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We began at six twenty-five in the evening, and at one fifty-three, his energy and arm lagged a tiny bit. I threw what I’d been holding in reserve at it, and his arm slammed onto the table with a resounding crack.
“Shit!” He pulled it in as quick as he let it out, but I’d scented pain.
“I’m sorry! Let me see!”
He held his arm up, closed his fist, opened it, spread his fingers, and turned it both ways so I could see. “I’m fine, and you clearly won. I’m going to head up and use the restroom. I don’t suppose there’s a chess set on the premises?”
* * * *
Ryan
She’d beat me, fair and square, but most fights happen quickly and then they’re over with, and I wasn’t sure whatever was inside me that needed to know which of us would win in a fight was going to be satisfied with this.
Or, maybe it would, because if I was human, the bones in my hand would be in pieces. She’d unequivocally won, but still…
Would a few games of chess head us in the right direction? I still felt as if we needed something fast, to challenge each other when speed and reflexes were needed, but I couldn’t think of a way to do it without things getting dangerous. Under no circumstances did I want to have to strike out and hit Etta.
She was seated at a table not far from the restrooms when I came out, a glass of beer on the table in front of an empty seat. I assumed, when I’d first met her, she meant to be histrionic when she dramatically posed, rather than merely sat, but I’ve come to understand that’s probably not the case. It’s just who she is and how she looks.
I took a seat and downed most of the glass in front of me. I wanted water, but beer would do. Also, it was a statement of trust. I rarely consume food or drink provided to me by the supernatural community.
“We can hit up an open-all-night restaurant and then head to TBC,” Etta told me. “We have a chess set I can take to my office. The kitchen’ll be closed by the time we arrive, or I’d offer to feed you there. We should decide on which rules we’ll use.”
“Traditional rules,” I told her. “The new ones decided on for tournament play in twenty-one don’t sit well with me.”
“I’m fine either way, so long as we decide ahead of time and we’re in agreement.” She ran a tress of her hair through her fingers, thoughtful. “I don’t suppose you know how to play ping-pong?”
And there it was — the perfect way to test our reflexes. You can’t hit the ball too hard or you’ll crush it, so it’s a contest that requires speed, accuracy, and more than a little temperance.
“I do, and thank you for thinking of the perfect avenue for us to test our reflexes, speed, and control against each other.”
“The conference center is currently rented out, or I’d order a table set up for us over there.”
I shook my head. I needed a week or two of practice before I engaged in a competition. “Not tonight. Let’s play chess, and we’ll figure out a time and place for our ping-pong match.”
“I’m curious. Are slayers born with strong shields, or is it something you must learn?”
I lifted an eyebrow and considered what I could tell her. “It’s likely you’ll meet some acolytes if I take you to my home, possibly some teens. Being born into the family doesn’t mean you’ll be an active Slayer. Many of our kind are better suited to working behind the scenes. If you probe, and I know you’ll have to do so a little, but I hope you keep it to the bare minimum, but when you do, you’ll discover there are natural shields as well as the ones we’ve been trained to hold.”
“Acolytes? Not apprentices?”
“Attendants? Aides? Helpers? I suppose there’s a newer word for them, but it’s the one we use. I have a slew of people backing me up — making transportation arrangements, keeping track of the bugs and cameras I place, hacking into all the devices I need to snoop into, and just generally making my life easier so I can do my job.”
“And how do you handle…” She looked around, and the guard at the top of the stairs stepped outside, though the eagle slave she’d recently acquired remained on his knees, where he’d been since I entered the room.
“He won’t hear us,” she assured me. “Slayers have to kill to keep from aging. How do you keep your aides alive?”
The truth is, Slayer society is a little brutal, but millennia of experimentation have shown there is no perfect solution, only the one that allows us to stay strong. This means a tightly controlled percentage of our aides and analysts are brought someone to kill every month. Our children compete heavily to try to make it into the Slayer ranks, or to be one of our top analysts, so they can be assured of opportunities to keep themselves alive.
Roughly forty percent of our children pass the tests that allow them to go out into the field. Sometimes thirty, sometimes sixty, but over time, around forty percent. About twenty percent of active Slayers die in their first five years. If they make it past five years, they’ll likely last decades.
Allowing only our Slayers and the top thirty percent of our support staff to be long-lived keeps our towns and our gene pool strong. A town full of long-lived beings stops having children, which means we stop getting new Slayers, and I’m told this was almost disastrous during the Holy Wars. Slayer numbers were decimated, and it took decades to bring us back strong enough we could stand up to the Concilio once again.
But this means two-thirds of our support staff live a normal human lifespan. Can you imagine the stress of your yearly job performance evaluation when the outcome defines whether you’ll age the following year or not?
“I hope to be able to talk to you about my family of choice, but it isn’t possible for me to do so now.”
She nodded. “I understand, and I apologize for not asking the question I truly want an answer to. I was a coward.” She met my gaze, and we’d both taken our sunglasses off, so I kept mine as relaxed as possible. “Will I be able to pick up more of what’s in your head if I drink from you, and if so, how much more? I feel certain you and your friend have had these conversations.”
