“Guild Venins, those women elevated after surviving their trial, find themselves suddenly lost when faced with how they will further contribute to Guild needs. Some are skilled in the art of spy craft. Others, teeth and fangs of combat. Some are have allure and feminine glamors used centuries-over to beguile and deceive. No, not all Venins can win at market…but of those women and their work, we use them often—frequently burning them up. They are meat in our traps for marked unnamings. To survive us, beautiful Venins must be better than the rest, else be plucked too soon, their names heaped on pyres. I admit to us drowning in cinders as we feed on those lesser specimens, conserving Venin wit and skill.”
- from Corolla Susan Smithe, 1861, “The Child Pursuits,” Corolla Compendium
Elyse waited until she thought her task had noticed her, then she used her tongue to glide along her drink’s rim, a hummingbird’s sip, and broke eye contact like she realized she was caught staring.
The lounge window she stood before gave her both a stunning cityscape, traffic speeding by on invisible sky highways only vehicle AIs detected. Her particular view afforded enough reflection of people and things behind her. She could enjoy both evening’s last sunlight and observation of who moved about around her.
She distracted herself against nerves, studying her reflection for flaws. The reflection looking back at her, rusted gold colored dress clinging like a starved lover to every curve and dip. Its real silk beckoned eyes to stare, hands to touch, each incline leading down to restricted folds at junctures where legs and dress loosened for flowy grace and dancing mobility.
In her face, evening’s honied glow highlighted long blonde hair, small brow, thin eyebrows, and faded freckles singing of mock youth sparse across small, rounded cheekbones that would have made a grandparent’s kind fingers itch. Wide, watchful eyes were a color like rain-soaked moss, shield-bronze rings rounding the irises set in pale features, except those pouting lips, naturally. They stood red like pomegranate-stains. Very kissable, or mocking like every sentence suggested a punctuated insult.
Honeypot, she thought frowning. It’s not just looks, she reassured herself. Again. I have ability, too. They wouldn’t assign this task otherwise-- No. No! I’m being stupid.
Would a narcissistic ephebophile go for those beefy legs and heavy breasts? They had to have chosen her for more than looks. Right?
Her keen memory gleaned quintessence of detail from each mottled pearl. She had learned fast. Ignored those insidious words from peers and teachers: not good enough.
Never good enough. Here she was in the middle of her trial, her big test, and she was a trainee who coasted on “not good enough” though a mistress-of-none could knock a few perverts down a peg.
Or get pegged in the process, she doubted, those backroom soundbites always dancing outside her control as a soundtrack to her short twenty-four years.
Because she knew she lacked too many other attributes for a solid Venin, she doubted. Better prepared sisters than her had died during trial. Those who really suck, discovered later in pieces, fished from nets, or both in pieces and a net depending on assignments.
Majaji, who had finished her trial well over two years ago explained how doubt was normal. Elyse should take heart in her ability, not compare herself or take moldy women seriously. But how did she not do that? Such as her current task.
Simon Esther, entrepreneur, father, and architect to more than a dozen popular political agendas in negotiations, stood several yards away in polite conversation with associates. One needed favor with very connected, very intimidating individuals.
And a serious putain de puta Arschloch pezzo di merda, Elyse thought. One language just wasn’t enough for certain personas. Profanity was linguistic art, and Elyse was an artist, when moods hooked her.
Worst, she was his groomed honeypot, rather than his stealthy assassin she had hoped her trial would be. She knew trials dictated how your Sepal would use you after passing. Her whole life would be this? Disdain twisted her guts. Life spent as potential snack to half-cocked pricks and occasional old, bored heiresses? A life wriggling like long pork in a skin-tight dress.
She pushed those whispers, those invasive thoughts.
She observed, watched how Esther’s command and wallet chummed waters, wooed additional delegates who rounded his table. He shot the shit in low whispers with a symphonic conductor’s swishing arm and occasional loud, punctuating laughter ending an uproarious sentence. He enforced court over minor sycophants at his corner table, Elyse’s intuition telling her none of which were friends.
His two consistent guests pretended to listen, Esther not caring if he noticed. He liked an audience and his psychological profile said he enjoyed command at another’s expense.
That type always did.
And this man, his overbearing influence over other Guild targets, would be Elyse’s first. A neo-fetishist with ticklish fancies for young girls—flesh and virtual. Her briefing had sent shivers pinpricked down Elyse’s spine as photo after photo surfaced like manic Athenas clawing to the forefront of her mind: girls young as thirteen pulled from under garbage and Jane Doe cold storage capsules authorities could not connect with Esther.
Coroners said some of those girls showed cranial scarring in the autopsy reports. Minds uploaded into virtual crossbreeding or forced implantation revealed similar scarring in autopsies.
She went about scanning around Esther: corners, doors, who drank what, how often servers moved between standing tables. She might miss a detail. Lenses were forbidden during trials, being a required test of skill, not how well one relied on tech that made you lazy.
Floating heads, bodies cut off in windowed reflections, entered the hotel lounge amidst conversation. They wore hungry looks in rumpled business suits of expensive tailoring. Elyse sipped her wine, categorizing each male’s make, model, potential incomes, how they arranged themselves in their own personal hierarchies across the small pub the best she could.
Some chose corners accented in gold-leafed stonework. Every table had unique lamps, winding veins like filigree under shaped glass. Several pillars topped by lighting and someone’s idea of tasteful exotic statuary, most likely originals of an early antiquity Elyse didn’t care to know, stood sentry throughout.
Walls had large canvases showcasing synth art playing with the eyes and never showing the same piece twice. It gave off subtle organic scents that were neither pleasant nor unpleasant, the medium telling of paint, flesh, and indiscernible materials one would almost call animal. It even coated the ceiling, though some programmer’s algorithmic lash kept it updating based on atmospheric data for an approximation of open sky.
Chandeliers floated overhead throwing reflected light against backdrops like grains of sand hurled by an enthusiastic child. They traveled on invisible cables, giving everything here a festive, light, celebratory air.
Esther’s belching laughter muddied its fa?ade. His overenthusiastic hand flicked close to the probe curling down like a bronzed snake suspended from an equally bronzed chandelier.
The snake “sniffed” person and drink, coiled in fluid contractions to interrogate another guest when its reading produced no alarming parameters: explosives, impurities, nano particulate matter, poisons least often.
Elyse shut her eyes, cradled a sip of wine on her tongue. I am of potion. Through kiss, deliver change, the change ticking gilded beats. I breathe the deepest sleep, bring death to deepest need. For we are of pure potions, and of potions pure are we, she intoned, seeming to any onlooker like someone deeply indulging in waning sunlight, lips pursed, tasting her drink.
Tucked away where neither hand nor the sniffing snakes might make a public venture, Elyse thought her potion too intimately for comfort. However, scans would pass her small, medical-grade polymer cylinder secreting her grace, with its fatal kiss.
Elyse again and again echoed her catechism until once more her heart slowed its jog, the constant thump once more matching her calm exterior. Only when she grew calm did she check her task, seeing he was watching her again, and set out her bait.
Pulling her hair aside, she flashed perfect glowing skin in its framed space the evening lit as though begging fingers or lips trace and explore its vulnerable dips and hillocks.
Again, this window had been a perfect choice.
She sensed Esther watching, interest renewed. Elyse coyly looked around never quite settling on him, looking lost, uncomfortable, uncertain, and ensuring he saw her. She tangled fingers in one blonde lock over her shoulder.
She imagined Esther’s instincts flare, his loins stir.
What she hadn’t called from her mind’s more shadowed recesses was every horrid photo; every memory from her brief, floating images like dust motes of dead girls.
“Use what you have,” Sepal Fiona Lainia, head of their house in their Chapter had taught all Guild Venins. “It must not be an act. The Venin must become a choice victim. Believable.”
Simon will see her flush. See her look out of place. See her body language chronicle every insecurity and innocent worry made up or not. She is in the wrong place, perhaps, or waiting on someone not coming. She should be Dom Perignon on sawdust in a dive.
In a rush of hurried waves and backpedaling, Esther detached himself from his companions. He sauntered towards the bar, muscled limbs and shoulders swaying with a mismatched paunch like a cat’s primordial pouch. There, she saw him order another drink and a glass of wine. Two drinks.
Elyse’s glass stood half full, but no matter. Her Corolla reassured her in memory: Your man will offer a glass as the congenial uncle offers a sweet. Accept his sweet. Make him feel magnanimous in his gift.
Got you, asshole, thought Elyse.
People parted as Esther’s fluorescent smile matched his bald head’s awful glare. Elyse wondered if he waxed it? Overhead lights blinked Morse code off of approach. What she had not expected was a wafted reek of acrid smoke and light body odor accompanying his arrival.
He placed two drinks on the table at Elyse’s elbow, another wine, and a horrible-looking thing with a charred reptile, she thought. Her shock nearly knocked her out of character before she caught herself, putting all her attentions on Esther who flashed a smile and bowed at the neck.
“I spotted your loveliness from across the room,” said Esther, offering Elyse the new glass of wine without so much as acknowledging the one in her hand. “You looked lonely and here I thought I would make a friendly offering. The- uh- barkeep…provided me a vintage better than what you’re drinking. I had hoped I might entice conversation in trade?”
Elyse cast down her eyes, a coyness this predator might enjoy, then for a cherry, she smirked mindlessly, tossing back what remained of her drink as though it were a shot of cheap alcohol. Easily done when you had zero appreciation for the stuff.
Esther smiled appreciatively. “An appetite,” he said. “The wine here is superb. Su-perb! You’ll find few others like it anywhere. Here, have another on me. My treat and absolute pleasure.”
She took the fresh glass, head tilted askew. Adjusted her voice an octave higher, she said, “Thank you!” pitch-perfect as practiced. Elyse was going for early 16ish. If she overshot too much, Elyse doubted he would notice. “What makes this new one different from mine?”
“Wine is complicated. Much as, say, you...my darling girl. The grapes, the non-synth oak barrels, the lavender and fruits perfuming this particular bottle. You catch them on your palate,” said Esther, gesturing at her glass. “I so love the budding notes riding my tongue. Delicate and ripe.”
“Sounds yummy!” she said, inside retched at wordplay he likely thought smooth.
She tossed back half her glass without savoring it, almost knocking the glass over when she set it down clinking loudly on the table.
Esther smiled, sipped his bizarre cocktail resembling blue-tinted water and that poor, charred reptile positioned as if enjoying a soak. Elyse finally recognized it. The Guild bred them for their venom in House Fang. Esther craved coaxing, and his drink was his conversation piece. Easier than researching his victims in general, and he got to play sage and sadistic fuck in the same evening.
When Elyse exaggeratingly eyed his friend, Esther pounced. “Do you know this drink, or the fellow sitting in it?” He asked, tilting the reptile towards her.
“I don’t, but it looks kinda nasty. Why do you have a dead animal in your glass?”
She could feel his alert concern. This gambit might lose his catch having overplayed his hand on a too-interesting drink.
With a professorial air, like it was his role in life to inform and educate his great secrets derived from dead animal booze, Esther moved closer. In a conspiring, quiet whisper, he poked a finger at the reptile at every other word.
“It’s very rare, ve-ry rare! Expensive, too. The animal produces a toxin that, when prepared as this fellow is, excretes small doses into the alcohol, turning into a mind-altering cocktail with slight hallucinogenic properties.
“It gets you high,” said Elyse, honestly surprised.
“In a manner of fashion. It serves a purpose beyond flavor.” She jumped when he next gave a sudden, booming laugh hurting her ears.
“A purpose?” she asked, recovered.
Wide-eyed enthusiasm gripped him. “This drink is a trained infusion! You know what that is? No? Well, brewers inject trained molecules to the vat. The biological machines manipulate the stills, change the compounds and their flavors. They infuse the drink. Purpose comes at the hand of my blackened friend here, whose chemistry acts as catalyst. It adds its spirit to my spirit, so to speak,” he smiled at his joke. “Liquid luck in things to come. Virility for- well- it is...uh- a lot of elitist chemistry and all rather technical.”
She fostered a blank expression against Esther’s slow-building smirk spreading like a lengthening shadow across his sweat-strewn face. Elyse sensed, rather than saw, foreboding excitement in it; knew if she could sample the thoughts behind his smirk, nausea and an impulse to strike his testicles into his stomach might overtake her.
Urgent and animated, Esther’s body shot upward an inch. He passed his drink into his left hand, wiping his right before offering it palm up.
“I just realized I have been rude. Incre-dibly rude!” he said. “I never introduced myself. I fault your beauty for enchanting me to my core.”
Elyse offered her hand, he cradling it the way one might cradle a hand capable of shattering by a careless breath. Eyes entrenched in hers, he bent to kiss Elyse’s lightly calloused knuckles.
She worried he might ask about them. To her relief, he paid them no mind, his attentions elsewhere.
“Simon Esther,” he said quietly.
“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Esther.”
“Please, people who work for me call me that,” he said, still holding her hand hostage. “Friends and lovers call me Esther.” He breezed carelessly over “lovers” under quickened breath.
Subtle as a fart at the dinner table, Elyse thought. Maybe some idiot girls deserved his affliction. “Thank you…Simon. Are you here often with your…friends?” The question sliding off her tongue before Elyse’s brain had time to process the danger in such a thing.
“As often as my enterprises allow.” Esther’s eyes fell on the reptile a long while. Esther swished sediments at the bottom of his glass in the time his thoughts gathered. “Ah- what was your name, again?”
Elyse lipped an embarrassed “oh”, quickly covering her mouth. “My turn to be rude! Heather Greene. My father’s in town on business but I think he went out for the evening. Leaves me behind a lot. Boring business, not my idea of fun. Several days gone at a time, so I wander town, you know?”
“Such a chore, I know! But a father letting such a lovely daughter loose? Dangerous in this city. Doesn’t he watch the news?” He waited a beat, not getting the response he was seemingly waiting for. “This pendant world of ours is dangerous, Ms. Greene. Always swinging to-and-fro to rhythms people like your father and I decide, sometimes not what’s best for innocents, granted. That being said, daughters often meet trouble all on their own, regardless.” He sighed, mumbling, “More’s the pity.”
Simon finished his drink with finality, patting the reptile’s head with a finger. “Miss Greene, I acquired a rather special wine you might enjoy. I feel like I cannot in good faith leave you here where you are liable to run into a few unsavory personalities I have personally seen on occasion. Chafes my tastes in the later hours. The…two gentleman I was speaking with earlier? They are two such personalities with idle, nefarious hands. Trust me! If you would oblige me on this until you’re retrieved, room service has even procured a trove of chocolate-dusted strawberries, not synth, if you would like. Would you be comfortable indulging an older man’s concern?”
The best lies contain kernels of truth, as the cliché went. A single glance at the room told her old money and drunks, none more threatening, populated the lounge.
Ms. Greene wouldn’t know any better.
She allowed Esther’s guiding by her elbow past the entry towards the elevators. They crossed between Esther’s obvious security, eyeing the two of them, idle muscle scanning, marking, likely receiving checks on falsified files Elyse’s face brought up in their lens HUD.
She itched for her own lenses, information she might miss, an AI knowing her needs.
Which is why you’d get them for this, stupid. Focus!
“Wait down here, I won’t be long,” he ordered his guards, who nodded as though this were normal. Maybe it was. Maybe his guards presumed Esther kind and generous.
Or, more likely, they’re in on it with him. The guild will have two others they will unname after Esther’s finished. Inhuman pieces of shit.
He escorted her towards elevator doors of milky glass terminating a wide hall. Not until Elyse stood inside, doors sealing them both away from human eyes, positively glowing from excitement and, admittedly, something else lazily uncurling and stretching in her guts. The hard part was over. Now for the easy part.
Soft chimes tinkled their swift arrival to the hotel’s penthouse, then a musical number in various pings and chirps as the floor vibrated to a standstill and doors clattered open.
Elyse squeezed her thighs reassuringly, felt for the hard pinch signaling her potions remained in place. This was it. She recalled her Sepal’s final advice, delivered in her heavy, Irish-filtered accent, crisp instructions, sometimes a peppering of nonsensical words neither Venin nor Trainee could understand.
“Remember, seduction first.”
Check.
“Where you go, there is no surveillance for privacy among those who can afford it. And no one will remember you, both out of fear and because the money is too good if you are someone who often ‘forgets’ details like who disappeared with whom. The mark will push relaxers, or boosted sedatives. Your grail will combat all and neutralize much of any alcohol you consume. Be the drunk slut if you like. Be the little nazzles we’ve nurtured.”
Also Check. Elyse still didn’t know what the hell a “nazzle” was, but she thought she should feel insulted. At least Lainia remained clear with which potion Elyse would leverage, and how she used it.
“Make your mark feel the hunter. Now…your first grace is a hypo of Convallaria majalis, the Lady’s Tears, which you will kiss near his groin. It is a quick-tick species, slowing your mark’s heartbeat in seconds among its other symptoms. It circumvents any immunity or molecular defenses. Your second grace is Strychnos toxifera kissed anywhere you can. Also quick-tick.
“By our kiss, Sepal,” Elyse had intoned as acknowledgement.
“Leave the formalities at the door, girl!” Elyse had Lainia’s vocal disdain for all things proper mentally engrained in her. It made Elyse smile. “Just best remember this: Honor your house and your Guild as only Venins can, as only Venins do. Make your task choke on his manhood as you unname and speak the epitaph,” Sepal Lainia said through clenched teeth.
Damn right, Sepal! Elyse clenched.
Esther’s loud voice jolted her back to present. “I can’t wait to get your opinion on this vintage!” he said with forced enthusiasm.
“Will we be long?”
“Only as long as you wish. Your palate seems mature for your age. I appreciate that, and I know absolutely you’ll appreciate the subtle notes. Consider this my absolute duty, if you like. I must educate you on flavor profiles worthy of a woman such as yourself.”
Still talking up how much of a “woman” she was despite looking like she was in high school, they too-slowly reached the penthouse floor. Esther was forcing small talk, compliments, and thickly spread suggestions of future meetings like this—all at his expense, of course. He was very wealthy, costs nothing to him. How lucky was Elyse to have happened to meet him as she had?
Gross.
She had smaller tasks before her trial, of course. There was the small mob holding stores hostage. She had unnamed several males targeting students at universities, parks, and one they called the “mall rat” because malls were where he and his thin mustache stalked teens.
That one had been fun, as Elyse leveraged a potion carrying Eupatorium rugosum, snake root, which would have the task suffer some awful bathroom experiences before finally being unnamed after a few days. Getting him to drink her drink was disgusting, but seeing him pulled screaming and stiff from his home had been entertaining.
Nothing like this. No one looming large like this disgusting thing parading as a human.
He gestured for Elyse to follow down the short twenty feet leading up to a solitary beige door rich in brown and gold filigree.
“Last door at the end of the hall,” said Esther.
Yellow wallpaper thrust through top to bottom by flowering, vine-enthralled silver bars outlined the door. Bulging bulbs looked out at Elyse. Nervous flutters suddenly crowding her stomach.
Simon swiped a manicured finger along the door’s frame, followed by clicks reminiscent of grandfather clocks or clockwork knights. The door’s mechanism withdrew any number of bolts and magnetic locks before quietly swinging inward on silent hinges.
Through choked light and stillness, Elyse barely made out a vaulted ceiling, sparse furniture, and an island fireplace she guessed was painted brick. The fireplace had its own gravity about it, intending to draw attention by way furnishings orbited its placement. Beyond, a step-down viewing area with a window wall looking out on a stretching city expanse.
Elyse stepped inside.
Negotiating short steps and furniture, she added a skip up to the wall of city spread out before her” a bay bridge, spires, traffic like hovering ants moving through and around them. Twinkling towers refracted harsh evening light peaking from the far horizon. She watched, the room and its view physically shifting West, turning towards the final snare of sunset. It was a cute feature for the mega rich, a slowly pivoting upper-tier. Wealth demanded unique features.
“This room turns?” asked Elyse, her surprise needing little coaxing. It was an impressive feature.
“It does,” said Simon, who was removing his dinner jacket and tossing it into a waiting receptacle in the closet. “You won’t ever feel it, if you’re worried. It adjusts for sunrises and sunsets, unless I tell the terminal otherwise.”
A bird dashed across the windowed expanse and a mate or competition—Elyse couldn’t tell which—followed close behind.
Elyse softly clapped her hands. “So beautiful!” she said and meant it.
“Yes. So, very, very pretty,” Esther said behind her.
His tone had turned husky. Thoughtful. A note in it gave Elyse a queer and accurate impression: eyes watching anything but the view with mental gears turning ponderously.
She turned in time to see him brushing a hand over the room’s central access pad. Room AIs learned every new occupant’s preference based on previous stays and open data shared between hotels. A small flame like a dragon whelp’s fire belched out and swirled blue, then gold around logs of slow-burn synth wood in the fireplace. At the same time, suspended globes burst on, then dimmed to their current occupant’s preference: tuned dim, favoring firelight.
And low visibility for his hunt, Elyse considered.
Violins quietly tuned up for the night’s performance in hidden speakers along the walls and ceiling. Esther smiled, closing his eyes, swaying to the melody.
Simon’s eyes snapped open, “Make yourself comfortable,” he said, beginning to loosen his tie.
“Ah, where’s the bathroom?” Elyse asked.
Simon paused at his bedroom door. “In here,” he gestured with a nod. “Wait a moment while I change, won’t you? These clothes are beginning to cling. It was very warm out today.”
“Sure, I can wait,” she said, grateful to have a moment alone.
He nodded before disappearing inside, closing the door behind him.
Which was when Elyse’s conditioning came alive.
She loped towards the video wall and gestured towards it in the universal “on” finger flick. The room’s projector hummed to life. Sharp lines of light panned along a bright rectangle off one wall, and on to the one Elyse had flicked towards. Torsos manifested in the heat of a discussion about small alliances between AIs in multiple countries and United Muslim Territories under siege. A second rectangle flashed near the first, this projecting addendums: fighting men, war machines, death, and a lot of stills showing lost children and animals.
Elyse mused on her luck. Politics and religion produced diarrhetic results for any distracting Venin.
Next, she spoke to the room AI directly, requesting something more upbeat than violins and symphonic suites. Wailing shattered the quiet violins mid note. The AI had translated “upbeat” into a cacophonous brass and snares piece smacking of blues with an undertone of electronica looping in the background. The kind of music drugged-out teenagers might bob and hump to.
She needed visual distractions. Had to compound results for a more intelligent task. Esther was a different creature. Superior stock among predatory peers. Elyse instinctually knew this room needed something more, something worthy of confusing the beast hiding beneath the suit.
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Surveying the hotel suite aesthetics, she found inspiration in how the couches neatly sat in parade rest before her. When Elyse hefted one, she found it surprisingly light for all its sturdiness.
She heaved three of them into a chaotic line inviting to none but children wanting a bouncy arena for their jumping and wrestling.
The fourth, she angled towards both the viewing wall and fire. It was a child’s set piece. Fire, TV, someone younger-seeming than Elyse mindlessly having fun with a room to mark her as an idiot, pushing Esther outside his comfort zone, perhaps even making him angry at disruptions, he moving up his timetable.
Then he would make mistakes, Elyse rationalized.
She didn’t hear a toilet flush, but she heard a door close and movement in the other room. Esther’s footfalls thumped towards the bedroom doors, which he carefully, bordering on sneakily, peeked between.
When he glimpsed Elyse looking doe-eyed back at him, he opened the bedroom door half way, stopped at seeing what Elyse had done to his suite, and slowly stepped out from the bedroom like a displaced animal woken from a dart in the rear.
She watched, hiding her saw his eyes wide and lip-puckered face panning the room, openly bewildered. His gaze finally settled on Elyse, island refuge stark against the chaos. The creamy business suit had been exchanged for silk pajamas similarly fashioned to a kimono’s bunching fabric. It did no good hiding a curving, hanging bulk beneath.
“What in the hells? Wha- did you-,” said Esther.
“A little mess serves a clean mind. If it bothers you that much, I can fix it?” Elyse crossed one arm, pushing up her breasts to almost bursting from the top of her dress. She proceeded to massage her bicep and nibbled her bottom lip.
Simon smiled warmly, “No! It’s- it’s fine. Fine. To each his own- well- to each her own I should say. Let me get that wine ready and those strawberries. Then we can enjoy ourselves, hmm?”
He crossed to a lit cabinet where Elyse saw a lone bottle and promised strawberries piled in a hermetically sealed, polished bowl. Two glasses hung in pajama pockets when he returned. Before taking a seat with Elyse, he slipped the glasses out and kept them near at hand.
Elyse eyed bottle and glasses for hints he used a drug on either. She saw no sign aside from a little lint.
Simon produced a corkscrew from his pajama pocket and uncorked the bottle. It made a hollow pop! sound cut off by a sensationalized news report from the TV.
“Looks expensive,” said Elyse, smiling and crossing her legs as Esther filled each glass, distracted by reporters discussing recent events overseas.
“I’ll lose money on this,” he mumbled, juggling glasses and wine bottle with half his attention. He finished filling one glass, offered it to Elyse, then attended his own.
Elyse studied her glass more closely. She glanced up at too-dim light, mentally kicked herself for rushing her distractions, forgetting to turn up overhead lights. Only fire provided any strong visibility.
Tipping the glass towards the flames, however, Elyse could just make out dusting along the inside.
He intends to drug me first? Elyse Thought. Sepal Lainia mentioned sedatives. Why, when it made his hunt easy?
She continued making it seem she understood swirling your wine and looking at the film it left was what you did when you were tasting. She didn’t. Pretending wasn’t all that difficult when you really didn’t understand the point to these things.
Simon’s condescending smile held as he offered Elyse a heaped bowl. “Have a strawberry, Ms. Greene. Pure ambrosia, hand-selected and purpose-grown for a kick.”
She reached into the bowl, pinching one of the plumper fruits. She delicately ate one, then a couple more, savoring sweetness and a hint of other flavors, like the strawberries had been dusted with honeysuckle. They were delicious, far better than any she remembered in the dining halls of guild Chapters. She had eaten several, Esther watching her fascinated and even slightly intrigued, whatever that particular kink might be.
When she had consumed a polite number, she swirled her glass and decided this was her moment for a break and final prep.
“May I use the restroom, Simon?” she asked. “I think my two glasses of wine caught up with me.”
“Oh- uhm- yes, of course.” Esther said, frowning as he scried his wine. “In the bedroom as I mentioned.”
Glass in hand, Elyse slipped barefoot and nymph-like from her spot on the couch. Upon entering his bedroom, a spotlight embedded in a floater lit her position in the surrounding stygian darkness. Other lights slowly brightened, illuminating neatness, no discarded clothing across floors, but candy wrappers of all things in a pile next to his bed.
Esther left no breadcrumbs when he traveled.
A black hole she assumed was the bathroom stood at her right. She crossed towards it and a light illuminated as she neared revealing slate stonework, a spotless glass shower door, and silver cherubs set around a single large mirror.
This room’s toilet was an import, having as many controls and features as a small car.
She locked her door and got to preparation. Elyse started with her potion, which was the only troublesome part. She hiked up her dress and balanced a foot on the toilet’s lip, then set her jaw for this next part. Gently, ensuring she wouldn’t accidentally discharge her payload, she retrieved her case, its grippy double cylinders no more difficult than some fun toys she had used on occasion. She held it up to her face for inspection, confirming it remained sealed and she had not just kissed herself with a set of potions in a very sensitive area. It had happened to other trainees, she had heard.
Awesome. And terrifying.
Elyse pinching the conical tips releasing small pressurized hypos, standard delivery systems when one wasn’t having to get creative, from their casing. Now, she would trust her House’s Potions Master knew his work—and he did, as much as any male was trusted to. Her quick-tick species would end this trial, then Elyse would leave this place for her waiting ride home, where she would be elevated to a full Venin of House Flora.
Dummy, you don’t have time for this!
Elyse fumbled at her left armpit where she had a small amount of bio-reactive goo that would secure her hypo point down until she was ready to use it, and where she could avoid needles engaging, their tips pressed hard enough into a contact point.
No one outside specific kinks wanted to stick hands—or other things—in an armpit.
Her second grace tucked into her right.
Worry and nervous fingers had exacerbated each movement. At this rate, she had taken several minutes, not enough to kill Esther’s mood if he thought her dropping kids off at the pool in his bathroom, but long enough she was doing more than peeing. Hopefully just freshening up. This was, after all, the only moment she could make adjustments to her graces where skin might bunch against her grace’s business end. Self-inflicted potions had plenty of examples in old jokes and stories dating back centuries. Elyse wasn’t giving them another.
They were ready. By her estimate, it was only a few minutes, and there was still Esther’s suspect wine glass to deal with.
She dumped her glass and rubbed at residue frosting the glass’s inner surface. Was this a base species of Rohypnol? What was the tick for it? She was blanking and it was something she would need for a convincing act. She thought a tick upwards of twenty minutes. Or fifteen? Calculating weight and a mostly empty stomach...
Less than ten for true Rohypnol. Elyse inwardly sneered. Esther’s stereotypical application of an even more stereotypical drug. How cliché of an apex predator, and a little disappointing.
Flushing the toilet, Elyse mastered herself before reasserting her character. How long had she taken in there? She fidgeted nonchalant and slightly tipsy out the bathroom door.
Why was the room fuzzy, and her head spinning? She considered herself a professional drinker. Likely is was the wine earlier. Wine was a rarity, though she thought her grail would have handled the worst of it. Also, it seemed the room had gotten hotter and…larger, somehow? Had he moved furniture?
She ignored it. Esther, who looked cool and confident as he watched his TV, his wine half drunk, and a face Elyse badly wanted to stomp in until it gushed every time he breathed.
Elyse stumbled into her spot opposite him on the couch. Esther looked as before, but his eyes shifted about her. He toyed with his half-empty glass, hooded eyes turning, searching Elyse’s face, scanning her body, studying the now empty glass Elyse placed on her knee. The smile Esther gave her glass squeezed fatty folds in his face until he looked like some loose-skinned breed of dog.
Motioning for her glass, he poured Elyse a substantial amount of wine, smiling when she gulped it down like a college student getting drunk on boxed swill.
“Care for more?” He smirked, gesturing with the bottle. “You obviously like it.”
“Just a little please. It feels strong and hot in my stomach,” said Elyse and looked embarrassed for admitting it. “I think if I have another glass, it’ll make me pass out and I should leave pretty soon.”
“These treasures are rare at a time of viral rot in our government. I do a little work with them, but they do not want to listen to important advice,” said Esther. He offered her the bowl and pointed at his room’s viewing wall where coverage showed hundreds of protestors who brandished signs at soldiers and threw rocks painted red and black over the White House fence.
When Elyse took a strawberry and began sucking noisily at it, Esther added, “Society changes, conspiracies and idiots behind them do not.”
She fished out a second strawberry, this one plump and glistening between Elyse’s agile fingers. When she greedily bit into cold fruit with what she thought was a honeysuckle dusting, the ruby jewel’s prickly green leaves tickled her lips, then again at each nibble at every delectable bit. The strawberry tasted unlike anything manufactured by lab or factory.
Simon studied her.
Elyse took full notice while she ate a third, a fourth, prompting his turning attention back to the news, smiling. It faltered and finally collapsed on itself, agitation forming there as the reporting went on. He nodded appreciatively when Elyse dipped for another of the red fruit.
“They certainly are delicious,” he said. “Expensive, but delicious.”
Simon settled into the couch’s fold. Firelight played in his eyes, obscuring them in blue and gold flickers like fiery gyrations had replaced his irises and pupils.
“I love sweet things, you know, Ms. Greene,” he continued. “Sweeties tempt like nothing can. Sweeties nourish my soul. Heather- may I call you Heather? I leap at what sweeties I can take before they go to rot in this failing world. Does that make sense to you?”
Elyse nursed another strawberry in thought. Esther’s body language had changed. He hunched in his corner openly watching her. His face betrayed nothing. Not a twitch. He might have been a frozen beast metamorphosed from his previous, contemplative businessman.
Nausea started at a new thought: she had missed something.
She lacked the tool she needed right then to peel open this beast’s den. Elyse wracked her brain for lectures and advice. Should she make a move? A struggle would quicken her first grace’s symptoms if it elevated his heart rate. Rushing for the groin felt too direct. What might Esther-
Tingling.
She noticed it now. Static prickling through her limbs towards her chest. Elyse’s stomach, her mouth, even her fingertips prickled with something unidentifiable, and it was not like her limbs had lost circulation, because tingling smoldered along her flesh as though she had sat too near the fireplace, low heat building upon heat.
Thinking it was the fire, she scooted away with difficulty, yet there it was, that nagging discomfort.
“I see,” said Esther, speaking once more into his wine glass. He flicked an “off” signal towards the viewing wall, banishing the talking heads. “Never could stand those people. They really piss me off, you know what I mean, Heather? I get annoyed at talking and no action.”
Elyse’s tongue could have been a stranger’s massaging her mouth. She dared not speak, letting Esther continue.
“Though, thinking about it further, I really think people who feel they have a right to my life are worse. I tell you, many do.”
He gave her a wispy smile fluttering in and out of existence. .She knew her body railed within, cooling, slowing numbness continuing its spiraling prickles threatening complete numbness through her body. Her breath was sluggish. Ice-kissed. Every forced breath like death’s own exhalations. All the while she willed her grail, that mysterious extra organ marking her as owned by her guild, might cleanse whatever ripped through her as it was supposed to. She knew these symptoms; feared them as assuredly as she knew all the potions of her house.
Like bleeding paint, vision co-mingled into blobs of foreign hues atop flickering light and shadow. Sorted names and symptoms flipped through Elyse’s memory identified what the molecules in her system was having difficulty targeting. Sepal Lainia had said her grail would combat most anything…
Too occupied; too unprepared, Elyse was not ready when the beast pounced.
Esther leapt faster than his frame suggested possible. From his relaxed position, he dashed Elyse’s glass through the air where it shattered against a wall, its muffled tinklings like crystal droplets in their room’s sound-proofed walls.
Her screams would be the same, if she gave him that satisfaction!
“Stupid. Little. Cunt,” he snarled into her face while he pinned her with his bulk into the couch’s corner. “Stupid. Stuuuupid, why would you bother?”
He mounted her then, her muscles fighting her impulses to strike Esther’s face looming above hers and breathing hot breath like some excited dog. One hand slid up her stomach and caressed a breast he pulled from her dress. His hand travelled further until it rested on her neck. He wrapped fingers around her small throat, his hand giving a little testing hors d’oeuvre of a squeeze brought abrupt pressure to her head.
Sudden convulsions snapped her body like a flag in sharp winds. They cleared her head, realization coming alive in a panicked mind. Stupidly clear! The species stood out in her mind, but how was it suppressing her grail? How?
Elyse must have partially lipped a name because Esther chuckled, watching Elyse’s lips flounder over difficult words.
“Do you actually understand what’s happening to you?” he asked. His fingers contracted around Elyse’s throat again. “Do you know you’ve been poisoned? I see something in your eyes. You do- yes, your perfect eyes.” He leaned in and jerkily licked at her left eye.
Who the fuck licked eyes like some gross lizard?
“Do you still taste strawberries? Sweeties can never say no- oh I know- oh-h-h-h do I know.” He said excitedly, and spittle flicked across Elyse’s face.
“Mon-, mon-,” she tried. “Wol- wol-”
Simon shushed her. He clapped a perfumed hand over her mouth.
“Are you trying to say wolfbane? Now how would you know that? It was the name I was told during purchase. Now this is curious,” he said, less certain in his movements, his next steps. “There was another name if I heard you right? Yes-yes. You are a smart sweetie, dearest. Too smart. Uncharacteristically smart for what you pretend. Now I’m certain I picked a winner. What other surprises does my sweetie have, I wonder?”
He pressed more weight against Elyse’s struggling lungs, then violently cocked a knee up into the juncture of Elyse’s thighs, knocking a whimper loose from between Elyse’s numb lips. Esther’s free hand fumbled on a handful of Elyse’s soft flesh, pinched, nails biting painfully into the thin skin of her wrist until blood must have welling up.
“You are older than you look. I don’t usually go for older girls, but you have my curiosity, which is more valuable than a new grippy puss-”
He slapped her without warning, without facial twitch.
“Whomever you are, I won’t let that bother me.”
He slapped her again, awkward as Elyse’s head was tucked against a couch arm and she had all Esther’s bulk on top of her.
Esther lurched back on quivering knees, repositioning his arms in the perfect poise for strangling.
Elyse had waited—hoped—he would ease up. What she had for strength, Elyse pressed herself towards him, wrenching free one numb arm and twisting away from Esther. It caught him off guard time enough to turn her back and fumble in her left underarm for the first grace.
Sharp agony quick in its white spark barely registered over the adrenalin as she tore it free, and what felt like some stubble and a little skin. She palmed her grace, ready.
“No-no, I like watching!” Esther spat, grabbing her shoulder so he could leverage her back on to her back.
Sweat flung from his forehead, striking her in the face as Elyse used Esther’s momentum against him. She arched her hand barely clutching her first grace. It plunged into his inner thigh through thin pajama pants, which did nothing hiding his fully erect manhood.
She punched him in the dick for good measure.
Being numb and dosed kept her full strength in check, But Elyse thought it painful enough by Esther’s scream and freezing shock at being stung in a sensitive place.
At the moment he lowered himself again in an angry rush, Elyse launched her head forward to meet his face.
Crunching force from her hard head snapped his nose and its reverberations through her skull.
Blood spurted from Esther’s broken face. His shocked eyes locked with hers as he pawed at the disfigured feature leaking blood into his mouth and down his chin.
He was still on top of her, a hypo in his thigh, broken nose bleeding, dick no longer a proud testament to his hunt.
She was weakened and numb, however, never a girl who ran at a couple scratches, she twisted herself under Esther. He was off-balance and in unfamiliar pain. Powerful men never worried about physical harm when they could pay someone to take it for them.
Esther and his protruding paunch lost balance. He toppled over on to carpet, Elyse falling with him. He had still not pulled her grace, which was long empty, doing its work as moved like a turtled elephant seal in his attempts at grabbing for his prize.
She disentangled herself and crawled some distance while Simon, who finally stared down at Elyse’s syringe—an empty syringe—protruding from his pajama bottoms, violently pulled it from his thigh.
“Wha- what is-” Esther said, eyes rolling between syringe and Elyse’s face.
What Elyse wanted to say was Our Lady’s Tears. What she actually said was anyone’s guess. Her mouth struggled.
“Time’s up,” she attempted, losing syllables here and there. She was confident Esther understood enough.
Elyse tensed for refreshed violence. She had her second grace, still, and it meant another fight she was unprepared for.
Instead, it looked like indecision etched Esther’s features. He backed from her, his eyes wandered the room as he fought his body, hobbling across wine and blood-stained carpet. He was searching for something. More frantic, he stared across chaos and flames, his eyes finally stopping on a closet door at his entry.
Whatever lay tucked in there brought Esther renewed hope, sending quakes up and down his body as he forced himself into a drunken stumble-run which would eventually have him colliding nearly through that door. Instead, he fell a short few feet from it, tripping over a large couch cushion he himself had thrown earlier.
Elyse had no clue what Esther aimed for in there, but obviously there was either a weapon or a means he could alert his guards.
He thudded on the floor in a disorienting heap, shaking from something that was not excitement or fear. The Lady’s Tears had started work in his body. He shuddered, seizing up without warning. Legs flopped and swung wildly and he likely had telltale headaches sprouting fully formed and frightening in their ferocity. Next, would come shivers and sudden cramps, she knew. He pushed himself along carpet which had to rub his skin hot and raw in his escape from Elyse, who could only do slightly better at this point.
Elyse could crawl well enough after him in his slow-going, twitchy push towards the closet door. She was so tired, so sick, and she wanted to sleep! Just…rest. Just a moment. Esther wasn’t going anywhere, and her eyelids grew heavier. She categorized symptoms: heavy breath, chills, mild numbness. Weight (monitored daily), muscle mass, and theoretical amount of ingested poison factored in after. She had tasted slight bitterness, only slight, taste defining dose. Dose defined reaction. Reaction defined outcome. She winced at stabbing pain, then smiled at realization that, yes, she would live.
Did he have his own programmed molecules fighting the chemical cocktail she hit him with? Nano screens might do it after a single kiss. It was why a venin planned for two. Every double-kiss had one specific purpose: disable and disassemble.
Shit! How could she have forgotten the other grace!? If Esther carried a defense matrix, it would buffer poison and potion alike easily as a firewall AI whipping a child’s backdoor intrusion.
Elyse wrangled herself out of her encroaching darkness once more.
Through her blurred vision, she saw Esther clumsily open his closet door. An undulating shadow in what little light highlighted his dark pajamas.
She noticed less pain when she ripped her second grace from her other armpit. She lurched, fell, moved slowly using her knees and elbows, sometimes kicking feably, whatever it took if it meant reaching Esther, who had managed opening his closet and hands fighting pockets of a coat he wore up.
She about reached him when he pulled out what looked like an earpiece he could clip in and use to call for help. His fingers fumbled over his small device, dropped it in clumsy hands, tried again.
Simon’s head swiveled towards Elyse’s muffled thumps and scrapes behind him. He likely wished he had not, because the sight of Elyse coming towards him; a horror; a reflection of his nightmares kickstarted renewed fears she read in his body language and face. She was coming for him, and he was afraid.
“Get away! Get away! Stay back, you bitch!” he wriggled like an alarmed nightcrawler already impaled on her hook.
She licked dried lips and made damn sure he saw her do it.
He got his earpiece in just as Elyse reached for one weak leg.
“Get up here! She’s crazy! She’s going to kill me!” he yelled at the air.
Esther gambled a sloppy kick at her face, missed, then scraped her arm with his only slippered foot.
Elyse rolled, and Esther’s heel firmly jabbed painfully into Elyse’s shoulder hard enough she slid back.
She hissed through pain while Esther howled his elation and manic shrieks of surprise. Esther’s savage kicking flew at her face. She rolled, avoiding the full blow and catching the side of his feet on the mouth. Frantic bicycle kicks on the floor turned into a scene from an old film she saw with a giant shark and a very desperate boat captain. Esther’s feet rained down on her head, shoulders, arms until she caught one in her free hand and used it to propel up Esther’s leg into his waiting, embrace.
His mucous-choked throat throttled a scream as he battered and pushed at Elyse’s head. He bludgeoned Elyse aside. She took concussing blows, readying her second grace.
Elyse curled cat-like into Esther when she was confident she had a pointy end aimed the right way. She plunged it home, the kiss triggering its injectors.
Esther screamed again. His hand went towards his side, plucked her hypo, and tried uselessly stabbing at her with it, but its tip remained inside his blubbery flesh like a bee sting and only a blunt polymer tip slammed harmlessly against her head.
His breathing labored. Struggled. Seconds between kiss and his reactions his body was heaving and reacting predictably. Esther croaked indistinct words of victory at a watchful creature retreating into shadow, though his body sagged, his breathing slowing.
Simon had lost his fight, and she saw it in him with all the assuredness of a rabid animal succumbing to a vet’s mercy. She had one final step before he lost consciousness and finally fucking died.
Elyse worked spittle over dry lips, worked her body into a slow, painful crawl putting herself several feet from Esther. Then she began speaking in as low and clear a voice possible, considering her circumstances.
“I…am of potion,” she began tiredly, feeling herself edging Esther’s attempts at putting her in his power. She paused, getting a breath, mind rattled as she tried to recall her catechism recited a million times and still escaping her in the heat of her big moment. “My gilded grace brings ticking change…By caustic kiss, do I unname. A rabid male seen undone. A festering female’s treason tamed. Transgressions rake thy tortured name, though by my hand I see it laid. May you…uh…nob’ly- Uhhg!” she wordlessly growled her frustration. “Like you could do anything noble you piece of shit!”
She kicked him hard in his pallid face sending more blood spattering against the wall and a weak moan escaping his lips.
She took a deep breath, held it, and released it through her nostrils. Her adrenalin was kicking in and it was giving her a renewed sense of fight, with no one she could unload on besides the garbage thing dying in front of her.
“Ok, ok. Meet my death, asshole! By hallowed potion am I made. Annddd…damn. You’re already dead.”
He might be somewhat alive, but he sure looked like her potion had runs its course. Elyse finished her rites anyway. Silly, when she thought about all the horrible things this male had done, her yapping his dead ear off. But she did it, as she was supposed to because who knew what she would have to answer for, or to whom, when this was over.
“You, who was Esther Esther. Go unnamed by my House, kissed by a Venin of the Guild. You have lost face, nameless Male. Fade in that knowledge, marked by our hand, by our potion, by our Guild.”
Both graces had worked in earnest. Oxygen deprivation painted the male’s skin. Paralysis had visibly taken hold, keeping him also fully aware and in pain until the moment he, unfortunately, lost consciousness. It had ended his suffering, dying a fucking monster who should have been screaming and pissing himself during his final throes.
It felt almost merciful.
Elyse knew as a Venin she would be allowed her own choice potions for future tasks, but in a trial, she must work with what she was given by her Sepal and Master Childs, keeper of all things potions. He deserved suffering. He deserved torture. A long, awful torture for all her sisters gone, victims he made. Minds left in virtual torture constructions for his sick…
Enough, she scolded.
Elyse bowed her head, letting her pain press a quaking hush of breath from her lungs. It was quiet enough for her to hear light, cemetery-quiet footsteps outside the room’s entry. She listened to them approach, pause, and when the locks clicked, Elyse knew that was the moment she failed.
Light spilled into the room as the door slowly swung in. Elyse saw no one there, nothing, that was, if you looked directly out. She did see a wavering quality to light filtering seemingly through, though she knew it was a trick of the eye and light bent around a form standing there, staring and surveying what lay inside.
I have no other potions, Elyse thought. I can barely move at this point. Hell! All this effort and I’m still going to die.
She lay there waiting for a gun, a knife, something she might see before it killed her, just as she was finally a Venin! What crap luck, like always.
Why can’t I be better? Why does everything have to be so hard for me, even a simple task.
Only after they closed the door again did the newcomer speak up, monotone in their matter-of-fact observation, and thickly accented Irish or some close approximation.
“Fops and jarkmen, trainee. Had I not killed his men in the elevator, you’d be dead already, or worse. And I could’ve slit your throat or put a bullet in you as soon as I opened his door. What a messy trial, girl!”
Elyse crumpled, half relieved, half expecting a long telling-off over a real fuck-up Elyse had made of things.
“You seemed more intent on the task, less on potential dangers. That earpiece he carried was classic,” she tsked.
Feminine and strong in its quiet control, the disembodied voice continued more formally, as if reading Elyse’s thoughts.
“No, you will not die tonight. I should punish you, like assigning a second trial for this sloppy business. But no, you did adequately, considering. My Corollas and I took bets and I knew you would stumble, then see it finished, else why throw away the potential and time? I dislike waste.”
Elyse couldn’t believe it was her and not someone else, because you never had Sepals follow a trainee on their trial. That was menial work for Corollas under a House Sepal.
“He caught me off guard, Sepal. I missed his…poison.”
Disgust rushed out as a hiss between teeth and lips. “Poison, trainee!? I should change my mind and kill you right now without rites or ceremony. Might as well discuss bathroom habits around the pope as much that language around me!” She paused, considering. “No, trainee. What vulgar assumptions. A lowly poison?”
Firelight refracted around Sepal Lainia’s chameleon mesh like wavering heat. At a presumed command, it stilled from her neck, up, and she pulled material away revealing red hair cropped short, brilliant violet eyes, and skin so white Elyse thought it was glowing.
That mesh was incredible, and also incredibly expensive tech they could not use en mass, only certain people being trusted with the suit, typically Sepals. But how much easier would this have been if Elyse were able to use it for a night…
She bowed her head respectively. “He tried what I believe was Rohypnol in my glass. That I caught,” said Elyse. “The strawberries-”
“The strawberries, you missed,” said Sepal Lainia. “Yes. I am aware. I imagine you have all sorts of wonderful thoughts spinning in that small head right now. What’s your Sepal thinking? Her judgements? Her calculations? I saw every blunder in their respective order, so what am I to do with a would-be Venin like that?”
Sepal Lainia stooped, leaning in to Elyse’s ear.
“You recognized Wolfbane, girl” Sepal Lainia said. “A start, though late. You named it a poison. That does not satisfy. A poison, trainee, is vulgar in name and property for what he had. That was your mistake, presuming the task would not procure true potion, and only a synthetic or knock-off we would call a poison for its quality and utilization. That was no poison birthed outside our Guild, however. It was true Wolfbane; true Aconitum napellus, prepared by Master Childs of your chosen house, and trafficked from our Chapter to your task for this trial. Worse if I’m right, though I won’t say right now, you are feeling as you do because it had a little extra kick targeting our grails. You would have been fine even from a potion had his dose not had a little extra something in it hobbling your damn grail! Someone intended you fail and disappear like too many others of late. Master Childs was informed, though the trail went cold. I have nothing at this time.”
She leaned away and let Elyse process the implications. Elyse had been set. Up. Meant to fail and Flora, and Flora’s Potions Master take blame.
“Holy fuck,” was all Elyse managed.
“Indeed,” said Sepal Lainia. “Keep this between us for now. There are schemes, trainee. Games. And I intend to play.”
Sepal Lainia put on her mesh and tapped at her neck. Like melting in reverse, her head quickly shadowed and became invisible. She stepped towards Esther—no, the male! He was unnamed now. She might have swished the air interacting with menus only she saw through her lenses. This was processing. Another unnamed monster given a number in their Guild data banks. He would remain a number.
Naming a thing gave it power. Unnaming stripped it.
“This,” she nudged the male’s body with an invisible foot, “deserved much worse than a trainee in her trial. Master Childs had…suggested as much to me…but you showed promise and the right build for this particular situation.”
She sighed, seconds stretching as she thought or weighed, Elyse didn’t know which or care, as pained and tired as she was.
Finally, Sepal Lainia crossed back towards the door. “Bloody hell, has Master Childs got a soft spot for you, Venin. I have about as much as I would for any of your sisters, but he certainly worries over you more than others.”
Venin, Elyse thought. She called me Venin! Her heart, regardless how tired she was, thrummed in her chest. She was accepted! Hot damn, she had done it!
Sepal Lainia allowed a small chuckle, but it was a tired chuckle. Bitter even. In whatever knowledge she held, she continued. “We teach you girls our world breeds people and animals who look like people. We police it, as no one else can as we do. Our great task. Decency is a squirt on the sheets, girl. Our Guild does what it can, when we can, in sparing our special attentions to the rot these bastards spread. There are always too many. Always,” she sighed. “Part of me is sorry we sent you here for your trial, however necessary. Necessary to House, Guild, Nation, world…but you succeeded, close a thing it was. You have learning to do. Take this experience and grow from it. Grow in confidence.”
Elyse’s head throbbed, her body beat up, and her senses dulled. She should have been angry. Instead, she wanted sleep, which she couldn’t under the circumstances. She needed extraction, and it would take time, as Elyse had her DNA all over this suite.
Reading her mind, Sepal Lainia said, “Cleaners are coming and they will extract you. This is going to be a mess, and it will cost. No, don’t look embarrassed. What we learned today is well worth every credit. You stay there, rest, activate your flush. You deserve it, girl.”
Sepal Lainia turned to the door and golden light broke across the floor. Scented air smelling like flowers drifted in past legs not there when she exited, leaving Elyse alone with a corpse and thoughts. Her first Venin task would hopefully be easier. This dovetailed into almost rueful laughter startling herself. She knew better than to wish for the improbable. unhurriedly left the room, leaving Elyse to grow blurry-eyed and very alone.
Underneath her right breast, Elyse pressed a raised mole that was actually an emergency flush. Microneedles plunged, triggering life-saving programmed molecules for pain and grail support. They would disperse through her system like additional antibodies, bolster her strange foreign organ, dampen pain. In minutes, supposedly. She could soon get up, feeling serene and awake.
She would also be a little high for a bit. She didn’t expect another task anytime soon. There were things to handle back at Salas Chapter. For now, she relaxed in her stimulant flush oozing through her bloodstream. The cocktail made her feel smooth and at ease on its wave of awesome mojo.
Easier? Under the grail’s embrace, easier was a fine word. Very fine. For the moment, though, she would give a damn about what came next after a shower, a coma, and a conversation between her and Master Childs, who would get an earful if she still felt as bold and this good. For now, she would nap until retrieval arrived.
Elyse did not remember falling asleep, thoughts alight among chaos, her room’s gentle turning, and death.
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