Lucky stalked ominously away from the station and headed for the nearest Harley dealership, already ruing the amount of money this was going to suck out of her bank account, in the worst mood she'd been in for—well, a while.
     She stalked into the showroom.
     "Can I help you, or you just lookin' around?"
     She inquired after her model of bike.
     "Oh yeah, we got one of those. Hold on."
     She smelled Scott's presence. What the hell—he had followed her? She turned and saw the Blood Board standing behind her. The staff flared to life in her hands. She'd take the punk apart just on general principles. And fuck you, Needle.
     An energy blast sent her staggering backwards. She recovered, swung the staff toward him. The illusion remained mostly intact as the staff swept through him, though silver bulged a little through the back as the liquid robot moved its substance out of the way of her blow.
     The hologram moved aside from the robot it had covered.
     "You thought it was going to be easy, didn't you," he mocked. "You thought we'd never come back, you'd never have to deal with us again? There's a huge price on your head, you know—we're going into the big time with you. This is Silverblood. He's going to kill you now."
     "Whatever." Not today he's not; she'd fought the android once before. She jumped on a bike and kicked it to life. Took it straight through the window.
     Silverblood extended a pseudopod and blasted her with pure, ear-shattering sound. She gunned the bike. Blood trickled down her neck.
     The Blood Board laughed and shouted, "Go ahead and run! We'll find you! She's running away! This is great!"
    
     Lucky reached Chandler's place. She didn't even knock. He was waiting in the hall.
     "Hi. How are you?"
     She stomped past him.
     "What happened? Needle said be careful, the Blood Boards are after you, I don't see why that would be—"
     "Yeah, I know."
     "She seems actually concerned about you."
     "They have Scott's... brother."
     "Oh. Oh my God, you're bleeding. Sit down. Where else have you been hit?"
     "I wasn't hit. It was sound, siren from this... thing, godawful noise. Then I drove through a plate glass window. Probably be on the cover of the tomorrow. What is it about reporters?" she asked, almost plaintively.
     "They look to get the story and they don't care who they get along the way?"
     "No shit."
     He handed her a cup; she drank from it without thinking—it was unspeakably foul.
     "It's an accelerant for healing. Old family recipe."
     "I really want to hurt someone."
     "Why?"
     Nothing.
     "I've got something to show you."
     She followed him into the sanctum, where he took down a dusty book from a high shelf.
     "I want you to understand something. I just found this. Doing research on the gloves, to find out what they are, where they came from. The sketches are from the notebook of a Knight Templar. They ran into something, either those or something very similar, around the fourteenth century, except they were capable of generating a sword rather than a staff. This is a picture of the guy who was carrying them." He showed her the illustration, the figure hardly human any longer, horned and demonic. "They think he was human originally. They had to cut the gloves off his hands. The gloves screamed." He paused to let that sink in. "If these are the same things, they used to have metal around the outside, full gauntlets; this is what was left."
     She looked down at the black leather that seemed more familiar than her own skin.
     He went on. "It is probably possible to bind them to you. I've known you for months now, I haven't seen any sign of penetration, they haven't started to burrow their way into your nervous system or anything like that. But there might very well be steps that could do that, and then yeah, they couldn't be taken away from you. But what else would they do?"
     She continued looking down. "So what do I do?"
     He shrugged. "You have a pair of daemons living on your hands, we've known that for months. They're malefic entities. That's not entirely true, that's propaganda," he amended. "They're chaotic entities. That doesn't necessarily make them bad, it just makes them... chaotic."
     "Well, they don't do me any good against something like Scott," she mumbled.
     "I don't think they're going to hurt you, the way things are right now. That's the first thing I tried to find out. But I'm worried about the fact that, psychologically, you seem to need them. I think that's just because you've grown accustomed to having them."
     "I've been shot at enough in the last four months—" she snapped.
     "I'm not denying that, just so long as that's what it is."
     "Well, yeah. I can't really envision how I could fight like these guys fight, without them."
     Pause. "People think that daemons are intrinsically bad. That's a standard conception, since they blew up Brooklyn. But they're just... chaotic. And they've been chained up for a very long period of time. They don't care about our society and our rules and our culture and anything, because things have to keep moving. Things have to keep changing. Their initial response whenever they get out is to destroy everything around them. I think the gloves probably like you. You're what they're looking for. You're chaotic, and usually in a good way. I can never predict what you're going to do, and I'm a precognitive."
     That got a laugh out of her. "Thank you."
     "I just want you to understand why I'm saying No." He put the book away. Dust settled into place almost immediately.
     "I thought you said you just used that?"
     "Oh, it's a product of the book. Those are the words trying to escape," he said offhandedly.
     "Oh." Sorry I asked. "Listen, I want to go someplace to think and... heal for a while. Do you think, umm... Do you think I could go... someplace... that place where...?"
     "You want to go into the Twilight? I'm not a Twilight mage, I can't access it. It's a little too dark for me."
     "I need someplace where I can think."
     "You can use my meditation room."
     "They're going to come after me, they'll—"
     "Nobody'll know you're here."
     "My bike's out front."
     "No one will see it." He said it in such a way that she could not help believing it. "I'm going to call Needle and let her know you're safe, tell her to stop looking for you. You'll have privacy for a while."
     "Thanks. You're a good friend."
     "You're probably going to pass into unconsciousness in about eight and a half minutes," he went on calmly.
     "Why?"
     "Healing functions. You'll sleep restfully, it will only last about twenty minutes."
     "Before I pass out, I just wanted to say I'm sorry about the other night."
     "Uh. Yeah. Pheromones. I finally found that out."
     "I haven't had any effect like that on someone in —"
     "We—don't—I'm going to go make some tea." He left her alone.

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