“Let me get that for you, sir.” She pulled a bleached duffel down from the overhead and put her hand on his bicep in a way that was clearly invitational. “Did you enjoy your flight?”
He smiled back at her, appreciating the attention as someone who had once taken sexual magnetism for granted, then woke up one day to realize that he was no longer turning heads. “I must have. It seemed to go by really fast.”
She giggled.
A jeep was pulling up just as he descended the last step and set foot on the tarmac.
“Airman Konolkin, at your service, sir.” The young driver took Sol’s duffel and put it in the back of the jeep.
“Airman.” Sol nodded once and swung up into the vehicle. “Nice day.”
“Indeed it is, sir. Have you been to Fort Dixon before?”
As Sol stared straight ahead he was overwhelmed by the deluge of memories that question evoked. He felt his face soften into a small smile. “Yes. I have. Looking forward to being back.”
“Yes, sir.”
When he was dropped in front of Jefferson Unit, Sol shouldered his duffel and stood staring at the front of the building. If he was honest with himself, he hadn’t really believed he’d ever be back in a body entering J.U. again. He heard his stomach rumble and laughed out loud. He was hungry! Hungry and eager to see what he looked like.
He stepped inside the door and was standing on the outer circle of The Hub a few seconds later. There was definitely more hustle and bustle than the last time he’d stood in that spot. The extra activity looked good on J.U. His entrance hadn’t garnered any attention so he took the moment of temporary anonymity to turn right toward the men’s room.
A man was coming out, someone Sol didn’t recognize, but who had to be a hunter based on his age and the way he carried himself. He breathed a little sigh of relief thinking there was no one else in the restroom, but had to rethink that when he turned toward the mirrored wall.
His first thought was that there was someone else and that he’d have to wait. Then he realized that the stranger looking back at him, mirroring his every movement, was Rev Farthing. He let the duffel slide to the floor and approached the mirror, slowly examining every detail of the reflection.
Cripes! No wonder the flight attendant was a little gaga. That angel fellow didn’t lie. The kid in the mirror was damn good-looking. Light brown hair, dark brown eyes, and tanned skin pretty enough to be a woman’s. At least he thought that would be the case once he shaved off the travel scruff. He hesitated at the top button of his shirt feeling a little gay about peeping, but by the gods, it was his body and he deserved to have a look at it.
He pulled the sides of his shirt apart to reveal well-defined abs kept in top working condition. His eyes followed a natural path to the happy trail. He asked himself if he had a good excuse for a look at the package and decided that a piss stop was as good an excuse as any. So he unzipped, pulled out, looked up into the mirror and grinned at himself. Yeah. The angel was right. He could have done a lot worse.
Once he got all that pretty hair buzzed away from his head he’d start to settle into the new house of flesh.
Overseer Dimension
“Enforcer. You need to keep an eye on the vampire aberration on that outpost.” Heralda didn’t bother to look at Kellareal when she addressed him.
“Very well. What does ‘keeping an eye’ entail?”
She stopped what she was doing and looked at him. “We’ll assist that band of boys. What was the name?”
“Animal House?”
“No. The human boys.”
“The Order of the Black Swan.”
“Yes. We’ll give them just enough support to begin turning the tide their way, but not enough to raise suspicion of divine intervention or something of the sort. The last thing we need is another era of people claiming to have gods on their side.”
“You’re going to sponsor them? Black Swan, that is?”
Huber barked out a laugh, stopped abruptly and began sniffing the air in every direction. “Does anyone else smell irony on the grill?” he giggled. “The mother of vampire is sponsoring vampire hunters. If this ever gets out…”
“Shut it, Huber.” Heralda heaved a sigh while she considered goosing Huber with a small lightning bolt. She turned back to the angel, appearing more bored than anything. “Yes. I will sponsor them. Keep me posted.”
“All right. Do you have a goal in mind?”
“Um. How do they count time?” Kellareal showed her a vision of time in year increments. “Two hundred years.” Kellareal didn’t move or change expression. “Too long or too short?”
“In terms of their life spans, that’s eight generations.”