Face Value

And the whole thing is as easy as it sounds. Sunshine and I go outside while Iago still stares at the copy of the Paladin’s Holy Book. Honestly, I don’t know what the Enlightenment lab geeks are going to find but I doubt it will involve answers. If the Paladins of Light had wanted to trick me, it seemed like the gag would’ve made more sense with a bullet in my brain pan to start it off. Everything here was trucking along at face value and I needed a new mask. Sunshine sat me down in a chair in an empty class room and started swabbing my arm. “So what happened? Why are you here and why is Dingo with the Nod Freaks?” I ask. Sunshine stiffens for a second and starts thumping my vein. “We had a difference of opinion about compromising. Dingo followed the people who kidnapped you, I was missing an arm. I needed medical attention so I dragged myself to an Enlightenment safe house. When we finally met back up, he had all these wild stories. The Book, an anti-vampire police force, and even the notion that a cure existed. It’s not that I thought he was lying, just mistaken. It’s just not scientifically possible,” Sunshine said. It was odd, that was too much information for someone observing from the outside. Dingo was capable of sneaking in, certainly. The security had been non-existent except for where the Book was concerned at the hospital, but still. “How did he give you the copy? Did it seem like he was ripping you off?” I asked. Sunshine plunged the tube in my arm and started the pump. They were going to take the limit, it seemed. “No, he seemed like he thought he was doing us a favor. The Nod Worshippers had been all too willing to help him procure a copy, but I got the impression it didn’t take much. Right out from under their noses with no one knowing was what he said. He was in a hurry though, like he had somewhere else to be even though I’d been waiting,” Sunshine said. Did that mean it was before or after we met at the warehouse? “Where and at what time?” I asked. The blood tank was half-full and my stomach turned at the sight of it. Shit, me, feeling sick at the sight of my own blood. Sunshine seemed as passive about it as ever. “He’s been staying at a place on the edge of town since you’ve been gone. I’ll write it down. This was at about…ten or so? Two nights ago,” Sunshine said. Same night, before the warehouse reunion. So he had been ignorant about needing the original Book when he gave them the copy.