Frankie Names was not an ordinary looking man. He was of medium height with blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes, the type that matched the sky at midday. His suit hung well on him, which probably meant he was a bit on the thin side for his height. His button-down shirt was recently pressed and he flared slightly before the tuck in to his pants. He wore his jacket open and the many-buttoned vest closed except for the bottom few buttons. Samantha found him attractive, even though she did not swing that way.

He had a certain aura of power, as if his words had additional weight. She had seen this trick in politicians. If you paid attention to the words that they used, you realized that they weren’t saying anything. But the form of the words had an inner strength that made even the nonsensical and illogical words weighty. Frankie’s voice felt that ways to Samantha. What he said also made sense, to a degree. There was much she could admire about him. He had ideals and opinions, and actually did something about them. She was not as comfortable on the question of whether he had a soul, however. She would have questioned if he had a soul even if he had been younger. There was something devious about him, something that made her think of sociopaths who did not think of the good of others, but only of how they can avoid those others from coming down on them. And even that question some of them didn’t regard as terribly important.

“The guild as we knew it was corrupt,” Frankie said. “It was not serving the immortals anymore. It had been taken over by bureaucrats and small-minded people who were intent on protecting its secrets. Did you know they started bringing in non-immortals to work for them? They paid them by promising to give the secret of immortality. These non-immortals were not potentials. They could never learn the secrets. They were slaves to the cause with a carrot at the end of a stick that they never could quite reach.”

“So you decided to do something about,” Esther said. She had been quiet during the conversation. She sat perfectly straight in the bench of the diner. She did not drink or eat anything. She seemed to be studying Frankie, trying to figure out something about him.

“We talked about this in the past, Esther. There was a need for a new order within the guild. They had grown to be the type of organization that we despised. Do you remember when we first joined hundreds of years ago? Before you started body jumping? It was a place that was worth joining. It was something I was proud to support. They were making the world a better place, protecting it from itself.

“You can tell by the past few decades that they lost their aim. They were no longer controlling world events, they were allowing those events to control them. There was death and terror in the world, spirituality was at an all-time low, and honor had been lost, even at the great institutions, like the guild. We needed to do something about, to wake up the guild and have it change its ways.”

Esther nodded her head in agreement. Samantha wasn’t so sure the world was so terrible. “The world was pretty terrible even before the last couple of decades. What about the Cold War and all the terrible world wars over the last hundred years? I don’t understand how the guild was helping the world even at that time.”

Frankie looked annoyed at Samantha. He started to speak and stopped three times. There was much he obviously wanted to say, but he didn’t seem to want to know what to say. Frankie checked his watch and his frown turned into a smile. “We should go. The four of them should have met in the basement. They should be heading to the remnant of the guild. We shouldn’t miss the fireworks. Especially if we plan to be the final event.”

“We do?” Esther asked.

“Who better? The two oldest members of the guild.”

“You and me both know that’s not true. What about the real power behind the guild?” Esther asked.

“You think after all this time they’re going to show themselves? They’ve been hunting me along with the various factions. If anything, they’re hiding out trying to figure out how they’re going to retake control of whatever faction manages to hunt and destroy the others. It’s a power struggle, and they’re behind the curtains trying to ensure that they back the right horse. They don’t realize that they’re worrying about the wrong race.”

“Neither of you are making much sense,” Samantha said.

“Yes, we know that. Just watch and see. There will be answer before the end of the day.”

Craig Stevens sat in the backseat of the car as it roared along the road. The car was a late-model Ford, the company car that the guild provided to Mr. Gonzalez for his jobs. It seemed fitting to Craig that they take down the guild using its own car. The car was loud as Mr. Gonzalez sped down the highway. It had been very exciting for the first half hour of the drive. The excitement began to wane slightly as the miles passed and they continued the drive. It was very much further than he remembered it.

Mr. Gonzalez did not seem to mind. He was driving with one hand on the bottom of the steering wheel. He wore dark sunglasses and seemed lost in thought. Craig could not imagine what must be going through his mind. He had spent the past two months going on various jobs with him. Most of the jobs had ended up leading nowhere. Their entire efforts were focused on following every lead related to Frankie Names. None of them had come to fruition.

Mr. Gonzalez was not a deep man. He was a former federal agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency. He had finished college with a degree in Criminal Science and went directly to the academy to chase drug violators. He retired from the government and went to work for a private security agency before falling in almost by accident with the guild. He had been investigating a pharmaceutical fraud case for one of his clients when he ran across Mr. Samson, who he had worked with briefly at the DEA. Mr. Samson had in turn invited him to the guild, and like most people who heard of its existence, was immediately taken aback that there was such a place that offered such a miracle.

Hearing his life story, it did not sound sad, although there was a bit of unhappiness. He had been married once with two beautiful girls. His mother had left him because of the time he spent working. It was deeper than that, he knew. He now looked back at could tick off all the real mistakes he made: his inattention was obvious; he did not show her the love that she needed; he did not have a relationship with his children. The same as his father and grandfather, he believed children grew up best when they had only a traditional parent-child relationship. What that meant in his family was spending as little time as possible with his three children. In modern society and to his wife who considered herself a modern woman, this was not acceptable.

Mr. Gonzalez had a better relationship with his children now. He saw them at least once a month, and they spent all their time together talking through their life and decisions. They were all teenagers, and they had a better relationship with him than their mother, or most of their friends with their parents. Mr. Gonzalez regretted the lost time with his children. He regretted that he had never learned how to be a parent until they were in their teenage years.

He had grown a lot. All of this growth made Craig Stevens wonder what he was after. Why he even wanted immortality. On this issue he was silent. It was just something he wanted. Craig wished he could give it to him. He had tried to teach it to him weeks ago, but it had not taken. He had thought it was because he was not qualified to teach the incantation. It had never occurred to him that there might be some people—the majority of people, actually—who could not cast the immortality spell.

Sitting next to Mr. Gonzalez was Tomlin. She was chatting quietly with him about the layout of the house, making plans for the best way to assault it. Her case holding the naginatas was in the trunk. They were talking strategy. Tomlin’s Japanese accent seems to have lessened. Craig knew a lot about accents. As a broadcaster, they had a certain way of talking that was different from his every day accent. Tomlin clearly had the Japanese accent sometime in her long life. She could still pull it out when she needed it, which was a rather impressive feat.

He looked over to his right at James Pleasant. He was a medium build guy. He was staring out the window, his mouth moving as if he was talking to himself. He was lost deep in thought. Craig had seen him with their weapons. He had not been impressive. He had dropped the point of his blade when they started to talk. He wondered why he was with them, how he could help when it came to a fight. Craig thought the same about himself. He was not a fighter. He wanted out of this guild and these immortality wars. It seemed ridiculous that the people who had the most to live (from a possible life expectancy) would spend so much time trying to kill each other. He was in the middle of it now, and he knew he had little choice but to see it through.

He looked out the window trying to fight the feeling of dejection. He would rather have been in the studio giving the evening broadcast. Even now the studio was beginning to wonder what his long term plans were. The guild must have had somebody in the studio, because nobody approached him or questioned his long absences. They had started to have his backup come every day to the studio, in the event he was called away for one of these silly missions. Even though he knew his job was secure, he could see it in the faces of the producers and cameramen: they knew something was wrong. They knew he did not have the same cynical look in his eye that he used to have. He still had the same types of guests, and he still got the best of them with his winning smile and his ability to back his guests into the corner where they least expect to be. But the fire was gone. It was like everyone in the studio was just going through the motions. He knew that part of it was him. He knew he internalized and probably was putting words into the minds of those in the studio that wasn’t true. He was still well liked. How could he not be with his smile and personality, and his interview with Frankie Names, the notorious Superman of modern day.

It was always came back to Frankie Names. Like most of his conversations and thoughts, it all returned to the day of the interview. The blackout, the whispered words of immortality, the sudden disappearance. He still had not got a straight answer out of the guild how he had vanished. From knowing the guild and their pettiness, he figured that it was likely not the magical explanation the tabloids still claimed. It was probably he had an accomplice that either let him out through the main door and then covered it up. That was the explanation he liked the best. He knew there were people who worked in the studio who were members of the guild, who would do anything they say either because they were part of the guild, or more and more likely, they were disciples of the new guild order. The disciple program had become more or less public: its advertisements were in every tabloid. There was the promise of immortality for the small fee of working for the guild.

The drive continued to the destination and the car quieted down. Everyone was left to their own thoughts. With the growth of the guild, they knew their farmhouse headquarters would likely have more guards than ever. Craig was sure they were driving into a trap of sometime. There was not much they could do about it, however. He looked out the window and resisted the urge to talk to himself like James Pleasant. He was immortal like him, but he was not yet crazy. Tomlin was staring ahead, and Mr. Gonzalez tapped the steering wheel in time to music that must have been playing in his head.

The car continued to eat up the miles to the farmhouse. Tomlin knew where we were heading. She had agreed that that was where they had to go. How they were going to get in, she was silent on. Everyone in the car had been to the farmhouse except Craig. He wondered what the headquarters for the guild looked like. He wondered this even after Tomlin explained that it was originally only a regional headquarter. After the explosion, this one was the headquarters of the largest splinter cell that was left of the guild. It was here that their battle would end. Nobody spoke about Frankie Names. They would deal with him after they took care of the guild. Craig figured he would wait in the car. He should have been calling his news buddies, having them bring a camera. This would have been the scoop of the decade. Even bigger than the Frankie Names interview. He did not, however. He had lately lost interest in reporting the news or being famous. If anything, he wanted to go somewhere quiet and think about his future—his hopefully very long future, and figure out what if anything he was going to do with himself.

Daily word count: 2,391.

Word remaining: 2,231 (47,769).

Almost there.