Chapter Twenty-Three

Ironically, Desire isn't a particularly desirable woman, at least by my standards.

She towers heads above me and everything else in the store save for the doors and the torrents I can't seem to stop looking at.

Her eyes are a dead, cold grey and her mouth is kept busy, chewing on some stick as she fixes me with a stare.

A heartbeat has passed since her introduction and another, I find myself standing there not saying anything. But then, just a second later her eyes finally take me in, all of me in.

Which means she's noticed my little armband.

I let myself smile up at her and speak for the first time since entering, "Hello, Desire."

She doesn't smile back, instead she just repeats her greeting from earlier, "Hello, welcome to Desire's Gun Shop, how may I help you, I'm Desire."

"Right, you've said." She doesn't blink. Clearing my throat, I continue, "Ah, right, so uh, you know why I'm here right?"

I ask this with folded arms and a finger tapping the armband as loudly as possibly.

Unfazed, her eyes roll about her skull as she mock tries a guess, "Hmm, if I had to say, I say you're here for guns or ammo?" With a shrug and a slight tug on her lips, I almost feel bad for blurting out my next line.

"You know better than to act dumb, Desire." I glower and pull out the slip, "You owe three months of unpaid protection fees, you know very well why I'm here Desire."

To her credit, she does a fantastic job of acting surprised. With her hands flown up in surrender she spurts out, almost laughing, "I'm sorry, I really had no idea you were sent here for that."

She shakes her head and ducks behind the curtained doorway she came through earlier, shouting out from the room, "So Rey's gotten tired of sending his goons over here to stain my floor with blood huh."

Uh…what?

There's some shuffling and the ever-distinguished sound of things falling over and breaking followed by a curse and an angry grunt.

I don't wait long and I don't bother panicking. I already know whatever she's retrieving from the back is no bit of good news to me so I ready myself and pull out my pistol, hammer pulled back.

She ends up coming out with a large white…cloth? Fabric? I'm not quite sure what it is.

She hits a button underneath the counter and it parts into itself seamlessly, making way where there previously was none.

Huh, so that's how she gets in there.

Grunting and pulling on the long white thing, she huffs and forfeits it to the floor. "Ha! You know what this is, kid?"

"No?"

Desire chuckles, her hair falling out of place as she shakes her head and wags a finger, "Too bad. If you did, you would have probably run out of here the moment you saw it."

"What is it?" I demand, trying not to be fazed by her taunts and the deafening sound of those turrets whirring and tracking my every move.

She picks it up and with a single, accurate spread of it, she manages to cover the entire half of the room we're standing in.

The thing splays over my feet in folds where it couldn't get past and looking down at it, I begin to recognize what exactly the thing is.

And rightfully, like she said, I get nervous.

"It's a tarp!" She gleefully announces, dusting her hands off. "Please step on the tarp."

Her eyes, dead barely a minute ago, are now alight with psychotic glee.

"I'm going to need you to get the money, Desire." I say this and gustily pull my gun on her.

Her smile doesn't fall, in fact, it grows. She snaps her fingers and the turrets begin to rev, "I think I have you outgunned."

I sigh and shake my head, lowering the pistol. She looks disappointed but I just want to ask, "Do you even have the money? Let me know whether or not this is a waste of time."

Her eyes narrow at me as she bites down sensually on her lips, an unnerving sight, "You're not afraid, are you?"

Oh, I'm terrified. But I know well enough when to play my cards.

"I am. Which is why I'd like to still have the option of leaving here…" I trail off, looking down on the white tarp, "…alive."

She chuckles but nods, "Yes, I'm good for it, business has never been better. Earlier I thought you'd just come to buy a gun or some ammo! Your people are still buying from me."

Here she cackles, the contrast between the woman from behind the counter and the one with the tarp is stark.

"And so do Lynxes men, they all know I sell out the best! And so they're giving me protection, at a much lower fee anyway, that's why I stopped paying your dumbass boss Rey." She tuts.

"You're paying protection to the cannibals?" I look around the store, there isn't a single sign that it's affiliated to any one gang. A dangerous way of gaining customers from all the pools but more interesting is the fact that there aren't any actual protectors, there isn't any one from Lynx lingering around.

"So where are your guards then?" I ask, "There should be some, an important business like this."

"I obviously don't need such crude protection, not when all I need is right up there."

Solemnly, I shake my head, "I'm sorry Desire, I'm really going to need that money."

"I thought you wou-"

Pause.

I don't bother listening to a word she says next, it's been obvious from the beginning that there's no talking to these people.

Feeling my bubble of time take over the room and I nod, satisfied, but still cautious.

Looking at the one thing I'm unsure of, the turrets.

A quick dance in front of it tells me I don't have anything to worry about from the machine as it too has been frozen in time.

Pulling out my gun I walk up to Desire and sigh.

"A shame…you should have really questioned what would prompt Rey to send a kid to do this job."

Bang! Bang!