Dawn crept through Windsor’s telecommunications warehouse's ventilation shafts, casting thin rays across the bunker's metallic walls. The light did little to warm the cold steel and concrete surrounding the Bloodhounds' temporary base of operations. Yet despite the early hour, Nemesis was already awake—or perhaps he had never slept at all.

  The white-haired assassin lounged on one of the military-grade cots, idly spinning a gray Contender around his finger that he got off one of the guards. His other hand cradled a flipphone—a burner—that he designated for this mission. As if summoned by his thoughts, the device crackled to life with an admittedly irritating ring, to which he sighed upon seeing the Caller ID. He debated letting it ring, but he knew that if he blew it off now, the next call was going to be absolute torture.

  And so, he accepted the call.

  "Where is the boy?" Cagliostro Narma's voice emerged distorted through the speakers; his fury needed no clarity to be understood. "It's been days since you arrived in Windsor. What exactly am I paying you for, Nemesis?"

  Nemesis’s perpetual smirk widened. He had to admit: there was something delicious about hearing the mighty patriarch of the House of Narma reduced to such desperation. "Now, now, client. Is that any way to speak to the man you're relying on?" He twirled the Contender faster. "Besides, I don't recall agreeing to any specific timeline."

  "You dare—"

  "I dare quite a lot of things, actually." The assassin's voice remained light, almost playful, but his blood-red eyes gleamed with something far colder. "For instance, I dare to wonder why you're so desperate to kill one little Irregular. Could it have something to do with the...peculiar circumstances of your son's death?"

  The silence that followed carried more weight than any response could have.

  "What are you implying?" Cagliostro's voice had dropped to a dangerous whisper.

  "Oh, nothing at all." Nemesis’s grin only grew wider. "Just making conversation. You know how dull stakeouts can be."

  "Eisenberg." The patriarch’s tone carried a new edge. "I hired your Bloodhounds under the assumption that you would handle this matter swiftly and efficiently. Yet here you are, playing games."

  "Games? Me?" Nemesis mock-gasped, pressing a hand to his chest in feigned offense. "I would never. I'm simply being thorough. After all, you wouldn't want your son's killer to slip through our fingers due to...hasty assumptions, would you?"

  A sharp intake of breath from the other end. The assassin could almost see Cagliostro's knuckles whitening around his phone.

  "The Irregular killed my son! The evidence—"

  "The evidence that your pet police force cobbled together in less than a day?" The assassin interrupted smoothly. "The same evidence that conveniently appeared right when you needed a scapegoat? How fascinating."

  "...Choose your next words carefully, Bloodhound."

  "Or what?" Nemesis’s playful tone vanished like smoke. "You'll hire someone else? Good luck finding another organization willing to take on Mercutio." He paused, letting that sink in.

  The silence stretched longer this time. When Cagliostro spoke again, his voice had lost its commanding edge.

  "How long?"

  "Depends on how patient you can be." The white-haired man rose from the cot, stretching languidly. "But don't worry yourself sick over the details. I have everything under control. Your Irregular will die—just not quite as quickly as you might like."

  "You're playing a dangerous game."

  "Nope.” Siegfried’s eyes flickered like fresh blood in sunlight. "I'm winning one. One that’s been six years overdue."

  He ended the call before the Narma patriarch could respond, tossing the burner phone onto the cot with a casual flick. The gray handgun continued to spin between his fingers, a nervous habit he'd picked up sometime between the dozens of contracts he'd executed over the years. Footsteps soon echoed down the corridor—two sets, one heavy and plodding, the other light and precise.

  "Boss!" Apollo's Fioran drawl carried through the bunker door. "Got a situation with the hostages!"

  Nemesis sighed, holstering his Contender. "What kind of situation?"

  Malleus burst through first, her usual composure frayed at the edges. "One of them is having some sort of attack. Seizure, maybe? I don't know, but if they start dying, it ruins the whole plan."

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "You're overreacting lil’ lady." Apollo followed behind her, his injured arm still bandaged from Leila's shot. "Ain't no one dying. They just getting rowdy 'cause we haven't fed 'em since yesterday morning."

  "When were you the medical expert? You can’t even heal your own wounds!"

  "Oh, I'm so sorry, Miss High and Mighty Witch. Were you going to heal 'em with your ol' 'I'm a strong independent woman who don't need no man's powers?’"

  "Both of you, shut up," Nemesis interjected before their bickering could escalate. "I'll take a look. They’re still—"

  "In the storage building." Malleus gestured toward the window which revealed a much smaller building meant for stockpiling. Nemesis nodded and made his way out of the warehouse and towards the storage building as the bickering duo trailed behind him.

  The morning air was crisp as they crossed the clearing between buildings. The guards—and workers unfortunate enough to be caught in the bomb—bodies no longer littered the ground; Nemesis had made sure of that yesterday when he had Apollo and Malleus help him relocate the telecommunications personnel to the storage building. It had been Malleus who'd suggested moving them above ground rather than leaving them buried alive as he'd originally planned. "Less messy," she'd argued. "And we can actually keep an eye on them."

  She had a point. Potentially dead hostages weren't very useful as leverage.

  The storage building was little more than a glorified shed, a squat concrete structure with a reinforced door. The scent of fear and sweat hit them the moment they entered. Nearly thirty personnel were bound with thick rope, arranged in rows against the walls. Their Mystic Gears had been confiscated and piled in a corner like discarded toys. Not that they could use them anyway—not after Malleus had employed her Bloodflame.

  The auburn witch's Birthright—the innate and or inherited ability of a Thaumaturge—was devastatingly simple in its effectiveness: the capability to drain and consume the prana of those she came in contact with, to which she could then later convert the excess prana into flames that burned so intensely that they were red like blood. Prana was the lifeblood of Thaumaturges, and so draining it was akin to sapping the strength from their bodies and the will from their souls. The hostages' vacant stares spoke to its potency; they barely had enough energy left to maintain consciousness, let alone cast a spell or attempt an escape.

  A thin man in a telecommunications uniform writhed near the back, his body convulsing against the concrete floor. His colleagues could only watch helplessly while their bodies were too weak from the prana drain that Malleus conducted on all of them to offer aid. Foam flecked the corners of his mouth as another seizure wracked his frame.

  "See? What did I tell you?" Malleus gestured sharply at the seizing man. "We need to do something or he'll—"

  "Die?" Nemesis finished, his perpetual smirk never wavering. "And here I thought you were getting soft on me." He knelt beside the convulsing figure, red eyes studying the man's face with clinical detachment. "Interesting. This isn't from your prana drain, Malleus. Look at his eyes."

  The auburn witch frowned but leaned in closer. The man's pupils were pinpoints, his gaze unfocused and glassy. "What about them?"

  "Classic signs of withdrawal. Seems our friend here has quite the dependency on Enhancement-type spells." Nemesis chuckled, the sound entirely devoid of warmth. "Probably been using them to keep up with those lovely corporate deadlines. But now that you've drained his prana..." He gestured at the man's trembling form. "Well, the body has ways of ‘objecting’ to sudden changes."

  "So what we do?" Apollo scratched his stubble with his good hand. "Can't exactly take him to no hospital."

  "We don't need to." Nemesis reached into his coat and produced a small vial filled with silvery liquid. "A little gift from an old friend in Desperado. It should stabilize him enough to keep breathing." He uncorked the vial with his teeth and forced the contents down the seizing man's throat. Within moments, the convulsions began to subside.

  "Ain't that mighty convenient." Apollo's drawl carried a note of suspicion. "You just happen to be carrying around medicine for prana withdrawal?"

  "I always come prepared." Nemesis shrugged as he rose, dusting off his knees next. "Besides, dead hostages make for poor leverage. Speaking of which..." He turned to address the room at large, raising his voice so all could hear. "Let this be a lesson to you all. Your lives are in our hands now. Cooperate, and you might just survive this. Resist..." He nodded toward the still-trembling man on the floor. "Well, we can't guarantee what your bodies might do without proper care."

  The threat hung in the air like poison gas, seeping into already broken spirits. A few of the hostages began to weep quietly, the sound barely audible over the hum of distant machinery.

  "Malleus, make sure they're fed. Nothing fancy—just enough to keep them alive. Apollo, that arm of yours still giving you trouble?"

  "Nothin' I can't handle, boss." The stubbled assassin rotated his injured hand with a wince. "That sniper got lucky is all."

  "Lucky?" Nemesis' eyes flickered dangerously. "That was Sirius and Eleanor Trafalgar’s daughter—perfectly inheriting the House of Altair’s Empyrean. There was nothing lucky about that shot." He turned toward the door, his next words carrying an edge sharp enough to draw blood. "She's made herself a player in our little game. We'll need to account for that."

  "You want us to take her out?" Malleus asked, her fingers already crackling with barely contained flames.

  "No." The white-haired assassin paused in the doorway, silhouetted against the morning light. "We stick to the plan. Dora needs to understand exactly what's at stake here, and nothing drives a lesson home quite like watching everything you've built crumble around you. But there’s something else I want you to do. I’ll explain later."

  The storage room door closed behind him with a final, echoing thud, leaving his subordinates to handle the grim business of maintaining their leverage. Outside, Windsor's windmills continued their endless rotation, their shadows sweeping across the ground like the hands of a massive clock counting down to inevitable confrontation.

  The game was entering its final stages. Soon, very soon, everyone would understand their role in this theater of sin.

  Whether they wanted to or not.