Come alone and unarmed. As if it mattered; as if a teenage human and his pre-teen sidekick could ever hope to make a mark against a band of supernatural killers. Kearn has never been anything but unarmed in this world. Still, he feels naked without his oak-handled pistol and the bullets it carried, both silver and iron. To reach in his pocket and touch nothing but wool - that was a vulnerable feeling.

He ran his tongue over his teeth, glancing at the park around him. Full sunshine filters through well-manicured trees, ringed with mulch and pretty stones and surrounded by grass that was never allowed to grow a millimeter beyond what was considered orderly. It wasn't often he came to this district - in the daylight, at least. So many pigeons here, fat and happy in their Italian shoes and tailored suits, ready to be plucked. Did they have any idea what simmered below this city's surface? Or did they think the shootings and robberies were the same price any other city this size paid? There were plenty of animals their gates and spiked fences were worthless to keep out.

Kearn still wasn't sure how the Viking and his crew had found out about the High Street job, a question that picked at him as much as his lack of weapons did, but he wasn't about to ask. If he were smart, he would have found out before coming here â€" ah, but if he were smart, he would have left this city long ago and found an honest way to make a living.

Not yet, not yet. There were still things Sacrosanct owed him, things he'd worked too long and bled too much to quit before he could collect.

His pace is languid, an easy stroll down the sidewalk bordered with early spring flowers, though he can't keep his eyes from marking where each man who passed kept their wallet or his mind from considering how best to empty a woman's purse. The only hitch comes when he sees the man who'd called him here, and Kearn pauses with a drawn breath, running a hand over his dark hair, tugging at the lapel of his coat.

And then he made his way over.

He didn't look so rough, this Viking with his mane of red hair and his coat of tattoos, but Kearn knew how easy it was to keep claws and teeth hidden. The big man looked out of place in this district, in this park, but put him in an ironic dive bar or indie show and he'd look like the next trust fund millennial who discovered a beard and tattoos kept him neck-deep in women. Even so, Kearn has to swallow down the uneasiness that washes over him, and when he's near enough that their eyes meet there's no mistaking the predator in that gaze.

So he drops his own, sidles up alongside the bench, sits and folds a leg neatly over his knee. "Afternoon," he says pleasantly, as if they were nothing more than two strangers, out for a stroll.