part was just to get your attention you soft-dicked pricks. “We need more rope.”

  “Or we find another way down,” Samael suggested.

  “There is no other way down!” My sixth sense that you don't need to know about would have directed me otherwise if there had been another way to get there.

  “If this cavern used to be a source of limestone water like I believe it is, it's quite possible that several veins snaking off from this path would have followed more even terrain until it eventually sloped down from years of erosion and-”

  “I think what he means is that there might be another path down there,” Liam chimed in helpfully.

  “I think what he really means,” Bliss said between gritted teeth, “is he knows his way 'round here and thinks I'm bein' an imbecile. Fine. Show us the way, oh Professor, and show we li'l folk how unworthy we are.”

  Samael stared at her, unspeaking for a few moments. Bliss would have preferred to kick his face in until it caved under the assault, but she did not leave a job partially done. When he finally stood and began to walk away from her and Liam, she almost expected him to leave them. She had not completely planned out this adventure, instead following her gut as she had always done. She didn't see the point of bothering with other people and making the trip more difficult than it had to be. People could be handled, but why fix a problem when a problem could be avoided altogether?

  “It's not uncommon for rainwater to erode soil over time, weakening what highly rocky ground doesn't normally hold in place. Eventually, several streams will split from the main river to bring water to surrounding areas, further breaking down the dirt and other minerals to create...” He wandered just outside Bliss' vision and she purposefully tuned his rambling out. She felt the temptation to raise her machine pistol to aim in his general direction, suddenly finding what should have been a simple man to be more complex -- and less trustworthy. Instead, she heard what must have been Samael striking a wall several times with his palm before a crumbling sound reverberated through the cavern and the wall collapsed into rubble.

  “How did he know where to do that and not cave us all in here?” Liam asked.

  “I dunno,” Bliss mumbled before standing up and walking in the general direction Samael had gone. “Gimme a light. Fuck my night vision. Something feels off.”

  Samael's dark skin and clothing meant that, even as Liam switched on his light, he blended into the darkness quite well. Even his eyes didn't reflect the bright beam. Bliss slowly strolled over to where a thin layer of minerals had covered what might have been, according to Samael, some sort of creek.

  Bliss stared at him for a few moments before giving a grunt of disapproval and passing through the freshly opened passage. Her skin practically crawled. She hated not knowing how to measure someone up, and Samael had just discovered, as if guided, a new way in an unfamiliar place. Even with her knack for finding treasure, she had not sensed this pathway. It didn't even feel like it was leading her in the right direction.

  She heard commotion from the direction of the cave's entrance; they’d been followed after all. Bliss hissed, grabbing hold of Liam and dragging her with him. The bandits likely wouldn't have the skills to follow, but she wouldn't press her luck. Caught with their backs up against a very large drop, Samael's new shortcut was their only chance.

  * * *

  Bliss stumbled through the darkness with Liam and Samael in tow. Both seemed nervous, and she couldn't blame them. If the bandits really had discovered where they had gone, they would more than likely either come after them or else steal everything at the base camp and remove the rope ladder that was their only known means of escaping the cavern, leaving them to starve in the dark. Bliss focused on the matter at hand. While she had at first felt lost, she was now picking up the trail once more. She felt pleased with herself, regaining her confidence and leading them to what she knew had to be here.

  Treasure. Bliss grinned to herself. She'd be damned if she was wrong, and what she saw before her was... well, she couldn't piece together what it was. It was huge, hulking a good eight feet above her with dimensions that struck her as large enough that numerous people would be needed to get it to work. She had only found pieces of something of this nature in the past, but now she had a complete model. It looked heavy. It looked...

  It looked as though she would need a much larger crew to move it. "Holy shit," she whispered, running her hand along the weathered armor plating. "This isn't just some relic. This is Old World tech."

  Watching Samael's practiced movements around the machine, understanding dawned on Bliss like a slap. He'd never been stumbling blindly through these tunnels, he'd been steering her, using her knack to pinpoint what he already suspected was here. The "coincidental" discovery of that side passage, his convenient knowledge of the cave system… it had all been calculated. The betrayal stung less than the embarrassment. Bliss had been played from the start.

  "You knew," she said flatly. "You knew it was here all along. You just needed me to find the exact location."

  The slight twitch at the corner of his mouth told her everything.

  Bliss didn't even want to look at Samael. She wanted to rip his ears off the sides of his head. It had not been a coincidence that he had led them this far, especially considering that getting here had not been particularly difficult in hindsight. Those weren't bandits she heard, it was the rest of his crew. She wasn't here to be a guide; she was expected to fix the damn thing.

  The noises down the pathway they had just left became clearer, footfalls and voices, and in one smooth motion Samael had grabbed Liam's arm and pressed his gun to his head. She had little qualms with letting Liam die or even spilling his blood herself, but letting him die at Samael's hands felt too much like losing. Furthermore, there was no telling how many were following in his footsteps. Ten? Twenty? Certainly enough to hitch the piece of machinery to some kind of rolling platform to lead it to the hole. Hell, even if they managed to get it there, would the ground above support its weight? There had to be another way out of here that would make retrieving the equipment easier....

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  She had to play nice, dammit. That meant she had to lead them to believe that she would get the object out of here. She rolled her shoulders to loosen her muscles, ran a hand through her hair, and turned to look at it. It needed fuel, so they would likely have brought some. Machines this large, by nature, had a motor or engine that either had a remote start or something to ignite the fuel and get it running. It wouldn't be an obvious switch or button, or there would have been no need for her.

  “I'm sorry I had to do things this-”

  “'M not stupid, Samael.” She didn't even bother to turn and look at him. “I know why I'm here. Put the damn gun away an' stop making yourself seem more important than you really are.”

  “I won't take that chance.”

  “In front of all your friends, Samael? There aren't 'nough guns between them to put both've us down whenever they want? Is it 'cause you can't get a woman to look at you, let alone touch you, an' you wanted to impress them? Yeah, go ahead an' get pissed at me. You need me to be your bitch in front of all of 'em? Well I'm not gonna- yeah, press the gun harder against him like you've got leverage. Kill the brat for all I care. He's got only an ounce more brainmeat than you, anyways.”

  Samael seemed dumbfounded, and that was all she wanted out of him. No amount of proof of my competency will ever satisfy anyone. Like clockwork, men will always challenge me. I can prove myself a hundred times, and they'll still think they're superior. Bliss shook off her thoughts and set her teeth as she walked over to the machine to climb on top of it. She didn't care what Samael wanted, but she wanted a look inside.

  She noticed that most of the machine still had a layer of crusted earth over it, indicating that the men had not managed to examine it very closely. She quirked an eyebrow at Samael before reaching for a latch that seemed to swivel away from a lid to unlock it. It was rusty and difficult to move, so she used the knife from her boot to pry it loose. She wanted to smirk to herself, imagining Samael using some hocus-pocus to bespell a group of bandits into doing his bidding. It certainly wasn't his knack for getting dirty. Too pretty to dirty himself and too meager to command enough respect to have his men do it for him? Fascinating.

  The lid flipped open slowly, pistons attached to the hinges still working enough to make lifting the cover relatively easy. She still had to work to get it completely open, but soon she was slowly lowering herself down into the space below her.

  The space was cramped, with so many handles and switches that she imagined anyone that didn't know what they were doing already would have difficulty determining where to start. She had little idea herself what every specific control switch did, but she could gather from what looked like a loading tube that none of this applied to a power source. She lowered herself further into the machine.

  Inside the machine's cockpit, Bliss recognized military insignias worn nearly to nothing. The control panel was unmistakably pre-Fall military design, standardized layouts that had appeared in other fragments she'd salvaged over the years, but never this complete. This wasn't just some cobbled-together wasteland vehicle. This was authentic Old World armored warfare technology - a tank that had somehow survived centuries underground.

  The steering mechanism caught her eye—and there, as she'd expected, was the ignition system. A machine this powerful wouldn't be designed for easy access. She looked for some sort of locking module and found it, reaching over to touch it. A key would normally be necessary to start it. She could fix that.

  "Find anything useful?" Samael called from below, impatience edging his voice.

  She ignored him, focusing on the locking module beneath her fingers. A cylindrical part requiring a key to complete the circuit. To most, an insurmountable obstacle. Bliss smiled. She'd broken into worse.

  Behind her, scuffling sounds and whispered voices grew more insistent. She felt Samael's rising tension like heat against her back. "Almost there," she muttered, examining the circuit connections. Just a matter of rerouting the current…

  As Bliss worked on the circuitry, her sharp hearing caught fragments of Samael's whispered conversation with one of the men.

  "...told you she'd find it. That's what she does."

  "Better be worth what we paid the shop to fund this wild—"

  "Worth ten times that. Once we get this back to camp, everything changes. Now that we know the location, no more scavenging for scraps. No witnesses."

  Bliss's hands stilled momentarily. So that was it; she was meant to be discarded once she'd served her purpose.

  Bliss got out of the machine and closed the latch. She couldn't help but give Samael a satisfied look. All these men must have expected him to get it to work and discovered he was just as inept as them. She hopped off the top and walked to the back of the machine, where several inches of steel were layered over it to protect it from harm. A few latches undone here, a few more forced open by hand tools...

  She ignored the continued exchanges between Samael and the others and simply focused on the matter at hand. Likely they were getting impatient. Perhaps they were questioning whether or not they should be letting her do this on her own. She got to what was likely the circuitry that would help the engine start and found the power source. Bliss hissed as a spark snapped her fingers. She managed to pull one wire, then another, rearranging the innards of the machine to suit her. The entire thing shook briefly.

  “It'll need more work to run for much longer. If I can-”

  “But it will work,” Samael said, cutting her off.

  Bliss glanced over her surroundings. He had, at most, ten men at his disposal. She may have misunderstood his intentions all along, then. Was it possible that they had been leading him rather than the other way around? Were they holding him accountable as much as her?

  The point was, the odds were not completely against her. Two of them had chamber-loaded rifles, a few had what looked like machine pistols, and the rest were either depending on blades or a concealed firearm. Samael himself only had a snub-nosed, silly-looking thing that must have been converted from a flare gun. At the distance of most of the men, and in the low lighting, they would either have difficulty hitting a moving target or find the range difficult to manage.

  Bliss grinned, a mad plan forming in her mind. “Sure. It'll work. Catch.”

  Samael must have figured out what Bliss intended, because he was already swiveling to brace himself as her bag struck him in the face. Bliss slid off the machine just as bullets began to ring off the steel around her. She hissed as a bullet punched through her, luckily hitting nothing vital and too weak to affect her trajectory. The whistles from the higher-velocity rounds indicated that the marksmen were anything but sharpshooters.

  Samael had intended to simply let her discover how to start the machine before killing her on the spot. Things would not be that easy. As she noticed the men moving in the darkness to get a better shot, she used the machine pistol strapped to her side to dissuade them. Temporary solutions to a much more permanent problem. She had better chances hopping inside the machine. That, of course, had its fair share of risks, including the fact that she would then be cornered and the fact that she currently had no idea how to run its weapons systems.

  Fuck it. She would take her risks running headlong into the group and try her chances at simply overwhelming them. The distance still meant that machine gun fire would be inaccurate and almost worthless; she could cross it if she had something to distract them. Bliss dashed out of cover and fired blindly into the darkness to try to keep them pinned down while she attempted to sweep wide and hit their flanks.

  Just as she darted out from the cover of the machine, she caught buckshot to her shoulder. A scream tore from her as a chunk of flesh was blasted off, her left arm going limp. She spun backward and hit the cave floor, skidding a few feet before coming to rest. She heard the shooter reloading, so she rolled onto her back to fire at him. He ducked behind the machine and her bullets bounced harmlessly off the armored hull.

  She had to get back up. In the dark, the marksmen weren't going to get a bead on her. If she stayed still, however, those with the faster firing weapons would get lucky. She flipped onto her stomach just as she heard bullets striking the floor around her and coming close to hitting her.

  From her vantage point she could see Liam actually making himself useful, interrupting Samael's efforts to load another shot. Either he was feeling sentimental or just didn't want her any more pissed at him. As she made for the group, however, she caught a glimpse of Liam spinning rapidly in place and crumpling to the floor. Well, so much for that.

  She was fast. She could bob and weave, making the ones with high-powered rifles miss easily. She had the agility to get just close enough to one of them before smashing - ow, that was a mistake - right into him before emptying the rest of her magazine into several others.

  Too late, she realized her mistake. Without a functioning left arm, she could not reload. Being this close, she was bound to get shot -- and did. Several more bullets punched right through her, and she began to doubt if she could fight off this many men and come out alive. With a shriek of both fury and agony, she tore after the remaining men.

  It was, she knew, an exercise in futility. With a fully functioning body, she would have had winning chances. As it was, even armed and with her superior strength and speed, she was getting as good as she was giving. Pain blossomed in her legs; her chest ached, and breathing was beginning to become difficult. She was losing sensation altogether in her left arm. By the time she had taken down half of them, she found just moving to be as much of a problem as simply fighting.

  Just as her vision began to waver, fresh gunshots echoed from deeper in the tunnel. Impossibly, some of Samael's men were falling - not from her bullets, but from fire coming from behind them. Through the muzzle flashes, she glimpsed unfamiliar silhouettes advancing methodically through the tunnel.

  "Secure the tank!" a commanding voice bellowed over the chaos. "Don't damage it!" As consciousness slipped away, Bliss's last thought was bitter irony; Samael had lost his prize to someone else.

  * * *

  The tent was cleaner than she had expected. As her consciousness trickled back into focus, that was the first thing she noticed. Most bandit camps were not the standard of cleanliness, since they were rarely composed of upstanding citizens of society.

  She started to sit up and winced as her wounds burned like fire. Right. She had been shot. She tossed the rags that had been covering her aside and rolled herself off the cot, landing on all fours before trying to bring herself to her feet.

  “Pull your stitches open, and I might have to kill you for putting all my hard work to waste.”

  The voice sounded amused, and that made her skin crawl. She reached for her weapon on reflex but found only empty air.

  Of course, dumbass, she berated herself. Naturally they would have disarmed her. She turned to face her captor.

  Big was the only way she could describe him. Tall, with large muscles and a large build, and he somehow had a presence that only augmented that size further. He was square-jawed, with a buzz cut of brilliant blond hair. He was grinning at her as if he found something very funny. Oh, if only she were in better shape to knock that smirk off his face...

  “Oh, you don't like me. That's harsh. Here I thought I was being charming. It's the hair, isn't it? They always say it's the hair.”

  “It's your damn face,” she snarled.

  “What? Oh.” The man stroked his chin thoughtfully. “You can touch it if you want. I won't bite.”

  “I want to punch your face.”

  “Well, see, for that I might have to charge-”

  “Who. The. Fuck. Are. You?” Bliss asked, practically biting each word as she spoke.

  “Mmm. Who am I? Just a lonely wandering traveler exploring the wastes and picking up darling little things like yourself. You can say that I'm a gatherer of people, discoverer of treasures, unveiler of mysteries, prophet of prophecies, master of masters, lover of lov-”

  “Commander,” a voice called from outside the tent, “I think she wants your name.”

  The man blinked and turned to look in the direction of the voice just as she had. She had to appreciate that someone else was losing patience with him, because she was one word away from lunging across the tent and socking him one. She did not appreciate people who were not straight with her, and this man was anything but. What did this dick want from her?

  “Oh, my name? Well, that's not important. You can call me Commander. Everyone does.”

  “Or the Manwhore of the Seven Wastes. Can I bring her the damned water, or are you going to keep waving your dick in front of her face?”

  “He's not.”

  “I'm not.”

  “For once,” the voice said, sounding exasperated.

  “Bring the water.”

  As the tent flap opened, sunlight sliced through the dimness. A man entered carrying a flask, but Bliss barely noticed him. Her attention fixed on what lay beyond - the tank, surrounded by unfamiliar figures in desert gear. Its hull had been hastily cleaned of cave debris, and someone was painting over the old military insignia with precise brushstrokes.

  "Admiring our new acquisition?" The big man followed her gaze, his voice tinged with satisfaction. "Your friend Samael went through all that trouble just to deliver it right into my hands. Funny how things work out."

  "You're the ones who came in guns blazing," Bliss said, the pieces clicking into place. "You took the tank."

  The large man's grin widened, pride gleaming in his eyes. "The tank, the survivors who looked useful, and you, the woman who found it and got it working. Quite the profitable excursion."

  Bliss quirked a brow at the water-bearer, studying him more carefully now. He was dressed to blend in with the sandy wasteland; in contrast, Commander looked ready to wander through a damn forest. A scarf obscured the lower half of his face, and long black hair covered all but his eyes. Both hair and scarf seemed to bring out the blue in his eyes as well as accentuate his tan skin. The rest of his clothing consisted of some sort of thin cloak wrapped around loose-fitting military clothing similar to what bandits wore but of finer material. He was by no means as large in presence or build as Commander; he seemed to be somewhere between Samael and Liam in size.

  The man narrowed his eyes at her, but she refused to pull her eyes from him.

  “Hey. Hey! Stop that! You can't come in here and ruin my game, Vertigo! You know how I am about-”

  “Commander, what are we doing with her?” Vertigo said, gesturing vaguely at her.

  “Well. That depends. What do you suggest?”

  “Hello, I'm right fucking here!” she bellowed.

  Vertigo turned, staring at her. Their eyes met for a few moments before he set the pitcher down on a box near the entrance. “It doesn't matter to me. Fuck her and leave her like all the other bitches you've had, Commander. I'm going back to my tent to get ready.” Vertigo turned to leave the tent.

  He did not make it far. Bliss launched herself from the floor of the tent and hit him, sending him sprawling. She shoved him onto his back, throwing a punch across his face. He deflected the first blow with his arm but the second swing caught him right on the chin. With a hiss, he grabbed her and rolled, trying to pin her down. Ignoring the agony that shot through her from her wounds she bit hard at his arm, breaking skin. Vertigo bellowed in fury and pain.

  “Well, son of a bitch. Here I was trying to get into her pants, and you're already getting kinky.”

  “Get this bitch off me!”

  “I can't! You're the one on top of her!”

  “Fine!” Bliss screamed. “You get THIS bitch off ME!”

  “Fuck you!” Vertigo screamed back.

  Commander sighed. “Aww. Aren't they sweet?”

  Bliss swung at Vertigo one last time as he managed to untangle himself. “You get pissy that I supposedly risk pulling my wounds, then you let him tackle me and send me on my ass? What the fuck, man?”

  “You were the one that tackled him,” Commander said. “Regardless. Vertigo. Up. I need to speak to her.”

  “Why?” Vertigo hissed.

  “Because it seems our new friend here has a knack for finding things, and I'm going to make her a deal.” He smirked at a dumbfounded Bliss. “That is to say, I'm going to make her an offer she won't be able to turn down.”