Lust Meter System: Conquering Beauties

The street had settled into the kind of quiet that only arrived after midnight when the city had finally stopped pretending it was still doing something productive.

A few cars passed at intervals, their headlights sweeping across the pavement and moving on.

Someone’s window was open two floors up and music was coming out of it, low enough that it blended into everything else rather than standing above it.

Liam walked with his hands in his pockets, moving at the easy unhurried pace of someone who had somewhere to be but wasn’t in a rush to get there.

Then his phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out and looked at the screen without breaking stride.

*Shay~ This man is testing every nerve I have left. I genuinely want to wrap both hands around his throat and hold there until something changes.*

Liam read it twice.

Then he smiled. A real one, small and genuine, arriving without him deciding to produce it.

’Shay has found himself another Iggy,’ he thought, putting the phone back in his pocket. ’The universe keeps delivering him the same type of person and he keeps being surprised by it. Some things never change.’

He kept walking.

The smile was still sitting on his face when something crossed his vision.

Fast. Low. Coming from the left.

The smile was still on his face when he moved his head.

No thought behind it.

Just his body deciding something before his brain had any say in the matter, his head snapping back sharply, and something passed directly in front of his face close enough that he heard it cut through the air.

He tracked it as it went.

A dagger. Spinning slightly, the blade catching the streetlight once, and then it hit the wall to his right and embedded itself there with a sound like something being cut short.

The handle vibrated.

Liam stood completely still and looked at it.

He stayed like that for a moment. Looking at the dagger in the wall. At where it had come from relative to where his head had been half a second ago.

Then he turned his head slowly toward the alley to his left.

It was the kind of alley that existed purely because two buildings hadn’t quite touched each other when they went up. Narrow.

The streetlight reached the first meter of it and then gave up entirely, the rest of it just dark, the specific texture of dark that wasn’t empty.

A figure was standing in it.

Not moving.

Just standing, somewhere in the part of the alley where the light didn’t reach, the shape of them present but without detail. No face visible. No features. Just the outline of a person standing in the dark looking at him.

Liam looked back at it.

Neither of them moved.

The street continued doing what it was doing behind him.

The music from the open window two floors up kept playing. A car passed at the end of the block and its headlights swept across the mouth of the alley and did nothing to illuminate what was inside it.

"You could have killed me with that," He said it the way someone said it’s raining, observationally, like he was simply providing information to whoever might find it useful.

The figure said nothing.

It just kept standing there in the dark, looking at him, completely still in the way things were still when stillness was a choice rather than an accident.

Liam looked at it.

"Okay," he said.

He looked at the figure.

The figure looked at him.

’I can’t go rushing in there,’ he thought, his face staying exactly where it was while his jaw tightened beneath it. ’I might be able to sense danger but that doesn’t mean I’m fast enough to dodge or block whatever comes next.’ He kept his eyes on the outline of the figure.

He kept looking.

"So you’re not much of a talker," he said, his tone identical to before. Casual. The tone of someone making a mild observation about someone they had just met at a gathering. "That’s fine. I can work with that."

He paused.

"If you’re not going to say anything or do anything though, can you at least stop throwing sharp things at me." He tilted his head slightly. "It’s a reasonable request. I don’t think I’m asking for much."

The figure looked at him.

Then it turned.

And started walking deeper into the alley, moving away from him, the shape of it dissolving steadily into the dark, step by step, until there was nothing left to look at.

Liam watched it go.

Something moved in his chest that wasn’t quite anger and wasn’t quite alarm but lived close to both of them.

"Are you the gang killer?" he said, raising his voice just enough to carry.

The figure stopped.

It didn’t turn around. Didn’t adjust its posture. Didn’t do anything that acknowledged the question in any visible way. Just stopped, standing in the dark with its back to him, completely still.

Liam watched it.

A second passed. Then two. The music from the window above continued. The street behind him stayed quiet. The dagger in the wall to his right had stopped vibrating.

The figure started walking again.

Liam moved.

He closed the distance fast and quietly, his feet finding the pavement without announcing themselves, his arm coming up and his fist driving forward at the space where the figure’s head should have been.

But, his fist went through nothing.

Not dodged in the way people dodged when they saw something coming and moved away from it.

The figure simply wasn’t there anymore, the space it had occupied completely empty, the how and where of its movement swallowed entirely by the dark of the alley.

Liam pulled his arm back and stood at the mouth of the alley looking into it.

Nothing.

No sound of footsteps. No rustle of clothing. No shadow moving against the far wall. Just the dark and the smell of the alley and the distant city carrying on behind him.

’That was faster than last time,’ he thought, standing there. ’Last time I had at least something to read, some edge of the movement I could track. This time there was nothing. He was gone before the punch was halfway through its arc.’

He straightened up.

"You think you can take me like last time?" The voice arrived from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, deep and unhurried, each word carrying its own weight, the voice of someone who had never once felt the need to raise it to be understood.

Liam turned his head, trying to locate a direction. Got nothing useful.

"Yeah," he said. "I think I can." He looked at the dark. "Stop hiding in there and come out and we can find out right now." A pause. "Stop being a bitch about it."

Silence.

Then, from a completely different direction than before: "Oh. You think so."

Liam turned.

Stiles was standing on the pavement.

Same suit sitting precisely on his shoulders.

Same two-toned hair, the white sitting clean on top and the light green showing at the sides, the two colors deliberate against each other. Same thin-framed glasses. Same expression that wore mild amusement as its default setting and rarely needed to shift far from it.

He was standing with his hands loose at his sides, looking at Liam with the smile that Liam had come to understand meant he was exactly where he had decided to be.

"Hi Liam," he said pleasantly. "I told you your admirer was persistent."

Something cut through the air.

A dagger landed in the pavement directly in front of Stiles’s right foot, the blade driving into the concrete cleanly, the handle standing straight up and vibrating from the impact, the whole thing arriving between one second and the next with no warning.

Stiles looked down at it.

He looked at the handle vibrating an inch from his shoe.

Then he looked back up with the expression of a man who had noted the information and filed it away without much emotional response.

"I told you," the voice said from the dark, closer now, the patience in it considerably thinner than before, "to stay out of this."

"I can’t have you two killing each other before the main event," Stiles said, addressing the darkness with the reasonable tone of someone explaining something that should have been obvious from the beginning.

"I don’t care," the voice said.

Liam looked at Stiles. "So you’re working with him."

Stiles turned to him immediately, his expression shifting into something that looked genuinely put upon. "Working with him?" He gestured toward the darkness with one hand. "He just put a dagger next to my foot. Why would I be working with someone who throws daggers at me."

Liam looked at him for a moment. "You seem like someone who’d enjoy that."

Stiles opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Looked at Liam.

"Okay," he said finally, and smiled. "You might be right."

"Tell him." The voice, flat and final now, the last of its patience gone. "Tell him now or I’m going to stop waiting and attack him myself."

"Hold on," Stiles said, raising one hand toward the darkness with the calm of someone managing a situation. "One moment please."

He straightened his jacket lapel with two fingers and looked at Liam directly. The smile had settled into something more business-like.

"I want you to fight in my arena," he said. "We’ve had this conversation before."

"And I gave you my answer before," Liam said.

"He’s not going to accept that answer," Stiles said. He said it without heat, without edge, the way someone said a simple fact about the way things were. "And to make clear how serious he’s mean that, well our friend already made a statement with killing some of your gang members." He paused, holding Liam’s gaze. "He told me he would continue. Starting, I believe, with someone closer to you. A police woman, I think he said."

The street was quiet.

The music from the window two floors up was still playing.

Something happened in Liam’s jaw.

The muscle in it worked once, tightening, and his eyes found Stiles and stayed there with a quality that had nothing easy in it anymore, nothing casual, nothing of the tone he had been carrying since the dagger in the wall.

"If he touches her," Liam said, his voice arriving low and completely even, carrying everything it needed to without being raised even slightly, "I’ll kill him. And then I’ll come for you."

Stiles looked at him. Something moved behind his glasses that wasn’t quite satisfaction and wasn’t quite concern but was aware of both.

"So we’re in agreement then," he said.

"We’re not in agreement," Liam said. "I need to talk to someone first. Before I commit to anything."

Stiles studied him for a moment. Then he nodded, one small precise nod, the nod of someone who respected a specific kind of answer even when it wasn’t the one they had come for.

"I respect that," he said.

He turned, adjusted his jacket one final time with both hands, and started walking away down the pavement. "Goodbye, Liam," he said, without looking back, his voice carrying easily in the quiet street.

"See you soon."

The second voice. Closer than it had been. Much closer. Close enough that the air near Liam’s right shoulder felt like it had recently been occupied by something that had chosen not to act on the proximity.

Then nothing.

Just the street. Just the cool air. Just the quiet.

Liam stood there.

He looked at the dagger still embedded in the pavement where Stiles had been standing. At the wall to his right where the first one had gone in. At the empty alley ahead of him that had no one in it now and no trace of anyone having been there.

’I have to let her know, I can’t keep my promise’ Liam thought to himself.

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