Love As The Darker Binding Ch 02

***This one's short. It's one of those in-between chapters which sometimes happen. I didn't think of it at the time, but there's no sex in this one, sorry.

I used a few bits of history for a character, but other than the famous guys, the names are changed.

You might recognize the character at the end. Just remember that this happens a few years before the beginning of 'Binding'. 0_o

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Nowhere, Colorado, 1PM

The landscape seemed to ripple a little before her eyes, but then it was early-afternoon, and it was the last week in June, after all. Hoo boy, the first hot spell of the year.

Carrie Harris ground up the dirt track which led to an old log and frame construction house.

Looking at the engine temperature gage and glancing at the outside air temperature indicator in her overhead display, Carrie put her truck in Park and sat for a moment, heeding what she'd always read in owner's manuals since she'd been a kid. Allow about a minute or two of idling before switching the engine off.

She looked around, savoring the air conditioning as she did. She had no idea WHY there were always these instructions and she had no clue what good it did, but ...

She saw that things could be a lot worse. The place didn't look to be in any immediate danger of falling in, anyhow, so that was a plus. It also wasn't far from a stream which looked to be nowhere near drying up.

The house and the land which it sat on looked a little rough, but she'd seen worse, she decided.

She'd just never owned worse.

Carrie was here to look at something which had been willed to her following the passing of a relation which she'd never known that she'd had. It sat on undeveloped land in the middle of nowhere in Colorado. It had been explained to her several times, but Carrie still didn't see the connection.

Well, it was not 'completely' undeveloped, she guessed. There appeared to be electrical service to the place. She saw the appearance of the line of poles as they entered the little 'valley' and proceeded along until they stopped out at where the um, 'road' was, or the road allowance, she supposed. At that point there was a transformer on the pole and then there was the last sixty or so feet to the meterbox.

She just wondered how long it would take between the time that she had the power turned on and the point where the place burst into flames.

The place had been left to her as the last identifiable, 'Harris' in a certain complicated line of succession. She hadn't recognized any of the names which she'd read in the law firm's offices.

"I don't understand," she'd said, "I'm not the last Harris. There are nine of us around here in my particular strain of Harrises alone. My parents are still alive. How does this come to me?"

"It's not down the line of family," the solicitor replied, "As far as being related, it comes to you by your name from another line of Harrises. They ran out of females. You appear in your line at nearest the correct age by the terms of the will.

In that line, a woman named Marjorie Harris has passed on due to illness. She was not much older than you I'd guess, and she never did anything with the place in the time that she'd owned it since she was eighteen. The property was bequeathed to her by her maternal grandmother. I can show you the whole line again, but this has been passed down from one generation to the next following only the female side of the family for getting on to a hundred years now.

It sits in the middle of nothing and it's not far outside of the borders of Browns Park, Colorado, a nature and wildlife preserve -- probably a historical one too.

You're rather distantly related to the woman who built it a long time ago. To relate her to you, her name was Ann Harris by her marriage to a Mr. Frank Harris.

Before her marriage, she was known by a few names and for a few reasons, though she was born and christened as Ann Miller. Back in her day, she was known as Queenie. Your ancestor was known to be a rancher, a cattle rustler on occasion, and a known associate of outlaws."

"Outlaws?" Carrie repeated as she looked up from the deed in surprise.

The attorney nodded with a sigh, "I haven't made much of a study of it -- other than how it relates to this bequeath, of course. That whole area; that corner of Colorado and the one in Utah right next to it, it all used to be the stomping grounds for a lot of shady characters at one time.

Have you ever heard of a man called Butch Cassidy, or his friend, the Sundance Kid, or Ben Kilpatrick or Elzy Lay?"

Seeing Carrie's blank expression, she shrugged, "I'm a little disappointed that you've never heard of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, at least. Hollywood made a big movie out of those guys a long time ago. You might want to rent yourself a copy if you can find one.

Anyway, Ann Miller and her older sister Flossy grew up on their father's cattle ranch. He often sold to outlaws passing through.

There were some powerful cattle barons in the area and they wanted the Miller land. The Millers refused to sell, and so the barons did the all-American thing and played dirty, rustling the Miller's cattle.

Ann and her sister just rustled them back, which the other cattlemen pointed to as what they saw as criminal activity, and they brought in a gun for hire named Bob Cornish to either intimidate or murder as needed.

It never happened though," the attorney said, "The Miller sisters maintained sort of, ... romantic relationships, you might say with the members of the gang and this, along with their supplying the gang with meat and horses, kept the threats from the other cattlemen to a non-existent level.

Eventually, the gang members all went their separate ways and/or died off and Ann married a rancher named Bonnington. She divorced him six years later. She married for the final time in 1928 to a cattleman named Harris. She died before him in 1956 and it was not until after his death in 1963, that this bequest became active.

It is not known how much use Ann Harris made of the property before she died. You may find it to be of some use as a vacation property if you're the kind who likes to be on her own out in the middle of nowhere.

It sits on a little under two hundred acres, so you might get a little out of it if you find that you don't want it. You just can't sell for two years. It's in the wording of the will. It must have worked so far, whatever the reason for it was, because no one who inherited it ever sold it.

"What about property taxes?" Carrie asked.

"Three seventy-six a year," the attorney said, "Lets go back to what I just said to you.

Middle of nowhere.

Anyway, here are the keys to the place, such as they are. Have fun, or whatever."

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It turned out to be a bit of a struggle to get the front door unlocked, but Carrie managed it and she smiled to herself once she had the door open, since at least the door hadn't fallen clean off the hinges.

She walked around the place slowly and very carefully, not knowing the state of the floor at all. It made some noises of complaint, but overall, there didn't seem to be any danger of falling through.

The place was sparsely furnished and none of the windows were broken, so Carrie guessed that there shouldn't be much of any resident wildlife inside, other than maybe a mouse or six. She tried not to shudder at the thought, but then she reasoned that with nothing in the place to eat, any resident mice had starved to death long before she'd been born.

She walked around the place and even found the courage to climb the creaky stairs to the upper floor. There wasn't much up there, other than a very tired-looking old bed and an empty bureau. The other rooms were empty.

Carrie walked downstairs and out of the door, leaving it open behind her as she went to retrieve a bottle of water from her truck. With that in hand, she stepped back onto the porch and sat down to think and take stock.

The overgrown yard was out there and she could see that the fence still stood. A little work with a weed-whacker and maybe an afternoon spent slopping stain or at least whitewash would help a lot, she decided.

The roof would need shingles soon, if it didn't already and the place sure could use a little paint and care as well. She fished around in her bag and came up with a tired-looking pack of cigarettes. Working one out, she found her lighter and lit one to think about things.

A look around from where she sat almost made her smile at the irony of it. At almost twenty-four, the inside of her heart felt just about the way that the old place looked on the outside.

With perhaps a little less cracked and blistered paint.

The way that Carrie saw herself, she was about the perfect bisexual woman, right in the middle of the spectrum. At first thought, once she'd realized this about herself long ago, she thought that it might come in a little handy to be a person who was wired that way, since she'd learned that she could quite easily be attracted to people of either gender.

Well, mathematically, it had sounded a little convenient at the time.

Theoretically, to her, it meant that all things being equal, she ought to have twice as much fun. And of course, it hadn't really worked out that way. It just meant that she was attracted to others more often. It didn't mean that she got laid more often at all in her own estimation.

But though she could tell herself that she'd had quite a few partners in bed even so, it hadn't helped her heart any. She could say that she'd had a lot of fun in the many beds that she'd been through, but she was still the same as anyone else in one needful regard.

She'd never found the one.

She took a long drag on the stale smoke and blew it out as she looked around, listening to the meadow birds as they sat here and there in tree branches and on the few well-rusted farm implements in sight, discussing the new neighbor, she supposed.

Something which she treasured about her childhood was that her father was a swordsmith -- which was a rather uncommon occupation to have at this point in human history. All of his work had been custom orders. Unless the customer had made it plain early on that what was wanted was purely for show -- which her father had argued against vociferously -- most pieces were crafted as live blades.

In other words, real swords.

If there was one aspect to her childhood, Carrie supposed, it had been this which had 'shaped' her the most.

She'd topped out at 5 foot, 10 inches tall which she supposed tended to narrow down the field of prospective males at least a little. And what she'd learned at her father's hands growing up had shaped her further. Carrie was not a large woman in terms of weight, though she was a little heavier than a lot of girls her age. But she most certainly was not soft.

At alternating moments, she credited (or blamed) the success of the film productions of Tolkien's master works of fantasy. The design people who had worked to produce interesting and unusual swords and blades for those films had been a boon to swordsmiths all over as they faced the demand of people to own something like what they'd seen on the screen.

It had also been a ton of work for her and her father, because it was one thing to make a sword which resembled something from those films. It was quite another to put in the work to craft a replica which could actually be used because there were issues of balance which came into play in a big way. Really, it had meant an almost total re-design so that the desired appearance could be retained in every case, since there is a world of difference between a movie prop sword and a real one.

For all of the work, Carrie remembered it as an exciting time as well.

And of course, once you knew -- truly knew - how to wield a live sword as well as a prop so that it's use appeared real, there was also all sorts of work available in teaching and even a little acting as well, not that she'd ever consider herself to be actress material.

Carrie finished her cigarette and ground it out carefully, her decision made about the place -- at least the beginning framework of it all.

She got to her feet and stuck her tongue out to blow a raspberry at the birds.

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Over the course of the summer, Carrie often spent time at her hideaway as she called it. She'd hired an electrical company to check out the service and with their nod, she had the power to the place connected and bought a smallish kitchen stove and a small refrigerator. The painting got done -- eventually and a little at a time - and the place seemed to look better for it all.

The really scary part of the whole thing had been the outhouse and it's mysteries and terrors and after having to sit there and look at the small rodents who absolutely needed to pass through just when she was using it and almost sit on their haunches (if not her toes) to peer at her and appear to almost have something to say to her, ...

Carrie knocked down the old hazard and filled in the hole. The paperwork and applications had been a nightmare on their own, but at last she had approval to put in a septic tank and the required weeping tile bed. But having an indoor toilet was worth a lot even to a girl like Carrie was.

She had no intent to craft any swords out there, since she had the use of her father's shop anyway. But she did often go to the old place with a blade or two to work at sweating and staying in shape.

That was when she met the first of the larpers.

She thought of it as quite humorous at first - a bunch of grown people who liked to run around and 'play' at a common fantasy world which they all shared. As the summer passed, she met quite a few of them and slowly revised her opinion. They had all the required paperwork and permits to use the area and they were really careful about trampling things.

It became a strange relationship which she had with many of them. They never trespassed on her land -- once she'd gone over the deed with her GPS and marked it a little more clearly, and they always offered to let her play along. She was even beginning to like the idea for more than the rather obvious reasons.

With a bit of luck, she could funnel a little work in her father's direction and she'd already seen a few, ... rather interesting prospects and possibilities for her almost non-existent love life -- well at this point anyway.

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Somewhere on the Gulf Coast, Florida, evening

The street chase was already annoying to Abi because the city was in the middle of it's summer street festival, so there were people everywhere. By the third block into it, Abi was slowly getting pissed over needing to vault over sidewalk bistro and café tables with startled customers seated all around them.

Why some people's kids had to leave their half-empty coffee cups on the sidewalk after dark as though they'd just forgotten them there was the thing. He'd already gone down twice and a demonlord just doesn't do landing on his ass in public very well at all, especially in front of startled humans.

In a nightclub nearby, in various places around the city core, and in two suburban homes, the littering twerps who had left those cups were in agony, covered in flames now and the thought of the news tomorrow as they speculated on the cause of these cases of simultaneous spontaneous combustion were almost enough to cause Abi to want to stick around.

At least it was a festival during the evening. So other than some surprised outbursts from people at seeing an almost seven foot tall man with horns, a tail, and a shotgun run past chasing an idiot in the middle of the street, it wasn't going all that badly on balance. They probably thought that it was some buffoonery put on for their entertainment and dining pleasure as opposed to some buffoonery put on by a shit-scared asshole who would never get away anyway no matter what he did.

Abi just needed to get a little closer to avoid messing up too many innocents when he took this fool. Stopping everything in the middle of a city would mean collisions and chaos at the edges of whatever zone he chose.

And something which every bounty hunter worried over at least a little was the possibility of catching a second, innocent soul during the taking, since you couldn't just apologize and hand them back their lives by then. Once a soul was taken out of a body, that body would not function again,

At least not properly.

He thought about it and decided that it all boiled down to just words for human crimes which didn't really interest him.

Embezzlement, car theft, assault, sexual assault, money laundering, fraud, kidnapping and murder. They were all just descriptors to him.

Human garbage, Abi thought, and not one of the better bags of trash.

He saw the faces of the people who he was running past as they looked up in surprise or shock, some of them caught in a moment of laughter, little kids in strollers getting slowly covered in sticky ice cream.

He dodged and weaved as he had to. They didn't interest him much either. Personally?

He was there for the fat bounty.

The mark which he was running down had embezzled a ton of money from a hospital children's fund, which Abi took as likely the brightest point in the jerk's life. Other than his slight distaste at that crime, it didn't bother Abi much unless he thought of the kids who might have been affected -- and he didn't.

It was the fraud, grand theft auto and the attempts to procure for the purposes of which had gotten his attention. The assorted other murders, sexual assaults of senior citizens, money laundering on a scale which could almost be admired for pretty much a one-man show and defrauding old people of their life's savings just irked him for the mess which had to be sorted out -- by someone else, he admitted, but still ...

Causing mayhem without a permit. He remembered that one in particular.

What the fuck kind of charge was that, anyway? Since when did you need a permit to fuck shit up?

Kidnapping, unlawful confinement and repeated physical and sexual assault -- those had been the charges which had brought the two groups of adjudicating beings to the table to consider the fate of a very dirty soul.

That two of the victims had perished before being found and rescued just sealed it and upped the ante. In the eyes of those two groups, the man's soul had ceased to be his own at the time of their judgement. Now, it was only a piece of currency to be traded -- once it had been riven from him.

And the guy was forty-seven. Not much time left to turn all of this around no matter what he did even before the judgment had been passed. Abi did have to hand it to him, though.

For a sadistic aging deviant, he sure could run.

So the bounty had come out and they were offering enough to get Abi's interest because nobody else had been able to get near enough to him to rip his worthless soul from him to stop this shit.

Abi saw the man turn left down a street and he ran through the strolling crowds faster, knocking a few people out of his way when it couldn't be helped. He had to catch this one now. Another short block and they'd be into the parade which was still going on.

The man knew that he was running for his life and he gave it his all. He didn't really know the danger so it was really an oversimplification. His life was only one of the things at risk here.

His eyes bulged when he saw the one who he'd been running from coming AT him from the front, yards ahead, but he wasn't dumb enough to stop and wonder how it was possible. He ran right into an old apartment building.

Abi saw it and jumped to land on the hood of a parked and empty police cruiser which was there to demarcate the edge of the pedestrian-only section. It fucked up the hood, windshield and roof, but it gave him the altitude to vault to the top of the large cube van parked sixty feet away with another leap.