THINGS YOU CAN’T PAY BACK
Gold Coast summers are a little slice of Hades on earth. Endless weeks of scorching days and humid nights, the temperature pushing forty on the Celsius scale. A punishing, sweltering heat that makes you regret being alive, the moisture thick enough to chew up and spit out if you’re willing to risk prolonged activity. Then the tourists descend, a plague of biblical proportions: on the beaches; on the streets; constant treks across the mountains and constant theme parks. Tourists in the fucking Hell Bar, obliging me to deal with them every damned night.
The holiday crowds reminded me why I first left all those years ago. Those self-indulgent fuckers got me think real hard about fleeing the Coast again, even if staying put was safer for a man in my situation.
I was thinking all those kinds of thoughts the morning Holly Langford cornered me at my latest safe-house. I climbed out of a cab at four AM, crossed the sun-blasted grass that masqueraded as a yard. Didn’t spot Langford parked on the front step, dreadlocks pooled around her skinny arse. Killing time with a Winnie Blue she’d smoked down to the filter.
I stopped short and wondered how the fuck I’d missed her. It wasn’t like Langford blended, not in the white-bread coastal suburbs pressed up against the shoreline. Six-three and stalk-thin, piercings through nose, lip and brow. Tattoos covering exposed skin long since worn to leather by hard living. Some of that ink I knew real well, tether marks that connected Langford to the other world and channeled the raw stuff of magic into our dimension. Other tats were decorative, or camouflage to keep the unwary from recognizing her as a sorcerer.
Langford sucked on her cigarette and eyed my approach. “Took your time.”
“Didn’t know about the meeting.”
“You’re still late.” Langford exhaled a final cloud of smoke and flicked the butt across the yard. She hauled herself upright with the cast-iron railing and looked me over, blocking my path to the door.
I halted at the bottom stop. “Thought I gave you the spare key?”
“No smoking apartment,” Langford said. “And it would have fucked your wards. Of course, that would be a fucking a mercy killing, way you handle defenses. There’s a real strong argument for establishing protection that can actually keep threats out—you might try it sometime.”
“And live in a world where you don’t show up, unannounced? Inconceivable.”
“Funny.” Langford stepped away to allow me access the flat. “Just open the door, eh?”
I stifled a yawn and obeyed. Twelve hours working the bar meant I wasn’t inclined towards visitors, but Langford wouldn’t give a crap. Refuse the people you owe debts to in my line of work and bad things happen, especially when you’re in so deep that paying it off was a pipe dream.
My flat was a bare bones operation. One bedroom, ensuite bathroom, a small kitchenette. Habits of a lifetime meant I didn’t keep much there. A handful of clothes, four second-hand books, enough weapons to hold off a demon attack if I got very lucky. A go-bag, tucked beneath the bed, ready bail on the place in a hurry if the situation demanded.
Langford flopped into the leather arm-chair while I headed to the kitchenette. The flat came with a bare minimum of cooking gear—one plate, two forks, a knife, three teaspoons. The kettle was an old, stove-top job barely up to boiling water, but I unearthed the last clean mugs and set them both on the bench.
Langford rolled a cigarette and kicked a heel against the coffee table. “You look okay, considering.”
“If you say so. Nescafe or English breakfast?”
“Tea.” Langford touched a fingertip to the cancer stick and flame bloomed at the end. My wards surged, fighting to tamp down the flow of magic, but they weren’t up to the job. Langford was an experienced witch, highly trained and older than she looked. My own skills ran in a different direction and relied on 9mm bullets and a low-key gift for sensing the Gloom.
I poured hot water over a Lipton bag. “How you take it?”
“Black. Two sugar.”
Langford studied my moves as I spooned things out, checking for signs the eye-patch was giving me trouble. Her lack of subtlety gave me the shits. “Depth perception was a bitch, the first three weeks, but I’m learning to adapt.”
She perched on the edge of the chair like a falcon, ready to swoop in. I made the fucking tea, handed her the cup. Langford took it, sipped it. Nodded her satisfaction.
The apartment seemed to bother her though. “I see you’re settling in for the long haul?”
“It is what it is. Old habits.”
Langford tapped a finger against her occipital bone. “The eye isn’t—”
“I’m doing okay.” I dropped an ashtray in front of Langford, went to claim my mug. Then we stared at each other, waiting, assessing. That wouldn’t end well for me. You don’t win staring matches against a witch.
Langford ashed her cigarette and grinned. “I’ve got a situation.”
“Right,” I said. “The fun kind, or the other?”
“The other. You’d call it an old-school type of party.”
Which meant Langford had need of my former profession, and the skills picked up before I managed a bar frequented by creatures who go bump in the night. I took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay.”
“No questions?”
“Not how this works. You require a contract done, I do it.”
“It’s not—” she hesitated. “Shit, Murphy, I’m not fucking Roark, demanding you jump on command because the crusade is all that matters.”
“Debts get paid off. First rule of the game.”
Langford raised an eyebrow. Truth is, I would have taken the job even without the debt. Hell Bar wasn’t a bad gig, but I’d spent the better part of a decade hunting things that go bump in the night—demons and warlocks and rogue entities from the Gloom. Not the smartest deal for a mortal, but practice ensured I got pretty good and my boss Danny picked up the slack.
The Hell Bar was just the stop-gap after that gig crashed down around me, courtesy of a hit Danny Roark and I fucked up down Adelaide way. Bar service and handling payroll didn’t exactly satisfy me, not after all those years of taking down monsters too dangerous to leave walking free.
“The job,” I said. “Tell me.”
Langford screwed up her face, stared at her mug of tea. She wasn’t comfortable giving orders yet. “I got a friend, Gareth Cottee. He works up at the university. Good bloke, once you get past his talent for talking shit and insistence on poking his nose where he shouldn’t. Took it upon himself to monitor some local Other, up Brisbane way. Says it’s reaching a point where there’s a dark influence in need of curbing. I never bothered policing that crap, but since you’re around and looking for things to do…”
“You require a trigger man.”
Langford worried at a knuckle. “Maybe.”
“All I have to hear,” I said. “Tell me about the target.”
Langford tossed a flyer onto the coffee table. It promised a thing called Rampage Pro was heading back to the Nundah Community Hall, headlined by Rocky Malice versus Eddie Coltrane. Glossy photographs of the two men sat underneath the logo. Malice wore black trunks and painted his face like Bruce Lee’s kid in The Crow. Coltrane was a chubby bloke, the fold of his gut hanging over his jeans, greasy hair dangling over his Cheshire-Cat grin.
The other names on the card were equally improbable, but at least they spared me the photographs. One name circled in red pen: Ketch.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m not.”
“Pro-wrestling?”
“I don’t pick where the target works.”
My eyes dropped to the flyer. “So long as your friend ain’t the fucker in the face-paint.”
“That’s not Cottee’s scene. He’s more an observer.”
“By observer you mean fan?”
“Researcher. Specializes in semiotics and cultural studies up at uni.” She waved her hand towards the door, like the campus was just outside. “Pop culture as modern mythology, all that kind of bullshit.”
“He knows magic?”
“Nope. Interested amateur. Sufficient knowledge to find trouble, but—”
She stopped, took a short breath. “Look, he knows stuff. Enough that I take his concerns on board. Isn’t the first time Gareth’s mentioned this problem, but he’s getting a little urgent about it. Insists I check out the show and give my two cents on proceedings.”
“So we’re going?”
Langford grinned. “You’re kidding, right? It’s a goddamn wrestling show.”
A bunch of things clicked into place for me. “Ah,” I said. “So I’m your proxy.”
Langford tapped the side of her nose. “Investigate. Assess. Come back and get me if Cottee’s stumbled across a big-bad in need of killing.”
I picked up the flyer again. Saturday night.
“Best see if Price can manage the bar for me. Seems I’ll be busy.”
GOOD THINGS
Gareth Cottee proved to be a tall, heavy guy built like a wheelie bin: long frame, thick shoulders, plenty of girth to go along with them. He showed up dressed in a dark-green Ninja Turtle’s tee and camouflage-pattern Chucks which had seen better days. The knot of the flannel shirt tied around his waist disappeared beneath the overhang of his gut, and a thatch of lank hair and untamed beard invited speculation about whether his neck existed underneath. He parked an SUV at the top of the Broadbeach mall and bounded over to my park bench with the eagerness of a hyperactive spaniel. “So you’re Keith Murphy?” he said. “I’ve heard brilliant things about you, sir.”
Those weren’t words I’m used to hearing from strangers. “Brilliant?”
“Holly speaks highly of you, says we owe you big for stopping some kind of apocalypse.” He nodded enthusiastically. “I make a point of paying attention when she mentions contacts like that. It’s a rarity, since she stopped taking an active interest in—”
Shit. I cut him off. “Mister Cottee, I—”
“Gareth, please.”
“Gareth, this isn’t—”
“Oh. Yes, of course. Say no more.” Gareth Cottee winked and broke out an eager grin. The intensity of his good humour infused his gaze, a stark contrast to his large frame. Like glimpsing an unfocused-but-brilliant intelligence in the eyes of a wooly mammoth. His attention darted to the next idea: “Discretion. Discretion. One reason Holly never deployed in the field. Never stopped me, you understand, but—”
“Gareth?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“We’re running late,” I said. “Perhaps we should get moving?”
“Oh,” he said. “Right. Of course.”
It’s a long drive to Brisbane, from my neck of the woods. Longer with a man like Cottee at the wheel, working his mouth at ten clicks a minute while he wove through the highway traffic. He shared things at a pace that left me feeling dizzy: thirty-four years old, lecturing in cultural studies; interested in folklore and semiotics and other shit I barely understood, which is how he fell in with Langford in the early days of his degree. Held forth on the artistic importance of the Bee Gees as we took the tunnel to Brisbane’s north side.
I stopped listening, chimed in with a nod or a-huh every few minutes. I’d worked with men talked compulsively before, back when me and Danny Roark still traveled as a team. You learn the art of faking interest and getting ready for a job.
I’d like to say it taught me I shouldn’t dismiss guys who deployed conversation to burn off nervous energy, but truth is, Gareth Cottee gave me the shits. By the time we hit Nundah, I was daydreaming about leaving him in a ditch.
We pulled up out front of the Nundah Community Hall. Dinky little building nestled up against a cricket pinch, a handful of pine trees marking out the edge of the car-park crammed to capacity. A small crowd queued up against the wall, standing by for doors to open. Maybe two hundred people, all walks of life: fathers with their kids, out for an evening’s entertainment; small clusters of goth-faced teens in black jackets and fishnets; sullen men in their thirties who could have raided Cottee’s wardrobe. Island boys, dressed in baggy jean and tight tees, tattoo sleeves on display as they talked shit from their place in the queue. A couple of obvious gym-bunnies, muscles pumped up like balloons. Lots of them talking like they knew wrestlers personally, a friend and family crowd.
Cottee and I fell in at the rear. He twitched with nervous energy, eager to be inside. He said: “You’ve not done this before, right?”
I raised an eyebrow. “This?”
“A wrestling show.”
“Not here for the wrestling.”
“Yeah,” Cottee said. “Your enthusiasm shows.”
I shrugged. “Always struck me as ten kinds of stupid.”
Cottee nodded. “I get that. Heard it a lot, when I first started writing papers about it. Like most things, it gets more interesting when you pay close attention.”
“I’ll take your word on that,” I said, hoping to stall the conversation.
Turns out, I wasn’t that lucky. The doors swung open, and we shuffled forward, tickets in hand, and Cottee blathered on. “I got interested in my undergraduate, reading Roland Barthes. He wrote an essay about the semiotics of a wrestling match, the way each man embodies notions of heroism and villainy,” he said. “All this? It’s one of the last true passion plays left in Western culture. The hero suffers for no other reason than embodying the act of suffering, the villain who cheats does so because ritual demands a despicable deed. The masses cheer, and hate, and empathize on cue.”
We shuffled inside, got our first look at the sagging ring. It didn’t inspire confidence, but the hall buzzed with conversations as the crowd searched for seats. “So,” I said. “You’re a fan?”
“Certainly, but never just that. I became hooked studying the modern incarnation of the sport. After that, there was…”
Cottee’s smile wilted as he trailed off. He pointed to a spot in the back row, close to the exit. “I’ll be honest with you, Mister Murphy. I’m surprised it took this long for an entity of the Gloom to embrace the possibilities. The wrestling ring is a microcosm for studying the Other—every man who steps into that squared circle draws power from being part of the story, transformed into a symbol of something greater than himself. It doesn’t play with subtlety and metaphor, it transforms men into avatars of good and evil, then asks the audience to believe. Given the nature of magic, as I understand it…”
The heat in the small building was oppressive and thick with humidity. The buzz of the crowd rattled against my skull, too many people crammed into a cramped space. Too much power gathered in one place, the Gloom responding to concentrated belief. “Okay,” I said. “If you’re correct, that could be bad.”
The grin returned. “Bad’s understating things by a considerable degree,” Cottee said. “Assuming my theories about the Gloom is accurate, there’s no better place than a wrestling company for an entity to hide and build up power without being noticed. It’s ritualized, highly symbolic, and people disregard it as a sideshow unworthy of attention.”
“Still not convinced there’s anything more than play-acting going on in there.”
“Not play-acting, iconography.” Cottee gestured toward the ring. “Magic’s founded on simple semiotics, just like everything else. One thing stands in for another, the symbols connected to esoteric meanings, the signified and the referent drawing power from the signifier. You learn to decode them and poof”—he snapped his fingers in front of my nose—“magic. A stage isn’t a ring, a movie villain is not a wrestling heel. The space shapes the performance, re-codes the symbols in different ways.”
The fervor creeping into the academic’s voice worried me. “You know they’re not really fighting, right?”
Cottee sighed, rolled his eyes. “If any of this happened for real, Mister Murphy, trust me, none of this would be a problem.”
FIRST FALL TO A FINISH
The seven-thirty kick-off arrived closer to eight, lights dimming to quiet the fans. The opening match pitted two scrawny rookies against each other. Both eighteen, nineteen years old, still with the undersized look young athletes have—sleek and muscled, but not bulked out. They lasted five painful minutes. Bad holds, sloppy punches, a quick gouge to the eye by the smaller of the two to get the pinfall. A handful of people booed the victor, the rest of us just sat there. Cottee lapsed into quiet commentary, unearthing the pattern underlying the fight, a rhythm and a ritual designed give meaning to every move and counter.
The second match featured another skinny youngster, all sinew and bone. He squared off against an evil-looking fucker with a beer gut and a perpetual scowl. Beer Gut slapping the hell out of the kid, raising welts on his chest. It earned more sympathy than either guy in the first bout, and the crowd erupted when the kid connected with a roundhouse kick and picked up the three-count.
We made it to the fourth match before I excused myself, found my way to the concession stand where a crew of older women were serving hotdogs and cans of Pepsi. I paid for one of each, absconded to an isolated spot behind the rows of seating. The slap of flesh on flesh echoed off the concrete walls, but my position offered a brief respite from Cottee’s rambling monolog.
I devoured the food mechanically, my hotdog cold in the middle. The first three matches had the virtue of being short, despite their other flaws. The fourth ticked into its twelfth minute as I finished eating and showed no sign of ending. I headed outside and dialed Langford’s number. “Cottee’s a freakin’ lunatic.”
“I hear you.”
“He ever shut up?”
“Nope. Told you he worked for a university?”
“I believe you. The man’s been lecturing non stop since we left the coast.”
“Gareth’s a little weird, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Get back in there and pay attention.”
I returned to the hall just in time for the short intermission. Cottee found me against the back wall. “First match back,” he said.
“What?”
“Keating versus Hangman Ketch. The one you got to see,” he said. “We’re done here, afterwards. I’m either right, or you tell Langford I’m full of shit and my credibility takes a hit. I may be an opinionated asshole, but I don’t do this to torture you.”
More self-awareness than I’d expected from the man. It earned him a little slack. When he returned to his seat, I followed him. They announced the fifth match fight after the lights dimmed, a tuxedo-clad announcer hyping the fans into a frenzy.
I heaved a deep breath. A final round and I was in the clear.
And then the demon turned up.
I’d known plenty of demons, killed my fair share of them. This one walked like a predator, weight on the balls of his feet. An ebony forelock draped over a gaunt face rendered in stark, monochromatic make-up. Bone-pale skin, kohl-rimmed stare, lips marked with black ink that bled into the white flesh around his mouth. A noose hung around his neck, the knot dangling between his pectorals, and he rippled with lean muscle.
Dark, shimmering eyes studied the crowd, ignoring their jeers. I wished I could sink into the wall, slide away from that stare without being noticed. The demon climbed into the ring and roared, showed off teeth filed into sharp points. The fans hated him, right on cue, and Ketch’s low-laughter mocked them all as he lounged against the ropes, one hand lifting the end of the noose and stuck out his tongue in a vulgar mockery of a hanging.
His opponent was older, a tall blonde with the physique of a front-row forward, all jaw-line and shoulders and focus. The guy you’d expect to dismantle a leaner, sleeker opponent, and you’d be disappointed. The demon moved fast, all grace and quick bursts of power. They locked up, arms gripping one-another’s elbows, and started forcing each other around the ring.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Yeah,” Cottee said, “he’s something, isn’t he?”
Something wasn’t the word I’d use. Outright bloody terrifying hit closer to the mark. Every demon I’ve met was some kind of dangerous, but they only crossed over from the Gloom when they found a mortal host. Relied heavily on corruption and wheedling, right up to the point they subsumed the host’s memories and eliminated the human spirit.
That took time, and if you’re lucky, a little humanity stained the demonic soul. But I doubted the fucker inside the ring ever felt the sting of earthly emotions.
They ran through Cotte’s ritual movements, wrestler and demon working in unison: shine, heat, come back, cut-off, finish. Cottee explained every step along the way, made sure I understood why it was happening. The shine saw the good guy take an early upper hand, demonstrating victory was possible against the superior skill of his opponent. Heat came after an illegal move, delivered control to the heel for a stretch. The good guy takes advantage of a moment of hubris, rallies as he makes a fast-paced combat. A cheap shot provides a hiccup, then everything is fury and fortune until the final pinfall.
Even with the knowledge it wasn’t real, Ketch’s offense stopped my breathing ever time he landed a blow. The impact of every powerslam vibrated through the pit of my stomach. “Wait,” Cottee said, “it’ll pass, soon enough.”
The end followed a thumb to the eye, blinding the good guy and setting him up for pain. The demon hovered, lips curved into a cruel line. It soaked up crowd’s derision, feeding on their hatred, and I caught a glimpse of everything Gareth Cottee fretted about. Ketch elbowed his opponent and picked the reeling wrestler up, prepared to plunge the other guy brain-first into the mat. The aura of menace around Ketch grew thicker, stronger. I could taste it, thick and bloody, roiling against the back of my throat.
“Shit,” I said, and Cottee nodded.
Ketch spiked the rangy blonde into the canvas, all the impact focused on head and neck. The blond kid sprawled, limp and boneless, still as death while the demon covered his shoulders. I held my breath, fingers drifting towards the gun holstered beneath my jacket. Cottee laid a warning hand against my wrist. “Wait,” he said. “Just give them a moment.”
The referee counted off the victory, count falling to the canvas three times. Hangman Ketch looped his noose over his opponent, pulled it tight. Stood and smirked at the crowd, before stalking out of the ring. His exit took him so close to us I could see the beads on sweat on his bare chest. He lingered, flipping the bird to jeering kids the next row down. Then Ketch looked over and flashed a mocking wink right at Gareth Cottee.
Two ambulance officers came to remove the other wrestler. They lifted him to his feet, lugged him backstage. I let them get through another bout, then abandoned my chair and went outside.
STEPS
The worst part about flying solo is making all the decisions. Me and Roark, we’d been a partnership, but the Old Man took the lead on picking jobs. He knew the terrain, and he understood magic. I treated my ability to pierce the veils of the Gloom as a hindrance and focused on wet work. Now he’s gone and all the conclusions were mine to come to. And scary as Hangman Ketch seemed in the ring, he might still be a character. The demon behind the wrestler bore further investigation.
The second worst part of flying solo was taking responsibility for passive surveillance. I got the address of the Rampage Wrestling School from Cottee, staked out the entrance for two days before I latched onto Ketch heading in for a session. He dressed down for training. No make up, sweatpants and a singlet, a pair of beat-up docs on his feet as he climbed out of the car. I hunched low in my rented hatchback, waited for him to emerge. Tailed him for the next couple of hours, tracked Ketch to his home.
He rented a duplex by the river in West End, one of the streets that went under in the last flood. The address gave me enough to track the demon’s host through Facebook, get the name that appeared on his license. Course, from what I’d seen, Toby Vennis was just another character, a human being who’d been real way back when, but the demon inside him ate all that away, left behind nothing but a shell and some attitude.
I dialed Langford’s number from the car. “Well, your friend Cottee definitely found something.”
Langford met the news with silence on her end. Then: “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. We got a kid, maybe twenty-three years old, any semblance of his mortal half long gone from the looks of him. Whatever shit Cottee’s rambling ‘bout with symbols and wrestling, turns out he may not be full of crap.”
“Damn,” Langford said. “The demon, it’s—”
“Not done a thing, so far as I can see, except perform and train and hang around his house. That’s the part that worries me. All that power, no real direction.”
“You want to go in?”
“Not yet. But it’s coming.”
“Keep on it.” Lanford blew a slow, weary sigh. “I trust you to make the call here, Murphy.”
“Never been my strong suite.”
Langford hung up, and I dug in. Drank the bottled water that came with the rental and settled in for the long haul.
There’s a process when eliminating a demon. A lot of it requires a shit-ton of patience and the willingness to lie low and avoid detection. That’s how you figure out what defenses they’ve got in place, from magical wards to booby traps that’ll blow your damn fingers off if you pick the wrong lock. I’d encountered both on the job before, back when I first worked my way up the food chain. The longer a demon’s been around, the more it’s settled into its host, the more dangerous they are.
After you’ve got the defenses down, you start in on the pattern. Figure out the safest places to hit them when you want to avoid detection. Plot where you hide out when the job’s done, since most dead demons just look like human corpses, and the cops ain’t buying the defense that you killed seemingly ordinary citizens for the good of humanity. It’s half the reason folks in my position allowed certain entities to keep walking around, if they limit themselves to the kind of bad shit that doesn’t cross a line.
My problem became predicting when and how the demon inside Hangman Ketch might cause harm. The asshole maintained a small, focused routine: he woke, he trained, he prepared for the next wrestling gig. That lack of engagement served as the first sign I needed to take him out, because even demons need to pay rent if they want to blend in.
Ketch wasn’t paying his way off local shows or teaching at a school full of undersized rookies, which meant he took shortcuts somewhere. And any entity of the Gloom who defaults to shortcuts is nothing but trouble in the long run.
The surveillance of a target usually lasted four weeks. I tagged team the job with Langford after the first three, focused on the physical aspects of Ketch’s existence while she handled the occult stuff. Met up with her fourteen days later, in the McDonalds down in Palm Beach, close to my safe house. Langford ordered a couple of shitty cheeseburgers and a large coke. I opted a black coffee, sat down to wait. Let her eat for a stretch before we started.
“Cottee says there’s another wrestling show coming next week,” Langford said. There were hollow pockets beneath her eyes, dark and sleepless. She didn’t look over, but idle fingers twisted her eyebrow ring while she contemplated the problem. “Based on what I’ve seen, we want him eliminated before that happens.”
I nodded. Drank my coffee. “He still done nothing worth killing him over.”
She hesitated, cheeseburger in hand. “Yeah.”
“You’re leaning towards doing it, just to be on the safe side?”
Langford bit into the burger. Spoke with her mouth full. “Cottee thinks it’s necessary. My gut says the same. You?”
“You helped me save the goddamn world. I owe you.”
“Your point?”
“My opinion doesn’t come into this once you’ve decided.” I sipped my coffee and tried to ignore the shrieks of young children two booths down. “I do wonder why Cottee gets to decide. He doesn’t seem like a guy who inspires that kind of faith or loyalty.”
“And yet, here we are. Preparing to do the job.” Langford unwrapped her third burger, bit into it. Chewed and swallowed. “Cottee’s rarely wrong about things. When he says something needs killing…”
“Like I said, just thought it was odd.”
“Okay. Noted. Now, consider this.” Langford gestured with two-thirds of a cheeseburger. “If any other demon figured out this trick, started using it as a way of helping others strip away their human half a little faster…”
“Yeah. I get it. Bad news for all humanity.”
“So we take Ketch out?”
“You don’t need to ask.”
She pushed a notebook across the table, along with a pencil. “Good. Let’s get a plan together. I want this done before the next show hits and the asshole gets another hit of energy.”
FORTIFIED
It was hot, the night we set aside to kill Ketch. Langford worked from the back of the van, setting up the ritual that would break down the demon’s wards. Me in the front, watching his duplex, leaving sweaty marks on the fake-leather upholstery. The air thick with incense and oppressive humidity, the moon a pale sliver and the streetlights on his street flickering as we waited. Technology and magic have never been a strong combination. Magic flows out of the Gloom, tainted by the shadows there. No lights on in Ketch’s home, although I doubted he needed them.
It wasn’t much of a place. I figure the kid who’d been Ketch rented it, before he got possessed; semi-furnished, cheap, and perched on a steep slope, the drive little more than a breakneck drop between the roadside and the door. Stubby palms filled the cramped yard and burnt-orange brick walls secured things to the hillside, a desperate attempt to keep soil erosion from sweeping the duplex away. Big windows gave me multiple points of entry, even if they were likely to be loud. I unearthed a SIG, a knife, and a set of lock picks, kept watch while Langford completed her work.
“We’re good.” Langford settled in the centre of her circle, crossed her legs, and closed her eyes. I slipped free of the van, whispered a short spell to discourage attention as I covered the two blocks between us and Ketch’s home. I edged closer to the duplex, counted down from five hundred. The air hummed as I sidled towards the front entrance, goosebumps prickling my arm as Langford’s ritual interacted with the first round of wards. I crouched low and worked my picks into the locks, prodded the tumblers until they clicked. Stepped inside before anyone noticed—you can trust magic to cover your tracks, a little, but there’s no point taking unnecessary risks. I eased the door shut behind me, quiet as a breath.
This seams of moonlight pried their way in beneath the heavy drapes of a long, narrow lounge I blinked, adapting to the changed light. Kept still and hoped the lingering effects of Langford’s spell would keep my scent obscured. I knew the layout of the duplex, courtesy of city plans: two bedrooms to the left, after leaving to the lounge; a small kitchen and dining space on the rear, heading right. Enough room to swing a cat, but if your balance was off the kitty would end up with a concussion. The chewy stink of rotting meat wafted from the garage. The frisson of unravelling magic filled the air with an ozone scent. The soft splash of tap-water, up and round the corner. Ketch lived alone, near as we could tell. I held my breath, edged closer.
He stood at the sink, filling a glass. Boxers only, in the muggy night heat, the muscled lines of his frame silhouetted against the open window. Head low, attention foggy thanks to Langford’s magic. I took aim at the broad back and the SIG kicked three times. Two in the chest, one in the skull. Standard operating procedure, whether you’re killing men or monsters. Ketch pitched forward, sprawled across his kitchen bench. Didn’t move for the space of ten seconds, which was long enough to get me curious.
I approached the body, SIG raised to keep him covered.
Big fucking mistake.
Ketch lashed out, whipping his arm around to smash the tumbler of water against my cheek. The combination of impact, fragile glass, and cheekbone didn’t work out too good on my end. Exploding glassware ripped through my face, my blind side a mess of hot blood and sharp pain. Ketch twisted himself upright, a stump of broken glass clenched in his right fist.
The world slowed to a crawl as a fresh wave of adrenaline hit. Gave me all the time I needed to register my mistake. I’d nailed Ketch clean with chest shots, but the headshot creased the skull instead of penetrating bone. Bloody enough to seem effective, but the shot did none of the messy damage to the brain that put a demonic host out for good. The demon would just shut down the pain impulses, force the body to keep moving until the flesh tore itself apart.
Ketch launched his bulk at me, dark blood streaming from his chest. I was already scrambling backwards, trying to get the space to plug him with the SIG and put him down. Ketch blocked my attempt to bring the gun up, slammed me against the wall with a strength no human could ever match. I groped for the knife sheathed at the small of my back, stuck it into his flank as Ketch closed on me. Steel dug into muscle, did just as little as the bullet wounds. Ketch fired a punch at my head that went through the drywall after I ducked to the left.
“You’re Cottee’s friend,” Ketch hissed. “Recognise your scent.”
I don’t work up-close, not if I can avoid it. I put a round in his leg, tried to slow him down. Didn’t work. He came after me, nails elongating into talons that raked at my wrist and face. Ketch latched on and wrenched sideways, hammering my fist against the wall. Pain lurched up my arm and numb fingers dropped the SIG. I got lucky, wrested the knife free of his side. Held it,, in my left hand as I jabbed and gave ground.
Ketch leapt at me, hit me with the blunt force of his shoulder. Knocked me to the floor while he kept his feet. The first kick caught me high, right under the armpit. The second, in the soft parts of my flank, just shy of the place where the ribs would protect me. Both hurt like getting bludgeoned with a sledge, took the fight right out of me.
The third kick hammered me in the skull, bounced my head off kitchen linoleum. The pain in my wrist didn’t bother me, after that.
Nothing really bothered me at all.
HEAT
Ketch threw water into my face and I came too, spluttering, desperately fighting to return to the painless darkness. Awake meant acknowledging physical discomfort. My wrist hurt. My cheek hurt. Cold liquid dripped from my nose.
I wasn’t dead, which surprised me, but the good news ended there. He’d tied me to an office chair, beside an archaic desk and laptop. Wrists taped to the arms, feet hanging free. Ketch perched on the edge of his couch, lights turned on. Up close, his features were bone-white and ugly, the fluorescent globes giving him a wan, sallow appearance. Lips pulled away from sharp teeth, yellow and stained with stringy lines of drool. A smile. “Your pulse just shifted,” Ketch said. “Don’t bother trying to pretend you’re not awake.”
I blinked a few times, lolled my head backwards. Ketch leaned back, showed off the puckered scar-tissue where my first two bullets had caught him. My jaw set, and I regretted it. Pain radiated through my face. “You should be dead.”
“And yet, I’m not.” Ketch scratched at the healing wounds. “Odds are your little wizard fucked up, or you’re not as good as I’d heard. You’ve got a reputation, killer, after all that shit went down. The local boogie-men are all a-twitter about your presence. Nobody really trusts you, working at your bar. They show up to keep an eye out, waiting for you to fuck up.”
I wanted to nod, but I didn’t. That way lay pain. I retreated into stillness, matched the demon’s gaze. It was one of Roark’s rules: hold on to your cool, work the situation. Talk it through until you get an opening. “Seems like your kind need more to gossip about, if all you’ve got is me.”
He punched me in the mouth, put his weight behind. Difficult to do when you’re perched on a couch, but Ketch tagged me hard enough that the office chair did a bunny-hop. I rolled backwards a few inches before the drag of my feet slowed things down. I could taste blood, my whole face burning.
“Don’t mistake the fact you live for a good thing,” Ketch said.
“Noted.”
“I’m not a patient man,” he declared, and I sucked in a short, desperate breath.
“Ceased being a man at all, second you got possessed.”
Ketch nodded. He liked that. “Nor are you, these days.”
“You figure?”
“I figure. When a two-bit killer heads to the Gloom, stops himself an apocalypse, my kind figure all kinds of things. When he cuts a deal that keeps him alive, every demon pays attention. We let each other know there’s a big damn hero on the block, that it’s time to step wary if you’re doing wrong.” Ketch darted in, clawed hands clamping down on my forearms. Pressed his face real close to mine. “I’m no not fond of a wary existence, hero. It makes me irritable.”
I flinched, despite myself. Screwed my good eye shut, waiting for the next punch. Instead, I got treated to his warm breath against my cheek, the faintest hint of brimstone every time he exhaled.
Then he rose, the weight of him no longer looming over me. Ketch was standing again, hoisted upright far too fast for anything human, like he’s used some magic trick that disconnected his bulk from the rules of sinew, gravity, and muscle movement. Sharp talons ripped the tape around my wrist. “Get up,” he said. “I’ve got no further interest in hurting you, right now.”
I hesitated, and the order came again, lowered to a feral growl. “Get. Up.”
I stood, unsteadily, expecting a trick. Pressed my injured arm close to my chest as the pain settled into a dull throb. I could still see dark shadows at the edge of my vision and my body felt weird, like I’d been made of flesh and helium before getting weight down with bring sparks of agony. Concussion, maybe. In no condition to fight.
It didn’t stop me from scanning the floor, searching for the SIG. It was there, half-hidden beneath the coffee table, like we’d kicked the gun there during our scuffle. A temptation. Demons enjoyed doing that. Inviting you to do something stupid and making it seem the sensible, noble option.
Sometimes, a bad option is still the best. I faked a stumble, blocking his view of the gun with my body, slumping into the worn wood of the table. I reached for the SIG left handed, swung it round towards Ketch as I rose.
Ketch shrugged one shoulder, a fire burning in his eyes. The long, muscled frame pulled itself back to full height, and the demon eyed the window, idly scratching at his chest as he sighed. “Shit, seriously?” he said. “You really want to do that, hero? I’m letting you go, you stupid fucker. Free and clear. I’m being generous.”
I glanced at the door. Another temptation.
Ketch shook his head. “Get out. I mean it.”
My first instinct was to run, flee with all the speed I could manage, but that was the kind of impulse that got you killed. I braced myself, adjusted my grip on the gun.
“Your friend is long gone,” Ketch said. “There’s no sorcerer worrying at my defenses, nobody tips the scales your way if we pick up the fight. No path to a win here, hero, except trusting me and leaving.”
“I tried to kill you.”
“And you failed. I’m not holding a grudge.”
I didn’t believe him. Demons lie, and they hold grudges better than anyone but the fey. Ketch blew an irritated sigh, and I caught the cruel points of his teeth.
“Get out.” Ketch said. “Tell Langford she’s getting sloppy as hell, and she should play it smarter the next time you try this. Won’t do her any good, but it’ll make things amusing. Give me a worthwhile fight, you know?”
I tried to hold the SIG steady and failed. The stupider of the stupid choices almost seemed sensible. I lowered my arm and limped toward the door, waiting for an attack that never came.
SECOND CHANCES
Used to be, when I was a kid, it was easy to find a pay phone. Not so simple anymore, in the age of cheap cells, which hurts like hell when you’re limping away from a job gone wrong and your back-ups already absconded with your ride.
These days, when you fuck up, you grit your teeth and lug your aching carcass three kilometres to the nearest Seven-Eleven with a pay phone, then you stand around on the curb until your partner comes to collect you.
Langford didn’t say much when she showed up. I stayed quiet the entire way to the Coast, distracting myself from the pain by running through each step of the job, attempting to figure out where it all went wrong. Got as far as the Coomera petrol station before I passed out, didn’t come to until we were back on home turf and Langford’s skinny arms lugged me into a new safe-house on the twenty-third floor of a holiday resort, down on the beachfront.
Langford made coffee, grabbed a first aid kit from the bathroom. Directed me to the spare bedroom where she started to patch me up. Stitches and antiseptic, to hold my face together. Bandages and a splint, when we got to my arm. I sat there in silence, glaring at her the entire time.
“That was a fucking fiasco,” I said.
Langford focused on wrapping my wrist, pulling the bandage tight. “Fucker set up wards we didn’t pick up during the surveillance. Didn’t help that he was awake to hear us coming.”
“Awake I can deal with. Awake is the natural state of most demons, and it’s never been a problem. The shit that fucked us was going to work with half the intel missing. That’s a recipe for shit going wrong.”
“The plan was solid.”
“And incomplete.”
Lanford caught the accusing tone in my voice, glanced up at me.
“Ketch knew your work,” I said. “Claimed you were getting sloppy.”
She hit the end of the bandage. Tied it off and stepped back. “That hold?”
I flexed my fingers. The pain was receding with splints and ibuprofen. “It’ll do. Sprained?”
Langford nodded, dreadlocks shifting.
“And Ketch?”
She sighed. “You got all kinds of lucky.”
“Lucky is escaping. That isn’t what happened here. Demons don’t offer mercy after a botched hit.”
“No,” Langford said. “That’s true.”
I forced my eyes shut and focused on the distant waves, the irregular hiss of them rolling in and thumping against the shore. “Tell me about Cottee.”
Harmony snapped the lid of the first aid kit closed. “Gareth’s a friend. A good friend.”
“And his beef with the demon?”
She sat back against the coffee table and studied her hands. “Ketch is a mistake,” she said. “One of mine, and so is Gareth. We groomed him for a time, me and Danny Roark. Gareth was a bright kid who understood the basics of the Gloom, started dabbling with magic. Never going to be a full-fledged sorcerer, but he could pick up enough to do what you do, backed up by someone like Roark. I never wanted to do what you and Danny did together, but Roark convinced me we could do good with Gareth onside.”
Harmony cradled the aluminium first aid kit, fingertips rubbing the red cross on the white surface. Moonlight caught the silver stud through her eyebrow as she glanced towards the window. “The shit of it is, I’m not Roark. I taught him a few details, figured he’d keep them to himself, but Cottee experimented. Attempted a few minor rituals. Next thing you know, Gareth’s partner is host to a demon…”
Things clicked into place. “Ah. So it’s personal.”
“Very.”
“And you’ve tried taking care of it before now?”
She nodded. “Me and Gareth, together, and Gareth on his own. We were looking to save him, but as we saw how his power expanded…”
“Yeah, well. Ketch was, what, a friend? A brother?”
“A lover,” Langford said. “They were both of them young and stupid, too enamoured of comic books and theories to listen to any warnings I had. Cottee’s holding a grudge for what he’s lost. Ketch is playing a different game, but make no mistake, if there’s anything human left in him…”
“Roark always claimed things go wrong when it gets personal.”
Langford’s snort ended in a weary choke. “And that asshole never met a job he approached without bias and his own issues stoking his rage.”
“Still, he did okay,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess he did.”
We glared at each other, tired and wary. Waiting for one of us to break.
I huffed and tested my hand. “Could have done this smarter, if you’d told me about the connections.”
“We hadn’t talked about trying in years. Cottee had gone to ground for a stretch.”
“And you figured, what? He’d forget it ever happened?”
“I figured Cottee made peace with it. Turns out, I was wrong,” she said. “Ketch wasn’t doing much, near as we can tell. He didn’t sign-on with any of the local crews, didn’t bother trying to recruit other demons. No reason to go after him, beyond Cottee’s hard-on. I guessed you’d check things out, see a demon getting by all quiet, was nothing worth fretting about. And then…”
“Then, there was something, and you wanted to try again.”
“Ketch is stronger than he was. We needed to move before he became a problem.”
“Weeks of surveillance,” I said. “Weeks of fucking studying and intel, and this wasn’t a detail you bring up?”
“I’m thought I had it handled, no need to talk about it.” Langford retreated to the doorway, paused there with one hand resting against the frame. “Listen, we made the attempt. You don’t owe me any more than that, and you sure as hell aren’t obliged to help Gareth. I’m sorry we didn’t warn you of that. Stupid call, but after years of pretending Ketch was harmless… well. Look. Go back to the bar, heal up. I’ll figure some other way of taking care of all this.”
Tempting. Very fucking tempting.
“Fuck that,” I said. “You owe Gareth, I owe you. It’s a vicious fucking circle.”
I made a tight fist with his right hand, getting used to the pain. “Get Cottee down from Brisbane, tomorrow morning. One thing hasn’t changed: we can’t let the fucker keep running around.”
LOCAL HEROES
We met Cottee in the KFC out on the highway, around the corner from Currumbin Beach. He pulled up in an ancient Honda hatch-back, half-rust and half green paint. Climbed and out mopped his forehead, sweaty in the muggy heat. I sat with Langford, watched him shuffle through the car park. The humidity lent him a glossy sheen and half-moons of sweat under his sleeves. I waved him over and he edged closer, hands fluttering as he tried to figure out what to do with them. “Mister Murphy,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”
“Sit.” My voice dropped into a growl. Cottee nodded once, eyes on my splint.
“Listen,” he said. “I—”
“Ketch is still alive.”
His face fell. “Oh.”
“Chose not to kill me, and he gave up some interesting hints about his personal history.”
“Oh, shit.” Cottee wrung his hands together. “I should apologize, I suppose.”
“Fuck your apology.”
“Please—”
“No.” I reached for my paper cup of Pepsi. “What you were hoping for, sending me in there? Tell me what you wanted.”
Cottee ground the ball of his thumb into the other hand. “Revenge, maybe. I’m not sure. Holly mentioned what you’d done, prior to ending up here. I figured… perhaps, this time…”
I glared at him, fists bunched, and Cottee’s mouth kept working without making noise. Langford touched on my arm, reigned me in. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just tell him, Gareth.”
Cottee looked away. “It wasn’t love, if that’s what you’re wondering. I’ll admit we had that once, before I messed around, but I know Ketch isn’t the man I fell for. We can’t get the human back and the demon is all that remains. Doesn’t change the fact I’m the reckless fool who initiated this situation, so call it an obligation, I guess. I owed it to him to fix my mistake. Holly figured—”
“Jesus, you’re both idiots.” I sipped on my straw and Cottee’s eyes flicked from me to Langford, trying to get read.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “If you’d like me to leave, I can.”
I put my cup down. “Tempting, but we need an expert. You’ve got an intimate knowledge of the human half, and you know wrestling enough to theorize how to play this to our advantage. I want you to figure something out for me.”
Cottee nodded.
“Why did Ketch let me go?”
“I don’t—”
“We botched it,” I said. “Three rounds hurt him, but he didn’t stay down. Nor did he rip me apart like most demons would in that situation. Instead, he asked me to leave with my gun. Ketch practically dared me and Langford to attempt another hit. That isn’t normal.”
Cottee frowned. Nodded. “For demons, no.”
“For wrestling?”
He shrugged. “It’s what bad guys do,” he said. “There’s a tradition in wrestling, when you’re trying to get a heel over. You send a guy out there, every show, to make an open challenge. Let him bring in unknown, hometown guys for a last-five-minutes-and-you’ll-win-a-prize kind of thing. Except no-one really lasts the time limit. Your heel goes out there and murder opponents every show.”
He raised a hand, forestalling questions. “Metaphorically killed, I mean. Submission holds and pain and…”
He trailed off, frowning. “Beating on the local boy makes the crowd hate ‘em, and heels loathed by the fans are the lifeblood of the industry. The potential of seeing them get their comeuppance lures people in every week. Except they don’t. Weeks go by. Months, sometimes. Or years. You stoke the fire until you’re ready to make a new golden boy and push him up the card. He answers the challenge, but he doesn’t get to win. Just lasts the five minutes, first guy to do so, and even then he’s beaten-up after the bell rings.”
“I certainly feel beat-up,” I said.
Cottee met the joke with a wan smile. “The golden boy’s the guy who feuds with the heel, gets a series of matches where the heel wins dirty to fan the flames a little more. Promoter waits until biggest show they’ve got is coming, and that’s when the hero tips the odds in his favor. No holds barred, no time limit, the whole match inside a cage. Doesn’t matter how, so long as you signal this is the moment the audience is waiting for. Your new golden boy pins the unbeatable arsehole and become a big damn hero.”
I understood about half of Cottee’s explanation, but the repeated phrases stood out. “Ketch started calling me Hero when he ranted at me.”
“Okay. That makes sense.” Cottee paused and sucked in a steady breath. “You’ve been beat,” he said, “and you’re still kicking. Ketch is drawing strength from that, like he does inside the ring. Transposing structures from the ritual of combat into a real fight. Might be he’s saving you up. Build up a rematch, so it means more when he kills you.”
“Except the bad guys get beat in wrestling, in the end, and I didn’t last five minutes.”
Cottee’s fingers drummed the table. “This is all just a theory.”
“It’s a starting point to work with.” Langford grinned. “And I’ve got an idea.”
“I don’t owe you enough to die,” I said.
“Sure you do.” Her grin widened a little. “Shouldn’t come to that, though. We go back to first principles: locations matter. Symbols matter. If he’s drawing power from the rituals of wrestling, we can do something with that. Get you an audience and a ring…”
I looked to Cottee. “Location matters, in this thing?”
“It does. Whole things about local heroes breaking out.”
“Could we use it to our advantage?”
Cottee’s nervous hands grew still. “We could, but I don’t rate your chances. You can’t wade in there with guns to fight him, not if we’re playing it by wrestling rules. You’ll have to engage on the same terms as the ritual, and that means… well, you know, fisticuffs.”
Cottee threw a couple of punches at the air. They looked like crap.
“New plan, then,” I said. “No way I’m taking on a demon bare-handed.” I held up my splint. “Especially not with this.”
“Then we’ll arm you.” Langford grinned as she pieced a concept together. “Take the sword and use it.”
“Any weapon would be an illegal,” Cottee said. “And good guys fight clean. Wrestling logic 101. The only time they cheat is when the heel cheats first, pushing the face to a point of frustration. Even then, giving into the temptation and stooping to their level—”
“So you’re saying I’m allowed to cross the line, so long as Ketch crosses it before me?”
Cottee scrunched his forehead, mulling it over. “More or less.”
“We can work with that.”
REMATCH
The sword was three feet of dull, serviceable metal we’d stolen from the deepest parts of the Gloom. The kind of weapon with a dozen mythological names, if you traced its history of making appearances in our world. Cottee would have a term for it, rave about its metaphoric resonance with every magic blade ever swung in the name of doing good. Me, I used it to stab people, and even then I hated the damn thing. Swords were a bad idea, no matter which way you sliced it. Any weapon that needed you up-close and personal with your enemy gave the other guy far too many opportunities to kill you first.
I preferred to shoot things. It played to my strengths. But you repay debts in this line of work, and that meant digging the sword out of the lock-box hidden beneath my office desk.
I sat in the driver’s seat of Gareth Cottee’s hatchback, studying the gym where Ketch and his fellow wrestlers assembled to train each Thursday. It didn’t look like much, just a stainless-steel shed in the middle of an industrial estate, a small lot out the front for regulars. We’d been staking the place out for a few hours, waiting for the trainees to leave. Cottee checked his watch, nodded to himself. “It’s time.”
He was pale beneath the perspiration. I couldn’t blame him. Sweat prickled my neck as I exited the car, hauled the sheathed sword out of the back seat and slung it over my shoulder. It was getting dark, shadows growing longer as the sun set. A poster by the shed door advertised their next show, three days away. I glanced over at Cottee. “Ready?”
He didn’t really nod, just inclined his head a little. He led the way, not bothering with anything like stealth as we barged into the wrestling gym. The faint sourness of too much sweat clung to the walls and canvas. Ketch worked out up the back, lifting weights. He looked up as we entered, his arms still moving in a smooth rhythm, muscles bunching beneath his grubby singlet. “Gareth and the hero. Two people who should have known better.”
“Some of us learn slow.” I gestured to the ring. “You interested in a rematch?”
Ketch’s lip curled. “Gareth’s been talking, I see.”
“That’s not a yes.”
Ketch smirked and loped over, smooth and graceful as a jungle cat. I climbed up the apron and clambered through the ropes. Handed the sword to Cottee and turned towards the demon on the floor. “No guns, this time,” I said. “We do it by the rules.”
Ketch stepped to the centre of the ring and offered a mocking handshake.
“Wait!” Gareth’s voice squeaked, pitch rising higher than any man his size should achieve.
Ketch’s laughed rolled across the ring. “Gareth, love, did you just attempt an order?“
“Light it up.” Gareth’s speech grew steady, and he locked eyes with Ketch. “You want an opponent, you want an audience, I’m giving you both. Do it right and light up the ring.”
A bare bulb flared to life, illuminating the red and blue cables running from the ring posts. Ketch dropped his barbell and loped up to the apron, sneer growing deeper with each step. “Is that true, hero? You demand a rematch?”
“You saying no?”
“Stupid,” Ketch said. “Your injured. You left your sorceress at home. You left your guns behind. This is my house, my ring.”
“I’ll risk it.”.
“Then I accept.”
I didn’t see Ketch move, not really. Just a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye, a blur as he charged. Then something hard and unyielding smashed against my jaw, sent me reeling back into the ropes. The impact rolled through my life the flash-wave of a bomb, a precursor to the pain that followed in its wake. I groped for turnbuckles, used them to stay upright. Another fist hooked into my stomach, doubling me over. Strong hands hoisted me, twisted and slammed me into the mat. Ketch grated my cheek against the canvas, opening up my stitches.
I swung a wild elbow, caught him in the face. Ketch backed off, just a little, gave me space to clamber to my feet. There wasn’t anything slick about my approach, nothing stylized or graceful. I threw desperate fists, hammered Ketch hard as I could. He retreated, circling left, grinning the entire way. I followed, half-stumbling, struggling to put power behind a blow. Tagged him below the right eye and his skin broke, blood seeping free.
Ketch grabbed my injured arm and twisted it against my back, the pain leveraging me to my knees. He dragged my dead weight to ringside and jammed me against the apron. “You’re lazy, hero, and you’re not built for this.”
Splinters from the wooden splint dug into my wrist. I cried out, grabbing the ropes with my other hand. Tried to kick my way free with both legs.
Ketch slapped me across the face. “Get up,” he said.
I got up on the balls of my feet, just like Danny Roark taught me. Swung a few times without connection before Ketch put a boot into my stomach. I went down hard and his bulk crashed into me, both hands locking around my throat. Hot breath pressed against my ear. “I applaud your persistence, hero. It’s worth more, killing you here. Far better than snapping your neck in my kitchen.”
I gasped, my face burning. Desperate to break free. Ketch cinched his choke a little tighter, squeezing the life out of me.
“Toby.”
Ketch faltered, gave me a moment to catch my breath.
“Toby, stop,” Cottee said. He was up on the apron, pleading with the demon. “This isn’t you, man. This isn’t—”
Ketch planted a right against Cottee’s jaw and knocked him to the floor. The big academic’s weight slapped concrete hard. No doubt it would hurt like hell in the morning, maybe even do permanent damage.
I crawled to the corner, collected the sword. Pulled it from the sheath.
Ketch laughed, spreading his arms wide. “Breaking the rules, hero-boy.”
“Chokes illegal. You broke ‘em first.”
Ketch’s laughter picked up volume. I didn’t bother talking anymore, charged in and buried the point of the sword deep into his chest. Ketch snarled, stumbling backwards. Sagged against the ropes. Wet blood stained the canvas, joining my own. Ketch swung at me, a wild haymaker that knocked me to the floor. I landed on my right shoulder, felt something pop that shouldn’t.
I forced myself upright, stabbed again. The fire in Ketch’s eyes snuffed out, and he sank to his knees, trying to hold his guts in.
Gareth Cottee’s rapid breathing echoed in the darkness, the big man scrambling through the bottom rope. “Toby,” he whimpered. “Shit, Toby.”
Ketch sucked desperate breaths, attempting to staunch the blood flow. I tried to pull the sword free, stab him again, but Ketch’s blood-slick hand grabbed at my wrist. The demon reached for Cottee, fixing the big man with an angry stare. “Not Toby. Not anymore,” it hissed.
Cottee closed his eyes, tears spilling down his cheeks.
“Watch,” Ketch said. “This needs an audience.”
Rules. Always rules with demons and magic.
I jerked out of Ketch’s grip and his fingers left bloody smears against my forearm. The demon reared back, hoping to bludgeon me across the head with both fists. I took the opening and stabbed, the sword digging in blow his ribcage and sliding through the chest. I twisted the blade for good measure, and blood slicked over my arm. Ketch screamed, and Cottee winced at the noise, but the academic held steady. His puffy eyes stayed open and focused.
Ketch dropped to both knees and coughed twice. I hauled the sword free and stabbed him again.
“Enough.” Cottee’s muted voice barely registered on me. I drew the sword back and stabbed a third time.
“Enough,” Cottee repeated, louder this time. There were tears dribbling into his beard. “It’s done, Mister Murphy. He’s gone.”
WINNER, AND NEW CHAMPION
I put through a call to Langford. “Jobs done.”
“Good. One less you owe me,” she said, and I agreed, that was true. She tried another apology for fucking me around and I hung up the phone.
Gareth Cottee waited out front, slumped up against his SUV. Nobody around to notice his red eyes and panicked sniffle, nor the gore slicked down my arm. That’s the nice thing about industrial estates: only folks who come out there at night were occasional security patrols, and their appearance meant you’d tripped an alarm.
I limped over, wrist pressed close to my chest, and sagged against the car beside Cottee. “You okay?”
Cottee blinked at me. “Yeah,” he said. “No. It’s possible I’m not sure.”
“I get that.” It hurt to hobble my way to the passenger side and force aching fingers to open the door. “You think you’re right to drive?”
He nodded, but Cottee fumbled his keys when he pulled them from his pocket. They clattered against the concrete, and he jumped at the noise. Part of me wished I could take over for the poor bastard, give him time to process everything he’d seen. Instead, I needed to re-splint my arm, swallow a metric ton of painkillers, and sleep for half a week.
“Well then,” I said. “Before anyone arrives.”
Cottee gathered his keyring and huddled in the driver’s set. Struggled with the gearstick as he tried to move into third, although he got it there eventually and started winding his way out towards the highway. My right arm burned the entire trip, fresh pain blooming any time I shifted in my seat. My shoulder protested as loud as the wrist, now. That wasn’t a good sign. “Every instinct I have tells me to bug out of town,” I said. “First rule of hitting things from the Gloom, get clear before the death curses start.”
Cottee answered in a low, hollow voice. “Demons don’t have death curses.”
“No, but they leave corpses. They attract cops.”
“Oh,” Cottee said. “Yeah, I guess they do.”
We drove four blocks without saying a thing. Cottee searched the radio band, kept skipping past the stations and listening to the empty static. He sniffled and wiped his nose with a sleeve.
“First time I ever ran,” I said, “I left a girl behind. Figured it was necessary. No real choice. Took comfort in that for years, until circumstances sent me home again.” I shifted. Winced. Transferred my attention to the window and the streets of Brisbane rolling past. “Didn’t end all that well, after we reconnected. Leaving might not have been the best thing for her.”
“I heard she attempted to kill you.”
“Lot of old friends tried that when I came back. Wasn’t unique to her.”
That earned me a weak smile amid that heavy beard. “Not the same as killing her, though.”
“No, I guess it ain’t.”
Cottee followed the road out onto the highway. Followed the highway south, to the Gold Coast. Neither of us said another thing the entire way home.