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The job itself wasn’t any different from usual; a group of three men were standing in front of who was obviously their leader, which also made him Caelus’s target. Two switchblades out and pointed at him, one crowbar, the outline of a gun still in its holster, and if he squinted he could see the tiny pistol the leader was trying to hide in his palm. Nobody had moved for several heartbeats, four pairs of hostile eyes staring down one pair of bored golden ones, until Caelus sighed and lifted his bat to rest on his shoulder.
“Can we get this over with? I’d like to go home.”
One of the men spat. “Like we’d let you leave here,” he snarled, shifting his stance to wield his switchblade lower. Caelus watched him carefully. It was four against one, and if he got hurt Dan Heng would lecture him for hours.
Best to end this quickly.
“Sorry about this,” he muttered. With a deep sigh, he reached back and pulled the hood of his jacket up over his head and closed his eyes.
Maybe it was fear, maybe it was stupidity, maybe it was the deep gut feeling that if they didn’t attack this lone boy now they would die; one man sprinted forward, hand darting out in a quick strike, straight for Caelus’s jugular. It was decisive, no hesitation, no fear of killing him – these men had ended up on Dan Heng’s radar for a reason, after all.
He never made it.
A hand snapped up, too fast to be seen, and caught his wrist in a vice grip. Twice Caelus’s size, and he couldn’t budge; his grip was too strong. His eyes darted between the hold and Caelus’s face, bewildered, only to feel the blood drain out of his face when those eyes finally opened.
They were glowing, a radiant gold that actually lightened the alley around them, and his pupils had turned white. But that wasn’t why fear washed through the man’s veins like ice. No, the eyes were unfeeling, colder than dead, a sharp contrast to the lazy flamboyance that the boy had just moments earlier. Caelus just blinked at him, slow and uncaring.
And then he snapped his wrist.
The man went down with a howl, and his two friends jumped into action. A switchblade arced through the air to meet nothing, its target crouched low to the ground. He cocked his head slightly to the side, considering, then dashed forward past his attacker with an inhuman speed. A crowbar slammed down in front of him, but he pivoted, shifting his weight from a run into a spin. The man crumpled, the discarded switchblade Caelus had grabbed from the ground protruding from the side of his neck. Without looking, he took a step to the side, dodging the stab aimed at him from behind; one hand struck his outstretched wrist, forcing the second switchblade to drop. A catch and a flip, and the man’s own momentum impaled himself on his own blade.
The pistol was aimed at him.
It wasn’t that the man was hesitant; Caelus was just too fast, and his actions were like a captivating dance. One second he had the boy in his sight, the next he was a hair’s breadth away, glowing golden eyes staring directly into his own. He couldn’t help but flinch backwards, instincts screaming at him that this thing wasn’t human, but that was his mistake; in the extra space, Caelus had room to bring his arms up, swinging his bat around to meet his skull with a deafening crack. Target down, he continued his spin, sliding the stolen blade out of his sleeve and into his hand. He let his arm finish its rotation, flinging the blade into the stomach of the man with the broken wrist. Finally risen only to recrumple, the man only had a second to look up into Caelus’s hooded face before the bat came back around and his vision went dark.
Standing over the four bodies, golden eyes looked on with disinterest. With no wasted movements, he gathered the men’s weapons, stuffing them into his bag, and walked out of the alley with blood streaked down his face.
It wouldn’t be a problem.
It never was.
**
Dan Heng had never been a fan of these meetings. Oftentimes they devolved very quickly into acts of grandstanding, each one of the smaller group leaders trying to prove themselves to him in the loudest way possible. This one was wearing on his patience rather spectacularly, and he could feel his tail twitch in irritation even as he kept his expression impassive.
He wished Caelus were here; the blond always kept things entertaining, even if it often was in the most frustrating ways.
As if responding to his thoughts, the door to the meeting room slammed open, cutting off the latest brag halfway through. Every head turned toward the disturbance, only to be greeted by the blood-spattered and hooded figure of Caelus. Without a word, Caelus tossed his bag to the side of the room, letting the blood-soaked weapons within clatter to the floor. This, coupled with Caelus’s hidden expression, was enough of a deterrent for most of the people in the room; the crime lord’s deadly right hand was hardly a secret, after all, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that this man exuding a dangerous aura shouldn’t be trifled with.
Yet a voice rang out, bruised ego apparently outweighing any common sense. “You idiot, can’t you tell you’re interrupting an important meeting?” Caelus’s footsteps stopped midstride, already halfway to Dan Heng’s seat at the head of the table. “Imbibitor Lunae, are all of your subordinates as ill-mannered as this?”
Dan Heng didn’t bother interjecting; Caelus reached up slowly and pushed the edge of his hood down, turning his gaze even more slowly to the speaker. Stellaron-bright eyes, unfeeling, stared at the man over his shoulder for several heartbeats. A cold air settled over the room, and the man’s mouth snapped shut even as his smarter neighbor tugged at his arm, forcing him to sit down.
Apparently satisfied, Caelus turned back around, eyes fixed solely on the one at the end of the table. Dan Heng gave him a small nod and, faster than anyone could blink, the killer who had been stalking through the room was curled into a ball on Imbibitor Lunae’s lap, arms wrapped around his waist and face buried in his shoulder. Rather than reprimanding him, as a few in the room may have expected, Dan Heng’s arms came up to wrap around the other in return, his chin resting on his head.
The glare he leveled at the room spoke loud enough.
“Caelus,” he murmured. When all he got was a hum in response, he sighed, bringing up a hand to card gently through Caelus’s hair, uncaring of the blood he encountered. It wasn’t Caelus’s, and that’s all that really mattered to him. “Why don’t you go find March, let her help you clean up?”
The rest of the room was quiet enough to hear a pin drop, so they could all hear the huff, followed by a petulant, “Don’t wanna.”
With a fond shake of his head, Dan Heng fixed his gaze on the others once more, eyes quickly switching from warm to cold and distant, even as he wrapped his arms more securely around the bundle in them. “You may continue, but make it brief.”
The smaller group leaders glanced between each other; were any of them brave enough to question it, let alone interrupt? It seemed not; one by one, they bowed their heads in respect to the horned man at the end of the room and made their own ways out.
The relationship between the crime lord and his right hand was a strange one indeed.