Page 53 of Reaper
Pete shook his head.“Dude, I didn’t ask questions.I just did what I was told and cashed my paychecks.I’m stupid, but I’m not stupid enough to ask a demon why he wants somebody to get special treatment in cage matches.”
Not the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, honestly.I turned this new information over and over in my head, but it still made no sense.“How long?”I finally asked.
“How long what?”
“How long have the fights been going on?”I asked.
“Right after the pandemic, as soon as things started opening up again.So I dunno, four years or so?”
Okay, so it wasn’t something he started as soon as he got to Charlotte, because Mort had been here before I arrived a couple decades back.I thought back to anything that happened around the COVID times that would have made him want to launch a new business venture, but nothing came to mind.“Did he ever say anything around you about why he was running this place?Was there some goal he had in mind?”
“Man, I have no friggin’ idea.And honestly, I never cared.There were folks beating down the door to fight, and even more folks beating down the door to watch the fights.We had people flying in on private planes from New York, Chicago, Miami, even some from England and Europe.I heard one time that there was a resort in the Caribbean that offered our fight trips as a tour for their highest rollers.”
The pride in his voice made me want to puke.“You said you grew up around cryptids and paras.How could you want to participate in something like this?People weredyingin these fights?And that’s not even getting into the fact that they rigged things so nobody ever left a winner.How could you do that?”
His pale face flushed under his freckles, and he scowled up at me.“Yeah, I grew up around you freaks.My mother was part faerie, and my father was a witch.My whole life was all about magic, and nature, and being at one with the universe, and all that bullshit.But nobody ever spared a thought for Pete.Poor, useless Pete, with no magic, no faerie glamours, not even the tiniest points on his ears.I wasn’t even an afterthought to them, I wasinvisible.Because I was the worst fucking thing they could imagine for their child—human.”He spat on the last word, a big glob of phlegm right by my shoe.
“I’m sorry they treated you like shit,” I said.“I really am.”
“Like you give a fuck.”
“You’re right, I don’t really give a fuck.You’re lying there whining about being human?About beingnormal?About being able to walk in the sunlight, something my uncle hasn’t been able to do for half a goddamned millennium?About being able to look somebody in the eyes without shielding and not be afraid you’d burn out their soul and leave them a drooling husk?I haven’t been able to do that since fucking Prohibition, you sniveling little bitch.Your mommy and daddy didn’t love you enough?What about all those shifters who have to chain themselves in their basement once a month because they don’t have complete control when they’re transformed and they don’t want to murder anybody?What about the faerie knight I fought beside who may never be allowed to go home, and will just be stuck on this plane, slowly growing weaker and weaker until the separation from his people and his world kills him?
“So no, I don’t give a fuck that your parents didn’t love you.I don’t give a fuck that you’re so goddamned insecure that you helped Mort and the rest of your crew commit murder on the regular, slaughtering people who just wanted to try and make a better life for themselves and their loved ones.And I don’t give a fuck how big a mess you make when you splatter all over the sidewalk, you pitiful little bitch.”And I snatched him back up off the floor by his collar, grabbed his belt with the other hand, and pressed him over my head, ready to send him flying off into space.
“Quincy, stop.”I froze at the words behind me.There’s pretty much one person who can regularly sneak up on me and calls me “Quincy.”
“Why?”I asked Luke without turning around.“You’ve killed more people than some standing armies.Why do you give a shit if I kill this asshat?”
“Because it affects you more than it does me.I grew up in bloodshed and was a warrior before I was a monster.You are neither.You are a protector, Quincy, and every life you take is one you could not save.I have seen how that affects you, even if you have not.Please do not allow anger to add another red mark to your ledger.”
I put Pete down, then shoved him back onto his ass and turned to Luke.He had a look of infinite sadness on his face, and I realized that every body I dropped had a cost to him, as well.“I’ve killed hundreds, if not thousands of people, Luke.Why say something now?”
“Seeing you in that arena, fighting against nigh-impossible odds, and reveling in the challenge…I was so incredibly proud of you, Quincy.You were fighting for something greater than yourself, for someone other than yourself.You were fighting for the others in the cages, whether they wanted your help or not.That is valiant.That is just.That is honorable.But this?”He gestured to Pete.“This is none of those things.This is power for power’s sake.This is killing because you can, not because you must.This…this is what monsters do.If you kill this man, it may feel good for an instant, but the cost to your soul is something you will feel forever.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out.Luke turned, and in a blink, he was gone.I stood there for a long moment, letting his words sink in, letting them really penetrate my consciousness, then I looked down at Pete.I knelt and freed his wrists.“Count Dracula just saved your worthless life.Get the fuck out of here, and do better.Be better.He gave you a second chance.Don’t waste it.There won’t be a third.”
Then I walked into the apartment, leaving all the doors wide open, and went home.I don’t know what Pete did, and frankly, I didn’t give a fuck.Luke hadn’t saved him.He’d saved me.Again.
40
Istood in my living room gearing up to storm one of the few places in Charlotte anyone in the paranormal community, fractured and fractious as it was, considered safe.Mort’s Bar wasn’t just a place with decent wings and a literally out of this world alcohol selection, it was a Sanctuary.It’s one of about three places I knew of where monsters with beefs that would normally have them spilling blood on sight could sit down and talk without worrying that somebody was going to double-cross them.And I was about to throw all that out the window.
Not that it applied to me, anyway.There was literally a sign over the bar stating that the rules of Sanctuary were for everybodybutme.That went up after Mort’s daughter, the half-demon cambion Christy, got killed by one of my enemies.I’d always liked Christy, and between Mort and I, we made sure that the guy who killed her was exceptionally dead, but it didn’t bring his daughter back, and it turned what had at one time been a snarky friendship and mutual respect into a relationship balanced on razorblades.Which I guess had finally tipped over into a volcano.
“You think this is because of Christy?”I asked Luke, who sat in an armchair watching Becks and I gear up.He couldn’t come with us on this run because we were hitting Mort’s in the daytime.There are a fair number of monsters and magical creatures that are weaker or completely nonfunctional while the sun’s up, so it was the right time to attack.I still didn’t like leaving my heaviest hitter behind.Luke’s not just one of the most powerful monsters in the world, he’s also one of the oldest, and his tactical mind is second to none.Without him, and with Glory and Faustus still on their re-angeling retreat or wherever they were, I felt a little outgunned before I even left my house.
“I do not know, Quincy,” he replied.“It seems the most likely scenario, but he is aligned with the forces of Chaos, so it may be that he simply wanted to, as you say, stir shit up.”
“Maybe,” I said.“I guess it’s a little arrogant of me to think he would have started an entire underground fight club just to get my attention, isn’t it?”
“To a certain degree, yes,” Luke said, a slight smile twitching one corner of his mouth.“But if it was targeted at you, he definitely chose a method which was certain to separate you from any backup, at least for a while, and to attack you at a point where you are particularly vulnerable—your sense of duty.”
I put down the Glock I’d been about to slide into a hip holster and gave Luke my full attention.“My…what?”
“You have your father’s sense of duty, Quincy.It is one of the things I most valued in him as an employee, and most loathed in him during the time we were adversaries.Both you and he are like the proverbial dogs with a bone when you feel that someone has been wronged, and if something or someone is under your protection, you will move heaven and earth to help them, protect them, or if necessary, avenge them.”
“And who exactly was I avenging by getting into a pit fight with a bunch of monsters?”I asked.
