Chapter 62: She is making a mess

Dante followed the two couriers through the quiet streets of Floor 34 for twenty minutes. He didn’t make a sound.

They never looked back. They just walked and talked about wine, a girl at the tavern, and how much money they were going to get paid. At the edge of the district, they turned into a building with no sign on the door.

Dante waited there.

Ten minutes later, one of the couriers came out alone. He was whistling and carrying the sealed metal case. Dante stepped out of the darkness behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Don’t turn around," Dante said.

The courier froze. The metal case slipped from his fingers, but Dante caught it before it hit the cobblestones.

"The cat-kin," Dante said quietly. "Where is she?"

"I... I don’t know what you’re talking about..."

"You said the thirty-sixth floor transit cell."

"That was this morning! The orders changed!" The courier’s voice cracked in panic. "Elena sent a new order at noon. The girl isn’t in the transit cell. She was taken straight up."

"Up where?"

"Fifty-five." The man swallowed hard. "Marcus wanted her there, personally. They said she’s the bait for something."

Dante’s grip tightened on the man’s shoulder without him meaning to. Marcus wasn’t hiding her. He was setting a table, and he had chosen the exact room where Dante had died.

"Who’s up there?" Dante asked.

"The whole vanguard! Marcus too—he moved his office up there last week! Please, I just carry the cases!"

Dante let go of his shoulder. The courier scrambled away, sprinting down the street without looking back. A few seconds later, his frantic footsteps vanished around the corner.

Dante stood alone in the street.

’Bait’, he thought. ’He wants me to walk right into it.’

He looked up. Far above the glass ceiling of Floor 34, past twenty-one floors of stone and steel, a man was sitting in a room, waiting for him.

"Fine," Dante said quietly to the empty street and walked off into the night.

One week later. Floor 41.

Dante sat in a corner A cup of tea sat untouched in front of him. He had climbed seven floors in six days. It was slow going because every lift above Floor 38 required a guild pass, and he only used his Decree of Absolution when he absolutely had to. Using it too often would leave a trail for Marcus to follow.

Around a large table near the center of the room, a dozen hunters were arguing over a fresh news sheet.

"I’m telling you, it’s real!" one shouted.

"Yeah, right. You said that about the dragon on Floor 30, too."

"That was a lizard! This one is completely different. She killed forty men on Floor 9. Forty! In a single night!"

"Forty? The guys from the lower tiers said it was a hundred."

"A hundred, forty, who cares? She’s walking through every floor very fast, asking one single question. If you give her the wrong answer, you burn."

"What’s the question?"

The hunter lowered his voice, leaning in. "She asks if you’ve seen a man named Dante."

Dante’s cup stopped halfway to his mouth.

"Dante?" someone else at the table scoffed.

"Dante Grey? The traitor from the posters?"

"That’s the one."

"Why the hell would a monster like that be looking for him?"

"Nobody knows. But if you say a bad word about him—even a joke—she kills you where you stand. They say her eyes turn gold colour. Her hands drip black fire."

"Black fire?"

"That’s why the guilds are calling her the Black Flame Reaper."

Dante set his cup back down, very carefully.

A young hunter tore a sheet off the tavern wall and slammed it onto the table. It wasn’t Dante’s bounty poster. This one showed a woman. Only her mouth and her eyes were visible. Underneath the drawing, the artist had written two words, [GOLD EYES], and underlined them twice.

[BLACK FLAME REAPER]

Reward: 300,000,000 credits.

Kills on sight. Last seen: Floor 14.

WARNING: Do not speak the name Dante Grey near her.

Someone had pinned the new sheet right next to the old poster of Dante’s scarred face. The two papers hung side by side on the wooden wall. A man with a scar and a woman with golden eyes, both marked for an astronomical amount of money, with the exact same name tying them together.

"Two for the price of one," a drunk hunter joked, laughing. "Find her, and she’ll lead you right to him."

"Or he’ll lead you to her."

"Either way, I’m staying far away from it."

The table laughed nervously, the joke falling.

Dante stared at the poster from across the room and said nothing.

’Floor 14’, he thought.

He thought back to the girl who had stood three steps away from him. The long cloak, the hands clasped together like a nervous student, the way she had taken that one extra step back just to make sure she didn’t crowd him.

’ i told her no hurting anyone I didn’t tell her to.’

He closed his eyes.

A drunk man leaned across from the neighboring table and shouted at him, "Hey! Hooded guy! You’ve been staring at that poster for ten minutes. You thinking of going after the bounty?"

"No," Dante said .

"Smart man." The drunk grinned, slapping the table. "Nobody should. That woman is a straight-up monster."

Dante didn’t answer. He stood up, dropped two coins next to his cold tea, and walked toward the door. Behind him, the tavern went right back to arguing over the body count.

"She’s making a mess’’, he told himself. "Marcus is going to track her. Every hunter between here and Floor 14 is going to know my name."

He looked up at the dark glass ceiling above.

"She’ll draw them right to me. Or she’ll get herself too much involved."

Neither option was good. He had a specific plan, and his plan didn’t have room for a demon queen who slaughtered forty men in a night because someone insulted him. He started walking again.

’Still’, he thought, a few paces down the street, ’she really is crazy, she always do what she wants’