Sunset Volume 2: High Noon

Swansea, Wales

"I left a message with Noah," Maggie said, perched on the cushioned arm of a chair and watching Reeve settle into the sofa bed. "Provided he's not in trouble, he's normally good about getting back to me."

"Thanks,” he nodded, shoving an arm full of bundled up clothes into his duffle bag. He was a mess, everything was a mess and he still wasn’t used to that yet.

"Worried about Gareth?" she asked.

"No. Well, yes, but no more than usual. I meant it—they aren't looking for us here yet." She put out a hand to placate him and her eyes caught, stuck over his shoulder. Reeve stretched his awareness—Alex.

Reeve turned around to see him standing in the open doorway of the guest room, a pillow mashed under one elbow.

Reeve looked at Maggie. Do you mind? He's pissed at me.

She arched her eyebrows and stood up, managing to form the response, No, he's not. Reeve squinted at her, bewildered, but didn’t press. Wrapping her robe tightly around her, she hit the lights in the hall and made her way upstairs. Alex had closed the guest room door behind him.

"Want to switch?” Reeve asked. “Alyosha can't be kind to read."

"No, he's not, but I don't need to swap." He sat on the edge of the sofa bed and cocked his head. "You're really not in here?"

Reeve studied the blankets in his lap. "You told me to get out of your head. Back in Mexico."

"So you're really basically an idiot?" he sighed. "It's fine. I'm tired of having all these snarky comments I can't say out loud go to waste."

Reeve rolled his eyes but couldn't help smiling, so he was distracted when he realized Alex was climbing into bed, shoving Reeve’s pillow out of the center of the fold-out. Reeve shifted to make space for him, both surprised and relieved.

He reluctantly reached to switch off the lamp, even though Reeve hadn't really intended to sleep. He liked being by the front door, alert and on watch. They were quiet in the dark for a moment. Alex fidgeted, creaking the old mattress. If he didn’t stop squirming, maybe Reeve would be able to stay awake after all. But maybe sleep wasn’t such a terrible idea, given the prospect of keeping himself from examining too closely exactly how glad he was for his company. Alex shifted again to rest his forehead against the side of Reeve’s shoulder. "Remember when you'd let me stay with you when my knack was going haywire?"

Reeve quirked his mouth and summoned a tone of annoyance. "I don't know if I let you, but you came in to stay with me a lot after that first time." Reeve took a shallow breath and eased back, settling into the familiar connections he had forged in Alex’s head so long ago. It was comfortable. Maybe he had been out of it too long, but something about his mind felt different. Foreign. But then again, a lot had changed in the past few days. He kept his telepathy contained enough that Alex still had his privacy, but close enough that he could really know him. Reeve gave his mind a small nudge of pressure to let Alex know he had seated himself back again and he felt Alex’s muscles relax despite the terrible mattress.

"It helped,” Alex continued, without acknowledging the telepathy. “You'd let me read you. Stupid, boring stuff, like you driving or you and Hannah cooking. I didn't scare you the way I did everyone else who knew what I could do. Even Gareth and Hannah at first."

Of course he remembered. They were some of his dearest memories. This was the same and not the same. Reeve shook his head and ruffled Alex’s hair to dispel something he couldn’t name.

"Yeah,” Alex groaned, “and then you'd do that and ruin it." Which just made Reeve smile and muss his hair up more. Alex batted at him and then let his arm flop across Reeve’s chest.

As his eyes adjusted to the low light of the street lamps, he could make out silhouettes of furniture and Alex’s face made blue by the dim light. "And you'd fall asleep in the middle of the bed, spread out like a starfish, and I wouldn't sleep at all. That hasn’t changed much."

"You're a crap sleeper, anyway.” Alex pulled the covers up to his neck. "It's cold," he whined while shifting himself closer to Reeve, who maneuvered his trapped arm above Alex’s head and rested it above the pillows, awkwardly. Alex settled his head on his shoulder, as if oblivious, and Reeve blew a tangle of Alex’s hair out of his face, resigned.

“It’s too cold here. Brazil was too hot. France was too humid. What the hell is your ideal climate?”

“Climate controlled. Or…” Alex pouted and was quiet for a moment, breathing, and Reeve closed his eyes, feeling Alex’s chest rise and fall next to him. That palpable proof that Alex was alive and safe and whole. “Home,” Alex finished. “It was good at home.”

“I know.” Reeve shifted his arm down to give his shoulders a squeeze. Alex pressed his face closer to Reeve’s neck in response, enough that he could feel his breath. His thoughts buzzed against Reeve’s mind and he tried to ignore it. Suddenly antsy, he shifted his trapped arm.

“If you fuck with my hair again, I will kick you.”

Reeve chuckled and patted his arm. “I know. We should sleep.”

“This mattress is shit.”

“I know.”

---

Gareth had just started to get comfortable when they had a visitor. While he wasn’t particularly a natural loner, he had never really made a habit of accepting strangers into his life. Alyosha had managed to slip in under the radar, since he was constantly with them but so busy and out of sight that Gareth didn’t have the time to get annoyed with him. It had taken a few days of living and idling in Maggie's house to finally relax around her. Gareth was sitting in the living room, watching some television with them when Reeve perked up in his chair, face tense and still.

“Maggie,” he said quickly, “there's someone walking this way who knows your name. They're looking for this address.”

It was like an electric shock had gone through everyone in the room. Gareth and Alex shot to their feet and Alyosha and Hannah came jogging in from the kitchen. Before anyone could speak, Maggie's phone rang.

Eyes wide, she picked up her cell and Reeve nodded to her to answer it. She set the call on speaker. No one was breathing.

“Hello?” Her spine was straight, but her voice shook.

“Maggie,” an accented male voice came over the line, “do you mind calling off your telepath? He’s gonna give me a damn migraine.”

She deflated, dropping her head into her hand. “Noah,” she said, exhaling heavily. “Jesus Christ.” Maggie nodded at Reeve, “My contact from The Church.”

“There in a sec,” the voice called and hung up the phone. Alyosha was shifting nervously, weapon ready, and Hannah locked eyes with Gareth, looking to gauge how worried she ought to be. He didn't have a clue, so gave his head an almost imperceptible shake.

Maggie moved to the door. “He's been here before. I trust him.” Reeve followed her, jaw clenched. It was clear no one was about to call him off, headache or no headache.

Gareth kept his eyes on Reeve, knowing he'd be the first to know if the situation was about to go south, and readied himself to react in whatever way Reeve did.

Reeve nodded to Gareth, no doubt hearing his thoughts and he held his breath, willing himself to not balk at Reeve knowing he still trusted him to know what was best.

There was a knock and Reeve moved to open it, but Maggie stepped in front of him, grabbing the latch and saying, “It's my house.” Gareth did sort of love the way she acted like she obviously outranked him every now and then. He wondered why Reeve let it slide. She opened the door and the man who walked in, slowly but without invitation, looked to be in his forties, tall with short dark hair. His skin was a warm, honeyed tan, and he had a dark birthmark high up on one cheek. His coat was two sizes too big for him and his clothes were well worn. Wet from the rain, he stamped his feet on the mat and moved to give Maggie room to shut the door behind him while shouldering a bulky backpack and sticking out his hand to Reeve.

“You the telepath?” His accent was mixed, but most predominantly Australian. Reeve hesitated, then shook his hand, nodding once. Noah jerked his head in a come-on gesture. “Then get it over with,” he said, dropping his hand, “so I can get settled. It was a long walk.” Reeve turned his head to one side to study him. Gareth took a few steps closer and Alyosha followed. He watched Reeve’s eyes go blank as he combed through the other man's mind. Noah clenched his eyes shut, lips tight. Gareth thought about how he used to be like that, back when he was a kid just starting up with Entropy. A long moment passed. Alyosha and Gareth exchanged a look. Then Reeve shifted his balance from foot to foot and it was over.

“He's fine,” he said, stepping back.

“I'm Noah,” he clarified, stretching his face and scanning the room. He put a hand on Maggie's shoulder and leaned down to kiss the air beside her cheek. “How are ya, love?”

She smiled and patted his cheek as he pressed past her to set his bag down by the loveseat, peeling off his wet coat and throwing it on the railing of the staircase. Slung on his back in a long, battered sheath was an old machete and another by his thigh. He plopped down heavily with a long sigh, holding his head with one hand. His arms were dense with tattoos, mostly in black and grey, with religious iconography, down to a tattooed rosary on the back of one hand. They reached up from the collar of his shirt to cover his throat, up to his jawline. Gareth’s first impression of him, and his warm tone of voice, didn’t match up with someone who would be that heavily tattooed.

“Telepaths always knock me for a loop,” he said, giving his head a shake. Noah looked them all over, blinking rapidly like he was just waking up. “You’re all Icarus? All of you?”

When no one spoke, Alyosha cleared his throat. “Everyone except me. I am like her,” he said, nodding to Maggie. “A friend.”

“You coming along though?”

“Yes,” he said quickly, glancing at Reeve, as if he thought he might answer for him.

“There sure are a lot of you. Okay,” he sighed, leaning back before freezing with a wince. “You all seem pretty trigger-happy, so I’m tellin’ you now that I’m taking my knives off, because it’s impossible to get comfortable with ‘em.” He unbuckled the straps on one shoulder and untangled himself from the rest, setting it down on top of his bag.

Gareth stretched his fingers before pulling them into a fist. “You have a knack?” he asked.

“No one but Sol calls it that,” he said, his expression sour. “I have a gift, God-given. I'm what we call a howler. You'd call it Sonic Screamer, I think.”

Reeve nodded. “You’ve helped other Icarus hide before, then?” he pressed, motioning the rest to sit. They eased themselves back into chairs or sat cross-legged on the floor, except for Maggie, who stood behind Noah, her back against the wall. Reeve stayed standing and no one crossed the room to sit near Noah.

“I’ve trained a few Icarus to impersonate The Children of God and I’ve trained a smaller number to become Children of God. You can probably guess which ones tend to last longer.”

“You can probably guess,” Reeve said, one eyebrow cocked, “which ones we plan on being.”

“Probably,” Noah smiled, stretching his shoulders. “From what I hear, you don’t seem like a very religious man.”

“No.”

“You’re gonna want to start. Faith will be your best weapon. They can’t withstand it.” Noah lifted his tee-shirt sleeve as far up his shoulder as it would go, showing that the tattoos kept going up to cover the entirety of his ropey muscle. “Symbols of faith are our protection. Our armor. And your armor can be anything: Christianity, Witchcraft, Islam, Shinto, Hinduism, Judaism. Whatever you can reach. Doesn't even have to be a religion known to man. Whatever faith you can forge for yourself will work. As long as you believe in something."

There was silence at that, and Gareth watched Reeve’s eyes dart around the room. “Well,” Reeve said, eyes settling on the door, “It's late. I hear you were traveling fast. You must be tired. We can get into this in the morning.”

Noah’s forehead creased. “Morning?” He leaned forward to crane his head toward the window and the dark sky behind the orange lamplight. “This is my morning.” He lowered his brow, straightened it, then his face broke into an incredulous smile.

“Maggie, love,” Noah called over his shoulder. “Could you brew us a very large pot of coffee?” He motioned to the others. “The Children of God sleep when the dogs sleep. You call them Phagi or something ridiculous like that. Now’s as good a time as any to get on our schedule. You can spend it learning about The Church.” Maggie made for the kitchen with a thin smile.

“You’re going to make us stay up all night with you?” Alex asked.

Noah leaned back. “I’m not going to make you do anything. All I’m gonna do is show you how to best survive. You can take my lessons or not. But you should.”

“Alright, alright,” Reeve sat down and sighed, setting one hand on Hannah’s knobby shoulder and giving it a jostle. “We might as well get it over with. We should only have to do it once.”

Noah leveled a pointed finger at Reeve and shook it a few times. “Let’s start there. You’re definitely going to be doing it more than once.”

Noah rubbed at his temples and slipped the boots off his feet by prying off the heel with his toes. “When you're at a Sanctuary, ninety-nine percent of the people there will be on a night schedule, but one or two will stay up during the day to keep watch while the others sleep. And that duty rotates. If it's being occupied, the Sanctuary is never empty and someone is always awake.”

Hannah cocked her head. “Why? Not a lot of hunting activity during the day, is there?”

“Course not. But Neptune,” he rapped his middle finger on the coffee table three times, “Neptune hunts anytime.”

“Is Neptune bothering you so much that you need guards?” Reeve asked. “If anything, I'd think you'd have Comets, recruiting teams I mean, out looking for you.”

Noah scoffed. “Your company would never recruit us. We already have a higher authority and they hate that.” He reached a hand just under the collar of his shirt and pulled out a crucifix. It was carved from wood and fully half the length of his hand. “Neptune raids our Sanctuaries looking for Icarus. Not often, but I've been in a few and it can be ugly. They’ve been doing it more and more lately.”

“Then why do you do it? If Icarus are getting you killed, why help us?” Gareth asked, an edge to his voice. The “us” stung him to say, which surprised him.

“Ah.” Noah held the nasal sound for a long time. “Trust. You don't have any. And that's good for Icarus, but that's shit for trying to fit in with The Children of God. You're at least gonna have to learn to fake it.”

Maggie came in with her hands full of steaming mugs and Hannah got up to help her hand them out. Noah nodded his thanks. With his coffee in one hand he picked up his necklace in the other. “Hakhnasat orchim,” he said, tucking it back into his shirt. “There are almost no laws you need to follow to be a part of The Church—Just hakhnasat orchim and maybe one other.” He said it slowly, enunciating it for them. “It's in the Talmud and Old Testament—a law of hospitality, and for us, it's a sacred charge. Anyone who shows up at a Sanctuary will be sheltered, fed, and protected. If you think about it, it would have to be law. We're a bunch of people from many different countries, of many different faiths, all wandering in and out of people's homes while heavily armed.” He chuckled to himself, then straightened out his face and looked at Reeve. “What I'm saying is, you've been donating money to our cause through Maggie, here, to try to gain our favor so we'd help you. But if you, all of you, had just shown up unannounced at the door of any Sanctuary, they'd have let you in. You didn't buy us—that’s our way and you're going to need to learn to think like this. Not that I don't appreciate the funding,” he smiled again at that. Reeve’s jaw was tighter than a vise.

“What’s the other law?” Alex asked into the silence.

“Pardon?”

“What’s the other law, besides 'hacky-sack orchid' or whatever?”

“Kill the dogs.”

It seemed to suck all the air from the room.

Noah let the pause hang over them and then cleared his throat to ask, voice lighter than the conversation had any right to be, “Now, which of you have ever fought one of these things?”

The feeling deep in Gareth’s gut was immediately as if his intestines were struggling to push a too-large chunk of ice through their length.

Beside him, Alyosha forced out, “I have.” Gareth, his mouth dry, raised the thumb and first two fingers of a hand resting on his knee.

“And you’re still alive. Impressive”

Shvedov shook his head and looked at the carpet. Gareth set his face in as neutral a position as he could. “We’re ex-Entropy.”

“Ah.” Noah stretched his lips in an awkward grimace that he must have meant to show sympathy, but just looked like a baring of teeth. “Well, good. They’re gonna need you two. It’s not easy to lose to a dog and not die.”

“How do you know we lost?” Gareth sneered.

Noah looked him up and down. “Am I wrong?”

Gareth’s nostrils flared and he gulped his coffee without answering.

“What about the Network?” Reeve cut in. His face was stoic, but his voice was tight.

Noah shrugged. “I reckon I know about as much as you. I hear whispers that it exists.”

“You didn't bother looking into it?”

“No.” Noah sipped his coffee and put it back down. “I had no idea if you'd ever actually show up here. You didn't buy me, I'm not your employee, and I was a little busy.”

“Great.”

“I do know a tracker in The Church who could probably find them for you.”

“Who?” Reeve hesitated, thinking. “Where?”

“No, we'll get to that later.”

“Later?” Gareth burst out, his neck corded from tension.

“Yes. Unless you intend to split up when you leave here. Do you?”

“No!” The voices came jangled together all at once from all across the room.

“There, see? Exactly. At the most, you might come across two Children of God traveling together. Never five. We’re loners. You stand out. No one is going to mistake you for Children. You're going to be difficult to house and expensive to feed. No Sanctuary will turn you away, but many may want to. I've got to train you in our etiquette so that you all seem worth the trouble and the risk. Neptune being tipped off to the location of Icarus at a Sanctuary is not unheard of. It's against our creed, but we’re human. The Children of God will give you everything you ask for and I have to teach you to know how to give them back everything they’d never ask for.”

“Jesus Christ,” Gareth muttered with a sniff. They needed a lot of things right then, but having a cult member teach them manners wasn't on the list.

“That right there for one. Might want to lay off the blasphemy.” Noah leaned forward. “Think there's nothing else anyone can teach you about these things?”

Reeve was there in his head, a heavy pressure cautioning silence. Fuck that.

“I get that you've had a lot of experience hunting these ‘demons' down, but that doesn't tell the whole story.”

“So how many have you killed?”

Gareth opened his mouth, but it was as if there was no air in his throat, his lungs empty as a vacuum. He gave a small cough. His hand was shaking.

“What about,” Hannah started, her voice trailing before picking up elsewhere. “They were human once, so are they all bad? How do you know which ones to kill?”

She was running interference for him again, trying to diffuse the situation. He wondered when she'd get sick of failing.

“They are abominations,” Noah replied, his voice raised slightly. “The result of an unholy sickness. All of them must be destroyed.”

“I just thought, if they have personalities…”

Noah clucked his tongue. “They have personalities in the way that the most severe drug addicts do. They exist, but when they're hurting, they will rip their mothers to shreds to make it stop. And they're always hurting.” He cocked his head at her. “You've seen one?”

He saw Hannah swallow. Gareth edged his knuckles between the couch and her shoulder blade for contact and it pinned his shaking hand still.

“Just recently,” Reeve answered. “It was…gruesome.”

Noah nodded. “I can't make you feel better by saying they aren't all like that. They are. They're in human shape, but that's where it ends.”

“You don't—” Gareth sputtered, shaking his head. “You can’t pretend it’s just that. You're finding them when they're hunting, sure, but they aren't always the beast.” He could feel his heart racing. His foot was tapping to the beat. “I've lived with them. Not among them without realizing it—in the same building as them. Sharing common spaces.” Hannah was looking at him, eyes wide. It wasn't something he'd ever shared out loud. Alex was looking down at the floor, and Gareth swallowed against rising bile, wondering which parts of his history Alex was remembering in that moment.

“You ever meet a kind one?” Noah asked. His tone was interested. Gareth wished he would sound more hostile.

“No.”

“Any you think shouldn’t be exterminated?”

“No, but I'm saying they have more motivations than just eating. Simplifying them can kill you.”

“True,” Noah admitted. “But usually it's the teeth.”

Gareth huffed and sat back, gathering himself.

“You can show us how to kill them?” It was Alex. His voice was hollow and Gareth’s stomach churned at it. Alex was still looking down at the floor, but not seeing anything.

“Yes,” Noah said gently, glancing around at the others.

“Can you really kill them?”

“Hey,” Noah said and waited. “Son, look at me.” Alex lifted his chin and Gareth felt pulled in all directions by the grim, straight line of Alex’s mouth on his otherwise expressionless face.

“I turn them to dust,” Noah continued, keeping eye contact with him. “You will too.”

Alex nodded with glassy eyes. Reeve reached down to lightly put a hand on Alex’s shoulder, but he shook him off.

“Right,” Noah said. “This can wait. You're all tired and the night just started. Anything I teach you now, I'll have to teach you again later when you're not dead on your feet. I’m gonna take some time to pray and get settled. Keep each other awake. We'll pick this up later.”

He left them alone in the living room. Maggie had left at some point, but Gareth hadn’t noticed when. No one had anything to say.

---

When the coming dawn had dusted the horizon with pink and Noah had waved the others off to bed, it was only he and Reeve left awake in the living room. Alex was curled up on the pullout, face buried deep in the pillows to cover his head. This was all going to take some getting used to.

Noah had told the others to stay up however they could and spent the rest of the night reading a tattered and dogeared novel.

Reeve watched Noah cross the room and pull the curtains shut, carefully overlapping the seams, blocking out the sun. There was a deep shaking in Reeve’s belly, a cold sickening tremble that came from extended sleeplessness. It was becoming a comforting feeling, an affirmation that his team was watched over and safe. He leaned into it.

“Thank you,” Reeve said softly from the couch. Noah glanced quickly at Alex. “He’s out,” Reeve assured him.

“No thanks needed.” Noah’s eyes looked as bloodshot as his own felt.

“How long will we stay here?”

“Not long. Best thing is to learn all this in a Sanctuary like the rest of us did when we were new.”

Reeve swallowed. He wasn't ready to leave Maggie yet.

“Where will you take us? Is there one nearby?”

“I'm sure there is,” Noah said. Reeve stood up to get out of his way as he rearranged the cushions of the couch to his liking. “But I'm not taking you there. There's too many of you and you're all just so damn papered.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means your corporation,” Noah replied, spitting out the word like it was sour, “thinks it can control the world with organizational flow charts and paperwork. I mean look at you. You move like a Sol agent, not a man who has been called by God to go fight the worst things that have ever walked this earth.”

Reeve gently sat down on the edge of the pullout bed, careful not to disturb Alex. “And you can fix that?”

“With the rest, yeah I think I can. You might be too far gone. Got so much paperwork stuck up your ass it might never come out.”

Reeve's eyes narrowed and a muscle by his mouth twitched before he realized Noah was laughing silently. He ran a hand over his head; he really was tired, to let someone get a joke over on him without knowing exactly what he was doing.

“So where will you take us?”

“To my Sanctuary. Each one is owned by one of the Children. Someone's paying rent on it, even if they're only there once a year. If we go to mine, I'll have more authority to back you.”

“I thought it was a holy mission to accept everyone.”

“It is, but you’ve been inside the minds of men—you know it's always more complicated than that.”

Reeve sighed. “Where is your Sanctuary?”

“Belgium.”

“That's not too bad.”

Noah nodded, lying down on the couch. “It shouldn't take us more than a few days.”

“Alyosha can fly us there in a few hours.”

“Pardon?”

“We have a small plane. Well, a Cessna.”

Noah laughed, then quieted himself. “Not anymore, you don't.”

Reeve took a quick breath in but checked himself, glancing at Alex, asleep and still. “Why?” he asked after a moment, his eyes narrowed as if that would keep his volume down.

“It would be expected that any man joining the Church who owned something like that would sell it to fund the cause.”

“Even though it would help your cause, since you're constantly traveling?”

“You have somewhere you need to be?” he asked, casually.

Reeve rubbed at his eyes, regretting getting into this conversation at all. “What?”

“We wander looking for these things, finding Sanctuaries as we go. There’s no need to get anywhere that fast.”

“You're telling me I should try to sell a private jet while laying low?”

“No. I'm telling you to park it and pretend you don't have it.”

Reeve's mouth went slack while his mind raced, muddy with exhaustion.

“You wanted to get behind the shield of The Church because we can show you how to hide from Sol. So listen to us. Do as you’re told and I can keep you all alive.” Reeve didn’t nod, but he didn’t say no, either.

***