Eden was located in the heart of the eerily named Meatpacking District of New York, in a brick building that towered over the Hudson. Despite its prime location, it had been forgotten beneath a yellow foreclosure sign. It turned away attention with its weathered appearance. The dust-stained gray windows were full of cobwebs and cracks.

The once proud brick walls were rust-washed, beaten by the time. It had been, at one time, a textile mill. Until the fire that deemed it nothing at all. For fifty years after, the husk laid along the bank of the river, only occupied by machinery and cobwebs. And, if the rumors were to be believed, ghosts.

Until he came. For no reason that seemed sensible. He didn’t care much for noise, or crowds, or the fun that could be found in the high-strung streets surrounding the crumbling brick. He simply needed a place to settle, a way to kill the never-ending time. So, the assembly line had been torn out to make a flat open space for dancing.

The cold interior walls were washed in neon spray paints, which shimmered as brightly as blood-filled veins beneath the multicolored lights. Speakers polluted the stale air, shaking the dust from its resting place on the high steel beams across the roof. And the ghosts had been evicted. Or, rather, chased away by the new owner’s mere presence. If, of course, the rumors were to be believed.

He didn’t like it much, but he didn’t like anything. His patrons, however, never seemed to complain. How could they, when it was everything they’d come to find. The space was home to a great many deviants, all coming for a taste of debauchery. Chaos in pretty packaging, with a price they’d willingly pay.

Strewn from here to the low-streets, were Demons, and undoubtedly the ones that hunted them.

They might have mixed here, entangled on the club floor. Who could say, when no one could see? Beneath human flesh, a Demon was no different. Wrapping them up tight in his web of illusions had once been an easy task for Bezel, but the years had drained him.

It would have been easier if he could have left them to make their own way, but hiding was still undeniably easier than dealing with the hassle of warding off the hunters seeking the sight of their demonic-tells.

Poachers. That’s what they were. Bezel might have considered himself the shepherd to a herd of sharp-toothed sheep, but no one seemed alarmed, it would be a waste of time. Anyone who would bring them harm would have to find them first, and take them away from the pack. Guided by only their paranoia, they were doomed to do nothing all night but dance. What could they do when all they had was a feeling?

So, there was a calm in the eye of the hurricane. One that Bezel would laze in, only half-aware enough to listen to the howling winds. He’d been trying to live an easier life, after all. Despite his many wards running him up and down the New York streets, causing enough ruckus to fill up several more centuries.

But if it was peace he was chasing, how had he ended up here? Drowning in the middle of the floor-crowd of Eden? Bezel was not the type to come down from his perch, high above all those that bored him. Nor was he the type to pursue ghosts. So when, and how, had he become someone willing to follow the path of most resistance?

It had happened slowly. So much so that Bezel hadn’t noticed. Not that he made a habit of observation anyway. Most chaos around him was driven by sensitivities he couldn’t grasp, it was a waste of his eternal time to entertain himself with the fleeting whims of emotions. He would have slept through the storm, if he was someone capable of falling asleep. He would have, except that he couldn’t ignore the buzzing of the fly in his ear.

She had always made it a habit to involve Bezel in trivial matters, painting them to be larger than the cosmos. How could she insist to him the existence of her worries, when he’d turn his eyes to the sky and see no stars. So, he had ignored her. Not quite intentionally. It had just never seemed important. Who was missing, and in what quantities, he didn’t care. Yet, she said the tides were swelling, even if Bezel couldn’t feel the cold of the water.

So, he had turned his attentions to humoring her. For three weeks, he’d humored her. He’d combed the lands from the club to the low-streets, trying to find those she claimed were no longer there.

And it had gotten him nowhere. It wasn’t like him to waste his time on something he couldn’t maneuver.

Nor was it like the He-Goats to avoid giving Bezel the gossip he relied on. Everything was wrong, because she was right.

The storm had shifted onto a stronger breeze, the eye was closing, and Bezel could not bring himself to leave his unresting place. The sky had changed, darkened. The wagging tongues had gone still. Much too still. Something was changing, something no one wanted to speak aloud.

It was trouble. It was fast approaching. And, if Bezel could keep it so, it was none of his concern. Everything seemed a fickle use of his everlasting seconds. Why had he climbed down from his office to pick at the skin of the lower streets? Only because she was right? She was often right, even if it pained him to admit.

He turned from the swaying flock and rerouted himself through the sea of bodies. No one would speak--not to him. It had never been that way before. He couldn’t navigate when it had changed, or why, but it didn’t matter what they thought of him. He couldn’t care less. He couldn’t care at all.

Bezel reached the staircase behind the bar and began to climb. The door at the top of the landing had always been to an office. It had once been placed for the factory head to scowl down at the production line. And now, Bezel used it for much of the same. Scowling had seemed an effective way to pass the time. The metal door squealed on its hinges. If anyone had paid attention, they’d have nothing to blame but the impossibly strong breeze. Another of his tricks, the same kind that turned hooves into feet and horns into perfectly normal hair.

He sealed the noise behind his back and dropped his facade. From the empty air, a man was made. He stepped forward, impeccably dressed, in a gray italian suit. His night black hair had been slicked back, revealing the sharp features of his olive-toned face. He was almost entirely human-like. Except for the pupils set in his fox-shaped eyes. In the dim of the room, they glowed as brightly as yellow fire. Slit with wide black ovals.

Cats eyes, attuned for a hunt, but Bezel had not felt particularly up for the challenge in years. He crossed the room and flung himself down into the brown leather of his office chair. It creaked as he shifted. It was a familiar sound. He’d spent much of his time here, pouring himself in the paper that somehow always found its way to his desk. Property taxes had been humanity best cure for turning the hours.

He sighed over his scattering of paperwork. It might have sounded like exhaustion, frustration, boredom--and it was none of it. Not even the breath had been authentic. He’d done nothing for decades. He was as made-up as his appearance had been just moments ago.

Bezel paused, pen raised in his hand, as the metal door began to push inwards. He watched as the light began to filter into his dark space. Outlined against the fluorescence was the humanoid shape of a girl. It was her. His pesky fly.

“Ba’al,” she called from the slightly ajar door, cutting the still air as pitifully as the gentle bleat of a mournful sheep. Of course, she’d call him that. It meant she wanted something. The ancient word had once meant something akin to Lord, but now it just sounded like a headache blooming behind his skull--if he’d been able to even foster one in his blank state. “May I enter?”

“Stop being so polite, Mayvalt. It never turns out well for me.” Bezel tucked his pen into a warm bed made of state taxes. He propped his elbows up on the table and set his chin in the palms of his open hands.

The door cracked open just enough to allow the girl entrance. She turned and shut the door quickly behind her, cutting off the music and lights before Bezel could get a chance to complain. Even void of displeasure, he still found the strength to whine.

The girl stepped brazenly into the room. Well, to call her a girl may have been a slight exaggeration since she was well over a thousand years old, despite her ageless appearance. Nor was she even human. It was not easy to ignore. She’d been the only one to deny Bezel’s illusions, choosing instead to wear her demonic-tells proudly.

The cream-brown tips of her antlers peaked from the wild curls of her strawberry pink hair. The velvet-wrapped antlers were very real, but the blushed-tone hair had come from a box, and Bezel’s tub still held traces of the stains from when he’d helped her do it. He still couldn’t quite figure out why she chose to be so difficult. In the time it had taken her to read the instructions on the back of the dye kit, Bezel could have turned her into a twenty-seven foot tall sunflower--but she always refused him. “Got a minute for your favorite employee, boss?”

She worked here in Bezel’s club and also for him, on the low-streets below. He had once taken pity on her before he’d lost the ability to care for anything. Not that it would have changed much, since he now knew how foolish it was to have ever worried for her.

“Ba’al, now boss.” Bezel rubbed the bridge of his nose and scowled. It was hollow, a mockery of how he’d imagine someone might act when their life was about to be disrupted. “You must really want something.” He hoped that she was not here to remind him of his investigation into the steady number of vanishing He-Goats. His insight on the front had led him nowhere. And he wasn’t one to keep flailing around cluelessly. It didn’t matter much to him, nothing did.

The weakest prey had always been, and would always be, picked off by the stronger predator. No matter the strength of the shepherd. This was all insignificance, merely a thread to follow to pass the time.

“That I do, boss.” Mayvalt pointed at one of Bezel’s leather chairs. He shrugged his shoulders, and she fell into it in a dramatic puff. “So, y’know my third cousin--Sabor. Not Frevolt, that old goat’s still living away in the mountains. Haven’t heard from him in. . . oh, sap! I think I forgot to send him a birthday card. It’s not every year you turn thirty-eight thousand.”

“Mayvalt.” Bezel pressed.

“Right!” She snapped her fingers and pointed at Bezel with her forefinger. “So, Sabor. He got married last spring. A truly beautiful ceremony. Sorry you couldn’t go.”

“Mayvalt.”

“Oh, sap, boss! You never let me properly explain things.” She huffed, her breath caught the ends of her frazzled pink hair and ruffled it over her soft tan cheeks. “Sabor’s wife’s--no, her brother’s friend, decided to do the big trip. Sabor’s wife’s brother has been trying to reach her since, but she’s been missing.”

Bezel blinked once, then twice. “Your brother in law’s friend is missing?”

Mayvalt pressed her fingers together over the bridge of her nose. “You didn’t let me speak, and now you’re confused that you’re confused. Sap, boss, you can be so thick sometimes. I don’t know how else I can clarify it.”

“Humor me.” He grunted without malice. Well, without anything, really.

“If it was possible to humor you, you wouldn’t have that creepy blank look all the time.” She huffed. Bezel fixed her beneath his sharp golden glare. Her spine stiffened, and the noise of her quickened pulse filled the office. Fear in sickly sweet volumes perfumed the space between them. Mayvalt shook her head, and the scent began to dissipate. She scowled at him, displeased with his trick. “That’s worse.”

“Then you should be grateful, Mayvalt.” He reminded.

“Sap.” She sighed, running fingers through frizzy peach-toned hair. “Let’s start again.”

So Bezel did his best not to stare off blankly, and Mayvalt did her best to condense her rambling. Something they both barely managed to maintain. In the end, Bezel sat back in his chair and let his glimmering yellow eyes drift shut.

“So, all that to say, another He-Goat is unaccounted for.” Bezel recounted slowly.

“Faun.” Mayvalt corrected quickly. “But, yes.”

Bezel opened his mouth and then stopped. Mayvalt raised a perfectly pink eyebrow and placed a hand on her hip. “Boss, remember, ‘why should I care?’ Isn’t an appropriate workplace response.”

“I stopped myself.” Bezel protested with a hollow shrug. He tried to reserve it to amplify the impact. If he said it, every time that he could mean it, he’d have no room to say anything else. It was all he could manage to mutter most days. Why should Bezel care if a few pesky Faun got into trouble? Why was it his fault that they stumbled into a world that didn’t want them.

They poured into the low-streets, if they were lucky enough to escape the hunters, they’d find themselves in his service. Which had once been a calling worth risk, now it consisted more of folding napkins and working the bar.

Mayvalt rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “You promised, Ba’al. You said we could find a home here--you would protect us.”

“Hmm,” he hummed. He had said that, and now he couldn’t recall why. Why had he done that, and why had they listened? He’d leave this place if he could. He might ache, in fact, to leave this place. If he could want, he would want to go back to a time and a place when he had known peace.

There was a part of Bezel, encased in cement far beneath the surface, that remembered the smell of salt on the South Sea. How far the warm breeze could carry it, across the entire crest of the Heneth mountains.

He had once been plagued with curiosity, wishing to investigate the howls echoing in the crisp night air hanging over the Sikker Wood. He’d even go willingly to discomfort, shivering with prickled skin from the frost coating the wide open plains of the Speir.

There had been a time when this cold dead husk had felt lit from within with passion--and it had seen him to this fate. So, suddenly, he might have been glad to be away. Even numb, dead to all pain and pleasure, Bezel couldn’t face the reality that he had no home anymore. Nothing could feel like home when Bezel could not feel. It seemed a fate worse than death, to return to a land he loved, and not love it.

Maybe, he reasoned to himself, it was better that he stay exiled. New York wasn’t terrible. It was loud and crowded. It was easy to wrap him up in so much that he could fill his days with pretending.

And here was Mayvalt, to fill up his day with trouble instead. “Ba’al?” She bleated. “What are you thinking? I can’t tell.” She stomped her boot nervously. He watched her black shoes scuff the wood paneling of his floor and thought that it must be exhausting to be victim to the whimsical fleeting feelings consuming her mind. Mayvalt was the bravest he’d ever met, but she was still only a Faun. They were flighty, he might say if he cared to mince his words. When he held no such inclination for kindness, he’d call them for what they were; cowards, weak to earthly pleasures. It saw them to trouble. It saw Bezel to bail them out.

Bezel fixed her beneath his cat-eyes. She froze in wait. “Tell me more.”

A smile broke across her delicate lips. “I knew you wouldn’t let us down, boss!”

Bezel exhaled brief acknowledgment from his nose. It had not always been true. It had been failure, once upon a time, that saw him to this moment. And it was too difficult to forget, or to pretend otherwise, so he did not speak.

“Her name is Savalt, and she’s been missing for a few days.” Mayvalt whimpered. Her wide brown eyes became watery with tears. She blinked until they went away, knowing that when Bezel was around, tears were just a waste. It had seemed a reaction beyond their portrayed relationship, but what did Bezel know of sympathy.

“A few days? She’s hardly a worthy exception.” Mayvalt whimpered again, “A few days isn’t unheard of, you must admit. Even amongst your speculations, Faun often disappeared before this.”

Mayvalt had hidden her hooves beneath a pair of wide leather boots, but even concealed Bezel could hear the scuff of them as she stomped her feet angrily on his floor. “Boss, please. With Savalt, that makes eight missing in the last four weeks. And Savalt isn’t the type to skip out on her indenture. She still owes you three years of service. More than that, she’s real social, but she hasn’t been seen by anyone. Trust me, boss.”

Bezel nodded in agreement because if Mayvalt said it was true, then it was. She had worked for Bezel for longer than New York had even existed. Since she was an orphan alone in a strange world, and he was someone who’d taken her into his service. She cared deeply, and Bezel did not care at all, and it created a balance that saw things through.

“What would you have me do? I’ve been keeping my ears in the low-streets already, no one will speak.” Bezel pointed. He pushed aside his pile of papers. He imaged that he was relieved to be released from jotting down plausible tax write-offs. It was shallow and only served to remind him how empty he was inside.

“Then it’s time to stop asking. Let’s head to Savalt’s apartment.” Mayvalt clasped her hands together and bowed her head. “And may all the Princes of Avernus protect her.” It was an odd prayer, considering current company, but Bezel didn’t tease. If he picked apart each silly emotion the Faun had before him, it would fill the rest of his days.

𓆙

Savalt was a Faun inducted to Bezel’s service, so same as the rest of them, she lived in the low-streets. It was a place Bezel had found for them, away from the attention of the Meatpacking District and even further from the pearl clutching choir boys stalking the ancient cathedral near Central Park. It was distant. It was the safest place he could find for them, and it was only a forty-minute drive by car. Yet she complained.

“Boss,” Mayvalt groaned, “can we go any faster?”

A minute, a year, a millennium, it was all the same molasses drip to him. Bezel’s wings had sunken into fly-paper, and he’d long given up struggling against the glue. “I am traveling at exactly the speed limit while adhering to high traffic.” Bezel said bluntly.

Mayvalt scowled, scrunching together her cherry blossom pink eyebrows. “You know, if we could fly, we might get there in time.”

There was a sensation, deep in the back of Bezel’s mind. It was a thud. As if he was standing in the attic of an old house, feeling distant books fall from the shelf in the basement. “No.”

Mayvalt fixed Bezel with a quizzical look. “Yeah, you always say that. Why not?”

“You know why, Mayvalt.” Bezel said. “I was stronger when I hid my demonic-tells. If I let down the barriers now, I may never be able to replace them.” The evidence was clear in his golden cat eyes. A feature that had leaked to the surface three years ago.

“And what’s so wrong with that, boss?” Mayvalt scowled. “You’re our boss. If you walked through Times Square as a three ton purple elephant, what could they do but watch?”

“And if you walked beside me, Mayvalt, then what would they do to you?” Bezel hoped to appeal to the fearful nature of the Faun. He wished to make her tremble so that she would never pester him again about the topic--but he should have known better.

Mayvalt wasn’t a Faun fresh from the big trip--doe eyed at a new world. She was much tougher, an over-cooked steak--metaphorically speaking, of course. She’d be much too sweet for Bezel. He had never been able to claim credit despite raising her for much of her thousand years. Even as a small kid, she’d never wavered. When she first refused Bezel’s illusions, he knew that she was different. She’d chosen instead to deny conforming to the changing world around her. As the cities began to grow, it meant stuffing her antlers into beanies and wearing boots over her hooves. A small price to pay to stay alive.

Bezel had done the opposite. Long before the failures that saw his expressions wrung from his flesh, back when he was still a creature ruled by whims, he’d hidden his differences. For as long as he could, he would keep them hidden. Exhausting himself to his last drop of magic. A day that seemed nearer each sunrise. It was entirely illogical. It was wholly irrational. It was madness, and that was the closest semblance of emotion that Bezel harbored.

“You’re afraid, boss.” Mayvalt scowled.

Bezel might have laughed, except of course he couldn’t. “I’m incapable.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it a thousand times, but I know you feel things, boss. I’ve seen it. And maybe you’re feeling this, too. Maybe it’s because you’ve always been worried what they would say if they saw the real you. Well, guess what, boss, they’re never going to accept the real you--you should turn your attention to living for those who actually care about you.” Her words should have shocked him, angered him, annoyed him. They didn’t.

“I feel things,” Bezel echoed in agreement, ” but only when I’m by their side.”

“Ba-al-” Mayvalt whined angrily.

“That’s the deal, Mayvalt. I am not afraid.” Bezel said.

“Deal?” Mayvalt scoffed. “No, boss. That’s the punishment.”

Bezel sometimes sighed. He could even force air through his lungs to laugh and scoff. When Mayvalt made her childish jokes, he could roll his eyes. It was an act. It was a facade to blend into the crowds. He almost did so now. He’d reached to sooth away his blankness with a tired exhale of make-believe disappointment, but he stopped. It seemed that he’d been all too convincing lately. She was beginning to forget what he was and what he had been capable of. “I don’t care what the Avernian word is to cover my unique condition. Curse, debt, sin. I only know that with or without my hindrance, I’d spend the time searching for that soul the same way; miserably.”

“You’re hopeless, boss.” She grumbled.

Bezel couldn’t help but agree on that particular topic. “You are wrong about one thing, Mayvalt.”

She raised a blush-warm brow and cocked her head. “Just one?”

“We didn’t need to fly. You talked us all the way to Bed-Stuy.” He informed. Bezel leaned forward in his seat, the sternum of his gray italian suit almost pressed into his steering wheel. “There it is. The low-streets.”

Mayvalt shivered, and the scent of her apprehension hung heavy in the cab. Bezel drowned out the sound of her rapid heart with the car radio. She glanced at him, eyebrows squinted. “Now you want to listen to music? There’s only one block left, boss.”

“I don’t want to hear anything.” Bezel corrected. He guided his black SUV into the parking lot of the apartment complex and killed the engine. The song on the radio began to dissipate, leaving Bezel alone with the sound of her pulse. It had calmed. She had forced it down, always aware of him and his unique condition. He was a glass-still pond, she a tree shedding its leaves over the surface. All she could do was hope a breeze would carry the carnage harmlessly over the water so as to not leave a ripple in something that had not stirred in centuries.

It may have calmed her to learn that the water was frozen, that she could drop her greatest branches onto the pond below, and it would never tremble. It would have, he knew that. “Mayvalt,” his tongue was held firm by the cage of his teeth. Words bubbled a thousand miles beneath the still surface. Meanings he could not capture. It was no longer his nature to nurture her as he once had. “You can get out.”

“Right, boss. Should I lead the way?” Her bark toned skin flushed a shade darker than her hair. “I know the way. . .to Savalt’s apartment.”

“Go ahead.” He gestured for her to exit the vehicle. She did so on trembling legs.

Bezel peered out of his window, his gaze fell upon one of his many properties. A five story apartment complex, one he’d filled with those that had been turned away from society. He’d never thought to call it anything. It was merely an address in his mind, nothing more. The first time he’d heard the calling, he hadn’t recognized it. The low-streets, they’d nicknamed it. He couldn’t explain way, so it must have been a reason tied to sentiment. One that Bezel could never even begin to imagine.

“Mayvalt, what is that?” Bezel asked. He stepped out of the car, not bothering to lock it behind him. The summer air had a strange taste to it. It was blood-hot and just as thick. The invisible blanket coating this corner of the city laid heavy against Bezel’s skin. If he had a need to breathe, he might have choked on it. She was shaking, sinking beneath the waves of it. It was almost akin to experiencing rage. It was purely emotional, and therefore wholly unreliable, but beneath irrationality, there could be room for something real.

“It’s. . .hatred, boss.” She whined, wrapping her arms tight around her chest. “I think it’s. . . for you.”

“Is it Fetor?” Bezel asked. Easily mistaken for instinct, there was a fear that tasted as bitter as skin prickled by the bright gaze of a predator, but that was something natural. And Fetor was not. It was a blight, a ripple in the fabric of the atmosphere, choking men with anger and fear.

If the thick cloud over them now was Fetor, then the cause could only be from a Ze’ev. Even masked beneath human skin, they weren’t worth the trouble they brought. So Bezel did not bring them, not in his clubs and not into his protection. They had no business in a place like this.

It was silly to ask, he already had his answer. He knew that it was not. The Fetor of a Ze’ev was magic, and it tasted the same. A scent sharper and cooler than ice. One that could drive even monsters mad. This was too dull. Flat and faint to Bezel’s numbed mind. It was not a projection from a territorial wolf. It was them.

“It’s the Faun, Ba’al.” Mayvalt confirmed. “Something has happened.”

“Huh,” Bezel huffed. His expressionless eyes traced the outline of the building laid before him. “How interesting.” He muttered, of course not quite honestly. He could have turned around now, climbed back in his car, and drove until he ran out of gas. It would not be the first time he had been accused of abandoning them. Nor had this been the first time he’d enjoyed their ire. The last time had coincidentally also been the last time he’d been capable of joy. Before they’d taken it from him. It might have amused him to wonder what they’d take from him for his betrayal this time.

“There’s more, boss.” Mayvalt pressed.

She didn’t need to continue. Bezel could taste it, rotting on the warm summer breeze. “I know.” He said. “Blood.”

“Boss,” Mayvalt whimpered. She extended her shaking arm, leveling one pointed finger at the building her kind had taken to calling the low-streets. “It’s coming from inside.”

“So it is.” Bezel agreed. “How interesting.” He didn’t glance to see if Mayvalt followed. She would or she wouldn’t; it made no difference to him. He didn’t need her guidance. He turned his nose to the decomposition on the stale air and followed it.

The apartments were still on the surface. The halls were emptied, as it had been each time Bezel had come by in the recent weeks. They’d once been full of Faun, chattering away long into the night. They were known to be social creatures, after all. Now, it was silent. Except for the racing heartbeats behind each door he passed. He’d had the thought before, but now it seemed painfully obvious. They’d been turning away from him, right beneath his nose. Had he ever noticed? Had he ever cared? No, none of it mattered. Not to him.

“Boss,” she chirped, “boss, wait, I don’t like this. It’s weird.”

She was scared. The scent of it was thick on her skin. He kept walking. The rot was growing stronger, masking the fear coating every inch of her being.

“Boss.” She wrapped her arms around her chest, glancing at the doors they passed. “They’re afraid. I think they’re. . .I think they’re afraid of you.”

It was coming from the last door, the one painted red. At the end of the hall. He was so close now, his fingers stretched for the door handle.

She whimpered childishly. “Why are they afraid of you?”

He wrapped his palm over the brass knob. It might have been cold from abandonment. It may have been hot from someone recently fleeing. Bezel couldn’t tell. He couldn’t tell anything. He could not feel. The breeze in his hair, the fabric of his suit against his skin, the burn of water filling his lungs. He’d tried, for centuries, to make his heart beat. There was only one cure--no. A cure was something that could last. Each time they’d been torn apart, Bezel’s ribs would once again become a coffin.

“What did you do?” She whispered.

He was nothing. He had no concern, no guilt, no pity. He was only one thing now. “I am the Third Prince of Hell, Mayvalt. They should fear me. Why must I find a way to explain it? Now, act accordingly or leave. Your whimpering is aggravating.” It was only as irritating as a mosquito biting at his steel flesh or buzzing in his deaf ears.

She fell silent, and Bezel pushed open the door, washing them both in the heavy stench of decay.

10 | Bezel Hears A Rumor

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