A World Of Decree: And The Seven Laws

Los Angelanos was one of those towns that had too many secrets, and too little time to explore them. Every alley had a nook and cranny that was different from another. Every shop you entered was a mystery in itself, and the items that were sold looked like they were taken straight from a fairy tale. The people walking the streets all wanted to forget the past, or relive it once more. It was a place where you could escape from everything, and no one would find you. However, you had to be careful, one small step in the wrong direction can cost you your life.

Calvin made sure Rina stuck close to him, specifically following his every step. Together, Cavlin looked like a young father taking care of his younger daughter, despite them being only 3-5 years apart in terms of age, and disregarding Calvin's previous immortality.

After walking a few minutes away from the dock, Calvin stopped dead in his tracks as he locked eyes with 'The Broken Ship.' A simple brothel on the edge of town where one could buy any drink that's ever been made, spend their entire life savings in a single day, and of course, participate in illegal activities.

The sign above the door was crooked, half-broken, and hung tilted across one of the windows on the second story. Calvin took another smell of the ocean seaweed and unwashed clothes, and proceeded to enter with Rina trailing right behind him.

The first step inside got looks from all the sc.u.mbags and dirty folks sitting at the bar, but Calvin's expression drew them away. Rina however, was terrified. She was practically clenching onto Calvin's robes to prevent her from being seen, but it made her look more like a maiden holding onto her master. It wasn't more of her being scared, but the intimidation was a lot for her to handle. Besides, it fell perfectly into plan with her and Calvin's techniques of trying to blend in.

Calvin casually strolled to the bar, leaned on the broken wooden stool, and glanced at the barkeep. The barkeep was tall, muscular, and had scars covering every part of his body like trails on a map.

Calvin placed his chin in his palm, smiled, and asked in the most polite manner possible, "Good afternoon my fellow barmaster! How can I, a simple traveler here, find myself a woman by the name of Henrietta Lov?"

The barkeep stared at Calvin like he had a death wish. The rest of the old beaten men at the bar looked at him as well, giving him an evil eye of death in their blank stares. Rina was carefully sitting on the cold floor below him, just trying her best not to be seen.

Another monster of a man came up behind Calvin, prompting him to turn around. This man was nearly seven feet tall, weighed about 300 pounds of pure muscle, and had silver rings across each of his thick, bulky fingers. He had a beard reaching down to his c.h.e.s.t, and a bald, shriveled head of absent hair. The man then opened his mouth, and started talking in a very deep, intimidating voice. "I think you came to the wrong place pal." The man put his colossal hand on Calvin's shoulder, and started to squeeze as hard as he could.

Calvin kept his brilliant smile plastered to his face, seeing the man get more and more aggravated the longer he squeezed, and the longer that nothing happened. After a few seconds, Calvin reached up, placed his hand on the man's shoulder, and started to squeeze in return.

One second. One second is all it took. The large man instantly started screaming in pain like a little girl, and Calvin had no intention of letting go. "I'm gonna ask again." Calvin said, keeping his happy grin, "Where can I find Henrietta Lov." The man dropped to his knees like a dog waiting for a treat.

Calvin let go of the man after he stopped screaming, making him fall to the ground like a broken mannequin. The rest of the people at the bar looked away, pretending they didn't see anything, and losing their confidence instantly.

The barkeep put down the glass of whisky he was holding, and pointed to a door on the back end of the bar. "Room 5," he said, in a low, unfriendly voice.

Calvin nodded, "Thank you kind sir." He bowed, and proceeded to the door with Rina.

Rina stayed silent, but could feel intense pressure coming off Calvin as he kept walking. She knew he wasn't here to play around, or to stay for long.

As they passed through the door, they were presented with a hallway filled with nothing but numbered doors left and right. Each door had a room number above it, sort of like the dorms at Princewood except these were much dirtier and disorganized. For example, the first door had the room number of 8, while the second had a 1.

Luckily room number 5 wasn't hard to find, considering there were only 10 rooms to begin with. Calvin knocked on the door, hearing a familiar voice on the other side, "Just a minute dear!" The voice was muffled, but there wasn't a single doubt in Calvin's mind for that voice to belong to anyone else but Henrietta Lov, the Scorpio Zodiac.

The door swung open, "Come on in!" Henrietta shouted as she laid n.a.k.e.d on a large, queen sized bed in the middle of the room. The bed was as pink as the petals of a cherry blossom, had layers of different bed sheets lying around, and had a dim light hanging from the ceiling above it. There was a dresser towards the right side of the room filled with nothing but makeup essentials, old clothes, and broken mirrors. However, Henrietta didn't seem to mind in the slightest.

Calvin quickly covered Rina's eyes with his hand as soon as he walked in, making sure she wasn't terrified of what she was seeing.

Henrietta instantly jumped up from the bed, "My dear boy, Calvin Pride?" She said with a face full of joy, recognizing his face without a single doubt. She jumped onto him, giving him a hug with her b.r.e.a.s.ts pushing against his c.h.e.s.t in a very uncomfortable manner. Calvin didn't seem pleased by her nudity, but rather just happy to see her.

As Henrietta released him from her hug, she took a pink bed sheet from the bed, and covered her private areas like goddesses being painted on display. Her face had far too much makeup covering it, making her look more like a clown rather than a woman selling her body. Her brown hair was curled into a bun, with a couple loose strands running down her left and right side. She was skinny, but not to a starvation extent. It was more of eating only one meal a day kind of deal.

"And who might be the lovely lady behind you dear?" Henrietta said in a very pleasing, romantic voice as she saw Calvin uncover Rina's eyes with his hand.

"Rina Ambrose," she beat Calvin to her introduction, "P.l.e.a.s.u.r.e to meet you…" She wanted to bow, but seeing the context of the scene made her stretch her hand out instead.

Henrietta grabbed her hand, but instead of shaking it, she examined it carefully. "Smooth skin, perfectly cut nails, pretty face, and the hands of a V.i.r.g.i.n… How lovely!" Henrietta laughed.

Rina pulled her hand back, blushing angrily. Just as she was about to talk back, Calvin took the words right out of her mouth, "Henrietta! This is serious. You know why we're here."

Henriette gently pushed back her smile, "Apologies master," She chuckled to herself. "But I'm afraid you'll have to do something for me if you want my help."

Calvin sighed, "As long as it doesn't involve Rina doing… You know what."

"Heavens no," Henrietta dazzled them with her cute laugh, "You see, I've been on the search for something. Something that will finally free my heart of this endless pain." She paused for a few seconds while clenching the bed sheet over her c.h.e.s.t, "Love. I want to find someone I can love. Someone that I'll live the rest of my years alive with. Someone that will fill this black hole in my heart."

"You want us to find you love?" Calvin asked, slightly confused.

Henrietta walked back to her bed, slowly taking a seat on the softness of her prison. "Not you dear. Her." She motioned towards Rina.

"Me! Why me!?" Rina looked fl.u.s.tered, prepared for another joke to come her way, but it never did.

"Eyes tell a lot about a person," Henrietta sighed, "Your eyes, dear. I can read them like a book… That violet glow in your right shows the love for a relative, perhaps a mother or sister you can't live without."

Rina looked down, knowing Henrietta wasn't wrong in the slightest.

"Your left however, is for someone else. The blue glow shows your heart's content, perhaps for a person you know holds a dire meaning to you, but you just don't know how to confess your love."

Rina stayed silent, feeling like an arrow just shot through her heart. Her body tensed up, but she tried not to show it.

"My dear Calvin is a different story." Henrietta started again. "I can see that someone confessed their love to him. And he hasn't done the same. He can't help but feel empty and shallow, like a crawl space in the dark."

"What do you want me to do." Rina stopped her with a voice of d.e.s.i.r.e.

Henrietta smiled, "Scavenge around town for men. I can't even count the number of times I've been with a vile, untrustworthy man. All they want is s.e.x, s.e.x and s.e.x. I want a man who cares, loves me for the way I am." She slid the bedheet down her shoulder, revealing a dark mark of the Scorpio symbol on her shoulder. "Loves me to the day I die."

"Are you sure this is the best town to find someone like that?" Calvin asked.

"Perhaps not, although I do know a place where they keep fresh, young, and newly born blood. The manor on the hillside. I'd go there myself, but..," She made a slight gesture of fainting like she was in a play. "I'm afraid I'm not allowed in. They don't allow whores and trash to walk through their gates."

Rina felt bad for her. She could see that Henrietta has been through far too much for her to live happily. She knew that Henrietta was depressed, lost, and had nowhere to go.

Calvin looked at Rina, "Let's go." He turned back to Henrietta, "We'll be back, and when we are. I'm taking you away from here, no questions asked."

Henrietta smiled, trying her best to not show the slight darkness around her eyes falling down her cheeks, "Close the door dear, I have customers…"

…

After leaving the brothel, both Calvin and Rina remained as quiet as two hawks in the sky. They were left alone in their thoughts, and away from the people around them on the street.

Calvin continued looking forward, dodging the oncoming traffic of horses carrying wagons and people stumbling in their steps, "We need to ask around how we can get passage to the manner."

"Who should we ask? I mean, everyone here looks like…" She didn't really have the right words to describe the citizens, but Calvin understood what she was implying.

"We can start with merchants. They're usually the ones you can trust, but they're also the ones you have to be wary of."

Although there were plenty of shops around every corner of the open street, most were either closed, or broken into. This meant that most goods were either sold in the street by vendors that come and go every day, or in the shadows of certain alleys.

Calvin walked up to an older gentleman wearing fine clothes, a beaten face, and a table full of robes and jewelry that was far too easy to steal. The stench radiating off him was unbearable, explaining why no one dared to approach him.

"Welcome!" The man said in a rusty, dry voice. "Necklaces from far away lands await your possession! Robes that grant powers beyond your limits! Cloaks that-"

"I'm not here to buy." Calvin cut him off.

The man drew a malicious grin, "Then what are you trying to sell?"

In the meantime, Rina wandered off to the next stand of various goods not too far away, but far enough for Calvin not to see her. She approached a man that looked no older than a thirty-year-old, who happened to also be carrying bags of mysterious items on his table. The cotton bags seemed to glow from the inside, but the insides of them remained a mystery underneath the man's word. The man wore clothes that seemed to be sort of odd. A cloak that seemed to be nearly a century old, and nothing else underneath it but a ripped white shirt and a pair of black trousers.

Rina was about to leave him be, but his words turned her back around.

"Looking for the manor I see?" His voice was high-pitched, squeeky, and gross. "You know abou-"

Rina was cut off by a sudden knock to her head, and the world around her turned dark as she dropped into the arms of a stranger behind her.

As Calvin finished talking with the man at his stand, he looked about 40 feet to his left where he saw Rina go. However, when he saw she wasn't there, his stomach dropped as fast as an anchor to the bottomless pit of the sea. His throat suddenly went dry as he continued looking around the empty faces wandering the street.

He rushed to the stand where he saw Rina go, and saw nothing but a broken table with a few bags of rotten food and candles inside them. His heart felt like it nearly skipped a beat, but instead, it was the onset of panic kicking in.

His mind smoldered with nothing but resentment, his fists clenched tighter than a bow-string, and his rage burst into a blazing storm of fire. Calvin had reached the tip of the iceberg where no remorse would be shown. There were promises he had to keep, and today wasn't the day he was going to let them go.