Page 52 of Reaper
I spun around and saw Irish standing there staring down at Rachelle’s corpse.He looked at me with terrified eyes and opened his mouth to beg for his life.I shot him right between the eyes.I wasn’t in the mood to listen to his bullshit, and I could beat the fuck out of Pete if I needed to find out who the real boss was.
He’s down, too,I said.
You okay?Becks said.
I’m not injured.
Not what I asked.
I took a beat.Yeah, I’m okay,I said.Some people just don’t deserve to live.And sometimes I’m the only one around to make that happen.That’s just the fucking job.I’m gonna scoop up Pete and bring him back to the apartment for interrogation.We’ll get the boss’s name out of him, then we’re shutting this shit down once and for all.
39
It seemed like only yesterday that I’d dangled a man off the roof of a building by his ankles.Probably because it had been yesterday when I dangled a scrawny banker off the roof of a building by his ankles.Now here I was, contemplating doing it again, only this time off my balcony, which wasn’t all that different from the roof, since I live on the top floor of my building.It is a little more recognizable to any passersby, since it would be my apartment, and my building isn’t nearly as tall as the bank building I hung Piss Boy off of the night before, so I gave it some serious thought before I hoisted Pete up by his belt and flipped him upside down, walking toward the sliding glass door while he struggled in my grasp.
“Come on, Murray, what are you doing?”he asked, his hair brushing the top of my coffee table.I didn’t crack his skull open on the furniture, but only because there might be information inside that gourd that I needed.
“The name is Harker, asshole,” I said through gritted teeth.I was inordinately pissed off at Pete for turning out to be one of the assclowns running things at the fight club, and it was totally my fault.IlikedPete, and I usually don’t like anybody.It keeps things a lot cleaner if I can maintain a consistent level of misanthropy in my life.But I was stuck in a cage, and Pete was the first person there who didn’t obviously want to murder me, so I’d let my guard down a little.And he betrayed me.
Okay, yeah, I was totally pretending to be someone I wasn’t in order to shut the whole fight club thing down around his ears and send him plunging into unemployment and possible death, depending on how his boss treated loose ends, but I wasn’t interested in exploring the inherent hypocrisy in letting someone betray you in an undercover situation and how that created feelings that were totally disproportionate to our actual level of friendship.I was just feeling pissy, not to mention I’d been awake for most of two days hunting these assholes down, and I needed a nap.So I wasn’t nearly as charitable as I’d usually be, and I’m not known for my charity.
“Who runs the fight club?”I asked, holding Pete off the ground in one hand as I opened the door.The sticky heat of Charlotte in the spring slapped me in the face, like getting wrapped in a soggy warm blanket.
“Dude, I tell you that, he’ll murder me!”Pete’s voice went up a notch when he realized how soft the traffic noises were way up here.
“What do you think I’m about to do to you if youdon’ttell me?”I asked.
“I thought you were the good guys?Like, the government or something.You can’t kill people!”
I lifted him up until his face was level with mine, albeit upside down.His legs dangled back over my shoulder because of the position he was in, but I trusted him not to try to kick me in the head on account of the whole falling to his death thing.“Are you stupid?”I asked.“Governments kill people all the time.Admittedly, they usually aren’t as direct about it as I am, nor are they nearly as precise, but don’t think for a moment that I work for the government because they do a goddamned thing to restrain my baser impulses.Which right now, consist mainly of seeing how many cars on South Boulevard you’d bounce off of before you hit the ground.Kinda like Frogger, only messier.”
“Dude, put me down and I’ll tell you everything.I swear.”
I did just as he asked, dropping him in a heap on the balcony.His hands were bound behind him, and his ankles were tied, so there was nothing to break his fall but the concrete, but that was his problem.He should have been more specific in his request.“Okay,” I said, kneeling down by his face.“Who’s in charge?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“I don’t like much,” I replied.“I’m notoriously hard to buy gifts for.Now.Who.Is.In.Charge?”
“Mort.”
Good thing he was already on the floor because that name would have loosened my grip for sure.I’d never considered Mort might be in charge of the whole shitshow, not even in my wildest speculations.It seemed more likely that Luke himself had bankrolled the whole thing decades back and forgotten about it than Mort setting up an underground fight club.
“What the fuck did you just say?”I asked, glaring down at him.I could see a purple tinge across his skin, which told me I had power leaking out of my eyes again.It happens sometimes when I’m not paying attention, and I very much was not paying attention at that moment.
“Mort is the real boss.It was weird at first, having the owner show up in different bodies all the time, but I got used to it after a while.I never let him possess me, though, no matter what he promised.That seemed…I dunno, just weird.”
As a hitchhiker demon, Mort moved from body to body at will, usually with express permission from the body’s original owner.Some people wanted to know what it was like to be possessed, some people wanted the built-in excuse of “there was a demon inside me” to do awful shit, and some people he just bribed.I’d never known him to take over an unwilling meat suit, but I’m sure it happened.
“That’swhat struck you as weird, Pete?You were helping run an underground fight club for monsters with a were-tiger recruiter and a vampire manager, and a little demonic possession was what crossed the line into weird for you?”
“I grew up around witches and faeries, man.Paras and cryptids were part of my life.But demons?Nah, I never had any dealings with them until I started working for Mort.”
“What was the deal?Why did Mort set this place up?”I’d always thought he was content with his place as owner of one of the few real Sanctuaries in Charlotte, and a primo information broker for all things magical and spooky.
“I got no idea, man.I barely know the guy.Jeremiah and Rachelle dealt with him a lot more than me.I was mostly there to handle any fighters that Mort wanted us to pay special attention to.”
I paused in my near-steady stream of muttered profanities.“What?Mort wanted you to pay special attention to me?Why?”
