Beam POV: Day 78

  Current Wealth: 229 gold 37 silver 6 copper

  We really did have fucking awful luck of the draw, thinking about it. How often did we, all three of us earthlings, split up? Not that frequently, not back then at least. And yet, just as both Shango and I were elsewhere, Solitaire got attacked. Well, I didn’t know anything about what was going on at Velaharo Manor until later on, I was still preoccupied with my own little escapade. Chasing a woman.

  Saying it like that, one does wonder whether Solitaire might have been better suited to it.

  Maybe not, this one was quick, disappearing around corners, hopping stalls, tearing down the streets with a frightful speed. More speed than me, easily. I could feel the distance between us growing with every stride, see her disappearing farther and farther ahead into the distance.

  Early on I’d assumed there’d been no high-profile guards in pursuit of her, it had seemed like a reasonable deduction, but seeing the way she moved, I could easily believe that there had been, and she’d just torn on ahead of them. No human had ever moved like this in the Olympics, that was for sure, and the longer I chased her, the more convinced I became that there weren’t all too many animals who’d have given her a decent chase, either.

  But I still had to catch her, there was really no two ways about it, and so I did what we earthlings- Belahonts- had started to develop a bit of a reputation for doing. I cheated.

  Not in a particularly sophisticated way, mind. If I were Shango I might’ve shouted something really clever and evil to trick her into turning around, or slowing, or falling over. If I were Solitaire I’d probably have stopped for a few seconds to assemble a jetpack out of the fruit I was running past, then swooped down on her from above.

  Instead I just climbed a building, putting my supernatural strength to good use as I hauled myself over it, and cut along the side.

  The woman was heading along a part of the city I recognised, and her path would doubtless take her through the street I was dropping down into. All I’d have to do to get her was wait, so I did. And did. But she didn’t come.

  It took a good few minutes before I finally caved, stepped out of my hiding place and started perusing the path I’d expected to find her shooting down, scrutinising every wall and gutter for any trace of her. Perhaps expectedly, she was in neither the brickwork, nor the gathering street-sludge washed to either of the road’s sides.

  My heart started to spasm. I couldn’t have lost her, it just wasn’t possible. She was right there, I’d had her, and I’d had one fucking job. I-

  I checked myself, forced as much calm as I could manage, and made myself go through the bare facts of things. Obviously, she hadn’t just evaporated into nowhere. So how could she have slipped away?

  Over the walls was the obvious solution, but eying them I found it hard to be convinced. They were steep, close to ten feet high, and without much in the way of grips or handholds. I’d only managed to hoist myself up by pinching down so hard that I almost dented the crumbling mortar, and while the woman was definitely not as heavy as me- perhaps even beneath half my weight- I doubted she had the physical power needed to fight gravity under those circumstances. Climbing was a much harder exercise than most people gave it credit for, even under ideal conditions.

  Had she backtracked? That one sent a shiver down my spine, if she had then there’d be no finding her. With her speed, with my delay, she could have turned down half a dozen different streets, made her way a literal mile from me. A few minutes wasn’t very much time at all, except for her.

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  I took an embarrassing pause deciding what to do next before logic won out over panic. I was certain she’d not gone over the wall, and knew I was fucked if she’d doubled back on herself, so there was only one thing left. Check more potential hiding places. If she was tucked away in the alley somewhere, or anywhere else along the path she’d cleared while I was climbing, then I might just find her. And if she wasn’t, then I’d lose nothing by searching, because she was already easily too far away to catch again with how much time I’d spent.

  Even as I began my search, the tension bled away to smugness. I couldn’t twist mere mortals to my will or remake everything mentioned in the Geneva Conventions, but I could get plenty of thought done myself, when the situation called for it. I almost wished we hadn’t left Ardin back at our original warehouse to go and get his stuff from the shop, it would’ve been nice to have someone with me to appreciate it.

  The search was long and tedious, because it was quite the shortcut I’d taken. Easily thirty metres of alley to sift through, and one particularly fast person to sift it for. I was well aware that even a second’s delay in reacting to her might let the woman get irreconcilably far ahead, so I kept my diligence as I worked. It soon proved worth it.

  She saw me before I saw her, a little glinting eye piled away in some shadows beneath a few scraps of rotting wood. There was lots of debris in the place, plenty of patches she could have been in, especially with a body as small as hers. But I didn’t let my guard down, and my reactions were fast as ever. I was moving just an instant after she was.

  An instant was a long time, for that one, and she almost slipped out of my reach in the time I took to fully turn and snap out an arm to grab her. My fingertips just barely grazed her clothes, a painful tug dragging on their ligaments as tearing cloth snagged and halted her momentum, then she was stumbling away, half-stopped and trying to restart her sprint as I began mine.

  My shoulder caught her in the stomach, bowling her over flat against the ground, and I was atop her instantly. She struggled, writhing beneath with the sort of strength I’d half-expected, but still found instinctually hard to believe. It was like the feral power of a cat, all weight-efficient force generation and explosive energy. But pound for pound strength only did so much when one had as few pounds as her, and up close I could tell she was just as small as I thought. Fifty kilos, probably less, short and wiry for this world, let alone mine.

  Which was to say nothing of my own magical strength. I didn’t even budge as she thrashed beneath me, just remained still and kept her arms pinned, waiting for her to run out of steam.

  But she surprised me before that could happen.

  “Saw you chasing me, pretty determined for a rapist, aren’t you?” She spat, glaring up at me with eyes that betrayed so much blind, searing disgust that it actually gave me pause.

  Too late, I realised the trick for what it was. She snatched her hand out of my grip, and half-leaned upwards for an elbow to my jaw before I could even think to grab her again. My head snapped back, vision dancing for a moment, then refocusing. She’d freed one of her legs by then, but I pressed down instantaneously and tightly, compressing her against the ground.

  With her arm still free, she hit me again, then again. But I ignored the blows. She had no leverage, and no surprise this time, her fist just bounced off my face and neck like it belonged to an infant. I glared at her, meeting the woman’s eyes and finding my temper suddenly short.

  “Very clever.” I snapped. “Now will you stop struggling, I want to fucking talk to you.”

  She froze, and for a second I dared to hope I’d gotten through to her. Then she went still, and I realised what was happening. A giant fucking six-one man, pinning down a four-eleven woman, snarling orders at her. I almost puked.

  Carefully, I moved back, standing slow, making sure not to let any sudden moves escape me.

  “I’m sorry.” I pressed. “Really, I am, but I do want to talk with you, I have an offer I’d like you to hear, and…That’s all. You can leave if you want to, you don't even have to say anything.” To illustrate the point, I took a few steps back, giving her enough room to doubtless escape if I started for her again. Even as each one stabbed me with reluctance. “There, your choice.”

  She stood, eyed me, eyed the alley behind her. Made to move, body tensing the way a cheetah’s might. Then paused. With a sigh, the woman met my gaze once more and spoke.

  “Go on then.” She said, speaking with an admirable level of steel in her spine. “I’m listening.”