Tomlin was moving quickly down the alley. James Pleasant followed. He carried the long naginata in his left hand, the sword tip held high and close to his body. Tomlin held her naginata out in front of her like a spear. He worried that someone would step out of one of the doorways in the alley and get skewed by her blade. Tomlin did not seem to share his worry.

The more time James spent with Tomlin, the more he felt himself falling in love with her. She was as quick witted as she was quick with her blade. He always thought of her as pretty, but she was always aloof in class, not even sharing in their laughter or inside jokes. Now that he had spent so many hours training and alone with her, he began to see beyond the hard exterior into the creamy interior.

He was not over her age, of course. She was older than him. When he thought about it—and he did too often for what would be healthy—he would go through the math and find she was older than his grandparents. She did not look a day over thirty. She had experienced things that he could only imagine. He would sometimes sit at dinner and listen to her talk about her experiences, marveling at where she had been and what she had seen or at least read about at the time. He was amazed to learn that unlike today, when world news happened, it was not an instantaneous truth.

The alley was filled with small piles of garbage on either end. James was careful where he stepped as he walked down. He did not want to get the garbage on his shoes, both to avoid the smell, but also to avoid the slipperiness of the garbage. Tomlin moved too quickly for her to avoid most of the garbage. She was eager to find whatever she was looking for, and the trail led down this alleyway.

James continued to follow Tomlin down the overly long alleyway. The doors grew less frequent but the smell grew stronger. The sun had set before they entered the alley, and the darkness was slowly falling. The alley did not have any lights, and James worried about getting out of the alleyway before they lost the light and he could no longer see the garbage on the ground.

The alley ended at a small staircase that led into a darkened room. There was no doorway at the end of the staircase. Large piles of thick black plastic garbage bags were stacked on top of the staircase. Tomlin walked down the concrete stairs, the naginata held in front of her and pointed downward. James took a deep breath and followed her into the room below the alleyway.

The smells were almost overpowering as James followed Tomlin down the stairs. He reversed the naginata so the metal ball that covered the back end went first. He was afraid of stabbing Tomlin with the sword end if he misjudged the distance or was rushed from the side. It was a big disadvantage with such a large weapon: used in small places, the weapon was not effective. Even so, he had learned from Tomlin ways to use both ends in small spaces. Mobility was limited but controlling the angles and using the momentum of quick stabs and jabs allowed the weapon to still be used. Blocking became more difficult and relied more on positioning than a more open area would.

The stairs led into a dank basement. It was warmer in the basement even without a door in the doorway. The basement was dank and dark. It took a few seconds for James’s eyes to adjust to the darkness, and he felt a small building of anxiety in his chest as he couldn’t see Tomlin in the basement. When his eyes finally adjusted he saw her standing in the middle of the room. She was still with the naginata still held in front of her listening. She waved to him to stop moving and making sounds, and he became still as a statue. He too listened to the quiet basement. The sounds of the street were muffled this far down into the alley. He tried to quiet his breathing but his heart was racing and all he heard was the thump, thump of each heartbeat.

The basement smelled cleaner than the alley. As James’s eyes adjusted, he saw that it was clean, much cleaner than the alley. The floors were recently swept, and the walls were painted. There was a small semicircle near the doorway where the weather had been let in by the lack of door. Besides that area, the rest of the room was clean. There was a small bit of light still coming from the alleyway. Not that his eyes adjusted, he noticed more light coming from a hallway ahead. It was barely noticeable, but the doorway gave off a grayish color that indicated that was where the light was coming from.

Tomlin looked satisfied by whatever she had been listening to and made her way toward the grayish light. James walked slowly behind her. He spun his naginata around so the blade was in the front.

The grayish door led deeper into the basement area. There was a loud dripping sound coming from the rooms ahead. James followed Tomlin as she made her way into the room. She walked around the edge of the room, making her way to the next door. A single dull light bulb swung overhead and provided a small amount of light in the room.

Tomlin had not told James much about this trip. They had been training in her gym when she had received a cell phone call. She had not spoken much but listened and nodded. She wrote down this address in her book and hung up the phone. They had just finished going through their strength routine. It was no longer a teacher-student relationship. They certainly weren’t even partners, but Tomlin spent much of the training session working with James on the same stuff he was working on. She did the strength exercises with him, and sparred as much to improve her own skill against James’s stronger albeit slower movements, as to assist him to learn the basics.

They had driven to the train station with James holding the case that held their naginatas. The case was heavy with two full blades in it, and he wore it crossed over his shoulder. They had taken the subway across two lines to the downtown heart of Brooklyn. There they had walked ten blocks to arrive at the alleyway. Tomlin was not forthcoming with where they were going, and James had learned not to ask. She would tell him what he needed to know when he needed to know it. Theirs was not an equal relationship. James accepted it as she knew much more about the ways of the immortal than he could in the brief four months since she introduced him to this world.

Tomlin continued walking through the rooms, entering each one and making the long or short circuit around the walls. There was no furniture or items in any of the room. The walls were painted different colors, but the flooring was always an unfinished concrete, the type you would expect in a basement. The ceiling was surprisingly tall, taller than the fifteen foot ceilings in Tomlin’s own basement where they practiced their fencing.

James liked the basement. He liked the fell of dark, wet places. He liked being with Tomlin in these adventures. This was the third time they had headed out from her house to explore the underbelly of the city. She would explain afterwards what they had been looking for. He assumed it was like the first time he had seen her kill someone: they would get a name and a location and hunt the soulless immortals. Unlike that first night, they had not come across any immortal in their evening excursions.

“It’s a game of patience,” she explained to him one night after a failed adventure. “We go where the leads take us. We’re on the front lines following up what the investigators feed us. Most times it doesn’t work out. Occasionally, it does, and we have to make good on our role.

“Who are we hunting?”

“Who is everyone in the guild hunting, you should ask.” Tomlin didn’t need to answer. It was Frankie Names. After each adventure, she would share the communication. They were always the same. There was no focus in the guild except to track down the infamous and dangerous Frankie Names. He had been the leader of the guild. The heads of the guild houses had expected him to commit suicide on the night of his birthday. He had planned a large extravagant party as his going away gift to the world.

Tomlin had not been able to attend, so she was one of the lucky ones. The heads of the guild and the executives that ran it were there. There was a large explosion that was reported on the news. It was where Frankie Names was first interviewed, one of the only survivors of the blast.

It was during that first interview that he had explained that the party had been in his honor. That part, James knew, was true. He had gone on to tell the world that he was immortal, having been alive for over a hundred and twenty years. It was during that interview that Frankie admitted to the remaining guild members that he was no longer human.

There was a great investigation into the fire. It had killed over a hundred people. The explosion was traced to an experimental generator in the basement. There had been many quiet settlements over the explosion and the many people that died. Tomlin had told James the full story. They were the heads of the guild. They ran the various guild branches. They had the same training and abilities as Frankie Names. That he survived the blast and they didn’t meant only one thing: he had been in on the planning. There was no chance he would have survived without knowing when to run and when to cast.

The he had killed so many in the guild on the night of his return was now legendary. The guild’s leadership had not recovered from the blast in the eight months since. Many of the lower level leaders had elevated themselves to take over the leadership positions. There had been much arguing and eventually the guild broke down into a kind of civil war. No longer were the immortals only hunting the soulless ones. They now found themselves hunting immortals who still had their souls.

It was here that Tomlin had broken with the guild and joined a small group who were looking to reinvent the guild and introduce the moral lessons that had always been at the heart of the guild to a larger population. They were not interested in the civil war within the guild. They did not take sides and had no alliances—at least no public alliances.

They hunted Frankie Names for the same reason the guild chose not to: he was the cause and planner behind what had happened. He must have known the resulting civil war. It was likely he planted the idea in the heads of those in the guild. He was always had a plan. It was how he achieved so much in the guild.

Now James found himself creeping through the basement looking for Frankie Names. He had studied his picture many times to ensure he would not make a mistake if he did find him. He was an eager looking man. In all the photographs he wore old-style clothing with a slightly bulge in the inside right pocket of his vest or jacket he wore. Tomlin had identified that area as the likely place he held his weapon. He was known to fight with short daggers. Short daggers were useful in close fighting areas, but given enough room, were generally useless against the naginata.

Daily word count: 2,032.

Words remaining: 8,714 (41,286).

It took a while for me to say anything today. My hands were hurting and the characters didn’t want to do anything. Somehow the characters not doing anything turned into a wonderful backstory for the villain. How I wish I had this backstory earlier. It would have been fun to describe it. At least it left me with a slight direction for the next few days. I can see the finale slowly forming. I just have to give the characters a little push in the right direction.