Free Solace & Grief by Foz Meadows Page B

so simply convey so much.
    ‘Hey!’ called Evan, finally breaking the moment. ‘We still on for tomorrow?’
    ‘Tomorrow? What's on tomorrow?’ asked Paige, before Solace could answer. Evan poked out his tongue at her.
    ‘Secret warehouse business! Only those in the know may know, you know?’
    ‘Pssht!’ Paige waved a dismissive hand and turned back to Harper. As Evan was still waiting, Manx flipped him a thumbs-up. Evan grinned, nodded and went back to rubbish duty.
    ‘Guess we're going ahead with it, then.’ Manx exhaled. ‘You never know. Something interesting might happen.’
    ‘Maybe,’ said Solace, but inside, the Vampire Cynic was oddly cautious.
    Interesting isn't the same as safe .

    Solace dreamed. Around her was darkness – not the black of a night sky, which has an open clarity, but the obfuscating, cobweb-oppression of shadow. Uncertainly, she walked forward. Her feet were bare, and the dream was sensory: asphalt pinched the soles of her feet, sometimes crumbling into the sharp asymmetry of individual rocks. A road, then . Momentarily, something grey flickered alongside her vision, there and gone like a wisp of smoke. The cause of it wasn't clear, but something in the action jogged her recent memory.
    The alleyway . As if the act of naming were an invocation, parts of the surrounding dark resolved themselves into lighter shadows – walls, bins, guttering – until her observation was made fact. The nape of her neck tingled. Solace felt her breath catch. She was too close, she realised – the faceless man was here, and she was too close. Unable to turn, she tried to walk backwards, but each step was like trying to free a gumboot stuck knee-deep in mud, slow and ineffectual.
    From farther up the alley came the sound of dry laughter, like a skitter of autumn leaves. Solace felt the pulse leap in her throat. It was the faceless man, but this time, even his silhouette was invisible, so that all she knew of his presence was a measured, steady footfall and his rasping mirth. She struggled anew to free herself, but the faceless man came on, closer and closer, until it seemed that any moment he would step free of whatever force shrouded him, whole and terrible.
    But the revelation never came. Instead, he stopped what felt like a scant metre from Solace, near enough that the sound of his breathing skirled around her in a rank breeze. She'd never been so terrified, but now her legs wouldn't even twitch, remaining as motionless as if she'd turned to marble from the heart down.
    ‘Who are you?’ she whispered.
    Laughter came back, different this time; but before Solace could ask again, the faceless man began to sing:
    ‘ First is in rage and the act of sorrow,
    Second is many the present keeps,
    Third has an eye to a dark tomorrow,
    Fourth is locked in dreaming deeps,
    And fifth is sixth; but when you wake
    How many hearts are yet to break ?’
    His voice was soft, the cadence lilting. Deprived of vision, Solace nonetheless felt his hand extend towards her. She screamed, or tried to; the pain of it caught in her chest, bubbling and shrieking as she forced herself backwards, away from both words and touch.
    Enough ! > said an unfamiliar voice. Something shoved roughly at Solace's body. Her paralysis vanished – as did the ground. Tumbling, she fell through a hole in the earth, the last words of the dream song spinning through her consciousness.

    ‘Solace!’
    ‘Mmph?’
    Blearily, she opened her eyes. Manx was leaning over her.
    ‘You okay? You were having a nightmare. Kicked me right in the leg.’
    ‘I was?’ Sleep beckoned. Distantly, she heard a cat cry. Something prickled at the top of her spine, nagging as a loose tooth, but she shook it off. ‘Sorry. I'm all right now. He's gone.’
    ‘He? Who's gone?’
    But sleep had already claimed her.

Lukin
    L eaving the warehouse the following morning, any qualms Solace might have felt about returning the surveys were swiftly erased by the physical