by Deck Davis
“Us?”
“The hunters,” she said.
And with that, she drained the rest of her coffee, and she stood up. “You’ve got the bill, right?” she asked.
“If you’re offering me a job, I’ll claim it back on my expenses.”
“Woah there, buddy. You’ll have to prove yourself first. Get your first bounty.”
“Bounty?”
“We’ll fix you up. We’ll give you a way to fight, and you’ll hunt for us. You’ll fade into obscurity, Josh. People will forget your name. When they see you, they’ll forget your face. You’ll never have fame, and you’ll never be remembered. You’ll be in the shadows. But it’s a second chance. Come and see us as soon as your head is clear, slugger.”
Then she left. She didn’t wait for me to answer, maybe because she knew what my answer would be. After all, what was I now? A fighter? Nope. A husband? No. A father? Barely. I wanted to be all those things but I’d let them slip away, and now, the only thing left open to me seemed to be a mysterious offer from an even more mysterious woman.
Chapter Four
“Remember me?” said the cabbie as he weaved through the streets, bullying his way through traffic in the casual way only cab drivers can get away with.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” I said.
“My kid wants to go to Disney World next year. Until then, I don’t sleep.”
He was a good guy. I could sense it, even if I hadn’t already seen the physical evidence hidden all around his cab. The photo of his wife and kid stuck on his dash. His wallet open and with a donor card peeking out between a debit card and his driver’s license. He was just a guy doing what he could for his family.
The thought made me sure about what I was doing. I didn’t know who the hell Molly Murillo was, really. And the things she’d told me; demons, corruption, hunters, bounties. It would have made no sense to some people. They’d have written her off as a loon. But me? I couldn’t ignore the feeling. The way she’d described the same dark feelings I’d always had about people.
If she had a job offer, and it was as lucrative as she said, it was worth hearing. Who knew? Maybe I could catch up on the mortgage payments and then squirrel some cash away. Maybe next year, it’d be me taking my kid to see Mickey Mouse and friends. We’d get cinnamon sticks and toffee popcorn and queue up for all the rides, and I’d fill my phone with pictures of Ruby smiling. Glora could come too, if she wanted. As bitter as she was toward me, god knew I owed her a little happiness to make up for the years I’d been lost in the haze of anger and regret.
“What is this place?” said the cabbie.
“You followed the map, right?”
“Keyed it in on my sat nav. But I don’t think this is it.”
“The map doesn’t lie,” I said.
I opened my wallet and leaned forward, passing him a tenner.
“Want me to hang around?” said the cabbie.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be, and waiting here for me isn’t gonna get you more fares. Stay safe,” I told him.
“You too.”
As the cabbie pulled away and turned onto the only road leading away from here, I looked around. I checked my map app to make sure I was in the right place, because it sure didn’t look like it.
It was an old industrial site, a sprawling square of concrete littered with piles of old timber, nests of scrap metal all mixed together, and faint markings that were once guidelines telling lorry drivers where to unload. There was a single building, an old factory that had gone to waste. Although it was still standing, it was a ruin. The roof was missing, and I guessed someone had taken whatever metal it had been made of and sold it. There were no doors, and parts of the walls had fallen in on themselves.
On the front there was a weathered rectangular strip that probably used to have the name of the factory on it. A place like this, I imagined it was a steel works, or maybe it was a mill. Maybe business had taken a hit in the recession, and the owner had fired his staff, stopped the machines, and then left before he lost everything. Maybe right now he was in a new warehouse in another part of the country, or he was abroad somewhere. A sunny place, where he’d left the grim business of steelwork behind and he’d opened a bar, and his name was Chas and everyone knew him as the Brit, and he got drunk all day while he served his customers.
Wherever the factory owner had gone, he was a ghost now, and the warehouse was a graveyard of a former business, and I thought that maybe Molly had played some kind of trick on me. Why, I didn’t know. But I felt my nerves tingle a little, and I needed to be on my guard.
I hadn’t come all this way for nothing, though. I walked across the concrete and toward the factory until I crossed through its empty doorway and stood inside. Birds perched on the rafters above. A few crows, a nest of pigeons. Their droppings stained the ground below them. The inside of the factory was bare, save a clapped-out machine, a press or something like that, that must have been too busted to sell. And there, in the middle of this empty ex-factory, was a metal door on the ground.
At first, I thought it was a door someone had heaved off its hinges to sell for scrap but had given up when they realized it was so big and heavy it’d screw up the suspension of their van. But no. This door wasn’t just laying around; it was fixed to the ground by bolts driven through hinges.
I pulled out my phone. No reception. The map app had downloaded the route here offline, and without reception, I couldn’t call Molly.
I crossed the factory and stood above the steel door. I tapped it with my foot. The clang sent a crow flying off the rafter.
There was no answer.
I kneeled down. I started to get a weird feeling now; the hairs on my neck were electrified. I imagined that the pigeons in their nest were spies sent to watch me.
I banged on the door again.
Then something cold and sharp pressed against the back of my neck, and my hairs shot up further, and adrenaline churned in my stomach.
“Easy, big fella,” said a voice.
When you box for long enough, your instincts get strong. That’s part of the sport; knowing when your opponent is going to move, and how, and where, even before he does. You try and think four steps ahead, to see combinations and hooks and feints that haven’t even happened yet. And you learn how to avoid them.
I darted my head forward as quick as I could, then a spun around with my right fist clenched and smacked it into the leg of the person behind me.
They crumpled like a bag of leaves and fell onto their back. I could hear them whining now, pathetic cries of pain.
It was a guy. He was nearly half my size, all skin and bones wrapped up in a humongous raincoat. He had an old face but a teenager’s body. There was no muscle definition to him at all, like he’d never picked up dumbbell in his life. I imagined that lifting pens and turning the pages of books were the only exercise he managed. Despite that, he had a fierceness to him. It was the kind of look you saw only in certain people; a sense of purpose, a knowledge of who they were and what they were about.
“Who the hell are you?” I said.
“Molly didn’t tell me she was bringing a fucking lunatic here,” said the man. His accent was southern, he had a farmer’s twang that placed him from Bristol or somewhere like that.
“You’re with Molly?” I said.
“What do you think?”
“What’s with the knife?”
Something groaned behind me, and then there was a metallic clang. The door in the floor had opened.
“That’s Wren,” said a familiar voice. “Don’t worry; he just doesn’t trust you.”
“That you, Molly?” I said.
Wren adjusted so he was sitting up, and he rubbed his leg where I’d punched him. “Who the hell do you think it is? Descartes?”
I heard steps, and then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I smelled sweat and perfume intermingled into one scent. I felt breath on my ear. “We had a bet on, that’s all. Whether he could sneak up on yo
u.”
“That’s a stupid fucking game to play.”
“Just testing your instincts. Come on.”
I looked at Wren properly now. I felt bad for punching him, even if he’d sneaked up on me. I was a big guy, and I’d trained with my hands all my life. I wasn’t supposed to use them outside of the ring, especially not on guys half my size.
I offered him my hand, but he batted it away. He got to his feet, but his leg must have been dead because he limped a little, and it took a few steps for him to walk normally.
“Let’s get this over with,” said Wren.
Molly was standing by the door. It was a large opening now, dark like a mouth, and I couldn’t see how far down it went.
“What is this place?” I said.
Molly smiled. “This is the headquarters of the Manchester Demon Hunters,” she said. “The only chapter in the north west.”
The she walked down the steps and into the bowels of the factory. Wren followed her, stopping only a few steps down. With part of him underground and his waist above it, it looked like the darkness was eating him. “Close the door behind you,” he said.
The Manchester Demon Hunters, like Molly said, were the only chapter of hunters in the north west of England. There were two more on our isle, I learned; one just west of Edinburgh in Scotland, the other on the coast, south of London. As Molly and Wren led me through the cramped tunnels of what resembled a war bunker, they gave answers to questions I hadn’t even thought of yet, just like how I used to protect myself in the ring against blows that hadn’t even come my way.
They called themselves an organization, a society, a chapter. The labels kept changing. Wren seemed to imbue his answers with a mystical vibe; the words ‘ancient’ and ‘lore’ often popped up in the things he said.
That made sense when I found out that he was the Loremaster of the hunters. It was his job to know the names of demons, or the creatures from the underworld who took many guises and called themselves many things. In his head he held knowledge of their strengths, their weaknesses, and the signs that accompanied each demon’s entry into the world. But it wasn’t just knowledge that Wren held; he could create wards to protect the hunters, he could enchant weapons, and he could imbue metal with magical energies to turn them into shields.
Demons, wards, shields. After I listened to even the barest of what they had to tell me, I felt sick. A real stomach-churning kind of sickness, liquifying my insides and making my head throb like the hangover after a week-long whiskey binge.
They led me from room to room in this underground tomb, talking at me in turn like they were in a hurry to get the information out. Wren spoke to me like he was a teacher and I was a kid, like he was impatient to smash my skull with the knowledge I’d need to become one of them.
Because that was assumed. I got that impression from the things they said and how Molly said ‘we’ in a way that I was sure meant me.
I saw everything the bunker had to offer in this surreal tour. Every room was made from concrete, every wall cold. One room had toilets and a sink, and they’d somehow rigged a shower cubicle. Another room was long and cramped, like a burial chamber, and in it were three camp beds. One of them was messy and unmade, and a half-drunk bottle of vodka peeked out of sight from underneath it. It must have been Molly’s. The bed opposite was made to military perfection, not a crease on it, and there was a pile of dusty-looking books next to it, each of them with little index cards sticking out to mark certain pages. No prizes for guessing that was Wren’s bed.
The third was empty. Not just in the lack of possessions around it, but in the feeling it gave me. The sheets didn’t look like they’d been disturbed in a while, and it seemed secluded from the others, like it was forgotten.
Wren nodded at it. “He’s not having Capgrove’s bed,” he said, talking as if I wasn’t here.
“Where do you expect him to sleep?” said Molly.
“Sleep?” I said. “The hell are you talking about?”
“Oh, yeah. There’s so much to mention, I forgot. You’ll have to give up your flat.”
“Give it up for what?”
“Hunters sleep in the bunker. That’s the way it goes. Wren can make wards, but the stuff he needs isn’t easy to come by. He sets them up down here to stop anything getting in, but he can’t spare enough to ward your flat.”
“Besides,” said Wren, “When we get the signs, I’m not traipsing across Manchester to find you. If you’re gonna be our Banisher, we need you here. But you’re not having Capgrove’s bed.”
I rubbed my temples. “Signs? Banisher?”
Molly patted my shoulder. “Come on.”
We left their makeshift dorm room and took a right turn. This threw me; I was sure there was no right turn to take when we’d first got here. The damn place was a labyrinth, and I couldn’t help feeling Molly and Wren were minotaurs leading me further into it, and that I was crazy to be down here with them. Wren obviously held me in contempt, and he’d already pressed a knife against my neck. And Molly? There was something dangerous about her. An air she gave off. Not like the feeling I got about Franz Huck, nothing as dark, nothing that stabbed into my soul. But something that worried me a little nonetheless.
I needed air. The stale aura of the place was tugging at my gut. I imagined the old concrete caving in and burying me.
“Which way’s the exit?” I said.
“You want to leave?”
“I told you he wasn’t our guy,” said Wren. “Nobody can take Capgrove’s place.”
“Just give him a chance, Wrenny. Remember how you were the first time you stepped down here? Like a little boy. You looked like you were going to piss yourself.”
Wren screwed up his face. I saw something in him then, a child’s kind of peevishness, and I didn’t like it. “If he wants to leave, let him leave,” he said.
“Let him leave, you say? And how long have we been looking for a Banisher?”
“Capgrove died four months ago,” said Wren. “And you talk about it like it was ages ago. Is that how long it takes for you to forget him?”
Anger flickered on Molly’s face now, and the danger seeped out. I was right. This woman was a dagger. “I’m going to take Joshua to get his hand fixed. You can stay away. Go read your god damned books, whatever, I don’t care. I just don’t want to see your face.”
Wren softened now. He almost looked a little worried, like Molly’s anger was something to tiptoe around. “I…forget it.”
He turned and left, and he took yet another turn that I didn’t think existed, and then he was gone, he was a ghost in the shadows, and the echoing of his footsteps was just a spectral pounding drifting in the old tunnels.
“Come on,” Molly said to me, business-like.
I didn’t move.
“What are you waiting for?”
“I’m waiting for you to show me the way out.”
“Why? Because of Wren? He’ll warm up a little eventually. Capgrove was like a brother to him. You get like that, down here. We spend so long together, it’s impossible not to get close. And the way we lost him…well, look, I don’t wanna go down that road. Not yet, anyway. There’s too much to tell you.”
“There’s no road. There’s no eventually. I don’t know what the hell you two do down here, I don’t know what mental ward you escaped from, but busted hand or not, I can still fuck you up if you don’t show me the way out.”
I said the words with all the conviction I could manage, but I didn’t mean them. I knew it wouldn’t come to violence. Even so, I wasn’t going to let them keep me here.
Molly walked ahead of me until she was almost out of sight. The darkness loomed behind her, hiding her features.
“Nobody’s holding you prisoner,” she said. “Turn and follow the tunnel and take a left, then a sharp right. Then you’ll be out of here.”
“Thanks.”
“But before you do, think about this. I said we can fix your hand. I told you this is lucra
tive. It’s not nice work. It’s not safe work. But the Grandmaster pays well, and he pays fairly. Leave here now, and what’s waiting for you? You can’t train, and who knows if you’ll ever be able to use that left hand of yours in the ring? I know you have a family, Joshua. Don’t think that we didn’t research every inch of your life before we brought you down here. The fact is, you’re more of a danger to us than we are to you, but we brought you here anyway because we need you. We need a Banisher. And you need everything we have to offer.”
I’d never heard truer, if more confusing, words in my life. She was right. I did need everything they had to offer, because I couldn’t fight, and my career was in the toilet. I didn’t have a name anymore, the lights didn’t shine on me, the posters didn’t advertise me. Without fighting, even as a journeyman, I was nobody, and I had nothing.
Molly took a left turn and disappeared further into the bunker, leaving me alone. Wren’s footsteps were long gone, and Molly’s were becoming echoes too.
So, I followed her.
Chapter Five
I caught up to Molly just in time to see her head through a concrete arch. Following her, I found myself in what must have been the biggest room in the bunker. Maybe years ago, this would have been a hub of operations in the second world war. Allied generals from the north would crowd around tables, where analysists and information officers studied papers and pushed model soldiers across colorful maps, while steam rose from coffee cups and cigarettes burned in ashtrays. That was the only thing a place like this could have been used for. The war might have been years ago but from the looks of things, another war was going on, and information about a different enemy was plastered over the walls.
On the wall to my left paper printouts were stuck to the concrete. Some of them showed the faces of people, while others were different; these showed creatures that looked like they’d been taken from the pages of a comic book. Grimacing faces, all scales and bones. Hunch-backed beasts with spikes lining their bodies. Heads with horns protruding out from crusted scalps, eyes red like burning embers. And between the people and the creatures were little strands of string, fixed in place by pins and connecting the whole mess together like murder clues in a detective’s office.