Banisher Reborn

by Deck Davis

  My explanation must have been jumbled because by the end of it, Wren looked none the wiser. Either that, or the shock of the truth had hit him, and it had frozen his features.

  “No,” was the only thing he said.

  “I can’t think of a single thing to explain it that doesn’t worry me.”

  “It can’t be.”

  “What else? Why would anything of Molly’s be there, much less a note with her name and telephone number? If you can think of just one reason, even if it’s only half-logical, then I want to believe it. I really do. But I can’t. And you can’t either, can you?”

  “No,” he said.

  “There was no call from the Grandmaster,” I told him. “It was an excuse to leave. She needed us to go to Stopwatch House alone, because she knew about the trap.”

  “Molly wouldn’t do that.”

  “For a clever guy, you’re not getting this.”

  Wrath twisted his face now. “I don’t want to get it! I can’t. Molly’s been with the hunters for years. Before me, even. She recruited me, for God’s sake. We lived together, we shared the same room, me, her, Capgrove.”

  “And she was working for the demons all this time.”

  “She couldn’t t have been. She came on every single banishment with us. Right up until…”

  “Until what?”

  “The last one we went on. It…it was when Capgrove…”

  “You said Molly was the one who found him, right?”

  The pieces seemed to click together in Wren’s head, and the wrath twisted his face even further, showing an anger I didn’t even think he’d been capable of. Right there, sitting on the bus stop seat under the shadow of an oak tree, with the dark sky brooding above us, Wren worried me. He worried me more than anyone I’d ever fought in the ring. He might have been a fraction of the size of the guys I’d faced over the years, but he had things they didn’t; this wasn’t just a sport for him, it was his life, and that expressed itself in a burning anger. Boxers had the rules of the sport to keep them toeing the line, but Wren didn’t have any rules.

  He stood up. “We need to find her,” he said.

  It was late by the time we got back to the industrial site. The factory, with the missing blocks of stone in its walls and its stripped-down roof, lay ahead of us. I’d been around the factory at night time before; sometimes after a hard day of lectures from Wren, I’d climb up the stone stairs to get some air. At those times I’d enjoyed how quiet it was. Being away from the city, the drunks, the cars, it’d helped clear my head a little.

  Now, the silence wasn’t one of peace, but of absence. The feeling that something had been taken away. I didn’t know what it was.

  We crossed the concrete of the industrial site until we reached the factory walls. Through the gap in one wall I saw the wide-open factory, with scrap metal piled up in a corner, and glass sprinkled on the ground from windows smashed long ago. Shapes stirred in the rafters above, and I saw the dark wings of a crow as it shuffled along the iron.

  I heard the groan of metal, and then the whine of rusted hinges turning, almost seeming too loud for such a quiet place in the dead of night. The sound made the crow flutter up and then flap away from the factory. There was a giant slamming sound as one of the iron doors on the ground flew open.

  Wren went to move toward the doors but I grabbed him and yanked him back, and then I pushed him against the wall. I held my finger to my lips, and he seemed to understand because he was quiet then.

  We waited there, hidden behind the factory walls. It seemed to last hours, that long, tension-filled wait, even though it could only have been seconds until we heard a couple of footsteps on stone, and then a figure emerged from the door in the factory floor.

  It was Molly. Her dark coat was fastened tight against her. Her ponytail blew slightly in the breeze. She grabbed the door and slammed it shut, and then she crossed the factory floor.

  Her steps got closer. They echoed, bouncing off this wall and that. I waited until they got closer and closer, while my heart hammered and anxiety flooded me.

  She walked through the opening in the wall, right beside me.

  I swung with my right fist, catching her flush in the stomach.

  She bent over. She gave a wheeze, and she gasped for air. She sank down to one knee.

  I grabbed her. I held her shoulder tight and I pulled her down onto her back.

  She rasped for air. It was a horrible sound, the sound of a crushed stomach. She was winded, but she would be okay. My punch was enough to stop her, and that was all. If I’d used my left fist…but no, that was never a question. We needed answers, not a corpse.

  I waited for her to catch her breath again. Wren, though, didn’t want to wait. When Molly tried to sit up he pushed her down so her head cracked against the stone, and then he kneeled on her, with his knee pressing against her chest.

  “You killed Capgrove, you bitch.”

  Kneeling on her, under the darkness of night, with his injured face and the crazed look in his eyes, he seemed like a madman. Demented, his expression darker than the worst picture of the worst demon of all the ones he’d showed me in the bunker.

  He raised his fist. Molly tried to move, but his knee held her down. I saw his fingers tense, his arm twitch. I knew when a man was about to throw a punch; that had been my life, after all. Watching for the signs.

  I grabbed his fist.

  “We need her to talk,” I said.

  “I need her to-”

  I grabbed him and pulled him off her. I stood over Molly now.

  “What weapons do you have on you?”

  “Nothing,” she croaked.

  “No? Where’s that little knife you carry?”

  Reluctantly, she patted her lift side. I lifted her coat and found the knife snug inside a leather sheath clipped to her belt. I took it, and then I patted her down, looking for anything else. Satisfied, I stepped back.

  “You killed Capgrove, didn’t you?” said Wren, so angry that spit flew from his lips.

  Molly’s eyes darted side to side. I could almost hear the gears of her brain whir, and I could imagine the excuses and the false logic she was spinning as a web, ready to spew out of her mouth and trap us in it. But with one look at me, taller and bigger than her, and then at Wren, who was angrier than seemed possible, the gears seemed to slow to a stop. She let out a long, labored breath.

  “I didn’t kill him,” she said, softly.

  “You were the one who found him. I never saw what happened. For all I know…”

  “I told you, I didn’t kill him. Why would I? What the hell is this all about?” she said, trying to feign innocence in her tone.

  I took the note out of her pocket. “We found this in Stopwatch House. Just after we got out of the trap that I’m guessing was set to kill us. And you conveniently weren’t there.”

  “I told you, the Grandmaster…”

  “Enough, Molly. Do we look like we’ll be fooled? We might not know everything, but we know this much; you’re working with them. Trickerie told me a hunter had helped a demon make entry.”

  “Trickerie? But how could that little bastard have known?”

  “What the hell does that matter? You need to explain everything, Molly.”

  She must have seen it in our eyes then. The resolute looks on our faces. The expression that said we couldn’t be lied to anymore.

  “I honestly didn’t kill Capgrove.”

  “Then who did?”

  “The Grandmaster,” said Molly.

  Wren leaned against the wall next to him, as if the name had sucked the energy from him. “What? How?”

  “He’s the one who sent us out that night,” said Molly. “The demon was real. The entry was real. I’m not saying the Grandmaster did it himself, not directly. But he knew we’d just come back from a banishment. He knew how tired we were, how much we needed a rest. We were in no state to go out again that night, but he made us. We were so tired that we made mistakes. We w
eren’t careful enough, and that got Capgrove killed. It was the Grandmaster who sent us, so it’s his fault.

  I never told you this, Wren, but Capgrove and I…we were in a relationship. We’d been together for months, and we were talking about telling you. About maybe leaving all of this and just, I don’t know, settling somewhere. Living somewhere safe. Doing what normal people do when they’re in love. And then the Grandmaster sent us out when we were in no state, and Capgrove died, and everything we’d planned went to shit.”

  “He didn’t have a choice. What were we supposed to do? Let a demon wander around? We’re hunters. That’s our job.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better, is it? You always used to say Capgrove was like your brother, but he wasn’t. Not really. You have real brothers, don’t you, Wren? It’s just you think you’re above them, since you’re so clever. Me? I had nobody. Everything I told you about my parents, my family…it was all a lie. I used to say it because it made me feel better. Capgrove was all I had. He…”

  She went silent then. For a second, a mere second, I felt sorry for her.

  I shook it away.

  “You need to tell us everything,” I said. “Start with the demons. Why would you work with them?”

  “I told you. It’s the Grandmaster’s fault Capgrove died. I wanted to hurt him. No…I wanted to destroy him.”

  Wren ran his hand through his raven-black hair. “What have you done, Molly? Have you made a deal with a demon? Is that what all this about?”

  She nodded.

  “Who?” said Wren. His voice was stronger than I’d ever heard it, authoritarian, commanding.

  “Alastor,” she said.

  In an instant, the little color left in Wren’s face drained, leaving him not just pale, but chalky-white. The effect transferred over to me, and my pulse sounded faint in my ears now, as though this fear, this anxious energy swirling around us, had slowed my heart.

  “Alastor?” said Wren. He paced around now. “Alastor, for fuck’s sake?”

  “Yes. Him.”

  “Who’s Alastor?” I said.

  “He’s one of the Mighty,” answered Wren. “A nemesis demon. A real bastard, one of the cruelest. Wait - Trickerie said one of the Mighty had come, and not just as a shard. He’d come through whole. How, Molly?”

  “Alastor has the Grandmaster.”

  “How’s that even be possible? Even we don’t know who he is.”

  “I worked it out,” said Molly. “Over the years. Every message he ever sent, everything he ever said. I always wrote it down, because I was desperate to know who he was. I didn’t plan to do anything; I just wanted to know. You know how careful he is. He’d never tell us his name. But over the years, he dropped little hints. Clues when he left his guard down. About his house, his kids. Things going on in his life. I worked it out.”

  “And you made a deal with Alastor?”

  “He came through as a shard, at first. And then when he took the Grandmaster, he came through properly.”

  Wren shook his head. “No. I don’t believe you. If he has the Grandmaster, then his wards would have failed already. They’d be swarming through, hundreds of them.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “You’ve done a hell of a lot of it already, you cold bitch. A few more lies won’t hurt.”

  “I’m caught, Wren. I hardly have a reason for lying now, do I?”

  Wren faced me. “I need to check.”

  “How?” I said.

  “There’s a radio in the bunker. Every chapter has a channel. We’re never supposed to use them, not unless it’s the worst kind of emergency. I think this counts.”

  I nodded. “Go. I’ll watch her.”

  Wren raced toward the doors in the floor. He opened them and then ran down the stairs, his body and his footsteps quickly fading, leaving me alone with Molly.

  She looked pathetic then. Nothing like the cocky girl who’d recruited me, the one who’d always seemed in charge. Instead of a proud hunter, I saw a woman who’d betrayed us. Her reasons didn’t mean a thing to me. Nothing could justify it.

  “The one thing I don’t get,” I said to her, “is bringing me into all of this. If you’d already made your deal with Alastor, if you already planned to screw everyone over, why bring a new Banisher in? Wouldn’t it have been a lot easier without having me around?”

  She nodded. “A damn sight easier. But the Grandmaster had been watching you. He told me he wanted me to recruit you. I tried to put him off, to tell him you weren’t right, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “He was watching me? How?”

  “He’s flesh and blood, like us. I expect he used his eyes.”

  “You’re in no position to make jokes.”

  Molly slapped the ground in frustration. “It shouldn’t have come to this,” she said.

  “Whatever you think about the Grandmaster, from what you told me, a demon killed Capgrove, not him.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean you. You should have died.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “In the alleyways - I used my Cleansing. I change your brain, tweaked it a little, made the alleys seem like a maze. I wanted you tired. Disorientated. And then when you found the demon, it’d finish you off.”

  “It was you? I thought Trickerie had done it.”

  She gave a short, sharp laugh. “Trickerie saved your life. Any other demon would have ripped you apart the moment it saw you. But Trickerie had an agreement, and he was too stupid to know you wouldn’t uphold it.”

  Footsteps came from the opening on the factory floor, and soon, Wren emerged. He shook his head as he paced over to us.

  “No answer. Not from any of the chapters, not from the Grandmaster on his channel. There’s no way they wouldn’t answer; we only use the radios in an emergency, and they’d have responded straight away. Something has happened to them all.”

  I pulled Molly to her feet and shoved her into the wall. “Where’s Alastor?” I said.

  She shook her head. “It’s too late. He already has the Grandmaster.”

  “Has him? You mean he isn’t dead yet?”

  “That’s why we haven’t seen any more entries yet,” said Wren. “He’s holding on to his wards. Maybe Alastor has done enough to get himself through, but the Grandmaster is alive. We need to get to him before he dies. When he dies, the wards fail.”

  “Why isn’t he dead already? Surely Alastor would have just killed him straight away?”

  “You don’t understand,” said Wren. “Alastor is one of the cruelest demons of the underworld. He won’t let the Grandmaster die until he’s seen him suffer. Suffer for all the banishments we’ve ever done.”

  I stared at Molly. “You’re going to take us to him,” I told her.

  Chapter Twelve

  I’d never looked at Manchester the same way as I did that night. I’d always hated having to go into the city centre, with its throng of bars and its crowded restaurants, and its shoppers who hurried by in such big crowds that they’d bustle passed you. Now, as the taxi wound through the streets to the address Molly had given us, I looked out of the window and I felt like the city was going by too quickly, and that I ought to get out and savor its sounds, its smells, the people before it was too late.

  There was no time for that. Every second counted when it came to Alastor, the nemesis demon. Every second he held the Grandmaster increased the danger, the threat that he’d get bored of inflicting pain and torture on him and finish the job. If he did it before we got there, it was too late. Wards of protection would fail, and then it wouldn’t just be my life at stake. It’d put everyone in danger; Glora, Ruby, her grandparents, Wren’s family.

  I took out my phone and dialed Glora’s number. I needed to speak to her even if it was only a second. Who knew if I’d get another chance? I pressed her number, and I waited. The phone seemed to ring for hours, before finally playing her answer machine message.

  I dialed another number. Th
is time, someone answered.

  “Joshua?” said a woman.

  “Emelie? I need to speak to Glora.”

  There was a pause. Glora’s mother used to like me, once, but that was years ago. Now all she felt for me was disdain.

  “She’s not here,” she said.

  “What? When did she leave?”

  “Leave?”

  “She was coming to stay with you.”

  “She hasn’t been here, Josh. You need to let her move on. It isn’t fair, what you do. Always calling her. Let her go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s met someone else.”

  I hung up the phone. The realization hit me then. Glora hadn’t gone to her mother’s. I was right. Damn it, I knew I was right. Glora did have a boyfriend. She’d moved on, and she and Ruby had gone to stay with this guy. I’d known this day was coming, but I hadn’t wanted to face it, because it was the final snapping of the bonds to my old life. Sure, I had Ruby and I’d always be her father, but we’d never be a proper family again.

  I punched the car door.

  “Watch it, fella,” said the driver.

  I needed to fix my mind. A fight was ahead, and I knew fights. It wasn’t just about the physical training or crafting your ring skills; mentality counted for a hell of a lot. I had seen guys who were the embodiment of physical perfection, Adonis-figures in glittering shorts who’d probably trained for months for a fight, who had listened to their coaches and thought about strategy and about their opponent’s strengths and weakness. Some of these guys crumbled in the early rounds because their heads weren’t where they should be. They were too busy thinking beyond the fight, their minds fixed instead on who they’d face next, and how many bouts they needed before they’d get a shot at a world title. They indulged all these thoughts when they should have had laser-focus on the guy in front of them, and when the bell rang they were like bags tied by string, and without focus the string unraveled and everything in the bag – their training their physiques, their tactics – all fell out.