054 – Any Advantage

Day 7

Instead of waltzing in through the front entrance, Jamie led me around the plot, using the cover of neighboring buildings to reach the back. We waited while a dot on the minimap crossed the club and unbarred the door.

Luke opened it. He was covered in dirt and dust. His face brightened when he saw Jamie, then froze when he saw me.

“Jamie,” he said, taking a careful step back. “Who is that?”

I crouched to his height and pointed at my devil eye. “Hey, Luke. It’s me, Eve.”

He examined me with the healthy suspicion of a child on guard duty, then looked up at Jamie.

“It really is her,” Jamie said. “You’ve seen her with weird shapes before.”

Luke stepped aside.

“But far worse dressed,” he said.

I stared after him. “Did the kid just roast my apocalypse attire?”

“Yup.”

“The fuck.”

We stepped inside. One of the stages had been turned into a heap of dirt, stone, and broken concrete. The mess led back toward the backstage area and the old boiler pit.

“They’re digging a tunnel?” I asked.

“Harder to track whether we’re in here if no one sees us come and go,” Jamie said.

“Do we really have time for that?”

“Do we have time to lose another outpost?”

Anthony had just come in through the main room, pushing a wheelbarrow. He stopped when he saw me.

“Sorry,” I said. “Your lost sheep came back as more of a half-dragon.”

He gave me one long look, then nodded like that was merely one more problem to fit into the day.

“So I see. Welcome back, Eve.”

I thanked him for the rescue, and Constance too when I found her. Both brushed it off quickly enough that I couldn’t tell whether they were being kind, practical, or just too busy to dwell on it.

The rest of them barely stopped working. Roslyn was down in the hole, actually digging. Constance moved rubble toward the boiler pit. Annika loaded wheelbarrows. Even before I had vanished into the tunnels, everyone had started changing. Now they had finished the job without asking my permission.

Good. Uncomfortable, but good.

Then there was another discussion to be had. We had successfully avoided each other since that moment behind the wall of the Gnoll Fortress. But now I was equipped with a subclass to find him. It was time I followed through on that promise and talked to Jason.

#

I sat down next to him on the edge of the roof. Up here next to the solar panels, the heat was suffocating.

“What do you want?” he said.

“I promised you that we’d talk again, and here we are.”

“Took you long enough.”

“I didn’t know what to say to you, and honestly still don’t. And well, then I was out of order, so to speak.”

“Because you are a reckless martyr who thinks she’s smarter than anyone else.”

“I—” I didn’t have a good reply. He wasn’t even exactly wrong.

“I wish they left you to rot in those tunnels.” For the first time, he turned to look at me, his hands clenched into fists. “If you died hunted by an endless tide of foes, only for more to appear wherever you went, you would have died like Dad did.”

If the martyr comment was a jab, this was the haymaker. I stared, stunned, feeling sick.

Jason turned away again.

“Jason. I’m sorry for what happened. I honestly wish I could have done something, anything, to save your father. But there was nothing I could have done.”

His hand shot out and grabbed my upper arm. “It took you two days! Two days before, you killed a warlord on your own! Don’t tell me you couldn’t have done anything! You just didn’t try.”

The answer came automatically. Because I had gone through that same discussion with myself countless times already.

“I couldn’t try because I was at my limit. I nearly died killing that one golem because I was at the end of the line. Any problem I solved, I could only solve with extreme prejudice. No, Jason. I couldn’t have done anything. If I had tried, I’d more likely have doomed us all than saved anyone.”

Looking into his furious eyes, I felt reminded of how I had felt when I broke up with Claire. I both envied what she could do and resented her for how she used her abilities. I’d been a good hacker, while she had been both good and ruthless.

But there was more in those eyes. I was told there wouldn’t be a corruption bar, and yet I was given a trait that allowed me to perceive exactly that. Those words weren’t his. They’d been fed to him by the Devil I had inflicted on him. Who was turning his Wrath into a conduit into his soul.

He frowned. “What is that new class you got?”

“I didn’t want to be hunted anymore by unseen demons. I can pierce supernatural concealment now. Notice ambushes—notice when I’m followed. Even search for specific targets.”

He reacted like I had slapped him with those words. He pulled his legs up from the edge and stepped away from me.

“Why would you pick something like that? Why not something that—that would have helped us kill more warlords? This—this is a coward’s class!”

I blinked at him. His heart was racing, his eyes wide. I pulled myself up as well.

“Jason? Are you okay?”

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He took another step back. “No! I’m fucking not!”

Before I could ask another question, he ran off inside.

When I explained my class choice, his reaction had been visceral. Anger, fear, and… disappointment.

He had plans.

Plans that were ruined by my choice.

Jason had planned to kill me.

#

[“I’ll take care of the hyenas on my own. See you on the boat. I’ll fly.”]

Jamie would be fine on his own, wouldn’t he? It was a five-minute trip through the tunnels, and not even dusk yet.

[“Eve, are you okay? What’s happening?”]

Up here I was out of range of the oath. I had no idea how to even begin this conversation. How to start a discussion about a teenager wanting to murder me.

[“No. The talk with Jason was rough. I need to be alone.”]

[“Just take care, okay? I’ll make my way back now. If you want to cover me from a distance, that’d be nice.”]

I switched into the crow shape.

[“Can do.”]

[“If you are out late, look for the boat further away from the coast. We undock it after nightfall.”]

I watched over ‘my’ paladin as he made his way to the tunnels. Careful to never get close enough for the Oath to kick in.

Then I made my way over to the hyenas—who may or may not already desire to murder me, too. But at least I could kick their asses to make them fall back in line. I had my doubts that beating Jason up would make him hate me any less.