“The guild at one time was a unified body,” Tomlin said as she stood holding the naginata still pointing at Mr. Gonzalez. He sat on the floor, his head in his arms, looking dejected. He had the look of a federal agent. He wore black sneakers that gave the illusion of shoes, but just the illusion. There was something about him that smelled pathetic—or perhaps it was overeager. He worked for the guild, and was obviously sent to babysit Craig Stevens. What the rest of his story was, James could not fathom.

“The guild had a set of laws that everyone followed. There were two reasons that people followed the guild’s mandate: honor and family. Honor was a bigger thing than you realize or can understand today. Today people talk of honor as something of the past, something of slower times where loyalty mattered. Trust me, loyalty did not matter in ancient times either. The failure of loyalty was what bound honor. The effect of a lack of loyalty on your family and friends stained their life greater than the disloyal action. That stain did not go away, and the guild developed in a time where people cared to protect those relationships.”

James had not heard this story. Tomlin did not speak of the guild. She spoke of her splinter cell and what they were trying to achieve, but she did not delve deeply into what the guild meant for the immortals or how it had been formed or why. Why she was explaining this to Craig Stevens and Mr. Gonzalez, James could only guess. It sounded like a recruitment speech. She had wasted her time with him. Having met him before the guild could get its hands on him, he was easy prey. For some reason, she wanted Craig Stevens in on this.

“Immortals are like regular people. At least the ones that were not hunters. In the beginning, there was little need for hunters. People knew and accepted the rules. When their last birthday came around, they threw and attended the party, and with their family by their side, they ended their life. You see, you cannot stop chanting the spell. No immortal has that type of control. Once the spell is invoked, you will, willingly or unwillingly, invoke it each evening and morning. Even if you were unconscious, you would still speak the ritual words. Some people don’t even understand what they’re saying when they say. It doesn’t matter.”

“Honestly, I don’t have a clue what I’m saying,” Craig said. Mr. Gonzalez looked up at the speech. James understood his eagerness. He was not part of the circle. He did not know the spell or chant that kept them young and alive for so many years. He had joined the guild group in order to learn the secret. He was one of their many human pawns.

Tomlin looked to Mr. Gonzalez and shook her head slightly. James did not have her ability read a person’s capability by just looking at them. It was a knack or spell that he had not been able to master. He spent too much of his time concentrating on his martial skills, getting ready for the confrontation with the fragmented guild. Tomlin had told him that there would be plenty of time for him to learn the ins and outs of the magical powers. Except for the immortality, the rest were merely tricks. Useful but not needed. Mr. Gonzalez, James now saw from Tomlin’s expression, would never be able to cast the spell. Whatever blessings he was given, Mr. Gonzalez did not share in them. He had been led to believe he would get something from the guild, when it was clear he could not even get the gift. He was being used and given promises that the guild could not keep.

“That’s why it was agreed that at the end of your soul’s life, each member of the guild would end their own life. It was a way of protecting the world from the monsters that would otherwise walk it.”

“I have heard the guild talk about this before,” Craig said. “How did they know that these people actually lost their life? Wouldn’t it be possible that it was just a superstition, that the immortals after they turn one hundred twenty one did not lose their soul, but were the same people afterwards that they were before, soul—or whatever it was that made a person—still intact?”

Tomlin nodded. “It’s funny you should use superstition to describe anything in our world. Magic changes the belief rules, don’t you think?”

“And has there developed a scientific understanding of the new rules surrounding immortality?” Craig asked. James remembered he was a scientific skeptic before he became enamored with the world of broadcasting, not dissimilar to the doctors who give up the scalpel to become broadcasters and forget what it’s like to actually treat patients.

“There have been attempts in the past. We’ve brought in immortals who had the background you speak of to do the research. That’s where we got the spiritual dimensionality understanding. It also supported the truth of the one hundred twenty year limit.”

“It’s biblical, isn’t it?” Craig asked. He did not come across as a religious person. James barely went to Sunday school and didn’t remember any references to the bible.

“Yes,” Tomlin said. “It’s in Genesis. It’s probably where the limit originated.”

“And it’s true,” Craig asked skeptically.

“We believe it. And by ‘we’, the important person here is me and my colleagues.”

“That brings us back to Frankie Names,” Craig said.

“Everything returns to Frankie,” Tomlin agreed. “If we find him, we can get an understanding for what he planned for the guild. You see, Frankie was not only the guild leader. He was also a genius with a deep understanding of the guild and world around us. He was a scientist and a statesman. He knew things that he had no way of knowing. He was a seer in his own time—an ability that is not unrecorded in the immortal annals, but one that is not frequent. In the old times he would have been called a prophet.”

“We were instructed to kill him on sight,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “No questions asked, no spells cast. I’ve seen a bullet in the head take out even the most ancient of immortals.”

“I have no doubt that Frankie would fall with a bullet to his head. That’s not my intention, though. He has to answer certain questions. I won’t let him off so easily.”

James knew that was Tomlin’s plan. She wanted to put the guild back together. The civil war within the guild was starting to flow into the wider society. She had told James that when the guild was intact, the wider world was not threatened by immortals. They had a sense of honor that protected the regular world. Because the family of immortals would turn out to be normal people, most immortals went with the plan.

Frankie Names’s family was still out there. Since there was no one left formally hunting him, his family had been left alone. He had a number of great grandchildren. Tomlin knew that was her next stop. Frankie had tried to disown them as he got older. He did not turn anyone in his family onto immortality. Tomlin was not sure if this was by choice of if any of them would have been so blessed. It didn’t matter: without the leverage, Frankie had risks the honor of the immortals with his coming out explosion. It wasn’t all bad, Tomlin had told James. The leadership of the guild had been circling the drain for many years before the incident.

“Okay, you’re with us now,” Tomlin said. She made decisions quickly, and when she did, she always followed through. She admitted she was not always right, but she said that once you make a decision, you should stick with it until you know it’s wrong. James was hoping she wouldn’t find out that this one was wrong.

Tomlin reached into jacket pocket and pulled out the gun. She handed it to Mr. Gonzalez hilt first. “I have to tell you, Mr. Gonzalez. I don’t know what they promised you, but if it was immortality—I hate to be the one to tell you this. You don’t have it.”

Mr. Gonzalez looked at her across the way, holding the gun in his hand with the muzzle still pointed to the ground. He looked confused for a moment as this was the first time she directly spoke to him. “Have what?” Mr. Gonzalez asked. It looked like he already knew the answer.

“The gift,” Tomlin said simply. “You will never be able to cast the spell. Even if we spent the next twenty years teaching it, it won’t work for you. You’re not like us.”

James watched Craig’s reaction. He obviously did not know the truth. Mr. Gonzalez was also taken aback by Tomlin’s words. “That can’t be true. The guild, they told me just one more year of service. They promised me.”

“Did they promise Mr. Samson the same thing?” Craig asked. Mr. Gonzalez paled as he turned to look at Craig. He was barely holding the gun. His greasy hair was messy from his brief struggle with Tomlin. It stood out in different directions of his head. He looked angry and then resigned.

“They did,” Mr. Gonzalez said. James could not read his face or what he was thinking. Everyone stood in the basement watching him as his expression remained stolid. “If you don’t mind,” he said finally. “I’d like to see this through.”

“I’m not looking to help you settle debts, Mr. Gonzalez,” Tomlin said. “I have my own priorities, and righting whatever wrongs you have in your head is not one of them.”

Mr. Gonzalez nodded in agreement. “I’m not looking to right any wrongs, but if they happened to get righted while helping you. Well, I expect you won’t complain too loudly.”

Tomlin weighed his statement for a few moments before nodding. “Very well. I have a feeling you’re going to come in use.”

Mr. Gonzalez smiled and slammed the gun back into the holster. The three of them followed Tomlin out of the basement and back into the alleyway. It seemed a bit of a coincidence that the Frankie Names’s leads led the four of them to the same deserted basement at the same time. James didn’t say anything to the group, but he had a feeling he knew who was behind it. It was the same person that seemed to be pulling all the strings in this investigation. James couldn’t wait to ask him his set of questions. He had a feeling that Craig and Tomlin were planning their own sets as well.

“Beginnings are always hard,” Frankie Names said as he held a French fry to his mouth. They were in another small diner in the southern part of Brooklyn. Samantha had driven the three of them to the diner at Frankie’s suggestion.

“I’d been at the guild for over a hundred fifty years by the time they made me its leader,” Frankie said. “It took twenty years just to get the place in order. And after I got it in order, it took my remaining thirty years to refocus its mission.”

“What did you focus it on?” Samantha asked.

“The usual administrative bullshit. But then I found a mission for the guild: Make the world, the regular world, a better place.”

“And how did you plan to do that? By destroying the guild?” Samantha asked.

“Oh, no, that decision I made much later.”

“When you still had a soul,” Samantha said.

“Still with that old rumor? No, this was planned way before my going away party.”

“We’ve spoken about this before,” Esther said.

“Yes, but this time we’re serious about it. We have one more action to perform and then there will be an end to this. There are four people hunting me right now. We need to confront them and have out with it. Once that is over with, the world as I dreamed it will return.”

Even Samantha found his speech strange.

Daily word count: 2,043.

Words remaining: 4,622 (45,378).

Man, that shark, it’s totally jumped. I can’t wait to see the carnage tomorrow.