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1979. Los Angeles.
Rio crouches over the body, inhaling the sweet scent of a not-so-dearly-departed soul and feeling an ounce of the multiverse’s great set of scales level out. A life moved from this plane to the next. Whatever the fuck that means. Rio doesn’t concern herself with heaven and hell – she likes reality and purgatory just fine. Whatever comes after her doesn’t matter. If there is anything at all.The man has been stabbed, six times in the chest, in an alleyway outside a bar infuriatingly called, simply, The Bar. Rio takes his soul, which has the bitter stench of a guy who did too many drugs and often forgot to ask the names of the women he slept with, the general scourge-of-humanity taste. She decides she needs a chaser. So against all her better instincts, she’s going to The Bar.Forcing herself into corporeality is always a bit of a chore. But she does it anyway, snapping her bones into place, slipping past the bouncer through the shadows and palming the wallet off of an unsuspecting movie executive in the meantime. Just for fun.The Bar is crowded at this time of night, full of pulsing bodies, smelling of sweat and hairspray. Glitter and spilled beer coat the floor. Rio – having donned shimmering lace bell bottoms and a diamond-encrusted black blouse, just for the drama of it all – steps delicately around coked-out has-beens and raps her knuckles twice on the bar. A glass of Jack and Coke appears at her fingertips, out of sight of the stoned bartender who isn’t paying attention anyway.Rio sips. It burns her conceptual throat and settles in her conceptual stomach. She’s not sure her body knows how to get drunk, or it probably would have happened already.There’s a stage in The Bar, and a band is setting up on it. Rio rolls her eyes. Just what she was craving, live music. But there’s a palpable, magical energy surrounding the women onstage – and yes, they are women all, and that makes Rio smile. She prefers women to men. Men are loud and rude and die extravagant, stupid deaths. Women go out in anger or peace or not at all. Women are scrappy – fighters –and Rio respects that in a human.There are four women on the stage – one sitting at a sparkling gold drum set, one with a bass guitar and another with a respectably expensive-looking Stratocaster. The one who seems to be in charge stands in the center, gripping a mic stand with both hands, knuckles going white from the effort. She’s arguing with the drummer. Her long, brown hair – kept back from her eyes with a thin black velvet headband – cascades down her back in a wild wave, and the deep purple of her sleeveless jumpsuit hugs her like a second skin.But more than that, something coils around her, black velvet and petrichor, the unmistakable scent of one who’s experienced Death. Rio thinks she would have remembered if she’d encountered a woman such as this before – those curves, that pouty mouth – so this is not one of those near-death-experience victims she hates so much. No, this absolute goddess has the look of someone who has killed.Tasty, Rio thinks, and parts the crowd with a wave of her hand so she can get closer.She lurks stage left, watches in silence as an argument plays out between the singer and the drummer. Accusatory words are thrown that she doesn’t bother to listen to. Rage simmers under the surface of the powerful frontwoman, who raises a hand in a declaratory, fuck this sort of gesture. The drummer is thrown into the air. Her head gives a sickening crack against the back wall of the stage as she slumps down, life fading. Rio feels it in her chest like the pulse of a sluggish, black heart. Interesting.She abandons her drink and steps forward onto the stage, meaning to claim the drummer’s soul and maybe watch the show from the wings, but the frontwoman whirls on her, fire in her eyes. “Who are you?” she asks with a snarl, and before Rio can think to do something about the fact that she’s visible to the human eye when she’s definitely not supposed to be, the singer snaps, “whatever. Can you play the drums?”Rio thinks on this for a moment. She’s never tried. She’s intimately familiar with heartbeats, however, and aren’t those just the drums of the body, or something?And anyway, Rio is looking right into this woman’s eyes, and infuriatingly, she’s not sure she’d be able to say no if she tried.“Sure,” she says easily, and takes the place of the old drummer on the sticky leather stool. She spares a glance for the corpse behind her, blows it a kiss – the drummer’s soul flits over to her in annoyed little prances and buries itself behind her chest for absorption and processing later.The rest of the band seems used to the singer’s antics, if not a little perturbed at the way she has assimilated someone new into their midst so easily. Perhaps Rio has her own sort of magnetic draw, as well. She somewhat likes the idea.She makes threatening eyes at both of them in turn, and they look down at their instruments, chagrined.“Hello,” the singer booms into the microphone, catching the attention of the bar – sorry, The Bar. “We’re Agatha and the Road,” she grins, “and we’ll be singing some songs for you tonight.”Agatha. Rio raises a single eyebrow. A woman of good, slick with the scent of death. How… utterly delicious.Agatha glares daggers into Rio, mouths do you know the Ballad with a dramatic air. Rio simply raises an eyebrow. Sure, she knows the Ballad. A proper witch, then, she notes, and counts the band in.The glimmering, wicked look in Agatha’s eyes as she sings catches Rio’s attention and refuses to let her go.---After the show, The Bar empties out. Rio sits on its horribly sticky countertop, sipping at another Jack and Coke. Across the room, Agatha and her band are packing up. Every so often, there’s a snippy comment, a swish of Agatha’s shimmering black cape, an insult with teeth. Rio smiles when she hears “maybe if your head wasn’t so far up your ass you were licking your own spine, you’d have an idea of what it takes to carry a harmony.”“Harsh,” she calls, and Agatha’s attention is caught like a fish on the line, eyes narrowing in Rio’s direction. “But true,” she adds with a shrug.The other two band members exchange a look, wary and uncomfortable, and slip out the backstage door with their instruments. Only Agatha and Rio remain, one posted up rather uncomfortably on the bar, the other bracing her hands against her hips at center stage, the lights turning her body radiant. “And what, exactly,” Agatha hisses, stepping off the stage with certainty, her block heels slamming against the hardwood floors, “would you be doing here? Infiltration? Sabotage?”The woman speaks with a flair for the dramatic. Rio merely smirks. “I was simply doing my job.”“Loitering around other people’s gigs? Inserting yourself where you’re not wanted?”The joke is too good to pass up. “I assure you, I only insert myself into places where I’m absolutely wanted.”Agatha smarts at that, mouth snapping shut as the slightest blush covers her cheeks. To anyone else, it would probably be invisible, but Rio isn’t anyone else. “Tell me,” Agatha says, obviously trying to recover the upper hand, “who are you?”Rio hums. The truth is on the tip of her tongue, but Agatha has to earn it, and besides – if Rio plays her cards right, she might find out exactly what kind of bloodlust is lurking under that thin, human skin. “You can call me Rio.”Agatha’s eyes narrow. “Cute. You make a habit of crashing concerts often?”“Only when the music’s good.” Rio shrugs. It’s true. She once sat through an entire opera, entranced by the singing, before remembering she was there to collect on the taxes of that year’s plague. “Or when a certain witch catches my eye.”A flinch. She’s struck bone. Perhaps Agatha isn’t used to being called out, or even found out. After all, not everyone has the sense to tell when a spell is being cast. Enchantment is certainly one way to achieve a record deal.Agatha seems to recover from her surprise and makes a face of mock offense. “Hey! I don’t know what you’re accusing me of!” When Rio’s face doesn’t change, she drops the act abruptly, frowning. “Listen, honey, I can dance all night. So be careful who you go around challenging.”“Hm.” Rio slips off the bar gracefully, circling Agatha with a clinical eye. Just for fun, she unsheathes her knife, trailing the sharp point across Agatha’s shoulder blades. She feels the shiver it elicits and can’t help but grin. “Who said I was challenging anyone?”“You don’t know what I’m capable of,” Agatha hisses through clenched teeth even as Rio draws nonsense patterns across her back with the edge of the blade. “It’s not all spotlights and solos. I’m doing real work here.”“Oh, really?” Rio leans in close, senses Agatha’s shiver as her cool breath caresses the shell of her ear. “And that would be-”“Power.” Agatha cuts Rio off, whipping around to face her. They hover less than inches apart, and Rio privately delights in the way Agatha’s eyes flicker between her own and her lips, seemingly of their own accord. “I have power, and I’ll have more, and I’m not afraid to use it. On any witch.”Rio can’t help it. She cackles, joy spreading through each limb of her body at the self-righteous look on Agatha’s face. A woman who has never failed, never been caught, never ensnared herself in one of her own traps. It’s almost too good to be true, and Rio loves it. “Sweetheart,” she sighs and reaches forward with her knife. “I’m not just any witch.”With a deft flick of her fingers, she slices Agatha’s pristine jumpsuit, just over her heart. The pale flesh that’s revealed beneath is begging to be streaked in ruby red (lipstick or blood, Rio isn’t picky), but she holds herself back. For now.She backs away, leaving Agatha staring at her, stock-still, trying to hide how hard she’s breathing and clenching her fists. “Te veo, superstar,” Rio teases, and disappears in a swirl of black and green smoke.---Agatha kills. Indiscriminately.Rio keeps an eye on her, lingering around Southern California longer than any rational being should, watching what she does. And what she does is murder, beautiful murder – mortals and witches alike.The witches she drains of power, like drinking deep from a well. It fills her, vibrant, violet, and she shakes with pleasure as she accumulates it, drop after drop, life after life. Rio watches. Waiting for the right time.The plain, boring humans: she stabs, slices, carves. She prefers blades. Elegant. Intimate. Rio understands this need for closeness, to feel lifeforce leak through the cracks of the body. She loves to watch Agatha work.Each body – witch or mortal – Agatha disposes of when it’s done. Tosses it into a nearby dumpster, wrapped in garbage bags, or burns it in a makeshift funeral pyre in the backyard of her Laurel Canyon house. Rio comes for the scraps when she’s done, the souls that still taste of cocaine and bad decisions. She keeps her distance. She plays the waiting game.Agatha sings for crowds of hundreds and looks out over the audience like there’s someone she wants out there, every time. Rio keeps herself just out of sight and thinks, now this is fun.---Two people die in Laurel Canyon. This is nothing new – people die in the Los Angeles Canyons all the time. Why, just a handful of years ago, Rio got the pleasure of cleaning up a grisly scene on Cielo Drive that would have been impressive if it wasn’t enacted by a whiny man-child desperate for favor. Nothing about these particular murders should be remarkable. And yet, Rio finds herself drawn to them, because she knows that when she pushes open the door of the non-descript bungalow, she will find –Agatha leans oh-so-casually against the wall, twirling a bloody butcher’s knife between her fingers. It’s a position of nonchalant dominance, but it’s clear she was waiting for Rio to come.The bodies lay out on the floor before them, an offering. Agatha’s former band members. Two witches – Rio can feel the power reeking from them, lingering in the air, tendrils of it. She knows, from watching, that Agatha takes the power of the witches she’s killed. She has not done that here.These corpses have not been sucked dry and left for the reaper, no. Agatha has taken her time with these bodies. Both throats have been elegantly cut, leaving pools of ruby blood to soak into the secondhand shag rug beneath their heads. They’ve been tastefully arranged, toe to toe, and the runes Agatha has carved into their skin, still beading with blood, read a simple summoning. So Rio has been called on purpose.“Sweetheart,” she hums. “You were looking for me.”Agatha bristles at the term of affection. Looking unused to it. Rio would like to smother her until she breaks. “Now, what makes you say that?” she shoots back, never one to be intimidated, and ooh, Rio burns.She leans down and traces the spell written into the flesh. “Mortem.” She points to herself, with mock surprise. “Convenire. Oblatio mea. Obedire.” Rio clicks her tongue against her teeth, eyebrows raised. “How did you figure it out?”Agatha just shrugs, her face kept carefully blank.“Somehow,” Rio hums, dipping a long fingernail in the blood that stems from the obedire rune, carved into the chest of the guitarist, “I don’t think you’ve obeyed a day in your life.”“You’re right,” Agatha snaps, “I’m very unruly.” Even as she says it, her body coils with unreleased tension. She longs to lunge, Rio leads in her body language, to take Rio by the throat and do something with this energy that sits thick in the room like a fog. Not quite Agatha’s yet, but infecting her all the same. But she won’t – she’s waiting for permission. Like a joyful cat, Rio tastes the cream at the edges of her lips, and she laps. “You can take it,” she grins. “Take it for me.”Agatha breathes in deep, and the magic swirls towards her, concentrated tendrils of purple entering her body through her chest. Her eyes close; she moans against the onslaught of it. Without thinking, Rio snags one small coil as it winds its way through the air towards its new mistress and tugs. Agatha comes stumbling forward, a hand clutched against her chest, eyebrows furrowed. Rio squeezes her fist around the kernel of power and smirks.“Did I say you could have all of it?”Agatha bares her teeth, and Rio just cackles. She releases the magic, and it flies into Agatha immediately, absorbing into her with a muted poof. She hisses.“Oh, you are down bad, aren’t you?” Rio kneels beside the two bodies. She can feel Agatha keeping her distance, watching. She draws out their souls with a clinical practice; places a hand on their bodies and feels them crumple into dust. “There you go,” she says, brushing the ashes of dead witches from her hands as she stands. “Now, you’re a solo act.”Agatha simply stares down at her former bandmates. “Well, they were annoying, anyway.”“I’m sure.” Rio takes her in – the plunging neckline of her lavender blouse and the tapered line of her trousers. They hug her hips just so. Her hair is teased and her signature black headband weaves among the strands like a part of her. She has even, Rio notes with glee, applied a fresh coat of lipstick.“So you were waiting for me,” she mutters, and Agatha’s eyes dart to her with sudden – and telling – speed.“No,” she scoffs, sounding fake to both Rio’s ears and her own. “No, I was… admiring my handiwork.” She twirls her knife around those long, long fingers, almost fumbles it but swipes it from the air just in time. “They’re the finest I’ve ever done.”“Tell me,” Rio says, deciding not to call her out on the obvious lie. “Do you only kill for sport or is there any strategy in it?”The perceived insult seems to bite. “There’s strategy in everything I do.” Agatha steps into Rio’s space, the smell of her intoxicating – camellia perfume, Rio realizes, masking that scent of lowercase-D-death that follows her wherever she goes. Rio has half a mind to replace it with uppercase-D-Death, turn Agatha from a follower into a worshipper, but – good things come in time.“I’m sure.” Rio takes advantage, just this once: leans down and brushes her lips over Agatha’s. “Te veo,” she whispers, and as suddenly as she was close, she’s gone again.“I don’t fucking speak Spanish!” she hears Agatha whine as she disappears. Her cackle is heard throughout the void, full-throated and fond.---The body of a tourist hangs from a chain-link fence in a downtown alleyway, guts spilled on the concrete. A light purple sticky-note clings to his forehead, stained with dried blood. Saturday night. The Lighthouse. Find me.---Rio wants to have words with whoever’s naming the music joints in downtown LA, but that’s the least important thing on her mind as she slips incorporeally past the bouncer and drifts towards the stage. The crowd is already full of stoned people, drunk people, and high people, so Rio has dressed the part. Dark flared jeans under a death-black caftan, red-tinted sunglasses sitting low on her nose, hair curled and teased. A crown of black dahlias and ambrosia adorns her head. She hopes Agatha sees.The woman steps out on stage in a radiance of light. Tight, shimmering gold leggings and a black velvet cape complete her look – it’s almost like she’s styling herself around the headband, Rio thinks with a snort. She has a new band with her, a five piece now, and there’s even a man there. Rio frowns in disgust, and with the way Agatha is deftly avoiding his every attempt to speak with her, she must feel the same way. Interesting.Agatha’s voice tonight is dangerous, dark. She sings like she has something to prove, and her eyes seem to find Rio at the bridge of every song, even though she’s moving around the crowd – drinking, smoking, finding random, beautiful women to kiss just to see if it will make Agatha jealous. She feels the sharp spark of magical energy from across the room and she figures she’s succeeded.Agatha ends the set with the Ballad, and it’s pitiful, really. Rio glares at the pretty young thing on the drums, a fragile-boned girl with dark hair who tried so hard to get Agatha’s attention earlier, and feels like throwing something. I can play the drums, she thinks – she knows this about herself now – and she pictures what it would be like to pin Agatha against something, feel her grind against her thigh to the Ballad’s pulsing rhythm.Rio feels the magic gathering before the lights begin to flicker, Agatha’s hands following just the right patterns of a spell. Everyone else in the crowd is either oblivious, uninformed, or too wasted to notice. The spell radiates from Agatha’s body, tangled around her limbs, timed perfectly to the Ballad – blood and tears and bone, she sings, and the spell unleashes.All around Rio, the people collapse. Even the band. The discordant clanging as the song crashes to a stop is music to her ears. The woman directly to her right froths at the mouth, blood and spittle dripping to the ground. A man beside her groans, his neck snapping with a sharp sound before he falls. The stench of death fills the room, and Rio laughs.Agatha has her head tipped back towards the ceiling, jaw unhinged. She looks radiant, still shimmering with purple, there under the lights. The bodies can wait, Rio thinks, and rushes the stage.Agatha yields to her touch like a woman starved, her kiss somehow fiercer even than Rio had anticipated. It is Agatha shoving her backwards onto the stage, Agatha straddling her hips and gripping Rio’s face between her hands with a possessiveness bordering on violent. She runs her tongue over Rio’s teeth and gets the bitter taste of her own blood in return, Rio having not realized she had bared her fangs until that very moment.“Sorry,” she breathes, and Agatha pinches the skin of her neck.“Don’t you dare,” she mutters, tugging on Rio’s lip with her teeth, licking into her mouth and leaving streaks of blood against her lips, “apologize.”There are still shuddering gasps of fresh death in the air when Rio slides cool hands under Agatha’s sleeveless top and pushes it unceremoniously off her shoulders. “Kinky,” she hums, pulling away only to attach her mouth to Agatha’s neck, mouthing against the sweet skin there. The stage lights have brought beaded sweat to hollows of her collarbones. Rio wants to erase its stain with her tongue.Agatha pins her down further, groaning in delight when Rio scratches long nails down her back. “I had to do something to get your attention.”“Oh, mi angel de la muerte, you’ve had it from the first.” Rio isn’t lying. She stifles a laugh against Agatha’s skin when she makes a small, frustrated noise – whether from Rio’s persistent use of a language she doesn’t understand or the way she skirts her fingers around her breasts, never quite getting close, she doesn’t know. “You have a talent, Agatha, dear.”Rio twists her hips, uses the force of the movement to flip them over. Agatha lands with an oomph on her back, staring up at Rio through fluttering lashes. “You gonna tell me what te veo means?” she quips, her accent so truly horrible it almost makes Rio want to get up and walk away, leaving her there all hot and wanting.It isn’t until she’s already torn Agatha’s clothes from her body that she lets her in on the secret.