A City Of Shadows by David Dwan - HTML preview

“You needn’t have worried,” Nix continued impishly. “I’m never far away. Just ask my old pal Cooky.”

Misha snapped Cook a look like daggers, her face set in anger for the briefest of moments, then she seemed to check herself and turned back to Nixon.

“Look...” She stopped.

“Nixon, call me Nix,” he replied.

“Nix. Look Nix, I’m sorry to rush you, I’m sure this is all very disorientating. But if we could set off now to our other location? I will explain everything along the way.”

“Sure, sure,” Nix agreed. “For twenty grand, I’m all yours.”

Cook made his way down to Alex, who let Nix go as Misha ushered him back down the path and towards Cook’s car.

“It’s all go, innit?” Nix called over his shoulder to Alex.

“Remember what I told you, Nixon,” she cautioned.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s all good,” he replied dismissively.

Alex knew it was the right thing to do, but still she felt an uneasy sense of guilt as she watched him go. Jabbering away at the woman. She tensed as Cook stopped uncomfortably close to her.

“I should knock you out,” he said coldly. “Or worse.”

“Evie’s got a kid,” Alex said with conviction. “I don’t know what weird shit is going on here, but I won’t involve a child.”

She turned to look him in the eyes, defiant. “Shoot me if you want, but I won’t do that. Plus, you know they wanted Nix more. So that’s good for everyone.”

She could hear his enraged breathing through his teeth. He clenched his jaw, but was just about keeping it together, for now. She knew she might cop it later, but that would have to wait.

“Look, I know you hate Nix...”

“This has got nothing to do with how I feel about Nixon!” He snapped. “I don’t give a shit about him, or Evie or any of them. It’s about getting this thing done and getting out. Nix is a fuck up, just like Jazz.”

He paused as Misha looked back at them from the car, then she turned back to help Nix get inside.

Cook lowered his voice. “This whole fucking mess is on a knife edge as it is, and the last thing I need is Nix fucking things up. Like he always does.”

It was hard to argue with that, Alex had to agree, but she wasn’t going to surrender her stance on this. Despite seeing Cook bailing his hands into fists, his knuckles white.

“I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“You’d better.”

“I will! So, what’s next?”

“You take the two of them back to the other house, then get straight back here. I’ve got shit of my own to do.”

Alex gave a curt nod and began down the path, glad to be away from him. Misha closed the back door then gave a quizzical look, seeing Alex approaching.

“Mister Cook,” she said looking past Alex, who stopped. “Won’t you join us instead?”

It was a statement, not a question despite the inflection to the contrary in her voice.

Alex glanced at Cook, who seemed frozen to the spot. His red face had turned a remarkable white in an instant.

“Cook?” Alex prompted.

He seemed to come around with a slight wince, then strode down the path. Trying and failing to hide his reticence.

“You made the choice,” he said to Alex as he past. “You get to call Evie and give her the good news. You might want to leave out the part where you picked Nix to win the lottery and not her. I’m sure she’ll understand, you being such good friends and all.” He walked down to the car, letting the realisation of that sink in.

Alex’s stomach churned at the prospect. She hadn’t thought about that part of the scenario she had set in motion. She went back up to the house on leaden legs, her mind a whirl of Evie’s potential reactions to the news. None of which she knew, would be anything other than devastation.

She would need a stiff drink or three before she made that particular call. Christ, how could doing something so good for someone, feel like nothing short of betrayal? She asked herself.

 

 

THIRTY-TWO

 

Nixon was used to chaos in his life, but the last week or so had been nothing short of insanity incarnate, even for him.

Just when he’d thought the city couldn’t surprise him anymore, given the catalogue of disasters that had befallen him lately, it had. He reeled off a list of recent woes in his head. A grim rollcall of misfortune.

He had been beaten senseless, partly by his oldest friend. Kneecapped, and all but kicked out of Evie’s flat whilst he had been recuperating. He was completely out of money, not to mention luck. And of course, he lamented most of all, the demise of his two old buddies, Milo and Jontie.

Then, like some great cosmic punchline, just when things were at their bleakest, the city had given him this twenty grand opportunity, after winning a lottery he hadn’t even entered.

Nix sat back on the sofa and adjusted his damaged leg which was propped up on a coffee table the woman, what was her name? Misha had provided for him when they had arrived at this other house.

He sipped his cup of tea which the largest man he had ever seen had given him along with a sizable piece of sponge cake the moment they arrived. He could hear the woman... Misha talking with Cook in the next room. No doubt about him, so Nix just stretched luxuriously on the sofa, he had never felt so popular.

All this attention was made so much better by the plain fact that Cook did not want him here. He had no idea what the relationship was between the two, but Nix had never seen the bastard look so uncomfortable around the woman. He heard them approach and just caught the end of their conversation.

“Honestly I don’t need to hear any of this,” Cook was saying. “It’s got nothing to do with me.”

“I disagree, mister Cook,” Misha replied. “I think it will re-focus your mind.”

They came into the living room a moment later. Misha gave Nix a gently smile, while Cook just looked as sour faced as normal. Maybe even a little scared, Nix noted.

“Tea alright, mister Nixon?” Misha asked politely and casually sat down on the end of the coffee table.

“Nix, please,” he reminded her.

He looked at Cook who was loitering in the background. “Everyone calls me Nix, don’t they Cooky?”

Cook reddened and Misha glanced at him and narrowed her eyes. “Hmm,” she said but let it drop.

She turned her attention back to Nix and he felt oddly comforted by the benign look in her eyes as she studied him.

“I just wanted to say thanks again,” Nix told her.

He gestured to his plaster cast.

“I thought I’d used up all my luck lately,” he could almost feel Cook glaring at him.

“Does it hurt much?” Misha asked.

“Nar, not do much, thanks.”

“Good, good.”

So much for the small talk Nix thought as her features grew serious, she leant forwards, and a slight frown played across her lips.

“As I said in the car, I cannot stress how important it is to us that you are fully aware of what we are asking of you.”

“I know,” he said with a nod.

There was something unnerving now about the way she was looking at him, he took a sip of tea to clear his dry throat.

“You must make your own decision,” she continued. “And I can assure you, no one here will force you to do anything you do not want to.”

Nix’s eyes flicked to Cook, but his face was unreadable. “Thanks, yeah, Alex made that very clear,” he said, returning his attention back to the woman.

Alex’s words on the drive over to the other house rang in his ears. “Listen to what they have to say and listen carefully...” She had asserted.

And he had promised that he would, although it was clear from the conflict in her face, she knew it was a forlorn hope.

But to be fair it was basically the truth, he told himself. He would listen, but unless they wanted to cut his dick off, he would agree to pretty much anything for twenty grand.

All that aside, and although they hadn’t spoken about their recent problems, let alone the kneecapping. At least they were talking, and that was a start. He made a mental note to buy Alex something completely inappropriate when he got paid after all this was over.

“Mister Nix?”

Shit had she been speaking the whole time he was zoning out? He couldn’t help but smile. Sorry Alex, I guess you know me too well.

“Sorry, I’m all ears,” he said.

“Alright,” she said a little wearily. “Now, I have no doubt all this seems very strange to you, not to mention rushed, but I’m afraid that could not be helped. But I can promise you, if you agree to our offer, things will get a lot stranger still.”

Nix nodded at this. She definitely had his undivided attention now.

“You don’t need to know why we are doing this,” she continued. “But you need to know exactly what we require.”

“Uhuh,” was all Nix could muster in response.

“Do you have any tattoos?”

“Tattoos? Erm, a couple, on my arms.”

He began to roll up a sleeve, but she dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

“That’s fine. Do you have any on your back?” She pointed under her left shoulder blade. “Here?”

“No,” he replied.

“That’s good,” she was clearly relieved at this. “We need to give you a tattoo. It’s about five inches in diameter,” she explained carefully. “It will be on your back, just below your shoulder blade.”

“A tattoo?” Nix said with surprise. Not what he was expecting at all. “Sure, why not?”

Misha nodded and took a moment before continuing. “That’s the easy part,” she told him. “We will then need to remove it later, physically remove it. The timing will depend on how well it takes, it varies from person to person, but from what I know from our...”

She fought for the right description. “Our selection process, it should be quite a quick turnaround in your case.”

She paused to let this sink in.

“Remove? Like a skin graft type of thing?” Nix asked with a chill.

“Yes, and I can assure you, the procedure to remove the tattoo with be quite painless. This is due to the special nature of the ink, and the skill of the tattooist.”

“The tattooist?”

She nodded gravely. “You won’t remember anything at all about him, or the tattooing itself. That I can guarantee.”

Nix examined her face, but she was inscrutable. Christ! No wonder Alex had told him to concentrate. He glanced at Cook, but he seemed as shocked as he was at the revelation.

“It’s not what you were expecting, I can appreciate that,” Misha said in a well-practiced, calming tone.

Nix cursed his current clarity of thought. He had wanted a jolt of booze before Alex dropped him off, but she had protested out of all proportion at the request.

“There will be some disorientation and discomfort, after the tattoo is applied,” Misha said. “This can’t be helped but will pass once the tattoo is then removed. I will perform the removal myself.”

She was being absolutely honest with him, Nix had no doubt about that. She was acutely aware of how bizarre the request was and made no attempt to hide what was required. This was the truth, straight up.

She was also desperate, he could see it even as she tried to mask her true feelings, that this really mattered. This wasn’t some weird human skin trophy fetish set up, which had first occurred to him. This was more important than that.

“So, you’ve done this before?” He asked.

“More times than I can stand sometimes,” she replied with unguarded honesty.

Disorientation and discomfort. Nix was used to the former and the latter could be eased in many, many ways.

“Twenty grand can buy a lot of painkillers,” he said with a half-smile.

“I suppose it can,” she replied.

A couple of days or so of weirdness and discomfort for twenty grand, Nix didn’t need to mull it over too long. After all, he had spent longer than that in exactly the same state on some drug fuelled bender, and that had cost him money, not gained him a small fortune.

It was really no debate at all he concluded. Besides, it might actually be fun.

Both Misha and Cook were staring at him in anticipation, it felt good to be in control for a change, he thought.

“Fuck it,” he announced. “I’m in.”

 

Cook watched as the hulking Tiny cleared away the cups and plates onto a tray and left the room. Misha had gone to confer with the others at the coach out the back. And it looked from all the activity that something was going to happen, sooner rather than later.

This left him and Nixon alone in the living room. Although Nix was a cocky bastard, Cook reminded himself that at least the prick would finally have the money to pay him back once he got paid, and if he survived.

Cook winched inwardly as he got a flash of Jazz stabbing himself in the neck with the bottle and the fountains of blood spurting everywhere. But felt a little better when he pictured Nix doing the same.

“What do they want with five tattoos?” Nix asked, finishing the cake and brushing crumbs off his lap.

“Fucked if I know.”

Cook bristled at the nonchalant way Nix looked at him, but he couldn’t do anything about it now. Still, he was placated by the knowledge he would soon be medicated off his tits, and then he would take great pleasure in slapping the twat every chance he got.

“You know when on the ride over here they told you someone had dropped out?” Cook asked.

“Yeah, there loss though, right?”

“Alex tell you who?”

“No.”

“No? Well that someone was Jazz,” Cook took great delight in Nixon’s alarm at this.

“Shit, really? Is he okay?”

Cook so wanted to tell him what had really happened to his friend, maybe later he thought, once all this was over.

“Jazz is just fucking peachy,” he lied.

The beginnings of his good mood soured as Misha appeared in the doorway. “Mister Nix,” she said solemnly. “We are ready for you now, if that’s acceptable?”

Nix looked like someone who had gone to the doctors for a check-up, only to be told he needed to be rushed into major surgery.

“Oh,” he uttered. “Yeah, sure, I guess.”

Cook felt his heartbeat quicken as Nix struggled with his crutches and finally got to his feet. Rather you than me, he thought grimly and had to fight the urge to start babbling about how he needed to go and that he’d be back once all this was over. But no, he told himself, just hang quietly in the background, they all have far more things to worry about than you.

Nixon’s eyes darted from him to Misha, and Cook had to stop himself from flinching at the fear he saw in them.

Don’t you back out now, don’t you dare back out now. It was as if he was trying to psychically embed the notion in the young idiot’s brain. One step at a time, go with the nice lady, Nixon. Get your fucking tattoo, then we can all go home.

“Go, on,” Cook said hoarsely and nodded for him to go with Misha.

A look of reticence flashed across Nix’s face, but he moved awkwardly on the crutches all the same and made his way over to Misha. She moved aside to let him pass, then followed him through into the hallway.

The room seemed to be closing in on Cook, he could feel the sweat seeping through the back of his shirt despite the constant chill in the air. He began to fumble in his pockets for his cigarettes, that would give him a good excuse to at least go outside whilst they did whatever they were going to do to Nixon.

When Cook came out into the hallway, Misha was standing with Nix at the open cellar door, which was next to the entrance to the kitchen. She put a comforting arm around his shoulder.

“Down there?” Nix asked, his voice gossamer.

“Yes,” Misha replied softly. “The tattooist is waiting downstairs.”

She motioned to the cellar below. “Now, Nix,” Misha whispered. “You are going to find his appearance...”

Cook found himself straining to hear, he was only a few steps from the front door and daylight, but he was unable to tear himself away from the scene.

“I’m not going to lie to you. You will find this very distressing,” she warned. “But I promise you, I promise you, you will not remember any of it. You will not remember anything that you see, or experience down there.”

“Jeez,” Nix breathed.

Misha squeezed his shoulder. “If you can get through the next few minutes,” she reassured him. “All this will be over, and in a couple of days, you will wonder what all the fuss was about.”

He was nodding now, clearly trying to convince himself.

“Is it gonna hurt?”

“Less than a normal tattoo actually, so I’m told,” she replied.

She moved closer to Nix and Cook felt like he was eavesdropping on some kind of messed up seduction scene. But still it was mesmerising.

“As I said, the ink is quite unique,” she continued softly. “It has certain anaesthetic qualities that will help, not only with the application, but with the aftermath while it takes to your skin, then finally, the removal.”

Nix edged a little closer to the top of the cellar steps and peered inside.

“You must be absolutely sure,” Misha said firmly. “We will never make you do anything you don’t want to. That part is very important to us.”

Nix turned and gave her a weak smile and Cook could see tears in his eyes.

“Thank you,” he said gratefully. “Let’s go.”

The relief was palpable, even Cook felt it. Then. “Won’t you help our friend downstairs, mister Cook?” Misha said without turning around.

Cook stared at the back of her head in utter shock. He tried to speak but his stunned brain couldn’t connect to his mouth. As if on cue, Tiny appeared at the doorway to the kitchen.

“What?” Was the only strangled word Cook could force out.

Misha slowly turned to face him, she seemed amused at his panic. “I think you might find the process most illuminating.”

And Cook instantly knew this was punishment for not telling her he knew Nixon. He cursed himself for his pettiness.

“Not to mention motivating,” she added coldly.

 

 

THIRTY-THREE

 

Cook weighed up his choices, and it didn’t take long. He could make for the door and throw everything away, it was tempting he had to admit, but not even remotely practical.

His reputation as a hard bastard would be ruined and he would be finished in this city. Or, he could bite the bullet and see this out to the bitter end.

“Okay,” he relented and moved over and slipped his arm under Nixon’s to help take the weight.

They took two fumbling paces forward until they were at the very top of the stone steps.

“This is some weird shit, Eh Cooky?”

“I never did like you,” Cook told him flatly.

And with that they descended into the most fucked up tattoo parlour Cook could imagine.

 

The cellar had a hard dirt floor and had been cleared of everything apart from a wooden chair which had been placed in the centre, directly under a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.

Cook was surprised at just how big the cellar actually was and calculated it must run under the entire house. The overhead light illuminated three damp stone walls to the left, right and behind him as he stood supporting Nix and took in their surroundings.

Up ahead was a stone archway which Cook figured must lead to the very back of the house, perhaps even under the backyard. But despite his best efforts he couldn’t see more than two feet beyond the opening.

“Please,” Misha edged past them and gestured for Cook to lead Nix over to the chair, which was facing the archway and whatever lurked in the darkness beyond.

Cook propped Nix’s crutches against the wall and bundled him over to the chair, he was about to sit him down when Misha stepped forwards.

“No, facing the other way.”

“Okay,” Cook replied a little perplexed.

He eased Nix down into the chair so that he was seated with the back rest against his chest and his back facing the archway.

Something’s definitely coming out of there, Cook thought with a chill. He tried to peer into the darkness again, but the light refused to penetrate very far into it.

Once Nix was seated, Cook backed away until his backside hit the cold damp stone wall by the steps, and the only way out.

“Please take your shirt off Nix,” Misha asked.

Nix dutifully pulled off his t-shirt and let it fall to the floor. He tried to look over his shoulder and into the gloom behind him. Cook could see his skinny chest rapidly rising and falling and he looked like he was about to start hyperventilating. Cook chanced a glance to the steps to his right.

“As you were, mister Cook,” Misha warned.

He swallowed hard, trying to ward off his growing sense of panic. The light at the top of the steps flickered and Tiny’s massive shadow fell upon them. Cook pressed his back hard against the stone wall and wished it would swallow him up completely.

Then the sound of something shifting in the darkness beyond the archway made Nix let out a startled cry. Cook bit back his own and tasted blood from where he had bitten his lip.

Nix was breathing in short, sharp, clipped breaths now. His eyes wide in terror. Misha knelt down in front of him and took his sweat drenched face in her hands.

“Sshh,” she breathed. “You won’t remember a thing.”

“I, I wanna see,” Nix pleaded.

“It’s better this way,” Misha said shaking her head. “Trust me.”

“O, Okay,” he muttered softly. The meagre light glinting off the tears streaming down his cheeks.

Cook tried desperately to regulate his own loud ragged breathing, which he was all too acutely aware was bouncing off the stone walls around him. His heart hammered fit to burst, and this was just at the anticipation of what was to come.

“Please...” Cook shocked himself as the word escaped his lips before he could stop it.

“Silence!” Misha hissed.

Then Cook remembered the gun, he nudged his back against the wall and could feel it digging into his lower back. He surreptitiously lifted his right hand, but it was shaking so badly he feared he would probably drop the pistol, let alone be able to fire it.

“Twenty grand, twenty grand...” Nix was repeating over and over, as he screwed his eyes tight shut.

The words came to a strangled stop at the sound of a hideous wheezing in the darkness behind him. Like a hollow death rattle caught in a desiccated throat. Each breath sounded like torture.

Metal clanking against metal echoed off the walls accompanied the rasping. It was a duet Cook was all too familiar with. He’d heard it in his nightmares ever since that day their ‘guest’ had arrived.

He brought his hand up to his mouth to stop the scream rising in his throat. His heart seemed to falter for a moment, missing a beat, then struggled to regain a regular rapid rhythm as though it was pumping motor oil, not blood through his system.

His head swam and he fully expected to drop dead right then and there. And at that moment, he would have welcomed it. Eventually his heart settled on beating like the double bass drums on a thrash metal song.

A flash of movement caught his eye, and he watched on in absolute horror as the darkness beyond the archway began to undulate as something began to emerge from its blackness.

The vague pale outline of a figure seated in a wheelchair bled out of the murky mass, as it was slowly pushed forwards to the very edge of the sickly orange light.

Cook tore his eyes away from it as it came further into the light and concentrated as best he could on the thankfully ordinary looking man pushing the wheelchair. He was wearing a white coat. Of course, the doctor he had seen the other day by the coach.

“Cooky?” Nix’s voice was weak.

Cook looked him in the eyes and instantly regretted it. The young man was openly weeping now, and he knew the horror on Nix’s face mirrored his own.

“Sshh, it’s alright, Nix,” Misha said tenderly.

She took his hands in hers and he leant forwards and rested his chin on the chair back. She spoke to him again, but Cook could not make out the words over the sickening approach of that wheezing nightmare as it came fully into the light.

And of course, Cook had to look. He gave up the futile attempt to block out the sight of the tattooist and took in the monstrosity as it came to a halt just behind Nix.

He, if indeed the thing was human, was ancient looking and impossibly thin. Each limb that Cook could see was withered right down to nothing more than skin, bone and sinew. It had a blanket draped across its legs, but Cook couldn’t imagine they were any less brittle.

The clanking sound came from two large oxygen type cylinders located on either side of the chair. They each had a tube which ran from the valve up to a fleshy face mask, covering its nose and mouth, which in the dull light could almost have been part of the tattooist’s emaciated face itself. Cook could hear the tanks straining to force air into withered lungs.

Deep set jaundiced eyes peered out from the skull like face, their gaze darted around its surroundings before focusing greedily on Nixon’s quivering back.

Cook was grateful for that small mercy because he had no doubt one look from the thing would have stopped his hammering heart in an instant.

The tattooist wore a thin blue shirt which was unbuttoned to reveal his sunken chest. Grey skin stretched taut like paper thin leather over his jutting ribs. The heart behind them could clearly be seen beating a slow faltering tempo under the white bone.

The tattooist had his hands under the blanket as if for warmth, and Cook could see four neat holes in a line on his brittle right forearm. They looked for all the world like quarter inch jack sockets.

Cook noted in shocked dismay that despite this monster’s horrifying appearance, not to mention the torturous sound of its laboured breathing. Misha was gazing upon it with utter devotion and awe.

Then something snapped in him, like a fuse blown at too much power flowing through his system. And it felt good, relief flooded his whole being, his thoughts cleared somewhat and again, Cook fought the urge to pull out the gun. He could cleanse his city of these abominations and their sick and twisted plans, with a volley of well-placed bullets, then use the rest of the mag on that colossus Tiny. He was a big fucker, but even he couldn’t be bullet proof.

Although his head was filled with welcome newfound thoughts of righteous murder, Cook was a cowered at heart, and even faced with this atrocity unfolding before him, he knew his nerve would fail. It didn’t take much self-reflection to know that was the truth of it. So, he would have to bide his time. Struggle through this trial, plot and wait for the right moment to strike.

The half-formed plan actually soothed the growing terror in him, like an overdose of sedative. If he could just survive this glimpse into hell, there would be time enough later to make things right. To bend this warped scenario, by sheer will power, not to mention brute force, back to blessed reality. His reality, where the only thing lurking in shadows and terrifying innocents, was him. Him!!

Secret faces for secrete places, he reminded himself. Don’t let the mask slip around these unholy creatures, time enough for that later. Later when that witch Misha and these others would see that secret face soon enough, unleashed in all its raw glory. Just not yet, he told himself, just not yet...

Perhaps, he thought suddenly, he would pay a visit to Club Hell later and let out some of this pent-up aggression on the whores and deviants working there. Yes, that was a plan, something he could look forward to, something to help keep that secret face hidden for a little while longer, until he was away from here.

Cook watched on with a welcome newfound sense of detachment as the doctor chappy stopped pushing the wheelchair, locked off the wheels and reached under the seat and took out a small black flight case about the size of a shoebox.

He placed it on the dirt floor and knelt next to it. All the while, the tattooist demon, which it surely was, Cook now knew. Ran its bony fingers over Nixon’s back as it examined the skin, which made Nix shiver and whimper under its touch.

Misha was still close to him, whispered, cajoling and wiping the sweat from his face.

Cook smiled to himself at Nixon’s distress. The calm that was now flowing through him felt like a drug. Perhaps he was slipping into madness at seeing such things, but he would gladly take that over the simpering quivering wreck he had been just moments before. Yes, if this was true madness, he could embrace it like a lover and never let go.

The doctor carefully opened the flight case and took out an ornate looking, highly polished chrome tattoo gun. The handle of which was already attached to four thin rubber tubes, each with a two-inch surgical needle on the end.

The doctor took a hold of the tattooist’s thin right arm and inserted each of the needles into the holes in its forearm. The skin was so translucent that Cook could see the needles just below the surface where they penetrated the vein.

Then the doctor carefully placed the gun into the tattooist’s bony hand and closed its fingers around the handle. Then once he was sure it had a firm grip, he closed the flight case, stood and back away.

The nerve-jangling wheezing through the fleshy mask increased excitedly as the thing leant forward with the gun and touched it gently under Nixon’s left shoulder blade.

The instant the needle touched the skin, the tubes began to fill with bright multi-coloured liquid which flowed up from the creature’s arm itself and into the tattoo gun.

Nix flinched as the gun buzzed into life and the tattooist moved its face to within inches of his back, and with a laser like focus began to tattoo the quivering flesh just under his left shoulder blade.

A mere few minutes ago, Cook mused, on top of everything he had seen and felt today. That would have sent him over the edge and into insanity. But since he was already there, and still in complete control of it, he watched the whole procedure with all the detached fascination of a coroner observing his hundredth autopsy.

Cook knew he would have to bide his time, go along with everything these devils asked of him, no matter how bizarre. Until the time was right to act. He had to stop himself grinning like a lunatic as he imagined the carnage that would follow.

Misha suddenly frowned and turned her attention from placating Nixon to him standing quietly now by the wall. It seemed to Cook that perhaps she somehow sensed this change in him, or perhaps it was the shift in his demeanour, from horrified witness to casual observer. Either way it clearly troubled her.

Normally that would have concerned him, but now he just didn’t care. Cook returned to watching the art show and just about resisted winking at the woman and telling her. ‘Just you wait witch, just you wait.’ Yes, he just didn’t care at all, and it was bliss.

 

 

THIRTY-FOUR

 

The city was a monster, every citizen could tell you that. And they all, in their own way, gave in to this fact with the fatalistic acceptance that this was their inescapable reality.

The city didn’t care about their hopes and dreams, if anything it fed greedily on such futile emotions with a ravenous delight. And woe betide anyone foolish enough to think otherwise.

That had been Evie’s downfall, she knew that now. She had been arrogant enough to believe that she was special, that she and her beloved Milly were destined for better things than life in this cesspool.

She had prided herself on her independence, of never fully giving in to the degradation that just existing here demanded of the lost souls trapped in this brick block purgatory. She had believed that she was different, and the city had taken great pleasure in making her pay for that pride tenfold.

Disoriented, Evie tried to stand, but her legs refused to obey even that simple command. She must have collapsed in the street at the blindside. One minute she was standing there waiting for Alex to come pick her up, the next she was face down in the gutter in a pool of her own vomit.

Her stomach cramped violently as she retched again. She felt like she had been shot in the guts the pain was so bad, and she half wished she had. At least that would have eventually put her out of her misery.

It had all been so quick, like a drive by shooting. She had answered her phone, seeing it was Alex calling and had gone from total euphoria to the depths of utter despair in the space of at most ten words form her friend.

She had been vaguely aware of the apologies after the initial hit that had send her to her knees, the hurried explanations and then the tears and sobbing coming from the other end of the phone. But these had barely registered as English to her shock addled brain.

Evie tried desperately to concentrate of Milly’s face, anything to pull her back from the edge of this abyss she was teetering on. But her daughter’s sweet face melted away at the all-pervasive hopelessness of her future.

Finally, somehow, she managed to drag herself to her feet, she had to lean against a wall at her back for balance like a drunkard.

“It’s the hope that kills you,” she muttered.

She had forgotten that simple mantra and it had cost her dearly. And in that moment, Evie swore to herself that she would never do that again. Hope.

 

A discordant sound, somewhere off in the waking world threatened to pull Alex Doyle out of a wonderful dream.

The dream was all the sweeter as it was a welcome relief from the utter devastation she had felt when she had gone to bed and curled up under the covers, after that traumatic phone call to Evie. It had been as if she had informed her of the death of a loved one, but one Alex herself had caused.

And in a way, she thought as she sobbed herself to sleep, she had. She had killed the poor woman’s hope of escape and that was a death Alex knew would be hard for Evie to come back from.

But all that pain and guilt was for the unwelcome reality that awaited her once she awoke. Now she just let the dream sooth her pain and surrendered to it, despite that nagging sound she couldn’t quite place.

Alex was in the living room with Jazz, and he was effortlessly playing a beautiful melody on the piano, she could hear it, clear as day. The others were there too, watching as his gifted fingers glided over the keys.

Alex looked at each of them in turn, they were all so clear eyed and present. She noticed that none of them had those awful patches on their backs. Of course, she knew she was dreaming as bright sunlight was filtering through the window bathing the scene in a warm orange glow.

Jazz played a bum note and Alex flinched as if it physically hurt her. The others flinched too, and the warm sunlight turned cooler on her face.

She moved over to the window, which was open, and she felt the biting chill of a winter’s breeze wash over her. The light outside was fading fast, replaced by a darkness that was emanating from something outside.

Jazz was pounding manically on the piano now, his face set in a terrible forced grin, his eyes blazing with madness. He had the patch on his back again now, seeping a strange malignant liquid through his shirt.

Again, that discordant sound from before, cutting through the cacophony Jazz was hammering out. Alex felt a tugging at her solar plexus, like an invisible fishing line hooked to her ribcage trying to pull her back to reality. She fought against it and looked back out through the window.

There were several figures in the garden, all of them looking blankly at her through the closing darkness. It was the five, but now Nix was one of them and Jazz was gone. They were all covered in blood, mixed with bright sickeningly fluorescent colours, pumping in fountains from the patches on their backs.

The increasing darkness swirled all around them, tumbling towards the house and she could see terrible undulating things in the gloom, they were a mass of twisted and tangled animalistic shapes, limbs outstretch, clawing for her. Alex let out a scream, but it wasn’t her own.

She jolted awake on her bed where she had been dozing, the scream still ringing in her eyes.

“Jesus,” she uttered and swung her legs over the side and sat with her head in her hands, breathing hard.

Then the scream came again, it was female coming from one of the other rooms but was cut short an instant later. She bolted out of her room and onto the landing where she nearly collided with Lucy who was standing by her own open doorway.

“Lucy, was that you?”

But the older woman just looked at her with that same blank expression she had come to expect from them all. Then a slight flicker of life behind those glacial eyes.

“Someone was screaming,” she said, her voice monotone.

“It wasn’t you?” Alex asked again in frustration.

The woman seemed to be reacting in slow motion. After an age she just looked at Alex but didn’t speak.

“Lucy, are you okay? Alex tried again.

She took her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. “Lucy?”

“I, don’t, know,” she replied haltingly. As if each word needed translating from a foreign language from thought to speech.

“But you heard someone scream?”

“Don’t think it was me,” she replied then seemed to drift off again.

“Christ!” Alex moved past her and down to Fiona’s room.

Her door was slightly ajar, so Alex cautiously nudged it open and came inside. Fiona was standing by the window looking vacantly down to the garden below.

“Fi?”

Fiona turned to face Alex, her face as impassive as ever.

“Do you ever feel like you’re a character in someone else’s nightmare?” Fiona asked obliquely.

“Huh?”

Alex had expected a monosyllabic response, not this.

“Fi, was that you just now?”

“What was me just now?” She replied with the hint of a frown.

“Christ,” Alex breathed in frustration.

Fiona shuffled over to the dresser and examined her reflection in its mirror. “I think it’s me just now,” she muttered.

A look of incomprehension crossed her face, and she touched her cheek. “Isn’t it?” She added.

Alex could feel the beginnings of a stress headache coming on. But she did her best to hide her growing annoyance.

“Fi, are you okay?” She asked flatly.

Fiona came away from the mirror. “Won’t be long now,” she said and drifted back over to the window.

Alex caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the dresser mirror. Her short hair was sticking up at odd angles from her nap. That coupled with the dark rings under her eyes made her look like a mad woman.

“I think we should all get out of here,” Alex whispered to herself.

Fiona spun on her heel and her eyes flashed with a sudden spark of life. “No!” She snapped.

“Fi, is twenty grand really worth all this?”

“It’s about much more than that now,” she replied.

Alex could see her eyes were already beginning to cloud over again. She was about to press her on what she meant when a car horn blared from outside.

“The final piece of the puzzle,” Fiona said.

 

When Alex came out of the front door, Nix was already propped up on his crutches by Cook’s car. She rushed down to him, but her stride faltered as she got closer to her friend.

“Nixon?” She said numbly.

He didn’t react and had his head lolled forwards like it weighed a ton. And Alex realised she had seen him in this state a million times before over the years. But this was different somehow.

When she reached him, she put her hand under his chin and gently raised his head. Shock hit her like a slap in the face at his lifeless eyes.

“Oh, Nix...”

Pity gave way to rage in a heartbeat, and she edged past Nix and ducked down to the driver’s open window.

“Cook, what the...” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

Cook’s red eyed lunatic stare robbed her of any indignation. “Doesn’t look good, does he?” Cook said with a strange humourless grin.

Alex instinctively took a step back as if whatever was infecting him could be catching. “What happened at that house?” She asked, unsure if she really wanted to know.

The question made Cook’s eyes widen for the briefest moment, then a hideous grin crawled across his waxy features.

“Never you mind,” he replied conspiratorially. “We’re in the end game now, Alex. This will all be over soon, this will all be over soon.”

“Cook...”

“Watch them,” he warned. “If you want to be one of the few left standing after all this is over.”

He frowned as if he and said too much. He looked to the darkening sky and a flash of mischief sparked in his red ringed eyes.

“I got shit to do,” he said not looking at her.

Alex was about to ask him what the hell he was talking about, when he slammed the car into reverse and sped off backwards up to the end of the road. At the top of the cul-du-sac, the car spun around recklessly, then raced off and out of sight with a screech of tyres.

Alex watched him go with a chill. She glanced across to where the minibus was parked by the side of the house. It would be so easy to grab Nix and get the hell out of here. But what about the others?

Not to mention she would be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life, seeing Cook in every shadow or around every street corner. And of course, Misha and her fucked up family.

Thought of Cook brought back that crazed grin and his wild eyes. No one wanted that nightmare after you for the rest of your days.

She realised Nix was mumbling something from behind her, so she turned and put an arm around his trembling shoulder.

“Twenty grad, twenty grand...”

“Come on mate,” she said softly and led him hobbling up the path and into the house.

The four others were waiting for them when Alex brought Nix into the kitchen. They were all sitting at the table, with one extra chair.

Alex instinctively wanted to turn Nix around and take him upstairs and to Jazz’s old room. But before she could make a move, Nix unprompted, sat down in the spare chair.

Then, as if on some unheard command, they all joined hands over the table. It looked to Alex like some kind of silent séance. But whatever this was, it was something she could never be a part of, so she reluctantly left them to their own mute and exclusive cabal. She just hoped they found comfort in it.

 

 

THIRTY-FIVE

 

When Micky Farnell arrived for work at Club Fresh Hell it was still early in the morning, but he noticed one of the rooms was already in use.

Christ, he thought, some people just can’t wait to get their fix of degradation. Still, you had to admire their dedication.

Although the club was technically open twenty-four hours a day, even the most devoted perverts and thrill seekers usually conked out by three or four in the morning. Then the next batch didn’t start filtering in until sometime after noon. From then on, it was a steady stream of people coming and going until the wee small hours again.

The hours between six and about eight AM were mostly taken up by the clean-up crews, getting the place looking something like hygienic, if not exactly welcoming ready for the next onslaught of punters. Yet someone was here at the ungodly hour of six AM.

Micky went into his office, eager to see on the CCTV just who was in this early and what they were up to. Just the thing to go with your morning coffee.

Vladimir, one of the nightshift security guards was already in the office, sitting at Micky’s desk and gawping at one of the monitors.

“Hey, Vlad, someone’s in early, eh?” Micky said cheerfully, but the smile dropped off his face seeing the guard’s reaction to whatever was on the screen.

The large man gave him a look of concern. “It’s Cooky,” he said gravely. “He came in about midnight, worked his way through two guys and a gal. Now he’s just in there by himself. He’s really fucked up, Mick.”

Intrigued, Micky shooed Vlad out of his chair and sat down to see for himself. The first thing he noticed was the dark patches on the walls and floor. The image was black and white, but he knew blood when he saw it.

“Fuck me, did he kill someone?”

“No, thank Christ. But, you know how he can get? He treated one of the guys pretty badly,” Vlad told him. “I almost had to go in there, but, you know, it’s Cook!”

Micky knew all too well what he meant. When Cook was in one of his rages, the best thing you could do was stay out of the way and wait for him to run out of steam. If he mistreated any of the talent, which did happen from time to time. Cook always paid them double. For their trouble, as the nutter liked to put it.

But Micky had never seen anything remotely this bad before. “He’s been in there six fucking hours?” He exclaimed.

“Yeah, it all started out harmless enough, then he just went fucking nuts.”

“The others okay?” Micky asked. Not out of concern for the performers, but the fact they might either quit or take time off to heal.

“Yeah, they’re pretty banged up, one had to go to the hospital. But as far as I can tell. The blood’s mostly Cook’s.”

“And how long has he been like that?” Micky pointed to the screen. Cook was totally naked, rolling around on the floor in the foetal position.

“He’s been either pacing about, dancing like a lunatic, or like that, for a good hour now,” Vlad told him with a grimace.

“This is all I need,” Micky said with resignation. “Just make sure someone keeps an eye on him. The last thing we need is that dickhead running amok in the main club.”

“Good idea, Boss, will do.”

Micky watched as Cook suddenly got to his feet and ran head long into the wall, he fell backwards, landing hard on his back, where he began to squirm on the tile floor in his own blood.

“Wonder what’s got him so riled up.”

 

“The devil’s money spends just as good as anyone’s,” Cook heard himself say out loud.

It was a familiar phrase he had come across before, but try as he might, he couldn’t put his finger on where. All that he knew was that it was very apt at the moment. A lifeline in the sea of uncertainty he was swimming in.

Pleasantly stunned from his impact with the wall, Cook raised his blood-soaked right arm and read the ragged word he had carved into his own forearm with a knife. Demons.

He thought maybe he had slashed it into his flesh on that first night back from the house after dropping Nixon off, days ago now. But why? He had bandaged it almost embarrassed at the self-mutilation. But tonight, he had ripped the bandage off and gouged at the wound in a frenzy, so it bled afresh.

It must have been important for him to scar himself so, but it was just tantalisingly out of his mental grasp. Like the name of an acquaintance, you suddenly couldn’t remember.

A void in your memory that contains something so familiar, so important but something you just can’t access.

He read the word over and over, hoping it would spark some memory in him. He seemed to remember it had all been so clear at the beginning, when he had left the house with Nixon. He had been filled with a sense of conviction, of righteous purpose, hadn’t he? But for what, he couldn’t grasp now.

That, he calculated dully had been three days ago, but inexplicably with each passing hour since then, since he had been away from Misha and what had happened in the cellar, the certainty of what he had witness, experienced there was fading.

And all he had been left with was a feeling of utter dread and a huge sense of foreboding. But for what? Demons, he had warned himself, demons.

Misha had been at great pains to reassure the five they would remember nothing about what happened to them, and apart from Jazz that had been true.

Had that forgetfulness also infected him somehow? And if so, would he ever remember that nagging momentous revelation hidden somewhere at the back of his tortured subconscious?

In Jazz’s case that suicidal fool’s memories had been triggered by the cocktail of the ink from the tattoo and a healthy dose of vodka. And in reality, his mania had more to do with his lost life than his current predicament.

The tattoo! Yes, he remembered Nix’s tattoo, but when he tried to picture the tattooist, his memory blanked out. There was nothing, not even a mental glimpse to hold on to. Just that feeling of dull horror.

But what he could remember, was that horrible wheezing, the clanking of metal on metal, had come from his thankfully fleeting encounter with the passenger from the coach at the house, days before. The one Misha had warned him not to look at under pain of death.

He had witness something portentous in that cellar, this was plain from the sickening emptiness he felt. But all that was left now was the abstract knowledge of the loss itself, but not what that loss was exactly.

The growing amnesia had made Cook frustrated, and that frustration had turned to anger. And when Cook was angry, he was cruel.

As the dawning realisation had begun to sink in, Cook had returned to the Club twice before since, each time getting a little meaner, a little rougher with the workers he had hired. Then last night, just when he thought he would shoot himself in the head, he had returned one final time in a blind impudent rage.

Normally a bout of mindless sex and violence would have been the perfect balm to sooth his tortured psyche, and in truth it had helped at first, but in the end, it had been little more than a short distraction from his torment.

Cook had beaten one of them to the point of unconsciousness and vaguely remembered the other two, who were just about still standing, dragging his victim out. Some of the blood he was wallowing in came from them. But mostly it was Cook’s own, which was still flowing from the cut on his arm, and now a fresh head wound from the impact with the wall. When he had tried to bash back the memory of his time in the cellar.

Because he knew it was in there somewhere, but that witch, Misha had hidden it from him. That was one of the few things Cook was certain of. There was something ungodly about the woman, and more over something contaminated about the five she had infected. Something he deeply feared would infect him too, not to mention his beloved city.

It was frustrating beyond all sanity, but he knew he would just have to wait for those dark hidden secrets to reveal themselves in time. No doubt, his inevitable return to the house would release them, for better or worse.

Then the blood in this room would seem like a drop in the ocean compared to the slaughter he would unleash during the cleansing of those demons.

 

 

THIRTY-SIX

 

The five stood lined up in the hallway like good little girls and boys and waited for Misha to call them into the kitchen where she was examining the wounds on their backs.

It had been four long days since Nix’s had returned from the other house, and Misha had dutifully arrived here each morning to examine him. And now, it seemed, it was everyone’s turn.

Alex was standing with Nix, who was the last in line, as one by one they disappeared into the kitchen, then emerged after ten minutes or so and drifted, zombie like, back up to their rooms.

Alex had been watching Tiny the whole time, who was standing in the kitchen doorway like the bouncer at a club. Every time she had seen him before he’d had that same stoic look on his broad face, never saying a word, just nodding and doing whatever Misha asked.

She had assumed he was a big lumbering simpleton, but she couldn’t help but notice now that he was watching the examinations with a look of genuine hopefulness om his face. He even smiled after each one came back out and wandered off.

He looked expectantly into the kitchen as Clarke shuffled out and it was clear from his reaction that Misha had indicated the examination had been a success.

Alex eased Nix along on his crutches and Tom, who was second to last, went inside for his turn. Seeing that she was now close enough to peer inside the kitchen, Tiny moved over to the other side of Nix and slid his thick arm around his waist to take his weight.

Alex could feel the big man almost lifting Nix off the ground without the least effort. He looked at Alex with a frown when she didn’t relinquish her hold on her friend.

“Fuck you, wide boy,” she said defiantly. “You aren’t so big.”

Alex nearly dropped Nix herself as Tiny actually laughed silently at her. It was clear to Alex he couldn’t make a sound, but still there was real mirth in his reaction and not a hint of sarcasm. He finally nodded his approval, which took her aback even more.

Alex nodded back, and they stood together either side of Nix and waited for Tom to come back out of the kitchen.

When the young man eventually emerged, Misha was directly behind him. She ushered him out and looked at the unlikely pair.

“Well, okay,” she said lightly.

Tiny gently touched her arm raised an eyebrow expectantly. “He’s ready,” she told him. “They all are.”

Tiny exhaled in relief and Alex caught the beginnings of tears in his eyes.

“Ready for what?” Alex asked firmly and tightened her grip on Nix’s arm.

“You love him,” Misha said and gestured to Nix.

“I tolerate him,” Alex replied.

Misha smiled warmly. “He will be alright,” she said. “I know you don’t trust us, and why should you? But please know we don’t want anyone to suffer too much for what we require.”

“And what is that?” Alex asked belligerently.

“To help someone we love too,” she replied.

Alex held her gaze, but she was the one who looked away first. She would never trust these strangers, but she knew the truth when she heard it. Not to mention that it was clear in the woman’s eyes.

“Please?” Misha said and took Nixon’s arm.

Alex let go and stepped back. “I’ll be right here,” she said to both of them.

“This won’t take long,” Misha assured her.

Alex watched as the two outsiders led her best friend into the kitchen. And true to her word, they came back out with him no more than five minutes later.

Misha looked at her and simply said. “It’s time.”

 

When the text came through from Alex, Cook was at home nursing a large scotch, which he used to wash down a mild amphetamine pill to kick start his battered mind and body.

He had been sitting in the dark for hours and was dog tired, but he just couldn’t bring himself to sleep, fearful of what nightmares would come. The pill would help.

He tapped his mobile, somehow already knowing who the text was from. Still, he got a stab of fear in his belly when he read it. ‘It’s time, get over to Misha’s, NOW.’

Cook got to his feet and methodically dressed in fresh clothes and combed his thinning hair. He looked at the man staring back at him from the hallway mirror by the front door.

“The devil’s money spends just as good as anyone’s,” he told him.

Cook scooped up his keys from the table beneath the mirror, then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his pistol. He popped out the magazine and pressed his thumb on the top bullet to make sure the spring action was smooth.

Then replaced the mag and double checked the silencer was tightly secured to the barrel. You never know, he told himself, when stealth might be needed. Then he chambered a round.

“Just as good as anyone’s,” he whispered, rubbing his bandaged forearm with the barrel.

 

 

THIRTY-SEVEN

 

Although it was still light outside, Alex found herself standing in a living room with the curtains drawn and lit only by two dozen or so candles. It was the first time she had actually been inside the other house, but she was pretty sure it must have electricity, so the candles were a deliberate act.

The leaden feeling of anticipation felt heavy in the air, that coupled with the strongly scented candles made it hard to breathe without effort. Which only added to Alex’s sense of foreboding.

She looked at each of the five in turn. They were all seated on wooden chairs, place in a row, all bolt upright with their hands placed neatly in their laps, like a row of mismatched mannequins.

Instinct told her that this was all part of some well-orchestrated ritual, that was to be carried out upstairs, away from prying eyes, such as hers.

Misha had told her she was welcome to stay, but that she was to remain downstairs, no matter what she heard from above. She would be a friendly face amongst so much uncertainly for the group, when they came back down once the procedure was complete.

Cook, for his sins was upstairs, and Alex for one was glad of it. He had an aura of sickness around him today, his usually ruddy features were as pale as a corpse’s and when he spoke, it was in an empty almost robotic tone. It was as if his body was here, but his mind, perhaps even his sanity was lost elsewhere. And his eyes? For want of a better word were soulless.

 

One of Misha’s many talents was her ability to read people. She could tell the good from the bad with remarkable ease.

It had proven useful when selecting those who could aid her when it came time to select potentials in a foreign place. And then keep those chosen few safe until it was time, such as now, to remove the tattoos and perform the next, most delicate part of the whole process.

Misha had spotted Cook for the sociopath he was the moment they had met. And if she’d had more time, she would have asked for someone less, cruel, and more empathetic. But as it had turned out, beggars in this case, could not be choosers.

However, it was true that his general lack of compassion was ideal for the job in regard to discretion. His type were always predictable when it came to blind obedience when you waved money in front of their faces.

But still, Misha couldn’t help but worry what might happen to the five once everything was complete and they were away from this awful city.

That, she imagined was why she had asked the girl, Alex to stay with them. If Cook was a sociopath, she was the exact opposite. A headache to be sure, when it came to her relentless questions and concern about the five, especially her friend, Nixon. But she was and would be invaluable when it came to their welfare after all was done.

That brought Misha back to Cook. Just why she had felt the need to have him close during this time wasn’t clear to her yet, it was just that there was something different about the man today. Something unpredictable, she had seen a hint of it in the cellar, and it had disturbed her.

The man had gone from utter terror, (which had been the whole point, after she had learnt of his deception regarding Nixon.) To something akin to detached enjoyment. She feared that perhaps his mind had snapped due to the sheer overload of horror the tattooist could incite in those who didn’t know or love him.

That would have been unfortunate, but not as troubling as his demeanour today. On the surface he was as complaint as ever, but she could sense something lurking within his already damaged psyche. Could it be due to somehow remembering part of what he had seen? Or the fact he could not quite?

Cook was standing obediently on the upstairs landing, stiff as a board, like some soldier diligently on guard. He hardly reacted as she passed him to come to the boy’s room, but she could see the beginnings of a frown on his ashen face, and the flicker of something dark behind those almost blank eyes.

Misha came into the boy’s room and closed the door gently behind her. The room, as with the rest of the house, was lit only in candlelight. That at least gave his pallid features some hint of colour as he laid on his bed.

Tiny was sitting on a chair by the bed, occasionally mopping the boy’s fevered brow, and patting his hand reassuringly.

The three of them had played out this scenario so many times before. And just like always, Misha thought the boy looked worse this time, and perhaps, this time he truly was.

The extra days it had taken to locate and tattoo Nixon had taken a heavy toll on the boy. Then there was the extra blood. That had affected him more than anything else.

“It will be over soon, sweet one,” she said, trying to keep the sorrow out of her voice.

He nodded ever so slightly and winced even at that small movement and hissed through gritted teeth. Tiny shot her a look of alarm which she silently acknowledged with an all but imperceptible frown.

Misha checked the surgical equipment on the trolly by the bed. Several specially designed scalpels of various types, still in their sterile packaging, courtesy of the doctor and his team. Also laid out neatly were bundles of surgical gauze, bandages, dressings and wipes. A packet of surgical gloves and another containing masks and finally a roll of surgical tape.

She placed them one by one on the trolly next to a large stainless-steel tray. Then took out five white envelopes from her back pocket and put them neatly in a pile next to the tray.

It was time. What happened in the next couple of hours would decide the future of them all. Patient and donors alike, so symbiotic that they were now.

Misha wasn’t afraid, fear had no place in what she was about to do. She had the skill to perform the task, then it was down to the fates if it succeeded or not. She pushed the trolly over to the door but paused briefly before leaving.

“I love you both,” she said and swiftly left the room.

She would be back soon enough to begin proceedings. For better or worse, only time would tell.

Once out onto the landing Misha pushed the trolly along to the room at the end, which she had now converted into a makeshift field operating room.

“Follow me,” she told Cook as she went.

Cook heard the command, but it took his riotous brain a moment to process the words. All the time he had been standing there alone, his thoughts had been in turmoil.

It was just as he had thought it might be. Once he stepped foot in this accursed house, he had begun to get spectral images flashing in his mind’s eye and the hint of something tainted in the air. All too vague at present to fully grasp, but the feeling he was building to some revelation was undeniable.

He found he was now following Misha before he realised he had even set off walking. He moved past the room she had just come out of and glanced inside to see the sickly child laid in what felt to him like the lad’s death bed. And that giant, Tiny leant over him, brushing the sweat matted hair from his face.

Again, that feeling that there was a great sickness here. The house seemed lousy with it, as were the three of them, and in turn the five downstairs they had somehow infected too. To what ends, it didn’t matter to Cook, sickness was sickness, even if it had a purpose.

Suddenly an image stabbed painfully behind his eyes, a sickly figure, emerging out of darkness, but it was gone before he could fully grasp what it was.

Cook absently rubbed his forearm and felt the rage flicker onto life in his belly. Weak, but waiting to be fanned into a furnace of hate. He pushed it down for now. ‘Secret faces for secret places.

Misha pushed the trolly though the open door and into the room Cook remembered had housed those creepy photographs. He followed her inside but hung back close to the door. The room had been stripped of everything expect for a long-padded bench which stood about wait high. It put him in mind of the type you would find in a massage parlour, but he thought impishly, he didn’t think there would be any ‘happy endings’ here today.

As with the rest of the house, the curtains were drawn, and the only light came from a dozen thick white candles which gave off a sickly-sweet odour. The sort that would cling to your clothes for days after.

He watched Misha stop the trolly by the bench, then she ripped open one of the packets and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves.

“You will lead each one of them up here in turn,” she instructed. She ripped open another packet containing a bundle of masks.

“And you with then wait outside on the landing,” she continued not looking at him. “It will take approximately twenty, twenty-five minutes for each. Then once I’m done, you will lead the volunteer back down to Alex and bring up the next.”

She selected a mask and finally looked at him. “Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Cook replied and eyed the remaining mask on the tray.

He so desperately wanted to ask for one himself but couldn’t summon up the courage. He would just have to hope, staying outside during the procedure would be protection enough from whatever insidious pestilence would be unleashed by this unholy endeavour.

Misha put on the mask, so it hung under her chin. “This will all be over soon, mister Cook. Then you and the others can get on with your lives, considerably richer. And we can be gone from this place.”

For the first time in his life, Cook realised he didn’t care about the money. There was something more now for him to aspire to, he would just need to wait for that trigger he needed lurking deep within him to be pulled. Then he would act.

Misha frowned as she studied him, and for one horrible moment, Cook thought she could read his mind. But she turned away and put the mask over her mouth and nose. She picked up another package and ripped it open, this one Cook saw contained a strange ornately designed scalpel, the likes of which he had never seen before.

She twisted it through the air as if feeling the weight and balance on for size and the candlelight flashed off the blade, far brighter than it should have and it blinded Cook for a moment. He blinked, seeing the blade seared perfectly on his retina.

“Let us begin,” Misha announced.

 

“Alex!”

She started in shock, it was Cook, hovering in the doorway to the living room. The candlelight danced off his hard features giving the illusion of life and movement where she wasn’t sure there was either.

She hadn’t even heard him come back downstairs. One minute she was uttering platitudes to Nix and the others, the next, there he was, looming silently like some revenant from the house’s dark past.

“What?” She asked testily.

For the longest time he just stood there, his gaze fixed on the five, she couldn’t see his eyes clearly thanks to the flickering shadows but could almost sense they were narrowed in suspicion.

Christ, she thought, things were bad enough being in this creepy house with five zombies, feeling increasingly like she was a prison guard at a group hanging, without this shit from Cook.

She was about to tell him to stop fucking around when he spoke without looking at her. “It’s time.”

The breath caught in her throat at the finality of those two simple words. She had known they were coming, but still it knocked the wind out of her.

She turned to the seated five, searching their glacial faces for any reaction. She realised she half hoped one, maybe all of them would suddenly show some sign of reticence. Anything to slow things down, stop this lunacy maybe. But there was nothing.

She went over and knelt in front of Nix. “Nixon?”

His unfocused eyes seemed to clear, and he looked at her directly for the first time since returning from the house and whatever they had done to him here.

“It’s okay Alexandra,” he said and gave her a fair approximation of his trademark smirk.

“Nix...” It was all she could say without bursting into tears. It was good to see even a glimpse of her old friend, even if operating at twenty percent.

“Be back before you know it,” he told her and pushed himself to his feet with his crutches.

She watched him hobble over to Cook, who moved aside as if fearful Nix might touch him.

“Best get out of here, Alex,” Cook said as he watched Nix go.

“I’m staying,” she replied firmly and sat down in Nixon’s chair with the others.

“It’s your funeral,” he said as he moved after Nix and out of sight.

Alex forced herself to fight back the tears, until she could hear they were at the top of the stairs and out of earshot. Then she just let them come. She sobbed uncontrollably into her hands and felt a comforting arm around her shoulders.

“Sshh, don’t cry,” Fiona whispered from next to her. “We want this more than you can ever know.”

Alex looked up through the tears as Clarke, Tom and Lucy all gathered around her. And just like Nix, she saw they all had a hint of life in their eyes once more.

Tom leant forwards and smiled. Christ, she had forgotten just how young he was. “Thank you for looking after us,” he said gently and kissed her tear-stained cheek.

 

 

THIRTY-EIGHT

 

As Cook followed the cripple along the landing, he saw Nix glance into the kid’s room as he hobbled past. The two seemed to lock eyes for a moment and Cook thought he saw the hint of a smile on the sickly kid’s face.

Nixon stumbled so Cook instinctively leant against him and helped him walk. He cursed himself for touching the man, but it was done now. But he felt physically sick at being so close to Nixon’s infected flesh. He could almost smell the decay in him, and it made Cook want to scream and scrub the skin right off his own body.

The only thing stopping him from erupting into an apoplectic rage at the potential contamination was the knowledge that the other four could walk on their own and so he wouldn’t have to touch them.

He would need to burn his clothes afterwards and bath himself in bleach, even then he couldn’t be sure that would kill this insidious disease that surrounded him.

Focus! He admonished himself, as shadowy figures in dank cellars threatened to invade his consciousness again. As did that red, red rage. He could feel it coursing through his veins, like a gasoline transfusion pumping through his body ready to ignite at the slightest spark.

He half guided, half pushed Nixon into the room where Misha was waiting and lingered by the door, praying she wouldn’t order him inside.

“Nix, welcome,” she said and motioned him in.

Cook noticed she had covered the instruments on the trolly with a towel. No doubt for the patient’s sake.

She gestured to the bench. “Please take your top off and lay face down on the bench.”

She seemed to inspect him as he approached. “Feeling better already?” She asked.

“Yeah, actually I am,” Nix replied and took off his t-shirt. “Fog’s clearing from the old brain. This all feels... Feels right all of a sudden. Soothing actually.”

“Glad to hear it,” she said brightly.

With a little effort she helped Nix climb onto the bench and propped his crutches against the wall.

“Comfy?”

“Uhuh.”

She moved back over to the bench and gingerly removed the dressing from his shoulder until the tattoo underneath was fully exposed.

She lightly ran her fingers over the design, which looked from where Cook was lingering like several vividly coloured strange runic type symbols, and he had to fight the urge to move closer for a better look.

And if it wasn’t a trick of the flickering candlelight, the tattoo seemed to be emitting a kind of luminescence, which reflected in Misha’s wide eyes as she studied it.

Yes! The colours were alive with subtle movement almost like lights reflected off water. He leant forwards, captivated by the display.

The sole of his shoe scuffed the floorboards and Misha’s head snapped around and she seemed genuinely surprised he was still standing there.

“Get out!” She barked.

Cook barely registered the order, he was so transfixed by the undulating brilliance of the tattoo.

“Cook!” Sharper now, with real power.

Cook reluctantly tore his gaze away in a daze.

“Wait outside,” she ordered again.

He backed away and was hit with an unexpected feeling of utter loss as he left the room. All he wanted to do was dive into that pool of light, drown in it if needs be.

Misha strode forwards with a look of murder in her eyes and slammed the door in his face.

Cook staggered back and hit the wall behind him. He was trembling, the energy in that room had been exhilarating. And now that he was cut off from it, he felt bereft. Tears came out of nowhere and it took all his resolve not to just fall to his knees sobbing.

“No,” he hissed.

Don’t be seduced, he told himself and began to rhythmically punch the wound on his forearm in an effort to anchor himself in reality. Or the best reality this waking nightmare could offer.

 

“Stupid!” Misha cursed herself.

She had been so immersed in her work that she had nearly exposed everything. She didn’t like that look in Cook’s eyes as he gazed upon the tattoo, he had felt its power, that much was clear from his reaction. But just how much it affected him wasn’t clear.

Yet one more reason to keep a close eye on mister Cook, she told herself. She took a moment to gather her thoughts. What was done was done and she had no time to dwell on its consequences. She removed the towel from the instruments and picked up a small scalpel.

“Now you mustn’t worry, Nix,” she reassured him. “The anaesthetic qualities of the ink will make this quite painless.”

“That’s good,” Nix said and closed his eyes.

“A little pressure,” she said and began to delicately cut around the entire edge of the tattoo. She glanced down at Nix, but he didn’t so much as flinch, if anything he looked like he was dozing, another beneficial effect that sometimes occurred.

Once the initial incision was completed, Misha methodically wrapped the scalpel in a length of gauze and placed it on the trolly by the tray. She picked up the next scalpel, which was razor thin and curved out at an angle from the grip. This she would use to flay off the entire piece from Nixon’s back in one go.

She carefully inserted the tip a quarter of an inch into the flesh and began to painstakingly cut under the tattoo, no more than a couple of millimetres at a time. The precious fluid seeped from the wound like a liquid rainbow as she edged along, and she had to periodically dab away the excess with a wad of gauze so she could see her progress.

Finally, just as her hand was beginning to cramp the whole tattoo came away from the muscle and flesh and she lifted it up and placed it on the stainless-steel tray. Where it continued to glisten brightly. She could feel the power of the ink radiate from the flesh. It had taken as well as she knew it would, the combination of the tattooist’s unique ink and the host’s own blood meshed in perfect synergy.

Misha then cleaned and dressed the wound on Nixon’s back and covered the tattoo with the towel, so that it was out of sight.

“There, all done!”

“All done?” Nix replied groggily.

“Not so bad, was it?”

“Feel...” He began with a sudden frown.

“You feel the loss,” Misha finished for him. “That’s not uncommon, but it will pass soon.”

“Christ, I hope so.”

Misha helped him move around and sit on the edge of the bench. She passed him his t-shirt which he gingerly put on.

“Doesn’t hurt,” Nix said with surprise and rolled his shoulder to test it.

“Oh, it will,” Misha said. “When the anaesthetic wears off, but not for too long.”

“I’ll live,” he replied and swayed a little on the bench.

She moved to catch him, but he braced his body with his hands on the edge of the bench until it passed.

“You will start to feel fatigued and disorientated for a day or so, but this too will pass.”

Misha took one of the envelopes off the trolly and handed it to him.

“I’m sure this will help,” she told him.

Nix took the envelope with a look of mild surprise and tapped it on his plaster cast.

“Weird,” he said almost to himself and turned the envelope over in his hands. “I’d forgotten about the money.”

Misha helped him off the bench. She leant him against it and retrieved his crutches.

“Thanks,” Nix said and put them under each arm.

Misha gently hugged him, making sure to avoid the wound.

“Thank you so much for helping us,” she said emotionally.

She let him go and Nix gave her a languid smile, but it fell away.

“I hope your kid gets better soon,” he said seriously. “He looks pretty sick.”

“He is,” Misha replied softly. “But he will get better very soon. Thanks to you and the others.”

“Finally!” Nix exclaimed in mock surprise. “I’m useful for something.”

“Good luck for the future, Nix, and thanks again,” she knew they would not meet again.

 

Alex had to stop herself from running over to greet Nix when he came into the living room. So, she imagined she had bricks for shoes and casually sauntered over to him, on the pretence of helping him over to the sofa.

She sat him down and looked him over. She could see the fresh bandage on his back under his t-shirt and had to fight the urge to touch it.

“That was quick,” she lied, it had left like hours. But she wanted to gauge his condition more than anything.

Nix waved the envelope at her, he seemed almost embarrassed by it. “Easy money,” his voice was weak, but much clearer than it had been. He had the look of someone who had just woken out of a deep sleep.

She rubbed his arm reassuringly. “Hardly,” she told him.

“Next!” Cook announced from the doorway.

The remaining four all looked to him, but he just waved a hand dismissively. “I don’t care which one.”

Fiona glanced from Clarke to Tom and finally to Lucy. The older woman smiled supportively and nodded. Fiona got to her feet with a thin smile. She turned to leave but looked at Nix.

“It’s alright,” he reassured her.

She seemed to take courage from this and strode purposely past Cook and out of the room.

Cook lingered for a moment and looked about to speak. Christ, thought Alex, he looked a wreck. But the man seemed to think better of it and followed on after Fiona.

Alex nudged up close to Nix on the sofa, his shoulders slumped. She could almost feel the energy draining from him, moment by moment.

“How you feeling?”

“I’m rich,” he replied, and Alex could hear the fatigue in his voice. He rested his head on her shoulder.

“I guess you are, mate,” she replied.

 

And so, it continued. The whole process took just over two hours. Alex watched as one by one each of the five went upstairs with Cook and returned sometime later clutching their envelopes.

And each time he returned, Alex could see Cook getting progressively more manic. His eyes fair glowing with red ringed mania. She did her best to ignore his souring mood, putting it down to the pressure of being so close to the end. That was something they could all relate to.

As each of them came back down, Alex could sense their energy draining away as they sat there waiting for the next. They all seemed more aware of their surroundings, more vital, just utterly exhausted. They huddled together, whispering, comforting each other, bonded as she knew she could never be, by their shared experience.

But as Alex watched them, she still couldn’t fully relax. Lucy, the last of them was upstairs and seemed to be taking longer than the others, but she appreciated that was probably just her nerves. And call her a fatalist, but getting this close to the end, she was half expecting something to go wrong.

She drifted over to the large bay window and pushed aside the heavy curtains. The sun had finally given up the ghost and was now retreating over the horizon. She still needed to decide whether she was going to take the five back over to the other house once everything was done, so she could keep one last eye on them. Or, now that her part in all this would be over, if she was going to drop them all back off at their homes, and good luck to them.

“What to do? What to do?” She whispered to herself.

 

 

THIRTY-NINE

 

Misha flexed her aching fingers and watched as Cook led Lucy along the landing and off down the stairs. The extraction had been harder with the woman, and she didn’t know why.

It was as if the tattoo didn’t want to give up its symbiosis with her. But in the end the result, and that was all that mattered, was the same, success.

She went over to the window, which looked down onto the waste ground beyond the high fence. The doctor and Gulbrand the driver were loading the tattooist into the back of the coach. She knocked on the glass and both men looked up to see her.

Misha blew them a kiss and waved. Gulbrand made great play at ‘catching’ the kiss and putting it in his pocket. The pair waved back, their faces pictures of perfect empathy for the work she still had to do, and she loved them for it.

She had said her goodbyes and eternal thanks to the tattooist in private earlier, that was a moment she would not share with anyone else.

The moment was only soured slightly by Cook, who was in the back yard pacing like a convict on his half hour exercise routine. Thinking dark, dark thoughts no doubt.

Misha came back into the room and looked at the tattoos in the tray. She exhaled with sheer thankfulness and absently arranged the five pieces so that they formed the necessary intricate alinements.

Five quite disparate designs, each utterly useless on their own. But once connected as a whole, such power would flow through those elaborate and ancient glyphs, that would make a deity weep.

 

Tiny and the boy looked up in desperate anticipation as Misha came into their room.

“It worked?” The boy asked expectantly.

“It worked.”

Tiny was up and hugging her before she could utter another word.

 

Although Misha had banished him to wait downstairs with the others. Cook could feel the dark festering power seeping through the ceiling above, now that he was back in the house after his smoke, and it sickened him to be so close.

He paced the floor of the kitchen like an addict desperately trying to resist the drug he knew might well be the end of him.

He had been in the living room with the five for as long as he could stand their diseased proximity. He had searched each one of their fatigue slackened faces in turn, looking for any sign of malevolence. He was sure he caught a hint of it, here and there and that had driven him out of the house.

He had then prowled the back yard smoking himself half to death. But then he had heard a horribly familiar sound that he just couldn’t quite place, coming from the other side of the high fence, where the blacked-out coach was parked.

It had turned his bowels to water, hearing that distant wheezing and clanking of metal on metal. And he pictured someone, or something being loaded into the coach. Part of him had perversely wanted to climb the fence and see. But a quiet terror at the back of his mind had pulled him back to sanity.

The coach’s engine spluttered into life, and he had nearly burst into tears of relief as he heard it drive away. Taking with it that half remembered nightmare he just couldn’t quite picture. Whatever it was he was just glad it was away from him. Its ghastly work done he guessed. After this, Cook had fled back into the kitchen.

 

Cook sat at the kitchen table, but just couldn’t settle.

He suddenly felt unbearably hot, so he got up and took of his jacket and flung it over the back of a chair. Then he remembered his pistol and retrieved it from the inside pocket and tucked it into the back of his trousers, not giving a shit if anyone could see it or not.

He closed his eyes and tried to regulate his breathing, but he could see the undulating colours coming from Nixon’s tattoo dancing behind his eyelids. He reached out a hand convinced he would be able to touch the phenomena, to taste its power.

“Cook! What the fucking hell are you doing?”

Cook opened his eyes to find himself in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, his foot poised over the bottom step. He turned disorientated, in the grip of a terrible fear to see it was Alex, standing right next to him who had spoken.

“Cook?” She said again and had the look of someone addressing a lunatic.

“Don’t touch me!” he snapped, recoiling.

“I’m not going anywhere fucking near you!” She replied harshly.

Cook held onto the banister as his legs threatened to buckle.

“I’m taking them out of here,” Alex told him firmly. “Taking them back to the house, then home in the morning.”

That hit him like a freight train. No! He wanted to scream at her. They couldn’t leave, they couldn’t go back into the city and infect it. Infect his city.

Alex was just staring at him, dumbfounded. Had he actually screamed that at her? No... Reason started to fight its way back into his thought process. Calm down, he told himself, keep up the façade for just a while longer.

“Not yet,” he managed to say evenly.

“But...” She started to protest.

“Not yet,” he said a little firmer.

He could see she was wracked with indecision and knowing her, it would only take a nudge for her to disobey him if he wasn’t careful.

He needed them here, at least until he had a sign, any sign. From heaven or hell, he didn’t care at this point. He just needed them close, though it sickened him. That was the only thing he was sure of.

“Alex, okay, I understand,” he said with surprising calmness. “Just give me ten minutes to wrap things up with them. Then you can take them wherever you see fit. And then all this will be over.”

It was a flat out lie, but she bought it, more out of desperation he imagined than common sense.

“Okay,” she relented.

He could see a cautious optimism in her eyes. She wanted to believe him more than she actually did. But that was enough for both of them at this point.

“Ten minutes,” she said, and he headed upstairs.

 

Once he was sure Alex had gone back to the others, Cook quickened his pace up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

But as he reached the top, he started to feel something ominous in the air. He couldn’t explain it, but it was like a barrier of sorts, a physical dread he had to push through.

Once he stepped onto the landing, it kicked in with a vengeance. He was hit with a surge of sickening power. It seemed to vibrate right through his body, igniting very nerve ending as it pulsed towards him in waves from the room at the very end of the landing.

He doubled up as if he had been punched in the stomach and it felt like his insides were going to liquify which caused him to lurch forwards. His legs gave out and he fell to his knees.

He narrowed his eyes against the invisible onslaught, like a man staring into the face of a tornado. His heart was racing fit to burst and he had to struggle to take even the shallowest of breaths.

The impact felt so violent that Cook expected to see the floorboards and plaster walls being torn away by the force of it. But they remained undisturbed, as did his clothes, which didn’t ripple or flutter in the least. And he now realised that the row of candles which had been placed at intervals down the length of the landing were burning quite serenely with not even a flicker to the flames.

Logic fled him like a coward and instead of tumbling back down the stairs and away from the source of this unholy power, Cook dragged himself to his feet and using the wall to his right to keep himself upright, he staggered along towards it, like the man in the midst of a surreal maelstrom.

Deep down, Cook knew this would be the death of him, but he vowed he would not die alone.

Madness beckoned as he approached the room at the end. This extreme exposure to such unnatural forces had made an addict of him and he was eager for more. Its poison would surely be an end to him, but he would gladly overdose on it if he could. As he felt instinctively it would be the power source he needed to cleanse this blasphemous family and those it had infected from the face of the earth.

Cook forced himself to stop just feet from the door which was slightly ajar, and he manoeuvred himself as best he could so that he could peek inside.

He looked down at himself, half expecting to see his body stripped down to the bone by the radiating power, but he was still intact. He peered in through the crack in the door, eager to see what insanity lay within.

The boy was laid on his front on the bench much like Nixon had been. He was bare from the waist up but had a large towel over his back. Tiny was knelt by his head with his massive hands on the boy’s shoulders.

Misha, still in her surgical mask, loomed over the boy.

The youngster stifled a cry as she pulled away the towel to expose his back. The flesh was a mass of rotting dull colours. Cook could make out vague patterns within the decay from a long-faded tattoo that had been applied he imagined, ages ago.

Tattoo! Cook bit back a scream as the image of a wheelchair bound tattooist flashed clear as day in his mind’s eye. Then everything came flooding back in vivid, horrific detail.

The mildewed dankness of the cellar. Nixon in the chair as the emaciated monstrosity leant over him, its eyes ravenous as it practiced its obscene artwork on his flesh. Inked, he remembered with horror by its own kaleidoscopic blood.

 

Back in the room, Misha hissed through the mask at the state of the decay. She selected a scalpel from the trolly and moved to make an incision.

“Ready?” She asked.

“Just get on with it!” The boy snapped back.

Tiny leant forwards as Misha approached with the blade and gently pressed down on the boy’s shoulders.

Misha began to delicately cut along the outline of the diseased flesh, which covered most of the boy’s back. He convulsed in pain and tried to move, but Tiny held him still.

Once she had completely cut around the area, Misha threw the scalpel onto the trolly and selected another instrument, which she used to expertly cut under the flesh as she flayed the whole rotting skin section off in one foul smelling piece.

Again, she tossed away the device and grabbed a hold of the flap of skin and with a sickening wet sucking sound, peeled it away from the muscle and bone. She cursed under her breath and held it up for a moment.

“Just in time,” she said in disgust and let it fall into a stainless-steel bucket by her feet.

She leant in and examined the boy’s back. Then took a bottle of clear solution and cleaned the wound. Finally drying it off with a wad of gauze.

 

Cook watched on in fascinated terror, as Misha crouched down under the bench and when she came back up, she was holding a stainless-steel tray with a cloth over it.

He could feel the surge of power the moment she placed the tray on the trolly and pulled off the cloth to reveal the five flayed tattoos.

Again, the change in air pressure seemed so powerful to him, Cook expected a blast of energy to be unleashed the instant she exposed the flesh, followed by the door being ripped off its hinges and for his fragile body to be obliterated into a bloody pulp.

But as with the candles, the laws of physics were a nonsense in this God forsaken house of magic and horrors.

Cook shuddered in terror at the sheer madness of it all. He tore at the bandage on his arm until he ripped it away. The scar was already starting to bleed, and he dug his nails into it and felt a satisfying shot of pain.

Pain was something Cook knew all about. Pain was real, just as the blood now pouring over his hands was real. He could smell that familiar metallic tang in the air, even above the sicky scent of the endless candles.

He rubbed his hands together, smearing the blood with an almost manic glee. Then traced the word gouged into his flesh with his left index finger.

Demons. It was as plain as the blood on his hands. Demons.

He thought of the pistol in his belt and fought the urge to use it. He suddenly doubted if bullets would work on this fucked up trio anyway.

The boy cried out in pain, jolting Cook back from thoughts of mayhem. He was so conflicted as he lingered there, part of him wanted to end this blasphemous ritual immediately. But the stronger, more perverse part of him wanted to bathe in its dark energies for a little while longer.

Time enough for righteous violence later, he reasoned. And turned back to peer into that makeshift abattoir once more.

Misha had taken the five tattoos from the tray and had placed them on the boy’s back, so they completely covered the open wound. And Cook could see there was some lunatic sense to the patterns and symbols, now that they were together.

Five pieces of stolen flesh infused with some unearthly power, placed to make one perfect, intricate design.

Tiny wiped the boy’s brow with the sleeve of his shirt and rested his forehead against the top of the boy’s head as if praying with him.

Misha ripped open another sterile packet and took out a long-curved needle, then proceeded to thread a long length of what looked like thin translucent wire through the eye. The boy’s hands gripped the sides of the bench as she began to delicately stitch the first of the tattoos to the healthy skin on his back. He winced but didn’t cry out this time.

As Misha worked, faint sparks of intense blue static like energy began to folk across the joins, fusing them together. And as she carefully added each piece in turn, the multicoloured inks began to flow through the designs, like psychedelic blood through veins and arteries during a transfusion.

A shimmering heat haze like distortion could be seen in the air just above the boy’s back, and the bright blue energies reflected in Misha’s intensely set eyes as she concentrated, working methodically, each stitch a calculated necessity.

Until finally she stepped away and put the needle and small amount of thread left in it back onto the trolly. She flexed her fingers and nodded wearily.

The undulating colours and blue static gradually began to fade as the tattoos fused together to form one flawless piece on the boy’s back. Until it had so completely merged with his skin, it could have been inked years ago.

A moment later the energy surged brightly for an instant and then died, its work complete.

 

Misha thought she caught movement over by the door out of the corner of her eye and went over to see.

She opened the door a little further and looked out onto the landing, but there was no one there. She heard hands clapping behind her and went back into the room.

The boy was sitting up already, he looked fatigued but so much healthier. He laughed at Tiny who was clapping his hands enthusiastically, and the big man looked like he was about to break into a jig, and the boy was clearly eager to hop down and join him.

“Not so fast,” she warned the pair. “He needs to rest.”

It never ceased to amaze her how quickly the magics worked.

“I’ve done nothing else for weeks!” The boy protested.

She came across and examined his eyes, then took a look at the still gleaming tattoo on his back. Here and there flecks of energy glistened deep within the design.

“Perfection, even if I do say so myself.”

Tiny took her arm and pulled the three of them into an embrace. Misha kissed the boy over and over and tears of relief came soon after.

“I’m hungry,” The boy said from within the huddle.

Misha laughed but didn’t let him go. “Soon enough,” she told him. “We need to get you bandaged up first. Then we can eat.”

“Then can we be gone from this place?” The boy asked tentatively.

“Then we can be gone from this place,” she echoed thankfully.

 

 

FORTY

 

Five minutes? Bollocks, Alex thought as she pensively looked through the large bay window and out into the now pitch-black sky looming overhead.

They were done, she told herself, contract fulfilled. The five had their cash so they should all get gone, and fuck Cook and his increasingly bizarre behaviour, bizarre even for him.

She had spent most of the time whilst she had been waiting, trying to connect with Nix and the others. They were all showing small but reassuring signs that they were gradually returning to something like normal. It was just that they were all so damn worn out. The operation or whatever the hell it was had drained them of most of their physical strength.

They all needed a few nights sleep, and more than anything to be away from this house and its strange occupants.

“Right,” she said finally deciding to take action.

She clapped her hands like a school teacher to get their attention, and the five all turned to look at her in slow motion with mild surprise, but thankfully clear enough eyes.

Clarke, Tom and Lucy were all huddled together on the sofa, they had been murmuring to each other while Nix was slumped in a comfy chair, playing with his envelope.

Fiona had been the most animated of the group since returning from upstairs. She was now pacing back and forth while they waited, chewing her nails as if deep in thought.

“Fi?” Alex said.

“Sorry,” Fiona replied and stopped to look at her.

“Everyone, we are leaving,” Alex stated, and it felt good to say it out loud.

This won little more than apathetic nods from them, but she wasn’t expecting rapturous applause at this stage. She moved towards Nix and held out both hands, ready to pull him up.

“Come on, dickhead, let’s get gone.”

“Oh,” Fiona said in mute surprise.

Alex followed her gaze and was about to speak when the words lodged in her throat.

Cook was standing in the living room doorway a vision of bloody wide-eyed madness. He had a tatty blood-soaked bandage handing from his right wrist, and his forearm was a gory mess.

His blook splattered shirt was hanging out and open to the chest, his hair, such as it was, stuck up wildly. He staggered slightly, like a drunkard and Alex thought for a moment he had slashed his wrist.

“Cook...” Was all she managed to say.

“Can’t you feel it?” He said manically.

Alex shook her head in shocked incomprehension. “What have you done?” She uttered. She had visions of the three upstairs being hacked to pieces in a frenzy of bloody mayhem.

“Can’t you feel it?” He repeated earnestly.

He gestured to the five with a wave of his left hand and Alex saw a blood covered pistol in it. “All infected,” he said.

Fiona backed slowly away, she looked more confused than scared as her clouded brain tried to process what she was seeing.

“Cook, we all need to leave,” Alex said hesitantly, her eyes on the pistol.

But he was concentrating on the five, shifting his manic focus from one to the other as if inexplicably waiting for them to pounce at him.

Alex was some fifteen feet away from Cook and across the other side of the room. She looked to the others but knew she would get no help from them. Her only chance was to reason with him. God help her.

“Come on now, Cooky,” she coaxed. “Let’s all just fuck off, okay?”

He glanced at her as if just noticing she was in the room. “Alex... You can go,” he said to her softly, clearly weak from blood loss. “You, you don’t seem tainted by all this. Unlike these... Demons.”

Demons? “We can all go,” she said. “Cook, we can all go. No one needs to die here.”

Cook gave her a look of mild amusement. “Poor old Alexandra, always sticking up for the little guy,” he let the pistol casually point at her as he spoke.

“Cook...”

“Enough!” He suddenly shouted. “I gotta burn this whole place down! All of it!”

He gestured wildly around him, taking in the house and the five. “It’s for the city,” he said softer. “They can’t infect the city.”

Alex frantically looked around at a loss at what to do. Would he really kill everyone? She didn’t want to believe it, but the proof was right there in front of her covered in blood.

She needed to act, to tackle him somehow. Her eyes met Nixon’s who was sitting up in the chair with his hands resting lazily on his knees. He shook his head slightly, reading her thoughts, just like he always could.

She mouthed his name, and he shook his head again and mouthed back. ‘Go.’ His eyes were filled with a mixture of muted fear but also love.

“They all gotta die! All of them!” Cook ranted.

Then he just stopped dead, his face frozen in horror. And Alex hoped to Christ he was having a heart attack.

“Jazz,” he murmured, as the realisation hit him.

“Jazz?” Alex said, utterly baffled by the mad man.

Oh course, Cook suddenly remembered. He didn’t know what the clean-up crew had done with Jazz’s body. Had they burnt it? God, he hoped so, although he was dead, he’d still had that shit his veins, he would still be as infected as these five.

“Need to check that,” he whispered to himself.

“What about Jazz?” Alex wanted to know, as a sudden stab of fear hit her.

Cook looked at her with genuine puzzlement, then he realised she didn’t know. A cruel smile crossed his haggard face.

“What about Jazz?” Alex repeated feeling sick to her stomach.

Cook reached into his trouser pocket with his bloody free hand and took something out. He tossed it across the room to Alex and she caught it. She looked down at the bloody phone in her hands and choked back a sob. Someone had scratched the words. ‘Jazz’s phone, do not pinch!’ On the back cover.

“You know, you really are a needy bitch,” Cook said. “Leaving all those messages? Were you fucking him or something?”

Alex didn’t hear him, she just looked at the phone. Poor, gentle Jazz. She shook her head numbly and for a second thought she was going to faint dead away.

Cook let out a harsh laugh at her reaction. This pulled Alex back from the edge of hopelessness, and the crippling sorrow gave way to a surge of murderous intent.

“For the city,” Cook announced triumphantly and moved towards Fiona.

Alex threw Jazz’s phone against the wall in a blind rage and rounded on Cook.

“Fuck the city,” she hissed.

Alex took a step towards the lunatic but realised her error in one heart stopping moment. Despite his weakened state, Cook was fast, spurred on by pure adrenaline and manic purpose.

She just about registered Cook turning and aiming the pistol at her, when someone seemed to hit her head on the side of the head with an iron bar.

In the blink of an eye, she was flat on her back, looking up through exploding fireworks at the cracked plaster ceiling. Her vision shifting in and out of focus and she had a deafening ringing in her ears.

She blacked out for a beat, then came to. Shadows were cavorting on the ceiling as shapes moved around her, cast by the dozens of candles dotted all around. Their guttering flames caught by dark figures moving to and frow.

Alex tried to cry out, but the whole left side of her face was so numb, she wasn’t sure it was even there anymore. She began to panic now, and tried to raise herself up a little using her elbows, but they slipped from under her in something wet she was laying in. Sickly and warm on her back, matting her hair.

A flash of light lit the room for an instant, and she thought it must be concussion from the blow to her head kicking in. Unable to move, Alex brought her left hand up to the side of her head and felt a wetness, but no sensation of touch against her face. She moved her hand into her failing field of vision.

It was drenched in thick dripping blood. The numbness gave way to a searing pain like someone was hammering red hot spikes into her temple.

It was hard to tell, but as the shock set in, she thought she heard someone sobbing, but she couldn’t be sure. Then her body began shuddering and convulsing as she lost all control over it. Then just as her vision finally began to darken, an ashen face loomed over her.

It was a face she dimly knew. Another flash of light from somewhere off in the room momentarily lit up the side of his face. It was like a lightbulb of recognition going off.

“Niixxooonnn...” She breathed. Then there was nothing.

 

 

FORTY-ONE

 

“Alex?” A voice in the darkness. Then. “Alexandra?” For some distant reason, that awoke a hint of displeasure in her.

“Alexandra Doyle?”

Now someone was going to get a slap. She tried to open her eyes, but only the right obeyed the command. She waited for it to slowly adjust to the gloom around her.

She became aware that someone was hugging her, and she realised Nix was sitting on the floor, with his back against the wall under the bay window and had dragged her onto his lap.

“Hey, sleepy head,” he said softly.

Someone was muttering something about saving the city nearby, but she concentrated on her friend’s face looking lovingly down at her. He had tears in his eyes and, thankfully that old spark of mischief.

“Thought I’d lost you, shithead,” he said affectionately, and squeezed her.

Alex slowly began to piece the last few moments together. She had been blindsided by some random assailant with a two by four. No, Cook, that fucker! Cook had shot her in the head! She dimly reasoned it must have been a glancing hit, or she would surely have been dead. She desperately wanted to touch her face to feel the damage, but part of her dreaded what would be left of it.

She was about to speak when that strange flash went off again, accompanied this time by a dull thud. She shifted slightly in Nix’s lap so that she could see better. She gasped in shock.

“Oh, God,” she uttered sickly.

Cook lowered his smoking pistol as Clarke crumpled to the floor, blood spurting from an exit wound in the back of his head.

It all came to her with sickening clarity. The flashes she had seen before passing out, weren’t the onset of concussion. They had been the muzzle flash from Cook’s pistol. The dull thud, the only sound escaping the attached silencer.

Clarke’s body fell next to that of Fiona’s and the kid Tom. Alex let out a strangled cry of grief.

Tom, barely an adult, now dead in some house in the middle of nowhere. Didn’t he have a girlfriend? That day she picked him up? And people who loved him?

And what of the others? They hadn’t deserved this, they had just wanted a better life. And it had been the death of them.

Alex bit back a scream as she watched on helplessly as Cook, his face set in a maniac’s grin, levelled his pistol at Lucy, who was just standing there expressionless, watching the carnage unfold around her.

Alex didn’t know what was more upsetting. The inevitability of the execution, or the serene look that crossed Lucy’s face.

She had clearly accepted her fate and made no attempt to bargain or run. She just gave her murderer the slightest of smiles and closed her eyes.

“Cook...” Alex tried to scream, but it came out as little more than a sob.

She cursed in pain, even that one word threatened to split her skull in two. Still, Cook must have heard because he turned to her with a look of disbelief. His pistol still aimed an inch from Lucy’s forehead.

“Don’t, please,” Alex pleaded softly.

“We’ll whadda ya know?” Cook said and pulled the trigger.

Alex let out a howl and closed her eyes for a moment. She was thankful at least the increasing ringing in her ears drown out the sound of Lucy’s body hitting the floor.

Cook puffed out his chest and took in the slaughter with pride. “Quite the blood bath, huh?” He said.

“You fucking monster,” she spat back and felt unconsciousness, or maybe it was death, creeping up on her.

“Don’t you see? I’m not the monster here,” he told her with absolute conviction. “I’m the monster killer.”

He paused, listening to the ceiling, then content he couldn’t hear anything from upstairs, he moved off, stepping over Fiona’s body as he did. Then he inexplicably started to go around the room, extinguishing every candle as he did so.

Alex watched him and willed herself to stay conscious. Christ only knew what lunatic logic this was. She tried to clear her head, she had to figure a way out of this, but her thoughts were smoke in a hurricane.

Cook stopped by the doorway, the flickering candlelight coming from the hallway beyond was the only light, and this gave the appearance of twitching, grinning mania to one side of his face.

“Don’t you two go anywhere,” he said and was gone.

“How long was I out?” Alex asked Nix.

“Minute, tops,” Nix replied. “Thought he had killed you.”

Then she thought of the trio upstairs and Cook’s bloody appearance. “D’you think he’s killed them upstairs?”

Nix shrugged. Alex nodded and thought for a sicking moment that she felt her brain slip in her skull. She bit back nausea.

“Nix, listen to me, you need to get out of here,” she said wearily. “I’m fucked, but you can still make it.”

“No way,” he replied and squeezed her.

“I’m the one that’s supposed to protect you, dickhead,” she sobbed.

“You always have,” Nix replied. “Ever since we were kids, you’ve looked after me. No matter how much I fucked up, no matter how much I hurt you. You never abandoned me.”

This naked honesty took Alex aback, tears came before she knew it. “I, I can’t help you anymore, Nix,” she cried. “Please go, I don’t know what else to do.”

“I’m so sorry, for everything,” Nix whispered in her ringing ear.

He cradled her in his arms and stroked her battered face although she couldn’t feel it. “Go,” she breathed.

“I’m sick of running,” he said. “It’s about time I helped you for a change.”

“Nixon, please...”

“No, Alex, look I need you to do me one last favour.”

“Nix...”

“Please.”

She slumped back in exhausted resignation. Nix reached under his t-shirt and took out his envelope.

“If by some miracle you get out of this. Give this to Evie. I know it should have been hers anyway. But thank Christ she isn’t here.”

Alex winced at a clattering sound coming from the hallway.

“You can give it to her your...” Alex began.

“Alex, please!” He insisted cutting her off. “I’d only waste it anyway. Maybe she can get out, with Milly. Before this city gets them too.”

Cook came back into the room carrying the two large jerry cans of fuel from the back of the minibus Alex had driven over. He put one down, opened the other and began dousing the room with petrol.

“Oh, Jesus,” Alex uttered in shock.

Nix leant forwards, so his lips her next to her good right ear. “Remember, in times of stress,” he whispered. “Breathe in the love. Hold it...”

“Breathe out the jive,” Alex finished through tears.

She began sobbing uncontrollably as the memory of years gone by with the fool came flooding back. Breathe in the love. Hold it. Breathe out the jive.

“Love you, dumb ass,” he whispered in her ear and slid himself from underneath her.

“Nix, Nix!” She choked out as he got awkwardly to his feet.

Nix watched the lunatic spraying petrol everywhere, with of all things, a look of mild amusement on his face.

“You always were a fucking nutter, Cook,” he said with an edge of pity in his voice.

Cook grinned manically back and poured the remaining fuel from the can all over Lucy’s body.

The vapour from the petrol fumes was now visible in the air. And Alex could feel it at the back of her throat.

Cook tossed the empty can aside, then snapped open the top of the other and kicked it over so it spilled fuel all over the floor.

It washed over Nixon’s shoes and over to where Alex was laid. She tried to scoot back as best she could but hit her back against the wall under the window. Cook moved towards where Nix was standing and pulled his pistol out of his waist band.

And Alex wondered dully if the spark from the bullet firing would set off the entire room. That would almost be worth it, just to see the look on the bastard’s face.

Something glinted in Nixon’s left hand, and she saw a knife blade silently flick out. She moved her hand to her back pocket, to where she kept the knife she had completely forgotten about should have been.

“Nix...”

Despite his condition, Nixon was fast. He brought the knife up, and in a blur or rapid movement, stabbed Cook in the side of his neck, once, then again.

Two perfect jets of blood fountained out of the wounds and arced through the air. Cook just stared open mouthed at his attacker in dumb shock. Then seemed to register what had happened and clamped his free hand over the gaping wounds in a vain attempt to stem the flow.

His expression was one of almost comical incredulity not only at the assault but also who it had come from. Alex willed Nix on as he moved to deliver what would surely be the coup de grace.

A rapid volley of dull thuds went off, and light strobed across Nixon’s face. His chest exploded as the bullets ripped through him. He staggered back a step but managed to raise the knife again. But Cook shot him point blank in the heart and the bullet exited through his back and slammed into the wall behind.

For a brief, heartbreaking moment neither man moved, both frozen in some gruesome death tableau. Nixon, still with knife in hand as if ready to strike again at his killer. Cook with his smoking pistol levelled at Nixon’s bloody chest, his other hand on his wounded neck.

Alex let out a scream of utter despair as Nix toppled backwards, dead before he hit the floor.

Still clutching his neck, Cook swayed but just about managed to stay on his feet, he made a sickening choking sound and threw up a massive amount of blood.

“Nixon!” Alex cried out. She desperately wanted to crawl over to him, but she just couldn’t move.

Then Cook inexplicably took a faltering step towards her, his eyes narrowing into slits of burning hate. Then another as blood poured through his fingers and down his arm, before mixing with the petrol at his feet. He tried to speak, but the words were lost in his ruined throat.

He raised the pistol and fired, but the bullet went just wide.

“Fuck you!” Alex spat defiantly as he staggered closer still.

Cook braced himself to take another shot, but he could barely hold the pistol let alone fire it accurately.

“What have you done!?” Misha screamed in anguish from across the other side of the room.

Alex tore her gaze away from Cook to see the three authors of all this mayhem standing by the doorway. Misha’s face set in horror at the scene before her.

The boy pushed past her, seething with anger, his gazed fixed firmly on Cook.

Cook shuffled around to face them. “Demons...” he gargled, and bloody spittle ran down his chin.

The boy took a step closer, his hands balled into fists. And Tiny tried to move between his charge and the bloody maniac, but the boy easily barged him aside with amazing strength.

Tiny staggered back and was about to try again when Misha caught his arm. She shook her head, no. Clearly conflicted, the big man reluctantly did as he was told.

As she looked on, Alex wondered if she was finally succumbing to her head trauma. The boy was almost luminous in the gloom of his surroundings, barely recognisable from the feeble child she had heard about. The sheer power radiating from him pulsed physically in waves and she could feel it pressing against her chest.

The boy took another step towards Cook, the anger turning to pure hate in his young, yet timeless eyes. Cook flinched and aimed the pistol at the boy as best he could.

“Don’t look at me, demon!” Cook struggled to say, which set him off spluttering and choking again.

“It didn’t need to be this way!” The boy said with real venom. “We gave you everything, and they did their part,” his voice cracked with emotion as he looked at the dead.

“Infected,” Cook wheezed.

The boy fixed him with a look that could cut steel.

“You are the infected one here,” he said. “You reek of it! Your tainted mind, your rotten soul.”

Cook tried to respond, but again all he could do was cough up blood.

“No one needed to die,” the boy lamented. “There was no need for all this pain, all this death.”

Cook actually sneered at this. He cleared his ruined throat, determined to be heard one last time. He steadied the pistol at the boy’s head.

“Let me tell you about death...” He choked.

Cook fired and from where she was Alex was sure the bullet must have hit the kid. But it ricocheted away and bit into the wall to his right. The boy didn’t so much as flinch.

“Demon!” Cook gargled in horror and moved to fire again.

Alex didn’t see Tiny so much as move. One moment she was bracing herself for the next shot, an instant later, Tiny was across the room and on Cook. He grabbed him by the wrist and twisted, and she heard the audible snap even through the ringing in her ears.

Cook screamed and the pistol spun away. Then the big man lifted him off the ground and above his head. Cook danced helplessly, his arms and legs kicking comically as Tiny held him there like a wrestler playing to the crowd. He then looked to the boy.

“Put him out of his misery,” the lad instructed with a viciousness that belied his youthful appearance.

Tiny hurled Cook over Alex and through the bay window, showering her with splintered wood and glass.

She cried out as Tiny then turned to her, his usually impassive face set in fury. He came towards her, arms outstretched like some vengeful Golam from a horror movie, with nothing but murder in his blazing eyes.

“No!” The boy shouted.

Tiny stopped dead, but Alex wasn’t waiting for them to change their minds. She slid herself up the wall using her back and all the strength her legs could muster. Fear of death proved to be a powerful motivator.

Her damaged head screamed in protest at the motion, and for a moment her vision failed her, and she thought she might pass out, but oblivion didn’t come, and she was able to make it to her feet.

Her legs threatened mutiny, so she spun around and working on nothing but blind survival instinct, she managed to half climb, half fall out of the smashed window left by Cook’s dramatic exit.

Alex hit the rubble strewn ground hard, knocking the wind out of her. She rolled away from the house as best she could, protecting her head with her arms and only came to a stop when she hit Cook’s prone body.

Compared to the fume filled room she had fled, the chilled freshness of the night air outside shocked her into full consciousness. She didn’t know how long it would last but was grateful for it all the same.

She frantically looked around, realised she was resting on Cook and scrambled away from him.

“Fuck me,” she uttered in shock as she realised the bastard was still breathing.

His ragged wet breaths clouded the air above his upturned face. His chest rose and fell in fitful motions.

Alex reached out blindly with her hands for a rock or something to cave the fucker’s skull in, unable to take her one good eye off the blood-soaked nightmare.

Then he sat bolt upright and looked as shocked as Alex felt that he was still alive. Blood was still seeping from the wounds in his neck, but it didn’t seem to register anymore. He looked at her, manically, barely comprehending where he was. Any sanity there had been in his eyes had long since fled.

Alex’s hand closed around a brick, and she dragged herself to her knees. She brought it up above her head.

Cook’s face suddenly bloomed in revelation, which made her pause. And he pulled a lighter out of his pocket.

“They gotta burn,” the words came out as a garbled mess.

Cook thumbed the lighter and the flame sparked into life. He tossed it over her head and through the smashed window into the room.

An instant later, Alex was blown onto her side by the force of the blast as the petrol inside ignited. She rolled onto her back, smelling singed hair and clothing as the fireball engulfed the house. Flames came spilling out of the opening and up into the night sky.

Cook was either laughing or choking to death at the sight, she couldn’t tell which.

The front door suddenly flew off its hinges and Tiny came barrelling out with Misha under his arm. He set her down at a safe distance in the street. And looked back at the blazing house.

Alex couldn’t be sure in her ragged state, but the boy seemed to just walk calmly through the flames lapping all around the door frame and out past her, to where Misha and Tiny were waiting. All of their clothes were smouldering, but otherwise they seemed unharmed.

“The girl,” the boy said to Tiny.

Tiny ran over to Alex and lifted her up like she was made of fresh air and took her out into the street, where she slumped down onto her backside.

Misha knelt next to her and winced at her head wound. She glanced up at Tiny, who was patting down his smoking shirt, whilst checking the boy.

“Tiny, my bag.”

He nodded and set off towards the front doorway which was already belching out black acrid smoke. But he stopped.

Alex figured that he had come to his senses, and that it would surely be suicide, even for a man like him to go back into the house which was now well and truly blazing. But then she realised he had halted next to Cook, who was now convulsing in the dirt.

Tiny bend down, picked him up by one foot and let him dangle there for a moment, like an upturned puppet. He shook him violently and several envelopes fell out from his open shirt and onto the ground.

“Tiny! My bag!” Misha shouted across to him.

Tiny set off towards the house and casually tossed Cook in through the smashed bay window where he was instantly engulfed by the raging inferno inside.

Alex let out a soft chuckle at the lunatic’s final demise. Good fucking riddance.

Moments later, Tiny came out of the house, not only with a black medical bag, but two massive suitcases under each arm. His clothes were smoking and damaged in places from the flames, but he seemed to have avoided the worst of the fire.

He gave the medical bag to Misha and put the two cases by their car in the street. Misha opened the bag and proceeded to clean the blood from Alex’s numb face.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she told her reassuringly.

She rummaged in the bag and took out a roll of bandages and several sterile packets containing needles and thread. The boy just stood watching as the house burned, his grimy face set in a frown.

Seemingly oblivious to the heat, Tiny went back over to the front of the house and retrieved the four envelopes. He gave them to the boy.

Misha was cleaning Alex’s wound with alcohol, when the boy appeared over her shoulder, a look of concern crossed his young face. Alex did her best to smile at him, but her face was so numb she might just have been drooling of all she knew.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” the boy said solemnly. “About all of them.”

“We didn’t want any of this,” Misha added as she busied herself stitching Alex’s head.

Alex just wanted to cry as she thought about Nix, but she was too shocked and tired. That was a tangled knot of emotion to untie another day, when she could mourn properly.

“Was it all worth it?” Alex asked.

“For us, yes,” Misha replied and glanced up lovingly at the boy.

“But for you...” The boy began, but his voice fell away.

He put the four envelopes in Alex’s lap and moved off.

Alex tucked them into her jacket along with Nixon’s. “Some good can come from all this,” she said.

“I truly hope so,” Misha said and began to wrap a bandage around Alex’s head.

 

The four of them watched in silence as the house burnt, and with it any trace that the unlikely trio of visitors had ever passed by the city. Or why they had chosen to stay, even for a little while.

People were missing, people presumed dead. But in the end, most would chalk it all up to life in the city.

 

And as everyone knew, the city was a monster.

 

 

FORTY-TWO

 

For those in the know, there was a small hidden alcove set back from the street opposite the entrance to Club Fresh Hell.

It was situated at such an angle, that if you positioned yourself correctly, especially at night, you could see directly between two derelict buildings to the very entrance door to the club, without any fear of exposure.

It was the perfect location for blackmailers and jealous lovers alike. Each eager to catch, for profit or paranoid validation, those damaged or daring enough to frequent such a den of iniquity.

Also, from time to time, it was home to those less adventurous types who dared not enter such a place themselves. The more imaginative of these shy voyeurs, could watch the comings and goings, not only of the club’s clientele, but and perhaps more salacious still, the many and varied performers who haunted its darkened rooms for a price. Then they could let their sordid imaginations run riot as to what weird and wonderful acts they had, or were about to, perform.

 

Evie was none of these. She looked through the gap in the buildings to see the blood red doors through stinging tears.

She had read the sign above the doors a dozen times whilst she waited for her nerve to either give out completely or hold firm. And as she stood there, she still had no idea which it would be.

What Fresh Hell Is This? It read in faded lettering.

What fresh hell indeed, Evie thought bitterly. She knew it was common knowledge that she had lost out on the twenty grand after her spectacular bridge burning exit the other day. And to Nixon of all people.

Micky Farnell, the club manager and all-round mother fucker had heard it too. And being the bitter and twisted bastard that he was, had let it be known that none of the other clubs in the city were to hire her, under any circumstances.

She had tried everywhere else, but it soon became clear that the threat of Micky’s was backed up by some very bad people. So if she wanted to work, there was only one place she could go. Only one person she could see.

Evie took a breath and slipped out of the alcove and onto the street before she could change her mind. She needed to be strong, for Milly. And take whatever indignity Farnell threw at her. It was either that or take some criminally low paid manual work in one of the city’s many death trap factories.

And if she did take one of those jobs, it was true she would keep a shred of dignity, but as she was all too aware, she wouldn’t be able to afford food and rent, let alone childcare, as they paid so little. Plus, there was the added attraction of an industrial accident tearing a limb off, as so often happened.

She started across the road, with her head down, just concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other.

A car horn went off close by, and she gave the driver the finger as the vehicle pulled alongside, keeping pace as she walked.

“Fuck off!” She snapped and kept going. But still the creepy bastard drove next to her.

Evie turned to the car and was about to hurl a torrent of abuse at the driver, when she stopped, seeing it was Cook’s car. Christ, that was all she needed.

Some bandaged up freak stuck their head out of the driver’s window. “Evie! Will you stop for Christ’s sake?”

Evie stopped at the familiar if muffled voice. “Alex?” Shit!” She exclaimed.

She leant into the driver’s window, and Evie’s heart sank into her boots. Alex’s face was purple and swollen where it showed behind the bandage wrapped around her head and jaw. She had two very black bloodshot eyes.

“You should see the other guy,” Alex said with a grin and Evie could see she was missing a couple of teeth.

“Christ, what happened to you? You look like I feel,” Evie said.

“Get in,” Alex said and leant across to open the passenger’s door.

“I’m still mad at you,” Evie told her, but without any conviction.

Deep down she knew Alex must have had her reasons, and she couldn’t have truly known what she had done to her future. But still.

“I know,” Alex said wearily. “But please get in, I want to make it right. Please.”

Evie glanced towards the club. She didn’t need a second invitation to put off that little appointment. So, she eagerly went around and got in.

“Look Evie,” Alex said pulling the car away. “The whole Nix over you thing...” She stopped herself. How to you tell someone you chose your oldest friend to die over a young mother?

“You heard from Nix?” Evie asked filling the silence.

“Nixon’s gone,” she replied flatly.

“Gone?”

Wasn’t that just like him? Evie imagined he was too embarrassed to say goodbye. But she realised she wasn’t too mad at the tool. He would no doubt surface later when his money ran out.

“He always was a lucky sonofabitch,” Evie said with a smile.

“Huh?”

It hit Alex like a ton of bricks. Evie actually thought Nix had just done a runner. She felt her stomach tighten. “Yeah, that’s Nixon alright,” she managed to say. “Off Scott free like always.”

It was a lie, but a beautiful one. She reached into the glove compartment and took out an envelope.

“Don’t think too badly of him, Evie, or me?” She handed her the envelope. “He asked me to give you this.”

The best lies have an element of truth in them, Alex thought grimly. Evie took the envelope and opened it.

“Christ!” She exclaimed.

“Fifty grand,” Alex told her.

Evie thumbed through the notes, her brow knitted in confusion. “I thought it was twenty, where’s all this come from?”

“Like you said, he always was lucky,” Alex replied trying to keep her tone light.

“I can’t believe it,” Evie said conflicted.

“Evie, it’s a gift horse. Don’t look it in the mouth. Nix wanted you to have it, he told me so himself. He wanted you to get your daughter out of this damn city.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

Evie turned to her dumbfounded, and Alex just wanted to give her a hug, she looked so lost.

“Say you’ll leave, like today,” Alex said. “In fact, if you don’t mind the company,” she tapped her jacket pocket. “I had a windfall too... From some friends.”

She thumped the steering wheel. “Whadda ya say? I’ve got the wheels!” She added brightly.

“Cook won’t mind?”

“Trust me, Cook won’t mind,” she said with a wry smile.

Evie thumbed the wad of notes, lost in thought.

“For Nixon,” Alex said.

Evie nodded. “Is this really happening?” She asked, her voice thick with emotion.

Alex fought back tears. “It is, if you let it.”

 

Alex glanced around her surroundings with a hint of discomfort. She was waiting in the car for Evie to collect Milly from her child minder.

The street they were on, was one of the nicer ones around here. And it reminded her a little of the cul-du-sac and the house where she had babysat the five. And if only she had known it at the time, the place poor Jazz died.

Idle thoughts of lost friends brought the image of Nixon standing defiantly before Cook to her unbidden and she had to bite back a sob. Fucking idiot, she thought fondly and had to wipe her sore eyes.

Evie was talking animatedly with a middle-aged woman. She must have told her about their plans, because the woman suddenly flung her arms around Evie and hugged her. Milly jumped over the doorstep and out onto the garden path. She spotted Alex and waved.

Alex waved back, the scene was so idyllic, Alex had the sudden thought that maybe she was back at the house, bleeding to death as it burned. And that this was some perfect death dream as she slipped away.

She shook off the morbid notion. Her still throbbing head, and every aching bone in her body told her all this was real enough. As did the loss she felt for Nix and the others.

Evie and Milly were starting up the path, hand in hand towards the car. “Wave bye-bye, Milly,” Evie told her, and the young girl turned and waved to the woman in the doorway.

“Bye Kate, love you!” Milly yelled.

“Bye, Milly monster, love you more,” Kate called back with a laugh. “And good luck!”

Evie had to squash Milly into the back seat as it was crammed full of their gear, everything they couldn’t leave behind. She clipped on the girl’s seat belt and got into the passenger seat.

“What happened to you?” Milly asked seeing Alex’s condition more clearly now.

“Now Milly, it’s rude to stare,” Evie chided good-naturedly.

“What do you mean?” Alex replied. “I always look like this.”

“No you don’t,” Milly protested with a giggle.

“It’s the latest fashion,” Alex told the girl and started the car.

Evie clapped her hands. “Now, who’s ready for an adventure?” She asked.

“Me, Me!” Milly exclaimed.

“Me, me,” Alex mimicked.

“Mum, will Nixon be coming on our adventure?” Milly asked.

Alex felt the bottom drop out of her stomach, but she managed to keep the sorrow from her battered face.

“Who knows with that fella!” Evie replied brightly.

Alex gripped the steering wheel tightly and set off.

She didn’t know exactly where the road would take them, and she didn’t care. All that mattered was that it was out of the city.

 

And that these were three lives that monster would never claim.

 

 

END