A DAGGER IN THE DARK

      The desert late-day sun heated the inside of the mudbrick building like an oven, adding an offbeat scent of toasted rock to the musk of dereliction. Macy descended the loft’s cracked-rung ladder. A few minutes on the upper story, and her clothes laminated further to her skin in awkward places.

      "Surviving in this heat is unnatural.” New runnels of sweat tickled her scalp.

      “Our lore and human sciences say we all came from the area, I'd say that makes heat very natural.” Sean, her one companion for this mission, responded from his seat on an overturned box in the center of the main floor.

      Her feet hit packed dirt. "Yet, we evolved to use thousands of languages, compose music to make the angels sing," she extended her arms, but kept her voice low, "and reach that pinnacle of modern engineering — central air!"

      Macy paused for a heartbeat, imagining a stray breeze. Her bullpup rifle rocked in its sling at her side. Sean carried one as well, and both were altered to fire a special cocktail round which included a mix of many of the weaknesses of the supernatural: iron, silver, holy water, and rowan splinters. Potent at small doses, given the rate of fire for the automatic rifles, they could be deadly to a vampire in under ten seconds. For close quarters fighting, a pair of twin daggers, guards etched with Greek letters, criss-crossed in their sheaths at her back.

      A scuffed deck of cards shuffled between Sean's hands as he ignored her dramatic delivery and awaited her report. Every two hours one of them climbed into the loft and checked the street outside along with the approach to the single entrance in their abandoned mud-brick house amongst a half dozen similar abodes, which weren't bombed out, looking for any signs of counter-surveillance. Most of the area was abandoned, and no-one had approached their target at the end of the street since their arrival.

      Dust hung in the slices of bronzing sunlight spilling through the cracked wooden shutters of the matching pair of first-floor windows. As prosaic as the rest of her report.

      Sean cut the deck, and the cards danced again before he replied, "You were the one lecturing me this morning about how close we were to where the first Vélos made the Covenant millions of years ago. I believed you used the words ‘amazing opportunity.’ ”

      Macy slouched back onto her own box and blew a breath up to force her escaping red hair out of her eyes. "Thousands of years. We aren’t dinosaurs. And, it was a reasonable temperature this morning."

      Vélos intelligence chose the safe house for their concealment in preparation for the overnight mission. They weren't here for the local war, so the bombing scars of the non-magical battles were simply as topographical as rocks in a ravine.

      She tucked the hair back under the headscarf she wore to blend in with the local human culture. Natural curls and the heat did not behave together. Even thin, the fabric added to her suffocation in the stifling room. She straightened it around her ears again. Both dressed to not offer insult, but they weren't in disguise. Their desert camo uniforms demanded the need to stay hidden and not cause a local firefight. But they were dressed for a fight, not spy work.

      "Please take me back to a beach with a Mediterranean Sea breeze."

      “Noted, only beachside assignments for Macy.”

      Macy jerked up at Sean’s bland balance between joking and serious. "Don't you dare. If I don't go with you, I don't go out. You know how long it took me to get my onsite hours done.”

      Sean continued to shuffle. Macy shoved her age-inappropriate whine back into the box it belonged in. "Stop thinking about the heat," Sean chided her. Then a smile started to pull at the edges of his mouth. "You're in the shade."

      Macy waved a hand at the walls. "This isn't shade, it's a kiln."

      "You could take the scarf off for now. It’s been quiet.”

      She set her cards facedown and unwound the fabric with pleasure. She told herself not to forget it as she threw it onto the box they used as a table. Sean moved his cards in his hand.

      Thinking back to the original thread, Macy said, “You are right, about our lore. All the oral histories tell us the first civilizations made the Vélos Covenant. Human science has traced those first civilizations to vaguely here. So this," she waved again, "is the spot where your great-great-keep going-great ancestors swore to protect the balance of the supernatural and mundane world. I was more excited. Then you informed me I'm stuck crisping around the edges with you until we can destroy some archaic Talisman and leave before dawn. No sightseeing included."