Chương 45: Chapter 41 - Kiss it better

Morning came with the smell of salt and engine grease from the eastern construction site. I hadn't slept well. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the pod with Sarah in it, the flat neural line, the empty mana bar. A body without anyone home. I showered, dressed, skipped the kebab, and headed for the Church section. They undoubtedly moved her to their complex. The Church compound sat on the western island. A military base with a church built in the center. The guards at the gate recognized me this time.

They weren't happy about it. Though after the last incident, they skipped the scan and merely told me to wait as they went to turn off the demon detectors. I waited. Verchiel showed up in a few minutes. He only opened the door and motioned me inside. Ignoring the guards, I walked to him. He wore the same mixture of combat armor and robes he did last time, a blindfold over his handsome face.

"Damian," he said when the door closed behind me.

"I admit I did not expect you. What brings you to our humble complex?"

"Sarah. I would like to ask if I could take her sword for the dives. It might help me find her." A smile spread over his face.

"That is an interesting request. Come." He headed into a hallway. I caught up to him in a few steps.

"I will find her and bring her back."

"For your pride demands it." Yes. She got taken in a dive I participated in. That couldn't stand.

"Something along those lines."

"The crown prince of Hell asks for a blessed sword to save a paladin. Pride indeed takes us to ironic ends." I frowned.

"Why would you call me that?" We walked into the courtyard where I sparred with Sarah. Verchiel stopped at the rack with swords.

"You may need to practice with it a bit." He picked up a wooden sword. I approached the rack. Sarah's sword lay on it, sheathed, attached to a belt. I sure haven't come unexpectedly. I picked it up, tied the belt around the waist, and drew the sword. The one-and-a-half hand longsword fit well into my hand, surprisingly light, the steel catching the sun.

"You sure you'll be fine if I spar with a real sword?" I asked.

"You will not hit me." Verchiel circled a few steps, holding the practice sword in front of him. I spun it in my hand, stepped toward him, and took the stance, both hands on the hilt, weight on the front foot. Verchiel stepped toward me, lunging lightly with the wooden sword. I parried that, but he withdrew the sword in an instant for another stab. As I parried, he followed up into another one. And then another as I defended that.

"If all you do is parry," he said calmly, raining the light stabs at me, pinning me to the spot.

"You won't achieve much." With the next parry, I stepped in for a swing. He parried the swing before I managed to put full weight into it. With the same move, he stabbed my shoulder. I turned the move into a massive slash. He pulled back half a step, and after the sword missed him, he tapped my hands with his tip.

"That was overextended." I knew, all right? I reset my stance, stepping in with a more controlled attack, going in with a short stab. He knocked that aside and slashed at my hands. I withdrew them. He stepped in for a flurry of stabs. I parried about half of them, the wooden sword poking me in the arms and shoulders.

"Lighter steps," he said.

"You cannot cede distance management." I lightened my step, going for quicker, less committed strikes. He continued parrying, hitting me from time to time. Sparring with him was like playing tennis with a wall. Nothing got through; everything hit me back. Every few moves, he offered a correction. I always tried to apply it, only to see him adjust at the same time. He wasn't all that fast or strong. He simply had the perfect technique for every move I made, executed as I tried the move.

Half an hour later, sweat covered me head to toe, gluing my clothes to me. My breath got heavier, dozens of spots lightly burning on my body from getting hit with the wooden sword. I slowed down.

"Your opponents won't stop just because you are tired." Thanks, I never thought of that. I charged in, trying a feint overhead slash into a stab. He ignored the feint, parrying the stab. As he lunged back, I stepped in into a duck for a wide swing at his knees. He knocked the sword tip to the ground with his, stepped lightly on my sword, and pressed the wooden tip into the side of my neck.

"That wasn't a bad idea." He stepped off the sword, heading back to the rack. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Panting, I straightened and returned the sword to the sheath. Verchiel returned the wooden sword to the rack.

"Even if you don't ever plan to use it, swordsmanship is a great way to focus one's mind." I wiped my face with my sleeve. This was more of a workout than what I'd had since arriving on the islands. My legs were going to hate me tomorrow.

"Thanks for the practice."

"You are welcome to return for more." I smiled.

"I actually might." He didn't follow me toward the exit. The rest of the day crawled. I spent the afternoon in my room, meditating, recovering mana, and resting. I left Astarielle to whatever she was going, and the other two remained unsummoned. Without a dive or knowledge of when the next dive would happen, I had little to do. If I knew I wasn't diving anywhere in a week, I could take a flight to Japan to desecrate a temple there or something. But without certainty, I couldn't leave.

My mind kept circling back to Yushi's words. Ask her about Hutriel. In the evening, I put on the charcoal suit, pocketed my phone, left Sarah's sword in the room, and headed for the dome. The construction crews had knocked off, leaving behind the ambient hum of generators and the Pacific. A few climbers passed me on the main walkway, headed for bars or beds. The leaderboard glowed on its pillar in the central hub, but I didn't stop to check it. That could wait. The dome was quiet.

Emergency lighting, amber hum, three pods occupied by late-night grinders. The usual. Cassandra sat behind her workstation tonight. Actually working, by how intensely she glared at the hologram in front of her. She was swiping through data with one hand while the other held a stylus she was using to annotate something on the Forgotten Tome's open pages. She looked focused. Hair up in the severe bun, silver dress catching the amber light, crimson eyes tracking data. She didn't look up when I walked in.

But her hand paused on the display for a fraction of a second before resuming. Cassandra knew I was here. I walked over, stopped at my usual distance, and leaned against the nearest pod.

"Working hard, or hardly working?"

"That joke predates electricity." She didn't look up.

"And yes, I'm working. Some texts in the tome appear mundane, but are actually an encryption. The cipher hides secrets underneath, which I very much plan to discover." She swiped a page.

"Which is going to be either the deepest secrets of the tower's inner workings, or random nonsense that stopped being important a century ago. Nevertheless, this thing seems to be destined to rob me of sleep."

"You don't sleep anyway."

"A vicious rumor." She finally looked up, and the corner of her mouth twitched.

"You're early tonight. Are you trying to catch me off guard?"

"Is it working?"

"No." She set the stylus down.

"But the effort is noted." I reached into my soul chamber and pulled the tower loot I'd been meaning to deliver. The two rare items from the shadow boss. I set them on the workstation's edge.

"For the Sands." She glanced at them, cataloguing with her eyes alone.

"These will do. Your debt decreases by approximately two hundred thousand." She tilted her head.

"At this rate, you might even start beating the interest."

"Finance has always been my passion." She chuckled.

"As the debt proves." I smiled. She smiled back, the crooked left-side one. The real one. The dome hummed between us, the pods ticked, and for a moment, the air had that specific weight it always got when neither of us wanted to break the silence first. She broke it.

"The Shinto materials are arriving tomorrow. I called in three favors, two of which I'll never get back. The temple incense alone required convincing a Kyoto shrine keeper that his two-hundred-year-old ash was needed for scientific purposes." She paused.

"He wanted a signed letter from a university. I forged one."

"For me?"

"For the Golden Sands' research division, which technically exists on paper." She leaned back.

"You're welcome."

"Thank you." I meant it. She held my gaze. Something shifted in her expression, the mask thinning just enough to show the edges of whatever was underneath. She'd been thinking about our last conversation. I could see it in the way she studied me.

"I've been thinking about your answer," she said. Quietly, like she wasn't sure she wanted to say it.

"And?"

"And nothing." She picked up the stylus again, turning it between her fingers.

"I just wanted you to know that I heard it." A warmth spread through my chest that had nothing to do with the dome's climate control.

"Good." She twirled the stylus. I watched her fingers. The silence stretched, comfortable for once instead of loaded.

"By the way," I said.

"Who's Hutriel?" The stylus stopped. Her fingers went rigid around it. An instant lock, as if someone had hit a switch. Her hand froze, and the rest of her followed. Shoulders. Jaw. Spine. Everything that had been relaxed three seconds ago turned to stone. Headshot. She looked at me, eyes overflowing with fear. Real, immediate, blood-draining fear. A full second passed. Maybe two. Her face was naked, and I left her to it. This was going to be the answer of her life.

"Where did you hear that name?" she finally asked back. Her voice was steady, but in a painfully manufactured way.

"I've got my sources."

"Your sources." She repeated the word like it personally offended her.

"That's not an answer."

"Neither is a question in response to a question." Her jaw worked. The stylus in her hand creaked. For a moment, I genuinely thought she might snap it.

"It's no one," she said.

"An old contact." It was the worst lie I've ever heard. And I've heard many. I didn't push verbally. I just looked at her, and let the silence do the work. She held for about five seconds. Then something in her expression shifted. A decision. I could see it happen, the calculation behind her eyes, running through every option, every deflection, every possible escape route. And it clearly landed on one. She got up from the table.

"I don't see why my old contacts would be of any interest." Fast, fluid, she closed the distance between us with three steps. Her hand caught the front of my suit jacket, fingers curling into the fabric. She pulled herself toward me.

"Especially when we have so many better things to do." She kissed me. And not like before. This was very different. Her mouth hit mine with an urgency that tasted like panic underneath the heat. Her fingers tightened in my jacket, pulling me closer, and her other hand found the back of my neck, her nails digging in just enough to sting. The heat was immediate. It always was with her.

That furnace temperature that made my brain short-circuit, the one that proved she wasn't a vampire and raised a thousand other questions I never got around to asking. It flooded through the kiss, through her hands, through the press of her body against mine. She kissed me like she was trying to burn the question out of my mouth. To my shame, it was going to work. My hands found her waist, her hip, and the name Hutriel started dissolving in my head like sugar in hot water.

She deepened the kiss, tilting my head back, and what was left of my analytical capacity went offline entirely. When she finally pulled back, she didn't go far. Her forehead rested against mine, her breath warm and fast against my lips. Her eyes were closed.

"Don't waste the time we spend together speaking of others." My heart hammered against my ribs. My hands were still on her waist. Her heat pulsed through the silver dress.

"Cassandra."

"Please." The word came out small. Smaller than anything I'd ever heard from her.

"Just kiss me again." I couldn't say no to that. I kissed her again. Slower this time. Less desperate, more deliberate, her hand sliding from my jacket to my chest. A different message. Not shut up. More like, stay here. With me. In this version of things, that name doesn't exist. I stayed. When she finally stepped back, the mask was reassembled. Not perfect; the edges were rough, and the smile didn't reach her eyes, but functional.

She picked up the stylus from where she'd dropped it, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and looked at the workstation as if the last two minutes hadn't happened.

"Your materials arrive tomorrow," she said. Her voice was almost normal. Almost.

"I'll have them delivered to your quarters." I watched her for a beat.

"Thank you."

"The debt is noted." She sat down, opened the tome, and didn't look at me. I was going to remember that. Yushi sure found some useful intel. I headed out. On my way, I noticed a number had changed on the main screen. Floor 25: 25/25