Sarain opened her eyes to see Kit staring back at her. She must have sensed his eyes in her sleep; she didn’t like being stared at.
“Do you always watch people while they’re sleeping?” Sarain asked him.
“You were making a lot of noise. It woke me up, and when I came in here you were moving around,” Kit told her.
“Oh,” Sarain said realizing that she was drenched in sweat. She hadn’t been aware that she struggled in her sleep; it wasn’t really a surprise though. She sat up in bed. The air was cool against her damp skin. She looked at Kit who looked concerned.
He got up and sat on the edge of the bed then he asked, “Do you always go out hunting?”
“Yes,” Sarain simply replied.
“No wonder you have nightmares. Don’t you ever do anything for fun?” Kit questioned.
Sarain contemplated for a second and then answered, “No, I can’t relax and be happy knowing there’s something out there.”
“Have you always been like this?” he asked sounding genuinely interested.
The images of violence flashed in Sarain’s mind, “I have been for a long time, but no, not always,” she spoke trying to remember a better time.
“Hmm,” Kit grunted, then after a moment he asked, “Who’s Orran?”
“What?” Sarain said with surprise.
“You kept calling it out, you sounded really scared,” he relayed with worry.
Sarain didn’t want to tell Kit the whole truth, so she just responded with, “He was someone I knew a long time ago.”
“Is he dead?” Kit curiously asked; not showing any tact for Sarain’s feelings, but not trying to be mean either.
She nodded and replied, “Yes, he’s dead.”
“Sorry,” he said quickly.
After a few silent minutes went by, Sarain broke the quiet by asking, “Have you been sleeping okay otherwise?”
“Not really. I used to stay up and wait for Nate to come home, and we would talk about his day when I would try to go to sleep,” Kit answered.
“Sounds kind of like a bedtime story,” she observed.
“Maybe…” he looked at Sarain for a moment and said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What is up with the purple eyes?”
“Nothing, it’s the same reason yours are brown; I was just born that way,” she replied.
“It’s still weird. Like you have super powers or something,” Kit spoke thinking of his comics.
“There’s nothing I can do that can’t be trained,” she said before really thinking over all that she could do. She was a skilled fighter, that was a given; but she wasn’t a superhero, was she? Her clan had thought her eye color meant that she would one day be their savior, but it was obvious now that that could never happen. It was most likely a regular abnormality that had occurred in her like people who have albinism or chimeras - people who were two eggs that fused into one, that often give them two different DNA.
Still, Sarain’s job did make her stand out, and perhaps she was a bit of a hero, but yet she felt like she could do better, that she wasn’t tapping into her full potential. She felt weak and helpless, and hoped that there was more she could do.
She looked to Kit as she got up from bed and said, “Go ahead and lie down, I want to tell you about the time two demons had me trapped in an alley with only a line of barbed wire from a nearby fence to use as a weapon.”
It wasn’t long before Kit was fast asleep.
Sarain sat in the living room. Hours had gone by, but Kit was still deeply asleep in her bed. She contemplated what she should do about Winston. He was obviously well guarded, possibly by both vil sangs and humans. So it would be best to strike at him during daylight hours when he would be at his weakest. She figured since he ran The Purge, and was usually there until closing, which was just before dawn, then it was likely that it was somewhere there at the club that he slept. She doubted that he slept out in the open, but she hadn’t seen in the club where he could be staying. She would have to investigate the club during off hours to see if she could find something she may have missed before. This mission could be a very dangerous one. There appeared to be more vil sang activity there than she was use to. But dangerous or not, she couldn’t abandon her job, because the demon activity in this city wouldn’t go away until she stopped that club, and she wouldn’t let the possibility of death keep her from completing her mission. Only then would she know peace.
A little voice in the back of Sarain’s mind reminded her that she now had to take care of Kit. But demon hunting had always come first to her. That wasn’t going to change now, and Kit knew that. She also knew that she could never truly be a mother figure to him, and might not be able to fill the void of a sibling either, but she would still be more to him than she had growing up. This was all she could ever do.
Sarain decided that she wasn’t going to wait for Kit to wake up; she was going to head down to The Purge while there was still daylight out. She quickly suited up and slipped out the door without as much as a stir from Kit.
From the outside, the club looked empty, but Sarain didn’t want to chance an obvious break in through the front door. She climbed the fire escape instead, which led to the roof, but she didn’t recall seeing a second floor when she was inside. And she was right; access from the roof to the club had been cut off when the club had at some point been renovated, taking the second floor out to make a vaulted ceiling. She contemplated what she should do next; the front door was the only entrance or exit to the building, which was technically a fire safety hazard, but there was a lot about this club that wasn’t up to code. The one entrance was probably so that the occupants inside could keep an easier track on who came and went from the club, and it made a sneak attack nearly impossible.
Sarain looked around the roof top hoping to find anything that could possibly help her and noticed a rather large ventilation duct. The air ducts would have to be large to filter such a sizeable room below, and she did remember seeing ventilation ducts high above the dance floor that twisted their way down to the ground. It wouldn’t be an easy trip, and she would have to maneuver her way through some drops, but it would be her best chance of getting in without alerting anyone.
Sarain ripped off the outer screen on the duct, which kept the elements out, and climbed in feet first. If she was going to crawl around in such a tight fitting place, then she was likely to not have room to turn around, and with the drops she would have to make, she rather be dropping feet first than head first. But this meant that she would be crawling backwards through the ventilation.
There was a short drop right away in the duct soon after Sarain had entirely climbed in, but this wasn’t a problem. She surprisingly moved quickly and fairly silent through the ventilation. It was dark inside, and Sarain was without a light, but it didn’t take long for her eyes to adjust to the dark.
Sarain wasn’t sure what she was going to find at the end of all this, perhaps Winston’s resting spot, perhaps the resting spot of multiple vil sangs. If there were many, she would have to torch the place down; she couldn’t take on more than three at a time. If it were just Winston, she would kill him herself and continue to watch the club for the other vil sangs that frequented it. Now there was a chance that the occupants inside would be awake; vil sangs didn’t have to sleep during the day, but usually did since they were nocturnal, and needed their rest just like humans.
Sarain noticed that she was coming upon another drop. This, unlike the first one, would be a considerable drop; a few yards if she remembered right. As she approached it she held herself up and she swung her legs down, crossing them to fit and to use her feet to hold herself up. She crossed her arms as she edged her way down, and used pressure to keep herself from falling. First she would move her hands down, then her feet. She moved slowly, but safely. It took an incredible amount of arm and leg strength to do this, but things like this came naturally to Sarain. After a while, Sarain’s feet finally reached the bottom and she uncrossed her legs. She dropped down and backed into the next stretch of air duct, where there was vent that looked down over the club. Sarain maneuvered over it and then peered through it when her head passed above it. The club looked empty, dark, and quiet. She was still high up over the dance floor, and wasn’t half way through her trip yet. She proceeded to move through many more yards of ventilation and two more drops before finally reaching the bottom.
Sarain managed to turn around to peek through the vent. The coast still looked clear. She gripped onto the vent and pushed it open, still holding on to it so that it wouldn’t clatter to the ground. After she climbed out, Sarain went to put the vent back on and realized that she had completely ripped out the bolts that held it on. Funny, she hadn’t thought she used that much strength to get the vent off. She set it down, and proceeded to look around the club. Near the entrance where the restrooms were located there was a third door. It was locked, but not so complicated that Sarain couldn’t get it open with some simple lock picking techniques.
Inside the room was a regular looking office. There was a desk, a filing cabinet, and a bookcase. Sarain scanned over the title of books. Some were random encyclopedia letters, not a complete set, a few collections of short stories and poems, even a couple of fancy looking cook books; but all were dusty and seemed to only be there for appearances. Scanning around the room, everything looked to be in place, in fact things looked too in place; the office didn’t look like it had been used in some time. The desk was clean of debris and only had a few pens and unimportant papers inside it. The filing cabinet contained business documents, and nothing out of the ordinary.
Sarain sighed; this was looking like a wasted trip. She couldn’t find one real peculiar thing, nor could she find any evidence of a resting place for Winston. She lowered her head while brushing her hand through her hair in stress. Something caught her eye. It was a piece of paper under one of the legs of the desk, it was brightly colored and probably just a club flyer, but the fact that it was there was odd enough, since the rest of the office was so pristine from clutter. Sarain pushed on the desk to slide it off the paper. She didn’t want to tear it trying to get it up, but the desk didn’t budge. She gave the desk a once over with a confused look, as it didn’t appear heavy. She pushed again, but still it didn’t move. Finally she stopped and examined the desk. It looked normal, but she inspected the left side more closely, the side with the drawers. She had to crouch down to get a good look at its legs, and realized that the desk’s two left legs were bolted down to the floor. She gave a closer look to the floor; it was plain checkered linoleum tile, but the grooves around the edging of the tile under the desk didn’t look as tightly spaced.
Sarain grabbed a hold of the right side of the desk and lifted it up, and with it came a section of the floor. It was a hidden trap door. The desk’s weight sat perfectly on its side leaving the door able to be left propped open. She peered inside; there were steps, but she couldn’t see much more, it was too dark. She wasn’t sure how far or deep the place went, but this was what she had been looking for, and she couldn’t back out now.
She pulled out a lighter, she hadn’t used it earlier in the vent, because she didn’t have room or the capability to use it and crawl at the same time. She put her foot on the first step; it was solid, and proceeded to walk down secret corridor.
While she took her steps into darkness, the thought occurred to Sarain that there was a chance she would never see daylight again.