The Talent was a little shitbird, but he's also not a liar.

I can feel myself learn faster, heal faster, endure stress better. The spear I took from the farmhouse - strange abilities have awoken in it, and they give me a confidence I did not have before. I feel like the Highlander when he discovered his Quickening - and I have contacts now who have experienced the same.

It is time to plan something big.

The first step requires the acquisition of a new identity - someone useful, the kind of face I can get a delivery truck registered to. Lavaz gave me a good target - some rich white douchebag who spends his money golfing and probably buying indulgences from his local church so he can keep his Venezuelan chocolate slaves or whatever the fuck. She's a viper, that woman, but I will put up with her for now. I should have the liquid assets to pay her fees once I take him out anyways.

I met a colleague on the job - I don't know who he works for or what his real name is, but he's a man after my own heart and just as paranoid as me. I introduced myself as Eowyn, and he as Merry, and between the two of us the job went a la mode. Stuck around and had a dinner the next day and got to attend the Pensacola Yule Armory Convention, which was a good way to unwind after an assassination. I got his number - once I get a new phone, I'll have to contact him.

Speaking of people I will need to contact, I should reach out to Blanche when I can - that creepy ass doctor has very, very smooth skin, and they let me do all sorts of things I wanted to to pay me back for how the farmhouse job went. Good taste in restaurants too, and they make the cutest noises, just like a pigeon.

Damn.

I need to get laid more often.

Maybe after I turn the world's biggest muskrat into a grease stain on a concrete block.

This contract business is addicting. New powers, new capabilities, new avenues - it's like a high that never ends, a train that can only get faster. New power flows through me - biblical power, the power to bind oaths on the stones of Hell itself. It's exhilarating - I don't know if God or Lucifer or anybody else is doing this for me or if I've simply found some way to tap into the nature of the universe, but wherever this comes from, I'm not going to squander it. My plans are coming along quickly - I have the trucks and the burner business, and I've made some headway with the Donna. We have a trial period - apparently her accountant wronged her somehow and she's been keeping him with some kind of lycanthrope as punishment, but it created the perfect opportunity for me to get a wedge in with the organization. I'm not where I want yet, but I've forged a covenant between Moreno and Lavaz written in blood in basalt diabolical. I have no doubt that soon, Donna Lavaz will come to understand what she could accomplish with these powers, and how little the price I ask truly is.

Soon, the tweetybird will tweet no longer, and hopefully those god-awful trucks will die with him.

I am extremely lucky that I know Blanche.

It was pretty opportune, all things considered - Cinder needed my help with something but wouldn't tell me what until I got up there. Turns out she wanted me to take out the head of some gang which has her under their thumb; I'd have done it, but she wasn't willing to talk price, so it wound up being a moot point.

What was not a moot point was who just happened to be staying with Cinder at the time: Blanche.

Blanche is... extremely, extremely capable.

Being down an eye is not ideal, but it is a lesson, and it's something I can compensate for.

Being down a hand? Being down a hand is a problem - one, it turns out, Blanche can fix.

We went on... I think it was a date? I'm not sure - but it ended with a dead neonazi, a new hand, and the best night I've had in recent memory, and all I had to pay for it was the promise of my spare time. Blanche has some sort of obsession with me, it seems - they're willing to help me at next to no cost. More than willing - eager.

Blanche might be my favorite person now.

It's a start - it's a fucking hell of a start, but it is a start.

Blanche got themselves into serious trouble with the Silver Cross - thank fuck we saved that pilot, Elijah, and that he got me there in time. I got to witness something truly horrifying - a parasite that made me trust easy. It was horrible - a violation of the worst kind, but it got me what I wanted: Blanche safe, and opened a door for me to form a lasting relationship with the Cross. Funny how the world works, that the truest and most faithful Catholic I have ever met now tends the wounds of a servant of the Adversary. They confirmed the boba monster isn't growing as well, which is always nice.

I also met with Trinity - I... misread her, but we're still collaborators, at least for now. I thought she was an idealist, like me - that her need to kill the false kings and lying prophets burning the world for cash was to save humanity from their jaws, but she's more short sighted than that: she wants revenge. I suppose that's understandable; I forget the privilege of others, sometimes. I forget they cannot understand the way I understand, cannot accept the brutal necessity of what must be done; cannot accept that in order for a new world to be born, the old one must burn before Apocalypse that the reckoning may come to pass and Eden be restored. She provided a safehouse and she provided contacts, and the trade was a favor - that I use my Gift in her service. She didn't even need me to seal the bargain with an oath, which was a surprising relief.

It is a start. I am meeting others - perhaps not always like minded, but at least aligned. Blanche. Trinity. Are they friends? Perhaps - Blanche certainly more than Trinity, but I hope that I can call Trinity friend too, someday.

It is comforting that though my role is to walk the path of Darkness, to console the Devil in His necessary torment, that I too am not denied the comfort of companions.

It is comforting to have friends.

Humans are such horrible, terrible, pitiful, broken animals. 

We are so vulnerable - weak, thin, easily broken. It is not hard to kill us - we don’t have claws or tough hides, we don’t have quills or protective layers of fur and hair. Our bones are easy enough to break that we don’t even need tools to do it, if you know the right trick. We are cursed - it is no surprise we were cast out of Eden, no surprise that the Creator turned His back on His hideous creation. 

But that is not the most damning of our flaws.

It is strange to watch a sleeper - the only time anybody is honest is when they are asleep, and then that is a stolen honesty. It feels a violation: who am I to rob them of that privacy, to steal a glance at their soul when they have no opportunity to hide it where it is safe? It is damnable, to play voyeur; it is no coincidence that the forbidden fruit is synonymous with the naked form.

And yet, I watch.

There is a peacefulness to them, when they sleep - the manic energy, the artistic brilliance that makes their pale skin glow is gone now, replaced by a gentle stillness so… uncharacteristic. The rise and fall of their chest mirrors the delicate slope of their nose, their jaw, replacing the edge they hold in their cheekbones. There is more muscle than before - I can trace the lines under their skin, and I understand now where the painter finds the beauty of a curve. They are so still - almost deathlike, in sleep. I’m sure they would appreciate the comparison, even though I find it frightens me now in ways I do not understand.

And yet, they are not dead. 

They are so very alive.

Their breath comes hot against my hand when I hold their face, and their little snores break the silence of the silk upon the bed. They are vital and pulsing and alive, and I cannot help but to throw myself into the jaws of perdition for but a taste of their warmth. It is selfish, what I do; childish and weak, but I am as helpless to resist as a moth fed to a flame. What else could I do but to steal their warmth? To press my body against theirs and let their gentle heat ebb into mine and banish the memory of how they were before? Banish the memory of the cold if I had been a day, an hour, a minute later? 

I am so grateful that I did not let Blanche go cold.

I do not know what Eddie would be without their warmth.