Violent Souls (Blood City Chronicles, Book 1)

Rafe limps into the room with Micel behind him. Kergan Satre is sitting on one of the steel chairs which surround the table. Her legs are crossed and she’s chewing on a wuddupple. A bit of juice runs down her chin. She wipes it with her hand and then wipes her hand on her animal fur pants. The pants expose her from the knee down. She’s wearing a top which is obviously from a different animal: darker and visibly more coarse. 

Standing behind Kergan Satre is a young girl, maybe twelve. She bears a strong resemblance to Kergan.

Rafe opens the dialogue, “Look at this, Micel—Kergan Satre, in our humble abode.”

“This place stinks,” Kergan says while chewing.

“That’s…the dead things,” Rafe replies, with a shrug and a flourish of his left hand.

Kergan uses her fingernail to pick food out of her teeth. “You look like…the business end of a hund, Rafe. What the hell have you been doing with yourself?”

Rafe leans against a chair; the wound hurts when he sits. “Waitin’ ’ere for your lovely presence.” 

Kergan laughs—a giant, wuddupple-spitting laugh. She hands her leftovers to the kid. “Throw this out.”

Kergan sucks on her teeth before saying, “I need to hire you and your band of …” She looks at Micel, who returns her look with a giant grin exposing a mouth of broken teeth and bleeding gums. “Of whatever it is you call this.”

“Well, you’ve come to the best on Earth, you know that.”

Kergan taps the table twice, “Hmmm. Mostly I know I can trust you; you don’t care about politics.”

“Not in so much as I get to keep my feoh away from the government.”

Kergan laughs. “You still think the government is the one taking your feoh, huh? You know, last year, the top five companies on Earth received 60 percent of tax revenues?”

Rafe looks at Micel. “I didn’t know that. Did you know that?”

Micel exaggerates a confused face, “I didn’t know that.”

Rafe looks back at Kergan. “We didn’t know that.”

“Gods, you still think you’re gonna fly this graveyard off to retirement, huh?”

Rafe doesn’t respond.

“Maybe you still think you and Sash—”

“Alright! Get to the job,” Rafe interjects.

Kergan nods. “I’m going to be assassinated.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Rafe deadpans right when Micel says, with complete sincerity, “Oh no! By who?”

Kergan rolls her eyes and ignores Micel.

“Do we know where or when?” asks Rafe.

“No.”

“So this is more of an existential threat, huh?” Rafe says.