Chapter One
The Accused
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.
~Joseph Heller, Catch 22
"Onore, lealtà, rispetto..."
The old, Italian chapel hummed with the silent swear, floating over the seated occupants in the pews whose hands were clasped and whose heads were bowed.
Well, most of them, anyway.
Tucked far into the back rows, clad in nothing but solid blacks, was a tall, dark-skinned male, bald head reflecting the light beaming in a rainbow of colors through the stained glass-depiction of Jesus Christ, and lips curled back into a permanent grimace.
As the people around him rose and the whispers of a hymn strew from the organ at the front, he sat still, unmoving. He warranted no looks - it was like he wasn't even there.
And then the alarm on his watch went off, and he leaned down to tap it, the church-goers among him raising their voices in chorus, none seeming to notice the impossibly big man lumber to his feet, pull up his dark hood over his tattooed face and journey down the nave, right up to the altar... to kneel right before the High Priest.
The man carried right on preaching without batting an eye.
The grimace twitched to a smile for just a moment, before the bald man bowed his head before the preacher and whispered the words for entry.
A loud 'crack' shattered the voices in song, but they never stumbled, tones blending together wonderfully and eyes trained on the large depiction of the Garden of Eden, raised behind the priest's head... the depiction that was currently splitting apart.
With a nod to the priest, the hairless man sidestepped him, cloak swelling around him as he headed towards the gaping hole in the middle of the before-solid wall, a low hiss of cold air blowing from its lips.
As he tucked himself within the crooks of the wall and glanced down the old, brick passage before him, he spared one last look at the clueless congregation, before, with a smirk on his marked face, turning to stalk into the cool confines of the man-made cave, the wall slamming closed behind him.
To the untrained eye, the space before him was blank; full of nothing but air and coldness. To eighteen year old Cale Schatten, however, the room was teetering with gold beyond imagination, with emeralds and rubies and diamonds and pearls - a mini-treasury, in the old essence of the word.
He was sure not to look anywhere but directly before him, at the seated panel of shortened men, with tufts of hair billowing from their ears, noses and lips, but none growing from their scalps - dwarfs, as his Mentor, Jamie Phelps, had informed him.
"And never forget, Cale... dwarfs like a good bargain. And they like a covetous man even more..."
So Cale didn't look at the mounds and hills and rivers of expensive jewelery. Instead, he focused his golden glare upon the chittering man, whose stubby little nails were worn down to the nubs and whose lips were parched from lack of sunlight and liquid.
Their eyes were the most disturbing.
They were slits; gleaming, hard little slits that were full to the brim with malice and hatred and greed.
It was the eyes that made Cale's blood boil.
"I hope you haven't started without me." A booming voice echoed about the tiny space, startling the dwarfs at its sudden intrusion.
Cale remained immobile. Only his eyes flickered to the only entrance to the confined space.
Standing in the mouth of the room was a broad, giant-like male, dark skin marked viciously with the dots of battle scars and tattoos. His coat billowed about him and face was partially covered by a hood. None of that mattered, however - Cale recognized him as none other than Orlot Hafter, one of the most esteemed Hunters in that part of the world... and also his current Watcher.
Which was why he'd been beckoned to the meeting with the underground gnomes.
Because Cale, his Charge, had been accused of stealing.
"Of course not, Master Orlot, sir." A snide little voice piped up from one of the dwarfs and the others cackled in mocking abandon.
They did, however, have the sense to look intimidated when Orlot shot them a silencing look, before sweeping over to sit beside Cale. As the hood came down, the younger boy sucked in a breath - it was the same every time he saw the man before him. His face was barley recognizable, the black marks upon them covering almost every inch of skin, his face and head completely free of hair. His eyes, like smoldering black coals, sat in his head and stared pensively ahead, his lips mirroring his distaste for the current situation.
"Well then... shall we begin?" His voice had impact, and the dwarves immediately began to shuffle about, flustered, although Cale was pretty sure that they'd more than ready a few seconds ago.
After a moment, the dwarf that had first addressed Orlot spoke up, fixing over-sized spectacles on his hooked nose. "I am sure, Master Orlot, that you are well aware of the charges being raised against one Hunter Cale Schatten of the Order. Am I not correct?" He added, leering over his glasses. Orlot said nothing and the little man's cheeks grew a little pink before he ushered on. "We, the First Council, have decided to preside over the punishment that shall be dealt out accordingly to the -"
"I didn't do it."
A shocked hush fell across the room and the little speaker-dwarf looked positively scandalized at being interrupted.
"Ex-excuse me?" He managed to choke out, slamming the papers down on the make-shift desk before him.
Cale's voice remained cool, unaffected. "You heard me. I didn't do it. And, honestly, I'm kind of insulted you guys would think I'd be willing to come down here and steal from you. I mean, seriously, I don't even get how you guys stand it - underneath the earth all the time, like worms. You really are the vermin of the Abnormal wo-"
"Enough, Cale." Orlot sliced across his sentence, making Cale turn towards him, his face finally showing speckles of emotion - anger.
Before he could retort, the Speaker behind the table looked back and forth between the two Hunters, as though something was puzzling him greatly. Then, he spoke up. "Stealing?"
A hovering silence dominated the room as Cale thoughts slowly clinked into the place; memories of earlier that day at the Academy, with Jamie making sure to give him the best clothes he had stuffed to the back of his closet - stiff dress clothes that he usually wouldn't be caught dead in but that Faye, another young Hunter residing in the huge institute, had deemed him 'très sexy' in - and telling him to be on his best behavior for the trial, her telling him it would be minor ordeal as stealing from the Abnormals usually was, her telling him he'd be back by noon with a slap on the wrist...
Her obviously lying to him - this meeting had nothing to do with the propaganda of him stealing from dwarves.
No wonder he'd been puzzled at being dragged across the sea from America to Italy simply to see a Council of Dwarfs when there were already a great many burrowed in Manhattan, where the Academy was hidden away.
"What is this talk about stealing?" The dwarf demanded, his brief spell of silence short-lived and his face now absolutely rigid. "Do you think, you pretentious little twerp, that we would drag you here for something so... so gaudy?" His skin was becoming blotchy with rage - Cale had always been told dwarfs had a very short fuse for anger - and his little hands were forming fists. "No, no, this matter is a personal insult of the Council itself! I will have your head for this, you brat! I will have your head!"
"A tad dramatic, no?" Cale murmured, but his muscles had tensed, prepped for a good fight - he was always ready for a good fight.
"No one's having anyone's heads." Orlot's tone was final and then tension in the room plummeted immediately. The red-faced little dwarf panted a bit, leaning back as his little friends patted his shoulder encouragingly. "We simply had not informed the boy fully of the... issue at hand. An obvious regret on the part of the Order, and we sincerely apologize for the outburst, but, as you can see, Cale Schatten is a bit..." Orlot trailed off, casting a furtive look in the teenager's direction. "A bit young." He finished, as though that explained things fully.
"Am I the only one who doesn't know what the hell is going on here?" Cale snapped, his inner rage seeping into his words and the irritation of not knowing all the facts eating at him.
"The matter of his youthfulness does not apply to Hunters, Master Orlot." The Speaker murmured at the same time, his gaze livid as it swept the two across from him in disgust. "You are trained to kill the moment you learn to walk. Trained to utter curses upon our kind from the time you learn to speak. Your youth was stripped from you from the time you left your mother's womb."
Orlot chuckled, a low, strumming sound at odds with his impassive face. "Parlare non parole di rabbia, ma parole di verità."
Speak not words of anger, but words of truth... Cale's internal translator piped up.
"They are truth, Master Orlot." The Speaker's voice was low with lethality, and his gaze returned to Cale whose own eyes grew cold. "You are murderers, bigots... you trample on all who do not have your superior bloodline - even the ones who you are sworn to protect from the Darkness."
The words sliced into Cale, more than anything else the Speaker had launched at him had. His voice grew frigid as he stared the dwarf down and when he spoke, icicles hung from his words, "Either accuse me of something, or watch me leave."
"Cale..." Orlot began slowly, but for the first time, the Speaker cut across him, locking his tubby little fingers beneath his chin and a cruel smirk gracing his lips.
"Dear, dear, Hunter of the Dark Ones, haven't you heard?" The Speaker leaned back now, and his eyes were so full of controlled fury and odium that Cale was surprised he hadn't exploded from its intensity. "The reason you were brought to Italy and pulled before the First Council is very simple... and very, very dire. A clause in the Agreement between the dwarfs and the Order has been broken... and now we want vengeance."
There was a gap of silence in which Cale sighed. "Was that supposed to explain something?"
"Silence, you impudent snot." Cale's eyebrow shot up sarcastically at the insult. "There is one thing, far beyond stealing and raiding and even destruction, that we, the Council, deem in very grim light. The one thing that the Hunters have been well known for in the past few centuries, succeeding in carrying out their filthy deeds without slip-up or fail or evidence... until now."
There was a shuffle of papers and the Speaker's callous smile was back, but now he was on his feet, shuffling around the desk to come right before Cale's seated form. From this vantage point, Cale could see the mold that was growing from the Abnormal's very pores, the moles that clumped one on top of the other and the grimy teeth of a being that had never met a toothbrush. He leaned forward, the loathing burning in the slits of his demon eyes.
"You, Hunter Cale Schatten, are hereby accused of the unsanctioned, unlawful and unsupported murder of a dwarf on Italian Council grounds." He leaned in even closer and the gleam in his eyes blazed. "The murder, Hunter Cale Schatten, of one of the most esteemed beings in the Council of Dwarfs... the Head Councillor himself."
The stale breath from the lips of the Abnormal fanned over Cale, but he made himself steady, and kept his figure frozen. His eyes however, were fiery pits of golden fury.
"The punishment for said action... is immediate termnation... or as I like to call it." The Abnormal rocked even closer. "...Execution."