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“What did you mean?” Karen asks over the rim of her coffee mug, the scent and steam of hot roast thick on her tongue as she inhales. Blade makes a sound in the back of his throat that she translates as a request for clarification. Either that, or to indicate that he has better things to do than entertain the vague query. The hunter is currently sat on his bent knees, sword laid across his lap as he runs a piece of cloth along the body of its blade in long strokes. Pieces of used sandpaper lay scattered off to the side along with a bottle of oil.
“You said it’s the way they move, that’s how you can tell the difference.” There’s no need to qualify ‘they’, the great big indefinite pronoun for the cloud that hangs over their lives. Karen’s world shook loose of all sense when Quinn took a bite out of Curtis, and sometimes if she stops for a moment she can still feel it moving under her feet. Blade finally spares her a glance, hands stilling against the sword. Even in what passes for sacred space, packing up and moving their lives around in duffels, the sunglasses remain perched on his nose. They come off for every visit to her lab for a dose of the new and improved serum, the need for injections farther and fewer between than they ever were before. It makes the way he thrashes and seizes easier to bear.
Sometimes Karen wonders if the shades are to keep the outside world from him, or to keep him from the outside world. Her mama once told her that the eyes had plenty to say when the tongue failed. His were a scroll of hurts and hardship, sharp strokes in blood spilled and the many names taken. No regrets but the few for himself, shared only by the one witness to both. When Karen looked, she saw them reflected back at her, the weight of a burden and a privilege. Trust and coincidence. That was being his friend.
“They walk with confidence. The kind that can’t be faked. No scared, small little boys and girls to find when you strip it back.” His hand stills against the sword, surface gleaming to near-perfect polish. Meditative pace broken only briefly before he’s back at it again. “They know the prey’s stupid enough that they’ll walk away from anything it can throw at them.”
“So I was stupid?” The line between playful curiosity and offense was as fine as that which etched the sword the Daywalker wields.
“Call it ignorance.” His tone tells her that she can call it what she likes, because it’s the closest thing to course-correction that he’ll indulge for the conversation of the world of the surface and the one below it; the real one. “You know better now.”
She hides her smile in another sip of coffee.