Chapter 18

“So, we’re going to a safe house?” I asked. My side was ‘healed’, but still bothering me. I could only imagine what Mace felt like.

“That’s for TV and movie spies. Now that I’m sure we weren’t followed, we just need to keep moving and make a contact.” He replied, walking fast enough to surprise me. “Tourist places are best, but we need to clean you up again and blend in first.”

Mace found another generic store, and bought another change of clothes. Mace paid cash again (a rarity itself these days) and we carried it all away, slipping into our new duds and trashing our old ones. Mace still looked huge but kinda funny in a dark blue ribbed turtleneck with grey slacks, but probably no worse than I looked in a soft cream v-neck sweater with brown chords.

“Couldn’t you find anything a bit more...”

“Butch?” He finished for me. “They didn’t have any anything in your size in the men’s section.”

I flipped him off and was left to stew on that one. (I’d never admit it aloud, but that sweater is still one of my favourites. Recognizing real 100% cashmere by feel, I get a lot of ladies fingering it and asking where I found it, then being very impressed when I reply that I got it in ‘a little shop in the south of Paris.)

We walked back towards downtown, catching yet another town bus on the way. Getting off that bus, I followed Mace into the crowd headed toward the train station. We bought some coffees and sat down, Mace casting around for something and me staying quiet, trying to look bored. Eventually Mace stood up, and approached a fellow who just put away his phone. He’d been talking in English just a moment ago.

Mace spoke to him a little bit, coping a rueful look. A moment later, the guy took a pink coloured bill from Mace, and passed over his phone. Mace punched in a string of numbers from memory, and faked a conversation with his sister.

“Let’s go...” he prodded my foot when he returned to our seats. We walked slowly to the car rental area and then past it to the arrivals area drop-off. “Here.” He passed me a wallet. “I’m going to greet my ‘sister’ and get in the car. We’re going to drive off and I’ll be back here in the same car in ten minutes. Find a place to watch from and if I don’t arrive alone; run. There’s an address in the wallet, and a bunch of cash. Take back all the healing potions but one. Take all the Silver while you’re at it, I’ll want mine back later though!

I did as asked and slowed to look at a rack of tourist pamphlets. From the corner of my eye, I watched him greet a woman at the curb with a hug and two cheek-kisses that managed not to look forced, before getting into the passenger seat.

After using the john, I made my way to the multi-story car park and found a place I could watch the arrivals area for a grey Vauxhall sedan.

There were a lot of those things, or other shitty little sedans that look like them. Names and brands I’d heard of but never seen before. Not a single pickup truck or sport utility vehicle to be seen.

I eventually saw Mace standing (alone) outside a grey car that could have been the one he drove off in. The passenger seat was empty, and if there was anyone in the back seat, they were lying down. Hustling down the stairs, I climbed into the back seat just as Mace was finishing his argument with a thin black guy in a blaze-orange vest. I guessed that they wanted him to move-on. Mace stepped around the hood, firing off one last comment in French that was way too fast for me to catch, but the vest-guy looked appalled.

“Making friends?” I asked innocently, once we were out of the loop and back on a major road.

“I’ve been shot, and on the run all fucking day. I’ve had enough of the French ‘welcome’ to last me a while. That turd was just doing his job, but I’d already had it when he asked me to ‘move along or be ticketed’. Mace explained. His voice was low and even but I could hear the deep fatigue. He was running on fumes.

“Can we pick something up?” I asked, as much for him as for me.

“What ya’ have in mind?” He drawled, trying out my own accent. “Not a lot of burger places or drive-thru chicken joints here.”

“Don’t care, just need calories. You do too. I have no idea what’s in all that magic stuff we took today, but I’m starvin’ all of a sudden”. I replied.

“Right...” he grunted, but it was another five minutes or more before he pulled over at a generic corner store. Climbing back into the car a few minutes later he passed back a brown paper bag with a giant breadstick poking out of the top.

“Couldn’t you find anything more ... cooked?” I asked as I rummaged through the bag, finding the other end of the bread, a small wheel of smelly cheese, another big slice of some harder (but less smelly) cheese as well as a couple apples, hands of grapes, and a bottle of wine.

“Fast-food: French version!” He laughed. I hadn’t heard him laugh in a long while. “I spent a month backpacking around Europe after my first stint. Bread and cheese brings back memories ... that and a bottle of cheap red wine”

I broke off a section of bread by hand, unwilling to bring out my knife and left bits of dried crust all over my pants and the back seat in general. A torn-out section of the soft cheese was smeared across it with my thumb. Sanitary? Not so much. Tasty? Yup!

I threw half of grapes over the back of the seat to Mace, he ate without comment but he had a funny look on his face as he popped grapes into his mouth from the small bunch in his hand.

“Sandy and I would have bread and cheese for lunch most days. A bottle of wine, or just a wine bottle refilled with water to drink ... ahh it was f’n perfect. Sandy had taken a bunch of art-history courses before joining up. I basically got a private tour of most places we went, Sandy narrating as we walked along; bags on backs and mostly drunk. Let me tell you, those bags felt odd without the accompanying helmet on your head and a rifle strung across your chest”. He paused for a long while, letting the silence hang while he drove. “You ever think of signing on when you got outta school?”

I was surprised, as much by the question as by the personal history lesson.

“Wasn’t ever in my mind. We’ve no history in my family of service” I replied, just looking out the window, streets of low-rise and stand-alone housing whipping by as I chewed. “I mean, in the great-grandfather kinda range there were guys who served, but that was World War Two. Nobody since.”

“You could’ve gotten an education and then worked in your field for five years. You’d be almost out by now but you’d have a college or university degree without any debt, and a whole bunch of experience”. He droned on. Even to my ears it sounded like a pre-recorded sales pitch.

“Been practicing that speech haven’t you?” I retorted.

He smiled. “A little bit. Did I rush it? It felt like I rushed it.”

“No, it was good. I liked it...” I smiled. This guy had seen all the same movies that I’d seen.

“Most of the men in my family have served in one sort or another. My cousin is just finishing Highschool and he’s at loose ends. I was trying to talk him into signing up for a hitch. He’s the kinda guy that’ll be lead astray by his friends, and at least in the service he won’t wander too far.” Mace pontificated.

Personally, I failed to see how learning to kill a man a dozen ways in the army was better than running around having fun with your friends?

I’d been given exactly one conversation about what I was going to do after Highschool. Dad had nothing to say besides letting me know that there was no money available from him, his wife, or bio-mom. Having a cousin to talk about it would’ve been cool, yet I can’t recall a time I last reached out to any of mine. Coach had offered me a lifeline, and I’d just grabbed it.

“My job wasn’t all that bad. It had some serious fringe benefits!” I smiled.

“Yeah, not a lot of women in the service still.” He smiled, bright white teeth in the rearview mirror.

We were both silent for the next ten minutes or so, just chewing what was left of our impromptu meal.

“Can you tell me what the hell happened back there with that priest?” Mace suddenly asked again. I guess it had been bugging him since we left.

“Ever left a glass of beer you’d just ordered on the table and left the bar?” I asked, really not expecting an answer. “it felt like that, kinda. I knew that there was something he needed, something I needed, something unfinished there and I just passed him the Spear. It seemed right so I just rolled with it. Got me a new Title though.”

“‘Benediction’ doesn’t seem to fit in with ‘Betrayer’ very well.” He poked at me.

“Jesus! And you said my skill was scary! How much do you see?” I asked incredulously. This guy had total oversight of me, basically.

“How about we say that between the two of us, there isn’t a lot about a Weapon that we won’t know.” He put out.