Chapter XI

Reggie’s was unrecognisable during the day.

It wasn’t just the lack of enthusiastic partygoers or the steady rhythm of music, or even the titular neon sign, currently dim, the magic lost with the daylight. It was something to do with the steel and concrete, the cracks in it and the pavement, now bare to see without the cover of darkness. The constant drone of the busy factories just streets away and the shouts of working men. The discarded trash littering the entranceway – the door currently shut tight. For all the night-time grandeur, during the day it was just another sleazy dive, its secrets too depraved to see the light of day.

Fog escaped Morgan’s lips as he explained, ‘If you’ll recall, the lovely gentlemen that runs this establishment neglected to fulfill his side of the bargain. And for some reason a fire demon knowing my name and my father’s address shows up after I tell Ling my name. What a strange coincidence, wouldn’t you agree corporal?’

‘It is quite a coincidence,’ said Shalia, humouring him. ‘You think Ling had something to do with it?’

The pair stopped at the steel entrance. ‘I think Ling let Wrath know I was on to him,’ said Morgan seriously. ‘Maybe to get the drop on me before we brought him in. Maybe he’s got a thing against me specifically.’

‘Why do you figure that?’

‘How often do you come across fire demons?’

She pursed her lips and Morgan pushed the door open, the metal screeching and announcing their arrival into the empty bar. The place reeked of alcohol, cleaning products and human stink, and beneath that the animal scents of blood and adrenaline and bloodlust. Spotlights, white and stationary, left little of the main floor in darkness for the janitors and barmen as they worked. The place had an anticipatory air about it, the calm before the storm.

‘Hey.’

Morgan turned to find the bookkeeper from the other night at the table to the right of the entranceway. ‘I had no idea you were gonna fight,’ she said as she left her computer to join them. ‘You should have said something. I wouldn’t have made you bet then.’ Her voice was husky from use and she had her hands in the back pocket of her jeans.

‘I had no I idea myself,’ he replied. ‘Did I win anything?’

A laugh. ‘Well, no, not quite. You did say to surprise you, so I put it on the Star Prince. No one wins in a tie.’ She adjusted her cap and shook her head. ‘Ling was pissed we couldn’t collect on the bet, but at least we didn’t have to pay out, as well. You’ve got a lot of admirers. Some would pay a pretty cen to have you in the ring again.’

It was Morgan’s turn to laugh. ‘Hmm, yeah, I think I’ll have to give it a miss. It was a bargain with Ling, that was all. Speaking of, the guy in today?’

‘…What for?’ The bookkeeper didn’t miss his plastic smile.

‘Ling promised me something if I fought in his cage – not win, just participate. He backed out of our deal and got a lot of people killed. So,’ he flashed his fangs, ‘I’d just like to have a little chat with the old man.’

The corporal placed a warning hand on his arm. The warmth beneath her fingers – not a searing heat like what lay inside him, but the warmth of weak sunshine – spread into his skin and smothered the rage threatening to overflow. ‘I promise, Ling won’t come to any harm,’ Shalia reassured. ‘We really just need to talk. It’s important. And it could save lives.’

The bookkeeper studied the corporal for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Alright, fine. But you better not hurt him.’ She eyed Morgan as she said this. ‘Otherwise, I won’t get paid.’

The pair left the bookkeeper to her work and crossed the bar; the janitors and barmen didn’t offer them so much as a glance they busied themselves for the evening ahead.

As they neared the door to Ling’s office, Shalia whispered, ‘You aren’t going to hurt him, right?’

Morgan wrapped his fingers around the door handle. ‘Of course not.’

She scowled, knowing it was a lie, as Morgan stepped inside.

‘I’ve got a bitch of a headache, so I’d appreciate it if you’d get the fuck out –’ Ling was sprawled on one of his warn leather sofas, arm draped over his eyes to block out the fluorescents. When he spied them in the corner of his eye he leapt quickly to his feet, white hair more frazzled than usual.

‘Ling!’ Morgan smiled, baring his teeth. ‘C’mere you bastard.’

Ling fumbled with a gun – standard alloy rounds, Morgan noted – from the waistband of his bedazzled red leather pants. Morgan vaulted the sofa and flung the coffee table out of the way, the weight nothing in his mounting anger. Ling set the sight of the gun against Morgan’s chest, sweat glistening off a wrinkled brow.

Morgan steadied the barrel of the gun. ‘Go ahead,’ he growled.

Ling scrunched his eyes closed and squeezed the trigger.

The gun clicked. Jammed.

Morgan snatched the pistol and flung it across the room. Ling winced, then began to whimper when Morgan took him by the collar and heaved him up against the wall above the sofa.

‘Listen little man,’ Morgan snarled, fangs snapping close to Ling’s cheek. ‘I’m not playing games anymore. What did you do? What shit have you and Wrath got going on? Don’t fucking lie to me.’

‘Y-you can’t do this to me. Reggie –’

He slammed Ling into the wall, the plaster splintering. ‘He ain’t gonna find out now, is he?’

Ling wildly shook his head, his voice strained. ‘If something happens to me…’

Morgan brushed his teeth against Ling’s throat, drawing a line of blood from the skin. ‘You think I care?’ he purred.

‘Lieutenant…’ the corporal warned.

He ignored her. There it was, whispering at the edge of Ling’s thoughts, the swirling flash of memories dancing just within reach. It just had to be brought into focus. ‘Tell me everything you know about Wrath. Don’t make me pull it out of you. You wanted the Butcher. You got him.’

Tears sprung to the old man’s eyes. He wouldn’t meet Morgan’s glare. ‘He’ll kill me…’

Gentler now, just above a conspiratorial whisper: ‘Not if I get to him first. I won’t let him touch you. You have my word.’

‘Alright…!’ Ling wheezed, nodding frantically, spittle flying.

Morgan set Ling down gently and the old man all but collapsed. He produced a cigarette and a bottle of whiskey from beneath the sofa and was about to place the bottle on the coffee table before he remembered it was across the room. Shrugging, he drank straight from the bottle before he began: ‘I don’t know his real name.’

Morgan took a seat across from Ling, the corporal standing beside his shoulder over the couch’s backrest. ‘You know where he lives?’ he asked.

Ling shook his head as he fished a kerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the drying blood on the side of his neck. The drink – and no doubt the drugs in the old man’s system – made it impossible for Morgan to tease out any more useful information from his thoughts. ‘Red likes to keep things quiet,’ said Ling. ‘Discreet. He reached out to me first a couple years back, before he got a hold of that demon.’ He was staring off into the past, gaze vacant. ‘Just a pit fighter first, small matches. He’s human, y’know, or at least he was, but damn was he a fast little fucker. Then he ate a demon and, well. “Red Wrath.” I came up with that, did you know?’

Morgan’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Yeah, I figured. Only you’d come up with something so stupid. He ate a demon? How’s that work?’

Ling took another swig of his whiskey. ‘How do any of them work? People get a hold of demons all the time, it just depends on the demon. The conclusion’s always the same, it’s just the execution. The transport. Vein or nose or mouth, it’s all the same in the end.’ He peered down at his exposed forearm, where purple welts dotted the veins that stood out against wizened skin.

Morgan could sympathise but he needed more concrete information. ‘Start making sense. So, he ate a demon to, what? Form a contract with it?’

Ling tipped the whiskey at him in a nod.

‘Why would he do such a thing?’ asked Shalia from over Morgan’s shoulder.

‘Why indeed? He never told me, but I can guess. I’ve never seen hate like I’ve seen in that man, and it can only come from one place and for one purpose.’

Morgan grimaced. ‘Revenge.’

Ling took a long draught from the bottle, heedless to the strength of the liquor inside. ‘Two for two. I told him the Butcher is either long dead or in Marl, but he wouldn’t believe me. Said no, he was still around, still butchering people and draining ‘em dry. Heh, I guess he was half-right.’

‘This is personal,’ declared Morgan. It was a statement, not a question.

But Ling replied anyway. ‘Take it from an old man. Ghosts have a funny way of coming back and haunting you when you least want them to.’

Morgan surged to his feet, too anxious to remain sitting, and chewed on a thumbnail. A personal vendetta? The number of individuals thirsty for both his blood and death was almost impossible to count, his past too muddled by janthin and bloodlust and youth for him to catalogue it all completely. His memory was a spotty thing at best, despite the reptilian indexing of a Vorvintti brain, blood-soaked memories corrupting his ability to think and recall. A coping mechanism, his therapist had said, for the brain to deal with stress and trauma. To just forget it all, smudge the details, defocus the lens of pain and hurt. Hard to agonise over something that couldn’t be remembered. Quitting the janthin had helped – the drug that suppressed bloodlust and thirst and everything else, even the good things. But there was no way to recover what had already been lost.

‘Lieutenant?’ The corporal snatched his hand as he paced past. Light and calm spilled across their intertwined fingers, cooling the heat fuelling his rage and fear.

Morgan sat back down and with some reluctance returned the corporal her hand, then cleared his throat. ‘I don’t…I don’t know – no, I don’t remember. I don’t remember what I did. For all I know, I probably deserve it.’

No one had a comment for that. It was true and they all knew it.

Two years.

It had just been two years, a year after he had been turned. A newborn, a child learning the ways of the world – but no, that wasn’t an excuse. He’d revelled in blood and misery and pain, all the nourishment he had needed, for two years.

And now, twelve years later, he was still paying for the repercussions of his youth, though the same could be said for any adult.

The other having burned down to a stump, Ling lit another cigarette, pinching the butt between thin, shrivelled lips. ‘He’ll kill me for even speaking to you like this but, well…’ He shrugged. ‘I’m already dead. He made a contract with a fire demon to get a hand up on the Burning Butcher. Fire for fire, that kind of thing. The night you gave me your name and the nickname for the fight, I knew. Red asked me to keep an eye out for you, just in case. Didn’t think you’d come around here, but.... guess he was hedging his bets. So, yes.’ He peered at Morgan from heavy-lidded, weary eyes. ‘I told him your real name. Let him know you’re alive. I thought he’d confront you here – imagine the match that would have been – but I’m guessing he went after someone close to you.’

‘More than that,’ growled Morgan.

Ling shrugged. ‘It’s all just an eye for an eye with him. I’m surprised you’re still alive. When you took off, I thought he’d kill you both.’

Morgan stiffened, nails biting into the leather of the couch as the ghost of melting flesh, tearing muscle and sulphur scratched from within his memories.

‘It was a close call,’ Shalia agreed, and placed a hand carefully on his thigh.

He took a shuddering breath. ‘What’s your point old man?’

‘My point is, I don’t know exactly what Red is planning or what he wants to do with you. Since you’re here I’m guessing he’s still alive. I haven’t heard from him since your fight – just silence. It’s not unusual, he hates people, but no messages at all? Doesn’t happen. You must’ve really ticked him off. My guess is he’s planning something big.’

‘What do you suggest?’ asked Shalia.

Ling shrugged, leaning into the backrest. ‘You should find him before he finds you. But that won’t be as helpful as this.’ Taking his wallet from his back pocket, he produced a business card with a flourish, sleek black with embossed gold calligraphy, and handed it over to the corporal.

Morgan peered over her shoulder:

Vicar Jude Prospero Jerónimos – Private Theurgist, the card read in sweeping gold italics, an address and contact number in smaller print on the bottom.

‘That’s a mouthful,’ he said.

‘An exorcist?’ Shalia shot Ling a questing glance.

Ling took a long drag from his cigarette. ‘You want a demon gone you go to Jude. He’s expensive unless he takes a liking to you – then he’s only overpriced. Since you’re with the bureau you could just mark it down as a necessary expense.’

Shalia pocketed the card with some reluctance before addressing Morgan. ‘Lieutenant, shouldn’t we just go to the Patrol? The military could easily handle something like this. We don’t need exorcists,’ this she said with some scorn, ‘or have to put our lives on the line. The extent of our work ends in finding that woman’s killer. We don’t have to make the arrest ourselves…’ She trailed off at the look in his eye.

Morgan worked the muscle in his jaw. ‘This is personal now. For me and for him. He went after my family – it goes beyond the bureau, or even the Patrol. This is gang business now. I need to see this through.’

Shalia said something under her breath that sounded awfully like ‘Men!’ as she crossed her arms and looked away.

But he knew he was right. The Patrol, the JNDB and the gangs of Joudai worked in a kind of uneasy symbiotic relationship, neither one stepping on the toes of the other. One could request aid from the other two, but they rarely did. The Patrol was only mobilised from the request of the bureau, and the bureau only interfered with gang business when civilians were threatened – or the gangs asked very nicely, which simply didn’t happen. Although he was an officer in the bureau, he was involved enough with Red Dawn to put this down in a report as gang-related business, knowing that as long as Shalia approved it as his handler he could get away with it as it was, technically, true. In any case, if he took down a serial murderer who had also broken the law and had willingly become possessed by a demon, the bureau wouldn’t look too closely at the methods used – the ends justifying the means and all that.

Ling threw the empty whiskey bottle in the wastebasket beside his sofa, hands only shaking slightly, and said, ‘Whatever you do, I recommend seeing Jude anyway. He might give you an insight on how to take down Red – for a minimal fee. Must warn you though, he’s a bit of an eccentric.’

‘So he fits right in here,’ quipped Morgan.

Ling looked him up and down. ‘I guess he does. Just remember –’ he stood and walked around to the door, a slight limp to his step, and pulled it open ‘– my life is on the line too. If you don’t take down Red, we’re all dead. You’re costing me a lot of money, boy.’

‘Send an itemised bill to the bureau,’ said Morgan.

Ling scowled.