“You need to help them find it, or all of this miserable bullshit will have been for nothing. It can't have been for nothing, Liam.” Ferdinand's voice was low as he pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and stuffed it into the Death hunter's hands. “I won't let it have been for nothing. This ain't Famine, Liam. We ain't never had s**t for luck, brother, that's not changing now. This is-”
“War,” the malevolent creature all but purred her own name. So they understood the gravity of the situation, did they? And yet the two men seemed to choose to stand alone... against her? War wore the expression of a thrilled theatergoer, surprised but delighted at the unexpected turn of events. The story playing out before her was so ludicrous, so utterly removed from reality that it must have been scripted. Some clever ploy to entertain and distract.
Surely they did not think that two men, two humans, could stand against her?
“You can't-” Liam began, and not for the first time in his life, Ferdinand laid his hands on the man. His big fists curled around his collar and pulled the man close as he all but roared his response. Most would have paled to think of using such a tone when addressing the Death leader, but war had a way of pushing men past the use of such formalities.
“I can. We can. So you're going to go, Liam. You're gonna take our troops and you're going to go. You're going to make those bastards s**t themselves with fear, find that ******** artifact, and you're going to stop it.”
Ferdinand dropped him, and in that moment, Liam saw the first hint of regret in his old friend's eyes. He watched as Ferdinand hefted Albatross up onto his shoulder and turned to face War
“And after you do, you're going to find her.”
***
Nineteen-ninety-one
Nineteen-ninety-one
“You can't go.”
The words were spoken in a hushed whisper laced with panic. It was not the soft whisper a newlywed might often take with her husband in a moment of intimacy, but a desperate yet restrained plea.
She didn't want to wake the baby.
Neither did Ferdinand Bolinsky as his rough hands tightened over the edge of the crib. Red eyes looked down on the blanket-swathed child, his newborn son not yet two months old. If he looked up now, it would be a stranger he saw standing above his bed. A dark-haired man who with he seemed so impossibly different, save for his eyes. Vibrant red eyes hidden behind pale lids, closed and stolen away to a world far more kind and forgiving than the one in which he would spend his waking hours.
“I have to,” he said for the... hell, he'd lost count years ago. He lost count after the first anniversary he missed and the first night he hadn't come home. After the first year he hadn't come home. Ferdinand had given up on being a good husband on the day he needed to become a good Hunter. One vow had been exchanged for another, one that he simply could not break. One precluded the other, demanding that he lie to his wife and all but abandon his child if he were to keep them safe. How was he to say no? Who was he to say it, even?
“You don't,” Nadine Bolinsky said sharply as she stepped forward to close the space between them. Her hands seemed so small as they wrapped around his arm and squeezed tightly, as though she intended to keep him there by force. He couldn't bring himself to look at her, or to look away from the infant boy. His hair was pale, like hers, and his features softer. Ferdinand was a man in the sense that his heart beat and his blood was warm, but he looked as though he had been crudely carved out of stone.
“I do.”
At moments, Nadine might have debated even those most basic qualifications. She bit the inside of her cheek and let her hands slip away; the gestural white flag. Once upon a time it had taken hours before she would turn away and squeeze her eyes shut, drawing in one deep breath to steady her nerves. Now, she performed it like a practiced ritual, a mourning ceremony for her dearly departed dreams. Gone was her hope for a white picket fence and grade-school spelling bees. It took only minimal refusal, and she would do no more than pause at the door with her hand on the switch.
She didn't look back at him as she softly asked, “Will you come back?”
Ferdinand remained silent long after she had left, and tears brimmed in his eyes for the first time. He wanted to reach out and touch his son for what he knew would be the last time. To stroke back the hair that reminded him of the woman he had failed so terribly. He wanted to whisper to him to be strong for his mother, and to be honorable as a man. Ferdinand Bolinsky was a hard man, and so his calloused hands did not reach out to touch the boy's face. His gruff voice did not whisper a confession of love or a solemn goodbye.
He didn't want to wake the baby.
***
Ferdinand fished something from his glove; a small scrap of paper that he didn't need to look down at to find comfort in. He knew what he would find there, and so he didn't remove his eyes from those of the Horseman. Ferdinand only lifted the piece of paper and kissed it, as he had before every fight, before tucking it back into his glove and tightening his grip on Albatross.
“Find her, Liam, and tell her I tried.”
“Take the hunters, sir.” John suddenly spoke up, his voice quiet as he stepped up beside Ferdinand. He looked to the Sun hunter, who simply nodded in response. It had been a long time since one had let the other go through a battle alone. They had spent years fighting side by side, John offering a masterful defense through which the Sun hunter attacked in fast but brutal strikes.
“You hired us to do a job,” John began.
“Now let us do it.” Ferdinand finished.
