“Remind me to smack you later,” Cale told the vampiric Salvo as he blocked a lunging attack and knocked him prone.

“Can’t help it,” Salvo said, jumping to his feet with unnatural grace and swiping at the paladin with clawed fingers.

“Yeah, that doesn’t really matter. Angel, can you use Chain Undead on him so we can focus on the big guy, please? Ice9, keep an eye on our friend here. If he gets loose, put him on ice.” Cale gave Salvo a middle finger before focusing his attention on Aldonis.

A chorus of whispers left Angel’s lips, and she thrust her hands forward, releasing chains of pure golden light from her palms. They coiled around Salvo, pinning him to the floor and sizzling around his wrists where the light touched him. He screamed in agony, though his health bar remained untouched. Which was probably a good thing. I had no clue how we were going to heal him from now on.

Down in our damage potential, we faced the boss and discovered we were in for a fight. My attacks barely touched the unnatural vampire flesh. Cale and Angel cast as many holy attacks as they had, but their mana pools dwindled.

Brad unleashed a flurry of fire arrows that Aldonis only flicked aside, laughing.

“Fireballs?” Cale asked, grunting under the strain of the continued attacks from the vampire.

Ice9 shook her head so hard her frosting-pink hair bobbed. “Off spec. It costs a ton of mana to cast and I’m out of mana potions. I can do it one last time, but not if you want me to freeze Salvo if he attacks again.”

“Goddammit, Salvo,” I groaned and bit down on the vampire lord, releasing some of my frustration on the boss. This time, my attack broke his flesh. The ancient blood hit my tongue and unholy strength rushed through my veins. My next attack flayed his back open in dark red ribbons of flesh. Shit, this feels good. Better than good. “Hey, Cale, remember when we marathoned through True Blood? And how after some of the characters would drink vampire blood, they’d get extra strong and kinda strung out? Drop some V and let’s kill this bitch.”

“I thought we agreed we’d never talk about me watching that,” he said, frowning at me from the opposite side of Aldonis.

“Is now the best time for manly pride?”

He shrugged, and recognition dawned on his face. His nose wrinkled at me before he sighed, resigning himself to lapping up a few drops of blood that had fallen on his sword hand. The muscles on his neck bulged, the skin on his face shone with an eerie light, and his silver eyes narrowed. Enhanced by the blood of our enemy, we tore him to shreds and finished with an arrow straight through his heart.

Aldonis screamed in rage as his skin flecked off in chunks of ash before he collapsed. A system message appeared saying: The Vampire Aldonis has been vanquished, but his curse remains on V4mpyrL0rd.

The magical chains around the rogue dropped, and he let out a relieved sigh.

“You all right?” I asked, shifting back to my elven form to offer him a hand up.

“Better than that I-”

Before he could finish, I punched him square in the nose. Friendly fire wasn’t on, so it wouldn’t do any damage. Just get the point across. “Pull that shit again and I’ll make sure you get a one-way ticket back to Detroit. Don’t forget that we’re here to help Viv. Let’s get our loot and find something else to kill.”

My anger at Salvo abated after we killed another spawn of zombies in the front of the house. The focus of my ire became the maggots squirming in my fur. After my outburst, Salvo had stayed relatively quiet, outside of a loud proclamation that he’d gotten the full set of Undead armor. Which was as well received as one might expect.

As we traveled on foot, killing whatever trash mobs we happened upon, the haunted atmosphere gave way to another enchanted forest, I was beginning to feel a little bad for him. I wouldn’t have time to do anything about it, because shortly after, I caught the scent of some unknown players lurking nearby. A quick glance at Salvo, who dropped back into the shadows, let me know I wasn’t the only one who picked up the vibes. Now that we were a guild, Cale and Brad had both warned us we opened ourselves up to PvP on a global scale. This was our first time encountering such an event.

“Brad,” I said in group chat. “Drop a flare by Angel and get ready for a fight. Angel, keep yourself up, if they’re players, you’re the prime target.”

“There’s five of them in total and all looking ready to attack. Three are moving towards Angel,” Salvo said, with more than a little arrogance. “I can hear their elevated heartbeats.” He appeared behind a startled human rogue as he sunk both of his daggers into her back; she screamed and crumpled over.

Golden mists covered the ground around Cale, uncovering another attacker. He lashed out with the corner of his shield, knocking the would-be assassin unconscious.

The last three attackers had indeed flanked Angel and lost their cover with Brad’s flare. Bolts of ice erupted from Ice9’s fingers, freezing and ultimately shattering one.

Bob the timber wolf growled and lunged at another, snapping his jaws into vital areas.

The remaining rogue pulled her daggers on Angel, both weapons aimed for the exposed back of our healer. I jumped and caught the assassin’s thigh, knocking her sideways and tearing at the flesh with my teeth.

“Druid bitch,” the rogue cried and spun on me, her poison-coated daggers whirling too fast to see which direction they were coming from.

A blur pushed me aside, taking the damage from the attack and Salvo’s life dropped by half. “Hungry,” he moaned and sunk his fangs into her neck, restoring his life while hers dropped to nothing. Once finished, he cast the body aside and brushed some dirt off his armor. “Still upset about my transformation?”

I rolled my eyes and nodded briefly in thanks to him before finishing the last of the ganking squad knocked out beside Cale.

“Why’d you do that?” Angel questioned. “We could have asked them why they attacked us.”

Brad dunked his balls a few times on the forehead of a dead rogue and shook his head at her. “No point, they’re just griefers.”

“I see. I’m glad they’re the only ones griefing.” Angel wrinkled her nose at him, and we shook our heads at each other in disgust. Boys. I had to remind myself again that she was actually a he.

Cale searched the area and recast his AoE spell while his fingers twitched at the hilt of his sword. “We should get moving. The graveyard is close enough that it won’t take them long to come back.”

“Let’s head to Lighthall,” Angel said while looking in her menus. “It’s getting late and apparently I have a flight in the morning. This Mr. Williams does not fuck around, I got my itinerary shortly after I accepted the offer. Private jet with an on-board lunch.”

Both Brad and Ice9’s menu icons appeared, and they cheered in unison.

“Holy shit,” Brad said, finally acknowledging Salvo for the first time in a long while. His smile was large and genuine, even his eyes misted over a little. “I’ll see you in less than 24 hours.”

“Excuse me?” Salvo asked, his face drained of what little color was left after his transformation. “What do you mean, see me in 24 hours?”

“Less than that, even. The rest of us are being flown in, I thought you knew.” Brad frowned at him and shook his head. “You aren’t a little excited to see me?”

Salvo fought for words before settling on, “I’m speechless.” His avatar may have been smiling, but I had a feeling the actual man in the pod was screaming internally. This wasn’t the direction he’d imagined their relationship would go.

After we ported back to Lighthall, only the three of us in Vegas remained online, Salvo said, “In-person meeting now. I need a stiff drink and anything else if you have it.”

I let Salvo marinate in his panic while I showered and got dressed. It was after the ninth or tenth time he knocked on the adjoining doors that Cale must have given up and just let him in.

“I thought we agreed to leave the doors open in case of emergency,” Salvo said the second I emerged from the bathroom. He was still wearing his bodysuit with a towel wrapped around his waist.

“The situation changed slightly.” Cale narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms.

There was no point in beating around the bush. “What he means is, we’d rather not have you walk in while he’s balls deep inside me,” I said, feeling the heat of an annoyed glare from my beloved.

Salvo made a face and waved a hand to end the topic; the reason I overshared in the first place. “Why are they coming?” He sat on the couch and stood in such quick motions he had to adjust the towel covering him.

“I figured you’d be more excited Viv’s dad was flying Brad out here. Get your own little love nest going.” I grabbed the menu for room service behind the bar and browsed it. “Who’s hungry?”

“I’m not hungry and I’m not excited. The distance between Brad and I was perfect. He’s a prick, I caught on to that fairly early on but the sex was great.” His shoulders slouched. “I never wanted anything more than no strings sex in a virtual world where I could keep my normal life far apart from him.” He fell back on the couch in an exaggerated collapse, with one arm over his face.

“Steak sounds good,” Cale said, ignoring the drama queen in our living room.

“It does,” Salvo whined. “But no onions on mine. After we eat, I’m going out for one last night on the town before I have to deal with this mess. Unless…” He picked himself off the couch and eyed me hopefully.

“Nope. Fuck you,” I said, knowing he was trying to weasel his way out of his own shit storm. “You brought him into this and you can deal with it. Leave me out of it.”

“Fine,” he huffed. “I see what years of friendship amounts to when the hardships really come our way.”

“Still not getting mixed up in the catastrophe you call life, Salvo.” I put up a finger to silence him and ordered our food.

Once he got himself dressed and put together, he seemed to snap back to normal. The rest of our night went as usual. We ate, enjoying our last moments between just the three of us before shit got weird. Eventually, he went out on the town while Cale and I stayed in. Our noses stuck in electronic devices while we watched the news, read articles, and all the different websites dedicated to the mystery of the static assassin. Or, The Lone Swordsman, as some were calling him.

There were full in-depth posts comparing a screenshot with the profile image to pictures of various staff from Eternia Entertainment. All the while, the poster ignored the fact that this was an in-game avatar. It seemed impossible anyone would be stupid enough to use their actual likeness in the game.

“Who’s got the most hits for similarity?” Cale asked, peering over.

“Junior Bouchard,” I said, pulling up the image of the two superimposed on my phone.

He frowned and held in a breath for a few beats. “Any reason the attacker would use Leland as their model?” His fingers sped across the keyboard on his laptop, pausing long enough to read before continuing. “Other than the guy is a massive douche.”

I glanced over at his screen to see an image of Leland Bouchard cheesing at the camera with half a dozen centerfolds draped around him. “It’s good to see being born with a silver spoon in his mouth didn’t go to his head. At least he’s keeping the local abortion clinics in business.”

“So, basically, there’s endless reasons they’d be using his likeness as the killer.”

“Well, glad we narrowed it down,” I said, tossing my phone on the end table.

“That settles it. I’m calling in a favor with a guy I know. He can probably dig up some information that’ll help us.” He glanced sideways at me, his eyes turned a few shades darker. “And I don’t want you anywhere near him.”

“Well, now you have my full attention. Why?”

Cale shook his head and snorted. “He’s stalking at least three different celebrities at the moment and has restraining orders from another half dozen or so. Says it’s for his movement against the rich and famous, but that’s just a bullshit excuse to justify his actions. The reality is he makes a living off selling naked pictures to gossip rags.”

I recalled a few of the more scandalous stories that broke in the past few years. Of bubble gum pop princesses caught in orgies or boy band singers caught bumping uglies with a male dancer. “Is he behind all those?”

“Some of them, yeah, and I can’t stress enough how little I want you to do with him. He’s not stable, and I only told you this much so you don’t think I’m hiding anything in case stuff gets weird. He owes me a favor and we’ll leave it at that.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “All right, I’ll avoid any contact with the guy if you tell me one thing. How the hell did you get this favor in the first place if he’s so bat shit?”

“It’s not that exciting,” he said, though his eyes kept darting between our phones, the laptop and all the other potential listening devices in the room. “I’ll talk about it some other time.”

I nodded but couldn’t keep my mind off it. All this time I’d thought Cale was the most boring of the bunch.

My eyes hadn’t opened that morning before I felt a puddle of something on my cheek. Spooned behind me and using my head as a pillow, Cale snored away while the contents of his mouth leaked on my face. To think, all those years on my own, I’d been missing out on this…

“Ew,” I pushed him away, wiping his drool on the cuff of his shirt, while blinking my eyes at the bedside clock. My heart raced, and I squinted to double-check I hadn’t read the time wrong. “Shit, wake up, it’s almost one in the afternoon.” I scrambled out of bed, yanking at the wedgie that had grown over the course of the night.

“Okay,” Cale mumbled and rolled over, covering his head with a pillow.

“Angel’s flight lands in less than a half hour.” I yanked the blankets off him and slapped his bare ass. “C’mon, Sunshine. Wake the fuck up.” I rummaged around for clean-ish clothing, sniffing a shirt and made a face, determined that for once I’d actually put some laundry in a bag for housekeeping.

Finally, both out of bed and aware of time, we tossed dirty clothing around, put the half-empty liquor bottles back behind the bar so we didn’t look like complete alcoholics and managed to appear somewhat organized before there was a knock at the front door.

My nerves nearly bubbled over as I looked through the peephole and groaned, swinging the door open. It was only Salvo, still dressed in the same clothing as the previous night.

“Forgot your keycard again?” Cale asked after a quick glance up from his laptop. “There is a front desk that can help you, you know. Liz and I aren’t your servants.”

“They were busy with some-tall-drink-of-sexy arguing he had a reservation,” he shrugged and strode in the room like he owned the place. “The new folks aren’t here yet?”

“Not yet, we thought you were Angel. Her… I mean, his flight landed about an hour or so ago.” I caught a whiff of musty cigarettes and booze off Salvo and shoved him toward his room. “Go clean yourself up. You smell like last call and desperation. In the meantime, I’m going to wander down to the lobby and make sure you didn’t just ignore one of our friends trying to check in.”

By the time the elevator dumped me off at the ground floor, any arguments Salvo may have witnessed had melted into whole-hearted apologies and ass kissing on levels I’d rarely seen before. Their target, a man who was so tall I had to crane my neck up to see him fully, was laughing about the mix-up. The smile on his dark face widened at my approach.

“I knew I’d be able to spot you out of a crowd anywhere,” he said and picked me up into a bear hug, knocking the wind from my lungs. “Guess it ain’t hard when you stick out just as much as I do. It’s me, your guardian Angel.”

Words failed me at that moment. While I’d known Angel was a man, I didn’t expect a nearly seven-foot, muscle-bound black man. But here she, he rather, was. “Holy shit, you are not at all what I expected.” I returned the hug and laughed, thinking what Cale’s reaction would be.

That was when three more guests arrived. A tired but pretty blonde woman and her son, who looked to be in his early to mid teens, behind them a twenty-something man who could have walked off a Hollywood set portraying a brooding teenager in some god-awful teen romance. Just once I’d like to see an actual teen, face full of pimples and grease, play a high schooler.

The boy shook free of his mom’s grasp. A look of disgust passed over his face as he whined about not being a baby anymore. The woman sighed and bit her lip, giving the tall man and I cautious glances.

“Ice9?” I asked, nodding at the young man, while catching the eye of his mother.

“Oh, thank god,” she gushed as her shoulders relaxed. “I’ve been so worried this whole thing was a trick. Like we would get here only to live out some rich asshole’s fantasy of recreating The Most Dangerous Game or something.”

“I read that one, I liked it,” I said, feeling at ease with her. Enough to leave out the fact that I’d only picked up the book after reading about a serial killer in Alaska who’d taken to killing prostitutes in a similar fashion.

The woman’s face reddened. “I’m Maddie. This is Nate. Technically, Ice9Valentine is my character, but I’ve been letting him play while I’m at work.” She closed her eyes and smacked her forehead with a palm. “And now you must think I’m a horrible mother, it’s not like that at all. The county cut funding for their daycare program and-”

“I don't need daycare, Mom. I'm fifteen years old,” the boy said through gritted teeth.

I shrugged at the teen and gave him an apologetic look before turning my attention to his mother. “Don’t worry, he’s been a great help. Besides, I was home alone plenty of times when I was his age.” This was a lie. If my grandmother had to run to the bank, she made me go next door to the neighbor’s house. Granted, that was more because of how much trouble I got into at school and less a concern for my overall safety. “I’m Liz, or-”

“Riot girl,” Nate said, cutting me off and nodded to the man next to me. “Is that Dread Pirate then?”

“Nah, I’m Angel, but my real name is Luke.” He held out a massive hand to the boy.

He shook it and laughed. “When you said you looked a lot different, you weren’t lying.”

“You didn’t lie either. Here you are and not a gnome in sight,” Luke said with the tone of a gentle giant.

“Where’s Salvo?” the man who I was already positive was Brad asked.

“Upstairs getting showered,” I said, hoping I wasn’t lying that time, and forced a smile. “Brad, right? I’m Liz. Luke, Maddie, Nate, but you heard that already. Cale and I are in suite one, but I’m assuming you’ll be in suite three with Salvo. Looks like Luke lucked out and gets a room to himself.”

“You won’t hear me complaining,” he said. “In fact, I need to thank you for changing your spec and dragging me along with you all those times.”

I shook my head and waved a hand. “You did me a favor by sticking with us. Seriously. I'm all about the action.”

“I bet you are,” he said and gave me a coy grin.

The woman at the front desk gave us all a tight smile and cleared her throat. It was clear she wanted the riffraff out of her lobby, and the sooner the better. We weren’t exactly their normal clientèle, but I had a feeling they were making more from us than a good portion of the others combined. So, she’d given us some extra leeway. But it was running thin.

I stood back while the rest of the party checked in. Luke was across the hall in number two while Maddie and Nate had four. They gathered their luggage, and I showed them to the penthouse and their rooms.

Cale peeked out the door to wave at them in greeting, but returned to his laptop without more than a few words. It might have been the residual awkwardness from the Angel situation, but I had a feeling there was more to it. Maybe he’d heard from his connection already? But it couldn’t have been long enough for anything noteworthy, so I let it lie; figuring he’d talk to me about it when he was ready.

“We’re all meeting for a late lunch,” I told him, trying to read over his shoulder, but he shut his laptop before I could read anything more than a few lines. “Who the fuck is asking you for pictures of your feet? And what the fuck kind of website are you on?”

His face turned beet red as he put his head in his hands. “The connection I was talking about. He got some dirt but wants some fetish pictures before he’ll give me the details. That’s the last time I cover for that dirtbag.”

“So take a picture of your feet and send it. What’s the problem?”

“Mine are hairy. He wants female toes and I’m not about to send him pictures of you for his spank bank. If that’s what he plans on doing with them.” He mocked dry heaving and shook his head.

“Jesus fucking christ, Cale. Just take some pictures of my feet and send them.” Before he could shake his head no, I added, “It’s for Viv. Even if the info is bunk, we need to try.”

And so, before we met up as a group for our first lunch together, I modeled some of Viv’s high heels I’d found in the closet while Cale snapped away with his phone. He scrubbed the metadata from the images and sent them off.

“Here’s hoping it’s worth it,” Cale said and took my hand as we headed to the restaurant.