Upon leaving the bar, Kiri was faced with an unusual predicament. Although she easily found several inns in the vicinity, all of them had large “No Vacancy” signs in the windows. If she’d known a little bit more about Blowin, she would have known that it was graduation weekend at the university, but all Kiri knew was that she had a drunk angel sitting with Derek and Tomlyn on a bench waiting for her to return with news of a place to stay.
Finally, after almost an hour of searching, she found a rundown little motel with no sign in the window. The door creaked when she pushed it open, the one dim light bulb illuminating the room with a flickering, rather eerie glow. It felt like the kind of place designed for murderers and illicit dealings. Needless to say, Kiri felt right at home. She strode straight up to the counter and rang the bell. A great sound of creaking came from beyond the single dark opening in the wall, and eventually an old man just as decrepit as the motel itself hobbled out. “C’n ah help yuh?” he wheezed.
“Got some rooms?” Kiri asked.
“Got a room. Jes’ one. Big’un, though. Suite. Two beds ‘n a couch.” He squinted at her through a pair of glasses so dirty she was astonished he could see anything at all, much less her face.
“That’ll do, gimme the key,” she snapped, dropping two gold pieces on the counter - the price listed on the board mounted on the wall behind the desk. The old man pottered around for a moment, scrawling something in a large binder then rummaging around in a drawer. Finally, he dropped a grubby key attached to a ragged oval of plastic with the number “215” scrawled on it in front of her.
“There y’go. Check out’s at noon t’morra’” he muttered at her, then turned and pottered away into the back room. Kiri quickly snagged the key and dropped it in her pocket then took off, jogging back down the street to the bench where the other three sat. Or rather, slept, as they had all ended up napping leaning against each other. She set about waking them up and getting them moving, and before long they were all piling through the door of their “suite” for the night. It barely deserved the name. It did have two beds - twin size, one against each wall of the bedroom, with a window in between. In the main room was a ratty old couch, a fireplace covered in ash, and a table. Other than that, and a small, primitive bathroom, that was it.
Renee crashed on the couch before they had even finished looking around. Tomlyn volunteered for the floor, leaving Derek and Kiri to take the two beds. All four of them were asleep within ten minutes, the long day and good food taking its toll. The assorted snores soon filled the rooms.
Kiri woke up in the middle of the night with the absolute and utter knowledge that something was not right. She wasn’t sure if it was a sound or a smell or just instinct, but she knew that someone was in the room with them. Multiple someones. Carefully and quietly, she slid her hand down the bed to the holster at her hip. She thanked the gods above that she hadn’t even bothered getting undressed or getting under the covers before falling asleep. It made releasing her revolver from its holster and into her grip relatively easy and quiet. She cracked her eyes open and pinpointed the location of the closest shadowy figure. It was standing over Tomlyn with its blade drawn.
In one smooth movement, she lurched upright and fired off two shots, hitting the intruder squarely in the back. He went down with a grunt, and she swung her head around to look for the other. The noise of the gunshots had awoken Tomlyn, who scrambled for his pack, presumably to get his weapons. The second intruder backed into the room, struggling, because he was carrying a bound and gagged Derek. She was about to shoot at him when a hand snagged her foot and yanked it out from under her and a sword lashed across her arm, opening up a long, shallow gash that made her hiss with the pain. Apparently there was a third intruder. The one who’d grabbed her foot, though, was the one she’d shot earlier, which confused her. Within seconds, he was back on his feet and helping his friend carry Derek out the window. She fired at him again and missed, then had to stop for fear of hitting Derek.
Tomlyn stood up in one motion and threw something at the intruder with the sword. It flew through the air with a whistling noise and wrapped itself around the man’s torso and arms. Once it stopped moving she could see what it was - a boleadoras, a long chain with two small but heavy metal balls on each end, designed to do exactly what it had just done. With him immobilized, his sword clattering to the floor, Kiri ducked around him and ran for the window just as the last intruder ducked through the window, seconds faster than her wild grab at him. Her face an angry mask, she whirled around and stuck her gun in the bound intruder’s face.
“Where. Did. They. Go!” she said quietly, dangerously. Derek was her crew. You did not. Mess. With her crew! So it only made her angrier when the man’s only response was to spit on her gun, which she proceeded to jam under his chin. “Tell me, and I’ll consider killing you quickly.”
He remained silent. She pulled her gun back, stood up straight, pointed her gun at his kneecap and fired. He let out a strangled shout of pain. “You tell me where they took him, or you lose more joints.” A part of her mind knew that she was being cruel, probably even too cruel, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. The bastards had broken into their room with no provocation, and abducted a member of her crew, one of her friends. Friends were a rare enough thing for Kiri that she tended to value them above just about everything but her own life.
A hand was laid on her shoulder and she spun around, gun at the ready, only to find it was just Tomlyn.
“Easy there, do you really need to maul him like that?” he said in a perfectly reasonable tone. It only ticked her off more.
“Yes. I do. I will shoot him until he tells us where they took Derek!” She was almost shouting now, aware of the fact that she was probably disturbing the hotel’s other guests, and also aware that she really did not care.
“Kiri, I’m a hunter. I track people for a living, it’s what I do. Stop shooting him, we’ll leave him here for the authorities, and I’ll help you find Derek.” He really was trying to calm her down and help her think logically, but that was the last thing Kiri wanted to do. Still, it didn’t seem like the intruder was going to talk. Even after being shot in what she knew full well was one of the single most painful places to take a bullet, he was still managing to glare at her. She stared at him for a long, thoughtful moment, then cocked her pistol again. Before Tomlyn could stop her, she shot him clean in the head.
“What did you do that for?!” he yelled, grabbing her gun and pulling it towards him, although she refused to let go. “He was no threat, he was unarmed, and bound! You had no right, no need to shoot him!”
Kiri just looked at him. “And leave a witness? Really? No, he was a liability, had to be taken care of.” In her anger, her voice was clipped, short, without any of her usual drawl. “Now, you said you would help me. I am going to wake Renee up. When I get back, you had better have a lead.” Without waiting for a reply, she walked angrily into the other room. Renee was still snoring on the couch, utterly oblivious to the chaos of the past ten minutes. How she’d slept through the gunshots, Kiri had no idea, but the proof was clear. Kiri was not one to be intimidated, and grabbed Renee’s arm and dragged her up into a sitting position, then onto her feet.
Renee awoke with a vague mutter of “Don’t wanna get the corner office, boss…”
Kiri didn’t even want to know. “C’mon, kid. We’re going. Some bastards decided it would be a good idea to kidnap Derek, so we’re going to get him back.” Renee was clearly not awake yet, as she responded only with a huge yawn, and a sigh that sounded vaguely like “Caffeine…”
Kiri groaned and quickly started a pot of cheap and crappy hotel coffee brewing - fortunately it was the five-minute kind. She took the chance to pack her few belongings and visit the restroom, by which time Tomlyn was also ready, and Renee looked a good deal more alert after drinking half the pot of coffee. Thus prepared, Kiri led the intrepid trio out of the hotel, taking only a moment to drop the key off at the desk, then around to below where there hotel room was, then she turned to Tomlyn. “Alright. Where’s the lead you promised me?”
He took a moment to walk around the area, eyes fixated on the ground, taking slow, deep breaths. Just at the point where Kiri was beginning to feel impatient, his head jerked up. “Gotcha! Footprint here, thread caught on that thorn, they went towards the beach!” And with that, he took off at a slow jog, leaving the two girls to follow behind him. They ran through the empty streets together, Tomlyn zigzagging as he followed the sparse signs of the intruders’ passage. In several places they saw clear drag marks, signs that Derek was still with them. After a while of running, during which time seemed to blend into one long blur, they finally reached the sand of the beach. Just in time to see the last hint of a boat disappearing into the darkness towards Lumo Bay, three figures just barely visible in it. If any of them had bothered to look up, they would have seen a strange sight - an angel, wings flapping frantically, carrying a cat through the air, after the boat. But none of them looked up.
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