Synopsis: April 26, 2001: Libra is in Liverpool at the request of the Posse he's recently befriended. Libra decides to bring some company along with him for the ride ...
26 April, 2001.
I always knew Liverpool was a cosmopolitan city, but the things I saw in my latest visit were truly mind broadening.
After the experience with that horrid web thing in Lime Street the first time I'd come here, I had learned to turn on the Sight immediately on entering railway stations in Liverpool. From the moment I walked into the sunlight outside Central Station, sight on, I saw witches. The lad selling Big Issues was a warlock; the lass he was chatting to was clearly a witch.
I saw yet more witches on the University precinct freely mingling with students carrying hunter sign drawn in biro into knapsacks and satchels. Some hunter had carefully drawn the Word for "Death" on the forehead of her Pikachu - designed satchel; she was talking freely with a young man dressed in black jeans and a heavy black sweatshirt with Korn or something on the back. I am certain that she could see the heavy purple aura of powerful magic about him: yet by what I overheard of the conversation she was having with the young warlock, she herself was clearly imbued, and unashamed of her role. In fact, the young warlock was deeply curious about the source of her newfound powers, and obviously fascinated by the whole thing.
The Liverpool Posse, clearly deeply involved in the Hunt.
Of course, looking more closely I noticed that for every witch on campus, there was always one hunter friend shadowing him or her. Arjuna may have a laissez faire attitude towards supes, but he was clearly no fool.
I was in Liverpool on business - official and "unofficial." I'd been offered a chance in the morning to put my case before the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce for a grant application to set up a site near the University Precinct to house the Liverpool branch of Herald Recruitments. In the afternoon, I was to visit the Precinct's coffee shop to participate in a very important meeting indeed.
With me in town were Astraea and Vagabond, enjoying a bit of a stretch out of the hospital at last. For the first part of my day, I had to leave the girl and Vagabond to fend for themselves in town while I was pressing the flesh and networking.
The people I met in the Chamber of Commerce were in definite need of judgement. The key players were normal, but their advisors, spin doctors and secretaries all carried an air of wrongness about them - something in their eyes, in the pallor of their skin, the way they seemed to have an odd tremor, as if they were aching inside for a fix of something.
I could sense the rasping of their breathing, watched as tiny changes in the light caused their pupils to react. One of them was sweating profusely; I handed her one of my handkerchiefs to mop her brow, then looked at it when she returned it. Sweat, with an odd extra scent I couldn't define. The hankie, I binned: it was only a Kleenex, anyway.
I looked at the warped agents of some monster as they went about their master's business, and caught the same scent from all of them. One monster was playing with the Chamber of Commerce; manipulating them like the puppets in a Punch & Judy show. And then it hit me: the smell was almost, but not quite, like blood; only very faint, far too faint for the unenhanced human nose to detect.
One word stood out, because I had caught a similar scent in my hunts back home. Vampire. The Chamber of Commerce was the plaything of one, possibly more, vampires. My money was on just one. Probably an older one, at that.
Looking at one of the puppets, as she approached me to announce the readiness of the Board to see me, I feigned ignorance of the supernatural elements. The hunt was important, yes: but business is business. I shuffled my papers in a display of mild nervousness and stood, straightening my jacket. The blood puppet was a brunette in a dark business suit, slender, with vivid green eyes that seemed to lock on to a person. She was very pretty, for a puppet.
"You will be speaking to a Mr Archer," the lady said as she led me into the office.
"He's not the usual chap," I said. "What's he like?"
"Stern, fair, doesn't take kindly to shifty types," the woman replied. "A bit like you."
"Well, then," I said, straightening the tie and letting my eyes linger ever so slightly over her lips, "we'll both get along like a house on fire, then."
Those ruby lips parted slightly into a smile. "Shall I call the fire brigade now, and save us all time later?"
I found myself grinning when I entered the Chamber. I quickly lost the grin when I saw the puppets waiting for me inside.
An hour later, I had the blessing of Liverpool's City Fathers for the branch of my business. The site had already been selected - it was a small redbrick building near the precinct, in the shadow of the strangely conical Catholic Cathedral of the Diocese of Liverpool. It had been vacated not eight months before, having previously housed a major postgraduate training firm and a company which produced aeronautical testbed software for the British Aerospace installation just outside of Chester.
Liverpool were obviously getting sick and tired of the old eyesore sitting there derelict, a home for drunks and junkies ... so they gave it to me. A bit of a fixer-upper, but I could get it up and running, oh, by July or August.
That was the good news. The bad news was that I had to report this infestation to Arjuna as soon as possible. Not that Arjuna had much in the way of good news to report to me, himself.
The journey across town was routine. I got onto a train at nearby Moorfields and took the Northern Line to Central, in Bold Street. From there, it was a quick right out the main entrance and up towards Mount Pleasant, a walk of about ten minutes I'd done before.
I caught Vagabond and Astraea in the Blackwell's Bookstore on the Precinct, opposite Arjuna's coffee shop and safe house. Astraea was enquiring about the availability of certain reference books in Braille, and by the sound of the bookstore assistant she was talking to, the signs were highly positive for Sally.
When the assistant had finished with Astraea, I approached them. Vagabond touched Astraea's shoulder, gently turning her toward me and whispering my name. Astraea smiled, held out her hands. I took them both.
"Was it a success?" Vagabond asked.
"We set up the branch in July or August," I replied. "It'll be a major boost to the local economy, lots of student jobs - undergratuate, postgrad, teacher training work placements ..."
"Your eyes are shining," Vagabond said.
"Yeah," I replied. "Let's go get a coffee next door. We can talk there. You can tell me all about what you guys found in town."
"Sounds great," Astraea replied.
Next door, we were ushered in past a knot of students, ecclectically dressed, no two hairdos alike, some of them sitting at computer desks lining the walls. The students staring into the glass boxes were stoically silent; those consuming coffee around the small steel tables in the middle were engaged in heated debate. The topic of the day was Philosophy.
"But what about the soul?" one young girl asked, her dyed red hair in dreadlocks, her lip and left eyebrow pierced. Her opponent ran his fingers through a tiny goatee, shook his black - dyed, spiky - haired head and smiled.
"Hah!" he replied, cynically. "The soul. No such thing. Next thing is, you'll be telling me that ghosts and goblins are real! Grow up, girl! This is the Twenty First Century!"
Vagabond and Astraea looked at one another, and then at me. I shrugged, kept counsel.
At this point, Arjuna arrived. We chatted a while about inconsequentials, about Astraea's new contact for ordering Braille books, and other concerns.
"Oh, by the way," Arjuna then said, "do you want to come and see my uncle's warehouse in the Queen's Dock Business Park? He's just bought it for this place."
"Are you going there now?" I asked, finishing my coffee. Arjuna nodded. Vagabond and Astraea finished theirs, and we got up to follow him.
We took his Espace down to the dock. This time in the afternoon, the business park was busy with cars leaving: despite the heavy traffic, Arjuna had no problem entering the park.
The business park's buildings were constructed in typical Late Nineties Prefab, separated by wide roads specifically designed for articulated lorries. We wasted no time getting to the warehouse, a bleak grey box at the far end of the park.
The office inside was busy, despite the late hour; Arjuna nodded us through at Reception, led us down some steel steps into a vestibule. And there, he told us to wait.
There was a charge in the air. The room we were in was empty, bar a few storage crates on shelves and a sink. The walls were painted woodchip, and the single naked light bulb in the ceiling gave the room a very cold, grimy feel.
"You can feel it, too," Astraea said.
"Is this what adrenalin smells like?" I asked her.
"You mean the smell of fear?" Astraea replied, nodding. "Oh, yes. Very likely."
"What are you on about?" Vagabond asked. "I don't have your edge, guys."
"Trust me, Martin," I replied, "you don't want to know."
On the far side of the room, the maroon painted double doors opened outwards, revealing a dark room beyond. We entered, standing framed in the light, squinting into the dark.
"I'll turn on the lights," someone muttered on my right.
"Needn't bother, Orion," I replied, turning to face him. "What happened to your arm?"
"What's happening?" Vagabond asked. "I can't see a thing -"
"How did you -" interjected Orion, simultaneously.
"Let's say I have a gift," I replied, stepping around the door and reaching effortlessly for the lightswitch behind me, on the wall beside the door on the right. It was a dimmer switch, so I turned the lights on gradually, to give everyone a chance to adjust to the light chance.
"Much better," Vagabond said, as the light sprang up around him. Then he had a chance to see what was before him, in the centre of the room; and he gasped.
"May I introduce," Orion said, stepping forwards, favouring the arm which he held in a sling, "Libra, Vagabond and ... Astraea."
"Libra," I said, stepping forwards. Beside me, Astraea stepped forwards and announced herself, and Vagabond stayed where he was, gave a little wave and said "Hi."
"What happened to you, then?" Vagabond asked, looking at Orion's arm.
"Broke it getting away from that thing," Orion replied, nodding towards the subject in the middle of the floor. "I was bait for it. Morris wanted to have a go, but that thing already knew him, so they had to go for someone whose scent it didn't recognise."
"Okay," Vagabond replied, approaching Orion. "Let me help you, if I can."
Orion stepped back as Vagabond reached out his hands to touch the cast. I looked at the kid, shook my head.
"He'll help you," I said. "Let him lay hands on you, and you'll see what I mean."
Vagabond laid hands on the cast. There was a sharp click, and Orion's eyes watered; but a moment later, his fingers began to flex.
"Give it a couple of hours, tops," Vagabond said. "You won't need to go back to the doctor; your arm will be whole again, and you'll be able to remove that cast."
"Thanks," Orion said.
Someone cleared his throat. I turned, saw Arjuna sitting on a raised platform, people on either side and the Thing in the centre of the floor, illuminated by a single spot in the ceiling pointing straight down, so that the creature sat in a bright pool of light.
I looked at the thing. It was bound in place by sturdy chains bolted to the floor. More chains bound its hands, its feet and looped around its neck. It was thin, supermodel thin, cadaverous and cold looking, with flawless skin and perfect black hair.
It had turned its face away from my scrutiny, but I caught a glimpse of its eyes. Black, solid, no whites, just all iris.
"What is it?" I asked. "A vampire?"
"No," Arjuna replied. "This one was walking around by day. We think it's a walker."
"Why is it here?" I asked Arjuna.
"It's murdered two priests in the city," Arjuna replied, "and attempted to murder a third." He faced the walker. "How do you plead?" he asked it.
The creature laughed; a hollow laugh. "Not guilty," he said. "I didn't know this place was a court. What are you, then? Judge, Jury and Executioner?"
"If we have to be," Arjuna replied.
Again the low, hollow chuckle of contempt. "Try away, then, Yer Honour."
I peered at it, noting its laughter, its gestures and body posture constrained by the chains. The light bantering tone in its voice was not reflected in its posture, which was far more apprehensive and tense.
"I'm reaching here," I whispered to Vagabond. "Its body posture looks stiff, forced; but that could just as much be rigor mortis as nervous tension. What do you think?"
"I think," Vagabond told me, "that if I can, I would like to see into its spirit."
I nodded, not needing to ask him how he could do that. He had demonstrated his ability to peer into the heart of a monster and determine its past dealings with people. We have our visions; Vagabond has his.
"If you would like to turn," Arjuna addressed the monster, "you will notice three people behind you. They are here at our request." He paused. "These guests of ours are the ones who will be trying you."
The monster turned to look at the three of us, straining against the heavy chains. "Ooh, I am so scared -" it began.
It caught a glimpse of Vagabond's eyes. And both it and Vagabond spasmed and jerked like fish on a hook.
A moment later, Vagabond broke contact, took a step back into my arms. The creature collapsed to the floor.
"Somebody get a medic!" Orion cried out, as I gently lowered Vagabond to the ground.
I stepped forwards. "That won't be necessary," I said. "As you were. My colleague knows what he is doing."
Vagabond's eyes opened wide. He looked up at me.
"What did you see?" I asked.
Vagabond swallowed, blinked, shivered. Speaking was an effort: the visions had drained the life out of him. "I saw its face, as it was at the point of death," he said. "He drowned in the Mersey a few years ago. Nobody mourned his passing."
"What connects him with these priests?" I asked.
"He was a priest," Vagabond replied. "He was murdered by those others he's killed."
"So you have established that he killed the priests," I said.
"All but one," Vagabond said, his voice raspy. "I have looked into its heart; its memories. I saw it batter the two priests to death with an iron bar. There was a third one, but that one got beaten up before it came for him." He started to get up, staggered over to the corpse in the chains, looked down at it.
"Open your eyes, dead man," he said, as his strength visibly returned, now he was confronting the enemy. "Why would priests kill?"
"To keep ... keep a secret ..." replied the corpse.
"Get up," Vagabond said. The walker stood, the chains clanking as it rose. The walker faced Vagabond. I stepped forwards to stand beside my friend, and Astraea stood on the other side.
"Tell these people, then," Vagabond said, "what that secret was."
"No way."
"I saw it inside you; your secret. Their secret. If you don't tell these people, I will."
"I ..."
"TELL THEM!" Vagabond bellowed, his fists clenched.
The dead thing stopped, looked at Vagabond. I turned, saw fire in his eyes, and looked at the dead thing in chains. It didn't stand a chance.
"All right then," said the dead ex - priest. "There are the ones you know, the two dead ones and the third one in hospital. There is also a fourth one who got away. I was tracking him down when you caught me.
"The five of us together had been running a small racket. Nothing much, you understand, just enough to raise some funds -"
"The truth, you bastard," Vagabond growled.
The creature paused, then opened its mouth. "We were running ... an Internet kiddy porn ring."
I listened to gasps of outrage from all around. I glimpsed at Astraea, saw her face set, impassive. She was in control; but she was clearly seething inside: a little tendon on her neck twitched, and a little muscle on her jaw jumped intermittently, indicating great inner tention kept under solid control. She turned, looked at me. I nodded, and she returned her gaze to the monster before her.
"This little beauty," I said to Vagabond, "was a monster even before his death."
"I killed them," the monster said, "but they killed me first."
"I can make an educated guess as to why you were after your colleagues," Astraea said. "If they conspired to kill you, they must have had some reason to. Were you planning on exposing the ring in exchange for a lighter sentence?"
"I was going to go down for some other crime," the monster said. "The Crown Prosecution Service would have seen to things."
"So you were going to grass on your conspirators," Vagabond said. "They found out and killed you."
"You have no idea how much I wanted to kill them," the monster said. "Even before they drugged me, put me in a weighted sack and tossed me into the Mersey like some unwanted kittens. You think I was bad - all I did was put the stuff up on the screen. They actually did the deed."
More outrage ensued. Arjuna had his hands full just keeping order. I was not surprised: if this monster was alive right now, he wouldn't be in a few minutes.
"As if what you did made you any less the monster," Astraea said, her voice chill.
"I never looked at any of the footage," the walker said. "All I did was set up the studio, streamed the video out on the Web to paying clients and posted a few additional jpeg files here and there to interested parties."
The court, by now, was seething. Arjuna's voice cut above the angry shouting. "Quiet!"
The mob sounds subsided somewhat, but only to a low, angry muttering. Vagabond stepped closer to the walker, looked at its face, its eyes. I placed a hand on his shoulder, cautioning him; Vagabond shrugged it off.
"You felt my thoughts," he said. "When I was in your head, looking at you, you were in mine."
The walker nodded.
"What did you see there?"
"You want to show me my final death," the walker replied, his voice no longer so cocky.
"Libra," Vagabond said, stepping back and turning to face me, "what do you think?"
"Do you have the capability of terminating this creature?" I asked Vagabond, who nodded.
"And what about that last priest?" I said. "The slimeball who attacked his colleague, and left him for dead hoping the authorities would think it was the same one who killed the other two members of the ring? This one?" I looked at the monster. "Where is the last priest?"
"I don't know," said the monster. "He was gone before I got to the third man. The fourth man's room was empty; he'd absconded during the night, taking money and evidence with him."
I looked at Astraea and Vagabond. "This creature has done us a service," I said. "He managed to dispense a kind of justice to two monsters."
"However," Astraea said, "he was a willing participant himself. Let's not forget."
"How could we forget?" Vagabond said.
"Still, there is the matter of the creep who got away," I said. "Do we have an obligation to go after him? If the creep is mortal, it's out of our jurisdiction as imbued."
"But not as law-abiding citizens," Vagabond said.
"Could this creature track down the last man?" Astraea asked.
"Probably," I replied.
"Definitely," the creature said, with confidence. "I know a little trick. It lets me be in the right place at the right time. Trust me, I can find him. No matter where he goes ... I will find him, or bump into someone who knows where he is.
"And when I do meet him again ..."
"What then?" I asked, suddenly receiving an insight. "What will you do? Kill him? Or just take the money and the kiddy porn and flog it yourself?"
Vagabond's eyes widened as I leaned forwards to press my point home to the accused. "That's why you killed the other two priests, isn't it?" I snarled. "They didn't have the stash or the money, and they didn't know where it was. Your friend was already on his way out the door with it all, wasn't he? You didn't kill those others out of a sense of moral outrage. You offed them because they didn't have what you wanted!"
The monster took a step back, to the limit of his range of motion. The chains clanked, snapped taut. But they held.
"You're not after the people at all! You only wanted to set yourself up in business!"
"That's not true -" said the creature.
I took a step back, as did Astraea. I looked at Vagabond. "Well? How close am I?"
Vagabond was sombre. "Spot on. You've hit the nail right on the head, Libra. He wants the goods for himself. Revenge has nothing to do with it."
"All right," I said, my voice a growl. "Do it, Vagabond. Take this sick fucker out."
Vagabond looked to Astraea. She looked at me, shocked by the unexpected use of invective; but she nodded assent and confirmation to Vagabond.
Vagabond stepped back, closed his eyes, shuddered. The heat haze stuff came out of him, billowed towards the entity and began to do its work.
It took some time for the rot to die a second time, but die it eventually did, corroding and melting into a pool of unidentifiable offal, the chains falling loosely to the ground. Its screams seemed to echo about the chamber for a considerable time after it finally stopped being recognisable as walking dead or walking anything.
I held onto Vagabond as he crumpled, winded, to his knees from the strain of using his edge. Gently, I lowered him once again to the ground, to catch his breath. Everyone else stood around the pile of liquid smoking remains in the centre of the floor in silence for a long time, just staring. Then Astraea drew an outline in the air above the remains.
The Judgement symbol.
I stood, looked at the midden before me. "Court is adjourned," I muttered.
An hour later, Vagabond was as good as new, and the three of us were sitting with Arjuna in his cybercafe drinking coffee. The computer terminals around the room were dark; the students were somewhere else, presumably the Students Union taking in a concert. Nobody felt like speaking much. We were all too busy thinking our own thoughts about what had happened that afternoon.
"We did good," I said.
"Yeah," Vagabond replied, "but there's that last priest."
"We can't win them all," Arjuna said. "And besides, that guy was mortal."
"He's still a monster," Astraea said, feeling her coffee mug with both hands, her eyes sightless once again. "We can't let him get away with it."
"I agree," I said. "We may only be able to look into the hearts of supernaturals, and we have a gift for spotting them and for dealing with them, but the hunt is more than just a neat set of powers. The hunt is a mission; we're here to stop the predators from feeding off of our own. All the predators.
"People like me and Astraea look on the hunt as being more like a pursuit of justice than anything else. All these parasites have been feeding on helpless, defenceless humanity for all these years; it's time justice was served on the worst offenders." I sipped my black coffee. "Even if they themselves are human, a mortal predator is still a predator."
The phone rang. Arjuna got up, crossed over to answer it. He listened quietly; then his face broke out in a huge grin. He turned to face us.
"I've been told to check out the BBC news," he said. "I think they've caught the fourth man. He was trying to flee the country when he was stopped by Dover Customs getting onto the Eurostar." He paused to listen to the phone again. "He's being charged with possession of obscene material, numerous sexual offences and the murders of his colleagues, /including/ the one we just tried and executed; and - ah - and now the murder of the fourth, as well: the injured priest just died an hour ago."
I turned, saw grim smiles all around. "As I said, people," I repeated, "we did good. We didn't get them all, but at least we tackled that part of the problem that lies in our bailiwick."
But as I downed the last my the bitter, black coffee I wondered about what I'd just said, about the hunt. Did these powers granted me by the Heralds give me the right to hunt down mortals who predate upon other people? Where exactly did the hunt end and vigilantism begin?
Astraea yawned. I checked my watch. It was getting late. Time to get home, and get some sleep. I had to go to Chester in the morning, to supervise the branch of Herald Recruitments there.
There were still plenty of victims crying out in the night for justice; but tonight, the cries were a little quieter. For now, that was good enough for me.
By: Fiat Knox
Copyright © Fiat Knox, 2001