Edgewise

15

There were inevitable consequences to growing up in possession of the bête noire.

When Calponia was eight, she befriended a new girl in the neighborhood, playing in the woods by her home. Their play ended when the girl stepped on a ground wasp nest, bad enough in itself, without her extreme allergy to stings. It was as Calponia watched the ambulance pull away, her new and brief friendship firmly snuffed as the girl fought for life, that her mother put a hand on her shoulder.

"It's not your fault sweet, but be careful how close you get."

She didn't understand the warning, not then, not when she was still young and hopeful. It took her more bad accidents, more mishaps, and suspiciously awful luck before she realized something was wrong. Calponia grew to understand she was unsafe to be around.

Between that stigma and her unfortunate habit of short circuiting technology in her proximity, Calponia had led a lonely existence.

The Edgewise had a knack for finding the lost souls. It could sense loneliness pouring off her, like stale beer, a thick foul aura that slowly ate her up. She needed the touch of other souls, to soak up the solitude.

She needed friends.

Calponia Anders had already begun to see the patrons as such. At the sight of Cesario covered in blood on the tavern floor, her reaction was visceral, her stomach bottoming out as she let out a choked cry.

She rushed to the group clustered around the figures on the floor, kneeling at Cesario's side as her hands fluttered, unwilling to touch them, afraid to make matters worse. Cesario rolled toward her, wincing in obvious pain as she grabbed Calponia's hand.

"It's not mine," said the woman, her face far too pale and pinched to lend truth to her statement. "Mostly," she ratified. She bit her lip as she lifted her shirt to reveal the wound in her side. "Bloody inquisitors."

Calponia itched to do something, anything, but she extricated herself from Cesario's grasp, easing away from the group she rashly approached. Cesario frowned at her as she pulled away, but Mack distracted her from the issue.

"Prospero?" The tavern master eased the old man onto his side, studying the wounds on his back. "What happened?"

Cesario forced herself to sit up. "They came out of nowhere, flooded into the realm like a tide of locusts."

The old man on the floor gave a rattling cough that made Calponia winced. Blood in the lungs. "Inquisitors," he rasped, seizing Mack by the wrists. "The Veil is gone, shattered. They took them, my sons, my sons are in their torturous grip."

Calponia could see the muscles of Mack's jaw clench at his words. Was this another incursion? Except this seemed much worse than a handful of werewolves left on a vampire planet. This sounded like a full scale invasion. What exactly were the inquisitors?