by Max Jager
"How much corruption is there? Give me a percentage." Ajax said.
"I don't know, ten percent? Five? It's a small group I figure, I don't think they could maneuver as a giant body. It might just be a few heads on the police force and a few men. You don't need many to cause trouble." He said.
"Well, that's terrible." Ajax searched inside his pocket for a cigarette. He lit. He puffed. He folded his arms. "But we can't fix corruption."
"I don't expect you to, but the nature of the crimes, the few that make it through at least, seem strange. They're obscene, cruel, almost irresistible for diseased minds. The victims were bled like pigs, cut up like dog meat. Random too. Ex convicts, homeless, prostitutes, college kids. I'm afraid of them branching out."
"We're not here to solve homicide cases either." Ajax said.
"Why don't you shut up and listen?" The Priest said. Darr smirked. "They'll call it homicide but I call it ritual. The way they're killed, like offerings almost. Bodies burned behind rings of salt, cut with a careful design, tattooed in strange ways. Whoever is doing this has a kind of faith behind their craftsmanship. Satanic, probably."
"Don't assume their monolith." Ajax broke his stiffness. "I've dealt with people like this but they were just that, people. No demons, no anything. Just people. Misguided, dumb, people"
"Well, that's why you're here right? To find out what they are." The Priest put both hands on the table. He seemed ready to pray and the desperation in his quivering eyes worried them both. "It's getting bad. It feels like I can't even breathe the air without tasting copper in my mouth. You need to help and do so with extreme prejudice. I don't think there's any saving this lot." They breathed in the tension in the air and filled their lungs with it. Their chests felt heavy like lead was inside of them, weighing them to seats they felt could break at any moment.
"That's very spiteful for a Priest." Ajax said.
"There are limits to anyone's patience. Besides I'm Catholic, not Buddhist."
They heard a snap. The box opened and their first contract was here. There were two suit jackets out for them, a pair of gloves, and two long threads of what seemed like yarn. Ajax began to strip.
"Why do we need to change?" Darr said.
"They don't teach you shit, do they? Consider it a loan. They're letting your borrow your gear and they'll take your coat as a ticket. They'll want their stuff back too. Can't let you take a joy ride, after all." Ajax said.
"There's nothing funny about that. Can't they trust us?" Darr said.
"No. They need to know: alive, rogue, dead." Ajax put on the blazer, he fitted his gloves and looked at the runes stitched inside of his jacket.
"Why do you get gloves?" He said.
"You should have asked." Ajax said. Darr narrowed his eyes and tugged on the Priests arm.
"Hey, can you send in a reque-" He jerked back. The Priest yanked his arm away and slid back a few inches.
"Don't touch me." He said. His eyes were still and wide and staring into Darr, the wrinkles on the old father seemed more pronounced in his anger and his neck began to glow red with rising blood.
"I'm thankful. But that's it. I know what unholy marriage you two are, man and beast." His dagger eyes stabbed at them. The sudden shift took Darr by surprise who assumed his desperation earlier would be the start of a friendship. As if desperation is any good of a start for friendship. But now the truth was out. Ajax put hands into a cross hatch.
"Yeah. We're frightening monsters. So keep far away and let us do our job." Ajax said. He seemed experienced in weathering the storm of insults, you could see from his straight face, mocking face almost. For his whole life perhaps had been one insult after another. That was something Darr could admire.
"We won't cause trouble. Just don't get in our way." Ajax scooted up. The Priest sat still in the back, tensed on his shoulders. But Ajax was not concerned with him, rather the two pieces of woven string in front of them. He grabbed them without caution, uncaring to the startled mess of the Priest. He held them in his hands and ignored The Priest completely, as he glared.
"Helen used to make these." He said. "I met her before she passed away. Now her son handles the business."
"Threads of life." Darr said. He wrapped it underneath his arm.
"Keep it hidden, let it touch your skin. When heretical arcana is close, they burn, when it's even closer, they glow."
"Are they supposed to be warm?" Darr asked.
"Of course, they're picking us up after all. Let them calibrate on their own." Ajax said. Darr couldn't stop scratching his arm and each time he looked at The Priest he scratched even harder. They all felt on edge, all far and backing away from one another.
"That's all we need from you. I'll keep in touch if I have to." Ajax put his hands on the table and dragged his whole figure towards the Priest. He left him a smile before he went for the door. "And only if I have to." The Priest nodded. Darr couldn't look him in the eyes. Discomfort was festering in his brain. It made his thoughts cloudy and fumbled his mouth, he did not know whether to thank or to apologize or to bad mouth. Whatever feeling it was, it tugged at every corner of his body. He walked out before it became too uncomfortable and closed the door. The Priest looked at them, then to the basket of money. He shook, it felt lighter.
Both Vicars were out. Darr huffed, he didn't realize how little he breathed until he was out of the room. The nuns that passed stared at him, some of them smiled, some scrunched their faces in disgust. Darr was sweating again.
"Is it supposed to be this hot?" Darr asked.
"What is?"
"I don't know. My neck, my face. My arm."
"Your arm?" Ajax asked. He searched in his pocket for the string and began to put it on his left forearm. It was the first touch, but one coil around his limb and he could already feel it searing into his skin. His eyes opened, he bit his lips and pulled on Darr.
"Hold on. " Ajax said. "There's something here."
12:25 AM
Oh, the stars would fall tonight.
They stood in a rented apartment room but could not fit themselves in it quite yet. For the last few hours, they had been in a fumble of fear. They sat around a table, hand out as they watched the pulse of the string of life. There was no movement, sometimes. There was, sometimes. Sporadic things.
"Are they working?" Darr asked.
"Yes." Ajax said. Darr wandered around the first few hours, Ajax kept his eyes on the string. He did not want to see it move, he did not want to admit to a fear that was pulsing in his heart. He wanted this whole thing to be over and done with, simple, neat, orderly. But on the third hour, he saw the coiling. The string, like a snake, wrapped around his arm, burned his arm, stung his arm with a tight grip. The faint glow of the string reciprocated in his eyes. Darr could see it across the room like torchlight and began smiling. He unwrapped his arms, the same symptoms were on him.
"What do we do?" Darr asked.
"We," He held his chest. "We find it, see if it's here."
"We know they're out there." Darr spat and could not hide his jovial face.
"We need to make sure."
"Alright, let's go then. Why wait?" Darr said. Ajax was trying to relax his chest. He looked to Darr whose irises turned red with the manipulation of his excitement. Ajax's did too as he tried filling himself with honorable rage, punching and scratching at his own thighs and finally committing himself.
"We're leaving." Ajax said.
"How will we find it?"
"Hotter the better, colder the deader." Ajax chanted like mantra. He was bumbling between fear and anger. "That's what she taught me.
"Well, alright." Darr smiled. "Hotter the better, colder the deader."
Ajax reached into his coat and put his hand against that esoteric design stitched on the inside of his jacket. It was the smooth feeling of felt at first until his whole hand was on it. Then it slipped. It felt like water as he maneuvered inside this curious zone like going through a pond blind. When his hand came o
ut he had in it a strange mask. Waxy looking, almost, white except for the area and shadows around the eye sockets that seemed tainted with black lines. It looked like a Rorschach, odd design. Was it wild plumage? Leaves on pale dirt? A broken porcelain road, black veins perhaps. Its face was neutral, it had nothing else to it but the leather straps that attached themselves to the back.
Darr revealed his own, a simple smiling mask with crescent eye holes that dripped with blue-stained tears across the contours of its cheeks. These were their life masks, like thieves or jokes across the night.
Ajax put his feet against the window sill, he looked up to the edge of the roof top across from him and looked down to the singular ladder shoot and lonely street. He jumped like a leopard across the sky, narrow-bodied, and landed like a storm. Shattering brick, disturbing gravel. For the night came and the hunt called.
Standing high above the edge did not help Ajax's pores from leaking. He felt death upon them both. His hands shook and he could feel the vibrations and heat wrapping around him. They were above on an apartment rooftop where the steam and smoke of a ventilation shaft contaminated them with the hot air, across from them was the faint smell of processed meat from a factory. Rancid and processed, like rot in bleach. It did not help Ajax. He was nervous, too cold to feel the warmth of vapors and his limbs felt tight like they were hypertrophied, full of an anxiety that was bound to explode. A balloon animal, shaped and bent by a clown. Pressed, pressed, pressed. Pop.
"What do we do?" Darr asked.
Ajax looked down with crimson eyes at the construction site that spanned half a block. They could hear noise. They could see details in the blinding darkness, their inhuman eyes adjusted, they were made for these things. Yet it did not help his mind for every new figure in the shadows made Ajax's stomach clench harder.
"We're going to wait until it comes out, then we'll kill it. We're in a good spot to see where it runs." Ajax knelt on the edge of the roof. He was surprised his gloves did not slide off his wet palms.
Darr tapped his foot. He shook his shoulders and began to kick around some plastic bags that floated. Ajax would have said something to him had he not felt the tightening of his throat. Then he stood.
Both of them got closer and reared their heads as they saw the first thing to come out. A man running, blood on his body. He fell. Something was thrown at him, a can of paint that spilled white all over and knocked him down. Darr tightened his hams to jump. Ajax held him.
The creature behind the man finally made his appearance and Ajax could feel his brain focus, all petty thoughts disappeared into the backdrop of his primal instincts. Live, kill, eat. He felt sick looking around the blurred and slow time around him as his adrenaline high pumped through. He looked down at the creature. Tall, big bellied, but thin limbed. Neck-less for on the top of it's torso was a birds head. They mistook it for a plague doctor until its horrible mouth opened and the small ridges of its teeth showed like serrated blades. It to be something worse. It squawked and shrieked like a banshee's siren.
"I'm not waiting any longer." Darr said. Ajax wanted to tug him back but was too slow. Darr went forward, to a closer rooftop. He reached into his clothes and out came his instrument of death. It was too big to call a revolver, too heavy for any normal man. It was pointed forward and seemed to carry Darr with its own weight. Darr aimed up and it sounded like the heavens collapsing down onto the earth. Ajax felt the air break and push out. He opened his eyes and saw the meteor falling down.
Pure silver, neon blue and heading straight for the beast. The creature heard it, too late but heard it and began to turn. His arm tore off into splatter and matter, black specks that turned the brown walls polka dot. Darr smiled behind his mask. So excited was he that he did not notice his own hanging wrist, the bone was sticking out, skin barely attached his hand to his body. He heard his gun fall and then realized the pain. Darr picked his gun with his good hand and pushed his broken hand back together against his chin. Ajax observed, it began to heal. Red mist came from the wound as the tendons and bones and muscles aligned themselves and reattached like self-healing machinery, red wires, red oil coming back to one another.
"You fucking idiot, don't push it." Ajax leapt down to him. "Let's go."
But Darr would not move. He watched the arm of the demon regenerate as well, cell by cell, skeleton, then muscle, then that onyx flesh.
Both of them seeds of the same breed, germinated in some unholy soil.
The beast stuck its long hand into its mouth and out came something out of a carnival side show, a sword swallower. He removed the blade. It seemed bony, perhaps it was a part of his own body, Ajax thought. It was not a thought to hold on to.
"Move!" He screamed and pushed Darr to the side. The spear whistled by and struck through the metal vent behind them. The fan went flying, the building shed bricks. Down below the monstrosity was fixing itself up from its bad throw and vomiting out another weapon.
"We can rout it, start moving." Ajax said. He began to jump roof tops before he looked back at Darr who was standing again by the edge and who with one strong gallop of his feet, threw the brick beneath him all directions and headed straight for the monstrosity.
"Listen to what I'm telling you." Ajax spoke into the mask. There was nothing but static.
Darr put his hand against the side of the wall and stone broke into dust as he scratched it all the way down. He hopped like some maddened cat, knocking and throwing pipe and wood as he managed down. It looked like a deforested jungle of pipe and cement and plank.
He was laughing. Ajax did not want to hear Darr laugh. He was sickly hungry.
Darr was shooting smaller bullets all the way down from different chambers in his gun. And all the way down he was cut and ripped. More spears were chucked his way, more damage was done to both beasts.
He landed onto a broken floor. To his side, the unconscious body of Jeronus, to his front, the beast staring back. Darr watched it. He was curious, falling into a desire for violence, just as Ajax feared. The beast reached into its beaked mouth, out came the skewer. He was a machine.
Ajax gritted his teeth as he looked down from above. He decided to move again when he had his fill.
"Just push him back. That's all you need to do." He told Darr. Static again. Ajax spat, slapped his forehead and headed on wards, past them, to the flat stone foundation, barely fenced by wood walls, where incomplete cement pillars erected upwards like albino evergreens.
Darr pointed his gun at the beast and stood. He listened, somewhat, to Ajax. But there was another competing muse in him, Mars.
He shot. The thing ducked. It was quick. He was impressed. Both at the creature and his wrist that managed to stiffen itself better than before. He was only bleeding this time. He did not wait for his pain to subside or for the blood to stop dripping from his wrist, he shot again. Careful now, with tact to his rhythm, an uneven pressure of bullet shots as if a drum line had stopped and started only to trip over their abrasive beats.
The leg came off of the demon. It would not stop it though. It used its own stake to push himself back. The monstrosity hid behind the tarps and shot out its spears. Darr was stabbed in the foot. He grabbed the skewer and broke it, shattered it into bone dust. He would have chased through was stopped again. This one cut his shoulder and caused him to kneel lower. The creature was moving far and away. His body was fuming red.
Darr stared. His face clenched, his eyes closed as he held his bitterness back.
"You coward, come back." He shouted at the drifting footsteps. "What dignity is there in running."
So angry was Darr that he pushed through his healing feet, the pain, the blood and would have given chase but he stopped. For above he could hear groaning. A withered cry of death. This one was human. His heart was torn. Two voices, two desires roamed in Darr's mind. To help, to kill. He wanted to scream but he bit his tongue until it cut. He bled, drooled red. Hellish smoke released from his teeth as his tongue fixed its tip, it was the dyin
g smog of his violent outburst. He fired an azure shot out at the sky. A flare.
"It's not heading your way specifically. But close enough." Darr said.
"What the fuck do you mean close enough?" Ajax started. Darr cut the sound off his mask with a press of the button.
He looked around himself and it seemed like the world was finally coming back to his blurred vision.
Darr rested Jeronus against a wall. He looked up to the moaning inside the castle of wood and decided to run. It was an excuse, he lamented, to not fight.
12:34 AM
The distant sound of gunshots died. The first thought that came to Ajax's head was the idea that Darr had died. But then he heard the radio transmission.