Chapter 3 - Magic

Oh-ho-ho, it’s magic you know / Never believe it’s not so

Through the ages she hadn’t intervened often. The victims were usually simply useful tools for finding them. But as she’d come into this Modern age she’d started finding them everywhere with a shattered trail of victims behind them. It was like they had multiplied in the last 50 years beyond a number she’d ever seen before. Was it there were more of them now or had the world changed enough they didn’t have to hide as well anymore?

Either way, she’d found it had changed her moral code over time. Hunt and destroy had become protect, hunt, and destroy. It meant emotional entanglement sometimes and actually . . . caring? . . . beyond the mission but the scales didn’t feel anything like they were balanced anymore. She hadn’t talked to anyone like her for 30 years. Was she the last one? Even given the fact that time was an interesting . . . concept . . . to them, she could feel the loneliness in her soul. What would happen when she was gone? Would they win?

“Es ist ein schöner Tag zum Sterben,” she muttered to herself. A bit of a personal mantra.

She wasn’t acutely telepathic. She didn’t need to know his exact thoughts to imagine what he was going through right now. She hadn’t changed his mind or driven him towards a direction; her words had simply been a charm against their power. They had this unique sense that allowed them to pull you back in that liminal moment before defeat. So many had lost themselves that way. She’d blocked her, gave him that moment of clarity she was about to steal from him once again. The Other must be enraged; apoplectic. But already planning to get him back.

The last time it felt this personal was during one of the wars. Which one? She couldn’t remember. She had been in London. There had been bombing. She saw herself in a uniform. She’d followed one to a smoky little pub off of Whitehall. The Dominion Arms she’d remembered it was called. It had been a narrow, three-story affair tucked into a side street. The frontage was dark, weathered timber with small leaden windows. The windows crisscrossed with tape from the bomb blasts.

She tracked this one half-way across Europe from the efficient urban hustle of an untouched Berlin to here in the bombed out heart of London. The Other went from girlfriend to refugee to hunter again in the space of three years. The Other probably would have stayed put in Berlin but once Hitler had moved on Austria it had become obvious war was coming and she needed a new source of validation and attention. She had become attached to a military officer on the General Staff. His time would quickly become consumed by the war effort. It was time to discard and move on.

And she’d chased this Other across war-ravaged Europe until they both landed here in this dingy pub; intertwined in this bizarre love triangle. They had both found themselves with this same sweet, kind Canadian officer. That night had been ahead of plan, and totally against orders, but sometimes love doesn’t acquiesce to high command. She carried her silver dagger in a leg sheath with a steely resolve for what she had to do.