With the roof folded, Ajax straightened his legs from the seat to elevate himself above the roofline—from there, the scenery looked awe-inspiring.
The sun was just rising in Sweden, painting the horizon in a beautiful shade of golden.
It hurt him to look directly at the sun, more so than others, causing his tattooed left arm to shade his eyes. But he still kept looking at the softly glowing, steadily rising sun.
'Nothing is stopping me from taking a long, relaxing drive to Stockholm Archipelago today, son.' Ajax thought with an unshakable gaze moments before Cuddleberry's main screen came to life and a rhythmic hum vibrated through the dashboard.
He folded his legs to sit back on the seats, and his eyes widened.
"No! No way! Just no!" Ajax whined, looking at the incoming texts of the one person who could stop him from taking a long, relaxing drive to the archipelago this fine morning.
Displayed on the screen, a messenger ID named Omen texted him.
—Finished business?
—Swing by here when you read this.
—I know you're reading this right now.
—Don't forget to bring me a souvenir.
—Come quick, I have a surprise or two for you.
—Don't keep a lady waiting, especially when she is cradling a present with your name on it.
Ajax could almost hear Omen's soft, coquettish voice in his ear.
It made him wonder how Christy was doing. "It's morning in Sweden, what time even is it in Dallas? 4 hours? 5 hours? Fuck, it's 7 hours. Minus 7 hours."
His eyes turned to the beautiful horizon, and Ajax muttered with a troubled expression, "Why do you have to contact me at midnight, Omen? I hope you're okay."
Then, the car disappeared from existence.
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
Two bright lights appeared in an inconspicuously dark alley with a chibi pineapple skull sticker on the wall somewhere in Downtown Dallas, Texas, USA.
The lights moved forward with startling speed, and once it entered the road, the visage of an oxblood hellcat became visible.
From Downtown, Ajax drove off to an adjacent district.
It was a measly ten-minute drive from Ajax's port point, and usually, he found the drive there pleasant. But, right now, it felt anything but that to him.
Ajax cruised at the speed limit, exceeding it occasionally when he was sure the cops weren't around. Until eventually, he was at his destination—The Design District.
The Design District was a sprawling grid of mid-century warehouses, industrial buildings, and low-slung commercial spaces just northwest of Downtown.
By day, it was home to high-end interior design showrooms, art galleries, and workshops—the perfect place to make important political connections.
However, by night, it became quiet, deserted, and shaded by the levees of the Trinity River—the perfect place for someone in his and Omen's line of business.
When near Omen's base of operations aka her house, Ajax didn't immediately enter the place. He surveilled it for a while, circling the building a few times before parking the car in front of Omen's front yard.
Omen's place was a double-story, nondescript brick building from the 1960s.
It had a modern, minimalist storefront with corrugated metal and a single plate-glass window displaying a cowboy hat on a stand. Other than that, there were no big, flashy signs. The real business happened in the back after all.
During his stakeout, he thought it was strange that nothing out of the ordinary was happening near her house, but now he saw why.
Immediately after parking his car on her driveway, and stepping on the concrete, he sensed multiple presences scattered so unexpectedly close to her store that he had missed them.
The thought of someone daring to go so near her place to spy on her no less never occurred to him.
"Great," Ajax's icy-grey pupils gained a soft sheen, "Just great."
A few minutes later, he walked into her front for supernatural business.
Ajax entered the place, briefly glancing at the taxidermy, old maps, antique firearms, and strange painting, and thought about the countless disagreements he'd had about showcasing such dangerous mystic objects out in the open like that.
Legally, Omen owned a high-end Consignment & Estate Liquidation shop. In a nutshell, she helped sell or liquidate the contents of a home, usually antiques. A good front to keep dangerous things in her house, and deal with rich and influential people with supernatural problems.
Ajax sighed before walking towards the back cabin in hurried steps.
"I came here as fast as I could. What's up?" Ajax said as he walked into Omen's cabin.
"Here before twenty minutes since my last text. Very impressive." He heard Omen's uniquely soothing voice.
He found her leisurely sitting behind her centered work desk, sipping tea, and petting the chinchilla that always sat on her lap.
"And, you're just drinking tea," Ajax let out a tired sigh. "Of course."
Despite wanting to be angry with her, he couldn't bring himself to, and fell back on one of the chairs next to a mini-bar on the side, pouring himself a drink.
Omen and Ajax went way back. As in, when he was a kid and she was a fresh widow kind of back.
As an orphan child with innate superpowers, Ajax had a severe god complex and extreme destructive tendencies.
There were even superstitious rumors amongst the bureaucrats who dealt with him regularly about him being cursed to bring misfortune wherever he went.
Which, in reality, was a direct consequence of him using his powers to inexplicably sabotage anything and everything he didn't like—a list of things that was pretty long when he was a kid.
As it turned out, being a barely functional superpowered saboteur had consequences, such as getting 'transferred' from orphanages and foster homes more times in a year than there were days in a month.
Until the day he met another similarly superpowered individual like him. A young woman with bone magic, a woman who was harvesting the bones of her husband in a back alley.
Young Ajax thought he would die that day, but the woman who saw the child witnessing her commit an unspeakable atrocity… didn't feel threatened by him.
Instead, she gave him a welcoming, genuinely loving smile. He remembered her words to this day, "Hello there, you."
"Well," Omen's mesmerizing voice spread through the room, along with the soft rustle of her chair moving. It sent a shiver of excitement down Ajax's spine, "The charm of living over the shop is that I can brew my tea and savor it slowly all while working."
She gently cradled the chinchilla on her lap, before rising from her chair and lovingly resting her pet on her warm seat. Omen then walked behind the mini-bar.
Omen had shoulder-length, slightly curvy black hair, light blue eyes, and a face that seemed to perpetually hold an expression of serenity and composure.
Despite being in her late forties, if one didn't know any better, they might think she was thirty-two or younger.
She wore a black waist-length camisole that liberally displayed her cleavage as she leaned forward on the bar table, "So, how was the Hunt, Vince?"