Chapter 16: 1.4.3
The plan was supposed to be simple. Load the gun. Find the client. Kill him.
But a week had passed, and Koen still didn’t know who the client was. He’d spent days in a fog of self-loathing, jumping at shadows, the feeling of the void-elves’ cool skin lingering like a stain. The gun, a heavy Peacemaker modified with fire-runes, sat under his pillow. It felt like a mockery. He couldn’t shoot a phantom.
The summons came on the sixth day, a slip of paper shoved under his door. Fight Night. Gurgling Eel. Opponent: Stoneclaw Troll. Be sharp.
He wasn’t sharp. He felt blunt, like a tool left out in the rain.
The Eel was a different pit, smaller, grimier, smelling of stale beer and wet dog. The troll was a lumbering mass of rock-like hide and bad temper. Koen won. He had to. Throwing a match here, without the silver masks watching, meant no purse at all. He fought mechanically, letting the troll’s blows land, feeling his ribs crack and mend, crack and mend, until he saw an opening and drove his fist through a crack in the creature’s stony armor, into the soft flesh beneath. It fell with a ground-shaking thud.
He collected his meager winnings, the coins cold in his hand. He was turning to leave when a familiar, gravelly voice stopped him.
“Not so fast.”
The silver-masked man from the main ring was there, leaning in the shadow of the entry tunnel. He must have followed him. “Impressive. Efficient. The client appreciates efficiency. He’s requested an encore.”
Koen’s blood ran cold. “I fought. I won. We’re done.”
The mask tilted. “The agreement was for your time after our bouts. Your moonlighting here doesn’t count. He wants to see you again. Now.”
The other one, the cultured voice, stepped from behind a support beam. “He was quite taken with the twins. Found your… internal conflict fascinating. He wishes to observe it again. Under slightly altered parameters.”
Resistance was pointless. They had enforcers here too—hulking brutes with knuckledusters glowing with faint enchantments, blocking the other exits. Koen’s demonic strength could take them, maybe. But then what? He’d be a fugitive, and the client would still be out there, buying someone else.
He went silently.
The office in The Gurgling Eel was a foul-smelling closet compared to the other, but the lacquered box on the desk was the same. The cultured one opened it. Inside was a single vial, this one holding a liquid the color of old blood.
“A variant on the sensitivity draft,” he explained, holding it up to the gaslight. “He wants you fully present. Fully aware. But your… enthusiasm last time was lacking. This will help.” He tossed it to Koen. “Drink.”
Koen caught it. His hands were steady. That surprised him. He uncorked it. The smell was coppery, sweet, and rotten all at once. He drank it in one go. It burned a path of ice down his throat, settling in his gut before exploding outward in a wave of prickling, hyper-awareness. Every thread in his cheap shirt felt like burlap. The soot-mark on the wall was a detailed landscape. The sound of his own heartbeat was a drum in a cavern.
And the hunger. It came on not as a roar, but as a sharp, focused ache. A need. It felt less like a foreign drug and more like a part of himself, a demonic part he kept caged, being stroked awake.
They led him not to a side room, but to a larger, colder chamber lit by harsh, blue witch-light orbs. The twins were there.
They were kneeling again, but everything else was different. They were dressed, if it could be called that, in lingerie of a sheer, black lace that covered nothing and highlighted everything. It was artful, cruel, transforming their ethereal beauty into something expressly, commercially carnal. The metal collars were still there, glinting against their moonlight skin. The sight was a punch to Koen’s gut, made a hundred times worse by the drug. He could see the rapid flutter of a pulse in the taller one’s throat. He could see the goosebumps on the shorter one’s arms. He could smell their fear, sharp and sour over their natural scent of cold flowers.
The drug’s hunger pulsed in time with his own shame.
“The client felt you were… overly gentle last time,” the gravel voice said from a dark corner. “He wants a different angle tonight. A more… forceful penetration.”
The cultured one stood near the door. “You will take them anally. Both. He wishes to see their limits tested. And yours.”
Koen stared. The crude command, the clinical wording, the sheer degradation of it curdled the hunger with nausea. The sisters’ eyes were wide, their controlled terror finally breaking. Anal intercourse was not unheard of among void-elves, but it was a matter of deep intimacy and preparation, not this. The taller one gave a minute, almost imperceptible shake of her head. A plea.
The drug surged, twisting the plea into a spark of defiance. A plan, stupid and desperate, formed in the hyper-clarity of his mind.
He didn’t speak. He walked towards them, his movements deliberate. He dropped to his knees behind the taller sister. He could feel the client’s unseen gaze, a pressure against his skin. He reached around her, his hands rough on the ridiculous lace. He yanked it down, baring her backside. Her breath hitched. He leaned close, his lips near her ear, his body shielding his hands from view of the corner where the voices came from.
“I’m not going to,” he whispered, the words a breath against her pointed ear. “Play along. Sound hurt. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t know if she understood. He pressed his cock, painfully hard from the drug, against the cleft of her ass. He spit into his hand, slicking himself generously. He used his other hand to guide himself, not into her, but to press firmly against her perineum, the sensitive skin between her entrance and her asshole. To the client, in the shadows, it would look like preparation.
He shifted his hips, sliding his cock upwards, so the head was nestled tightly in the groove between her buttocks. He angled himself down, so his shaft ran along the crease, the tip pressing against the small of her back. It mimicked the angle of penetration perfectly.
“Please,” the elf gasped, picking up her cue. Her voice was a silvery thread of real pain. She arched her back, presenting him. It was a flawless performance.
Koen began to move. He thrust, not into her body, but between it. The slide was against her skin, slick with saliva and his own pre-cum. He fucked the space between her ass cheeks with hard, driving strokes. His balls slapped against her where they would if he were truly inside her. The sound was wet, obscene, perfectly convincing.
He grunted, a raw, guttural sound that wasn’t entirely faked. The drug was making his senses scream. The feel of her cool, smooth skin against his burning length, the scent of her hair, the sight of her knuckles white where she gripped her own thighs—it was all unbearably intense. He had to focus every ounce of his will on maintaining the deception, on keeping his thrusts shallow and external.
He leaned over her, his chest against her back, his mouth near her ear again. “You’re doing good,” he rasped between thrusts. “Just a little longer.” He could feel her trembling. Not from fear now, but from the strain of the position, from the terrifying intimacy of this shared deceit.
He increased his pace, making the slap of skin on skin echo in the stone room. He let his breathing become ragged, desperate. “Fuck,” he moaned, letting his head fall forward. He was close, the drug demanding a climax. He needed to sell it.
With a final, driving series of thrusts that rubbed him raw against her skin, he came. His release shot across the small of her back, hot and sticky. He cried out, a sound of release and utter self-disgust, and collapsed against her for a moment, his weight heavy.
He pulled back, panting. He looked at the shorter sister. Her eyes were on him, wide with a dawning comprehension. He gave her the barest nod.
He moved to her. She was ready, turning, presenting herself without a word. Her trust was a blade in his heart. He repeated the pantomime. The spit, the positioning, the careful, grinding thrusts between her cheeks. She was smaller, and he had to adjust his angle. She cried out softly, a perfect, pained sound that made his throat tighten. He fucked the cleft of her ass with the same brutal rhythm, his spent cock still hard from the fucking drug. When he came again, it was a weaker, aching pulse, painting her spine.
He fell back onto his heels, exhausted, hollow, slick with sweat and his own seed. The drug’s edge was fading, leaving a bone-deep sickness. The two elves remained as they were, posed, marked with the evidence of a violation that hadn’t, technically, happened.
From the darkness, there was silence. Then, a slow, single clap.
Then, a slow, single clap.
It came from the deepest shadows in the far corner, a dry, measured sound of approval. That one clap pinpointed him—a vague outline against a slightly darker patch of wall. It was all Koen needed.
His right hand blurred. The heavy Peacemaker was in his grip before the echo of the clap had faded, the fire-etched runes along the barrel flaring to life with a dull red pulse. He didn’t aim. He pointed, his body an extension of the gun, and squeezed the trigger.
The report was monstrous in the confined space. A tongue of crimson-tinged flame lit the room for a split second. A spray of dark blood, almost black in the blue witch-light, erupted from the shadows. A gurgled, wet choke followed, then the sound of a body slumping heavily to the stone floor. Koen had hit the client.
For a heartbeat, there was only the ringing in his ears and the sharp, acrid smell of cordite.
“You stupid fuck!” the gravel-voiced man roared.
The cultured one was quicker, already moving, a small, elegant pistol appearing in his hand. Koen threw himself to the side as the man fired. The bullet tore a hot line across his ribcage. He landed hard on his shoulder, the impact jolting his healing bones. The two void-elves scrambled backward, chains rattling, their silent terror erupting into short, sharp cries.
Koen rolled, bringing the Peacemaker up again. The cultured man was diving for cover behind a heavy divan. The gravel-voiced one charged, a brute-force tackle. Koen fired, the shot going wide and punching a chunk out of the stone wall. Then the man was on him.
They crashed to the ground, a tangle of limbs. The enforcer was huge, all thick muscle and fury, his silver mask askew. A fist like a slab of meat connected with Koen’s jaw. He tasted blood, felt a tooth loosen. He drove his own forehead into the bridge of the man’s nose beneath the mask, feeling cartilage crunch.
The man grunted, his grip faltering for a second. Koen bucked, using his demonic strength to throw him off. He scrambled to his knees. The cultured one peeked from behind the divan, pistol aiming. Koen fired first.
The rune-shot wasn’t a bullet of lead. It was a focused lance of concussive hellfire. It struck the divan, and the expensive furniture didn’t just splinter—it exploded into a cloud of burning velvet and shattered wood. The cultured man shrieked, his clothes and hair catching fire, and stumbled out from his cover, batting at the flames.
Koen turned back to the gravel-voiced man, who was rising, a knife now in his hand. The drug was still in Koen’s system, sharpening every detail: the jagged notch in the knife’s blade, the rage in the man’s visible eye, the frantic pulse in his neck. Time seemed to slow. As the man lunged, Koen caught his wrist, twisted with a savage crack, and drove the man’s own knife up under his chin, through his mouth, and into his brain.
The man died with a muffled grunt, his body going limp. Koen let him drop.
He spun, Peacemaker aimed at the cultured one, who was now smoldering on the floor, his fine suit ruined, his mask melted partway to his face. The man looked up, his one visible eye wide with pain and hatred. Koen didn’t hesitate. He put a second round between that eye and the burned mask. The head snapped back.
Silence, then. Heavy, punctuated by the crackle of dying flames and the harsh sound of Koen’s own breathing. The drug’s hyper-clarity was fading, replaced by a pounding adrenaline crash and a deep, resonating ache in his soul. He looked at the two elves, huddled together, their chains pulled taut. They stared back, their galaxy-dark eyes filled with a new, volatile mix of shock, fear, and a desperate, fragile hope.
He stood, his body protesting. The wound on his ribs was already knitting itself closed, a faint, itchy heat. He walked over to the first shadowed corner, where the client had fallen. A man in an expensive, now blood-soaked velvet smoking jacket lay sprawled. Koen’s shot had taken him high in the chest, near the shoulder. He was alive, breathing in wet, ragged gasps, his pale hand clutched over the ruin of his collarbone.
Koen knelt, his shadow falling over the man’s face. It was aristocratic, middle-aged, with a neatly trimmed beard now speckled with blood. The man’s eyes, a watery blue, found his. “You… ruined… the viewing,” the client rasped, a bubble of blood forming on his lips.
“Yeah,” Koen said, his voice flat. He pressed the still-hot muzzle of the Peacemaker against the man’s forehead. The client’s eyes widened. Koen pulled the trigger. The man’s skull jerked, and then he was still. The viewing was over.
The finality of the gunshot seemed to break the spell. The taller elf suddenly moved, her chains clinking. “The keys,” she said, her voice a melodic, strained whisper. She pointed a slender finger toward the cultured man’s smoldering corpse. “On his belt.”
Koen found them, a small brass ring. His hands were trembling now, the adrenaline leaching away. He fumbled with the lock on their collars. The mechanism clicked, and the cruel metal bands fell away, clattering to the stone. The sisters rubbed their necks, the pale skin there chafed and red.
“We have to go. Now,” the shorter one said, looking at the door. “There will be others.”
Koen nodded numbly. He was a killer again. It felt familiar and absolutely alien. He shoved the Peacemaker back into its holster. The drug in his system, thwarted of its original purpose, was mutating. The sharp hunger was turning into a jittery, feverish need. The sight of the twins, their lace torn, their skin marked with his sweat and his spilled seed, sent a fresh, unwelcome wave of heat through him. He clenched his fists, his nails biting into his palms.
The taller elf stood, swaying slightly. She looked at the dead men, then at Koen. “You saved us from that,” she said, gesturing at the client’s body. “This… vile thing.”
“I used you,” Koen said, the words raw. “I still… fuck.” He turned away, trying to master the chemical fire in his blood. “We need to move.”
They hurried to the door. Koen listened, his heightened hearing picking up the distant, confused shouts from the fighting pit area. The gunshots had been heard. He cracked the door open. The corridor outside was empty, for now. “Come on.”
They fled, two pale shadows and a bloodstained half-demon, into the bowels of The Gurgling Eel. They took twisting service tunnels, the sisters moving with an eerie, silent grace despite their ordeal. Koen led, his mind a storm of guilt and racing plans. Get out. Get to Murdock’s. Get the hell out of the city.
The service tunnels beneath the Eel were a maze of dripping pipes and rust-streaked walls, the only light coming from sporadic, flickering witch-glass sconces that cast long, dancing shadows. Koen moved on instinct, his mind split between the need for escape and the persistent, feverish thrum of the drug in his veins. Every sound was amplified: the sisters’ soft footfalls behind him, the distant drip of water, the ragged draw of his own breath. The chemical hunger had shifted from a sharp need to a dull, pervasive ache that made his skin feel too tight and his thoughts slippery.
“Left here,” he grunted, pointing to a narrower passage. The taller sister, whose name he still didn’t know, nodded silently. Her eyes continuously scanned the darkness behind them. The shorter one kept a hand on her sister’s arm, her own gaze fixed on Koen’s back as if he were a failing lifeline. They didn’t speak. The shared violence in the client’s chamber had forged a fragile, temporary alliance, but it was brittle with unsaid things.
They emerged into an alley that stank of rotting cabbage and industrial runoff. The cold night air hit Koen’s sweat-soaked skin like a slap. The city’s endless hum of auto engines and distant jazz felt alien, a world away from the silent, bloody room. He leaned against the damp brick, head bowed, trying to marshal his thoughts. The drug pulsed, a low-grade fever demanding attention. He saw the shorter elf watching him, her gaze dropping briefly to the prominent bulge still straining against his trousers before flicking back to his face. Shame curdled in his gut.
“We can’t stay here,” the taller one whispered. Her voice was like wind through dead leaves. “Where do we go?”
“My place. It’s not far.” He pushed off the wall, his movements slightly uncoordinated. “Then we get gone.”
The walk to Murdock’s was a nightmare of heightened senses. Every flickering streetlamp was a starburst in his vision. The grumble of a passing auto felt like it vibrated in his teeth. The scent of the sisters—cold flowers and fear-sweat—was a tangible thread he had to consciously ignore. The drug constantly tried to reinterpret their proximity, their hurried breaths, as something else. He focused on putting one foot in front of the other, his hand resting on the grip of the Peacemaker beneath his coat.
“You’re hurt,” the shorter sister said, her first words since the alley.
“I heal,” Koen replied, not looking back. The gash from the cultured man’s bullet was already a tight, itchy scar. “Don’t worry about me.” Worry about the fact I can barely think straight, he didn’t add.
When the dilapidated sign for Murdock’s came into view, Koen felt a weak surge of relief. He fumbled with the key, his fingers clumsy. The lock gave with a loud click. He shoved the door open and ushered them into the dusty, dark interior.
“Stay here.” He moved quickly to the back, to the hidden cache. He threw open the false wall. The sight of his old gear—the guns, the knives, the worn leather harness—was a jolt of clarity. This was a language he understood. Action. Tools. He grabbed a large, waxed-canvas duffel and began shoving items inside with frantic haste: revolvers, boxes of specialty ammunition, bundles of currency notes from a hidden strongbox, a basic medical kit. His movements were rough, fueled by urgency and the drug’s artificial energy.
The sisters stood frozen in the middle of the gym, silhouetted by the faint light from the high window. The absurd, revealing lace they wore was a grotesque contrast to the stark, utilitarian space. Koen paused, the bag half-packed. He couldn’t take them anywhere like that.
He stomped over to a moth-eaten footlocker in the corner, rummaged inside, and pulled out two sets of old, gray training clothes—loose cotton trousers and tunics. He tossed them toward the sisters. They caught the rough fabric, staring at it.
“Change,” he said, turning his back to give them privacy. “Those… things you’re wearing will get you noticed, or killed.” He heard the soft rustle of fabric, the faint clink as they removed the delicate chains from their ankles and wrists. The sound made his jaw clench.
He went to a metal locker, his old one, and pulled out his own spare clothes: durable canvas pants, a thick wool shirt, a long, dark coat that had seen better days. He stripped off his bloodied, sweaty fighting gear right there, his back still to them. The cold air raised goosebumps on his skin. The drug flared, a hot pulse that made his cock twitch as he pulled on the clean clothes, the rough fabric an agony against his sensitized skin.
When he turned, they were dressed. The training clothes hung off their slender frames, making them look like ghosts wearing borrowed skins. But they were covered. They were safer. The taller one had gathered her long, void-black hair into a messy knot. They both still had that ethereal, otherworldly quality, but now they just looked like two painfully thin refugees.
“We need to move,” the shorter sister said, her eyes darting to the street-facing windows.
Koen hefted the duffel. It was brutally heavy. “Yeah.”
They slipped back into the night. The city was a different beast in the dead hours before dawn. The music had died. The streets belonged to fog and the occasional distant shout, the clatter of a late-night tram, the scuttling of things in the shadows. Koen led them through a warren of backstreets and service alleys, avoiding the wider avenues where the nightwatch or worse might patrol. His head throbbed in time with his heartbeat. The drug was a corrosive drip in his system, sapping his focus, turning his strength to water. He’d hold a thought, and it would slither away.
“You’re perspiring,” the taller elf murmured, walking slightly behind him.
“It’s the draft they gave me,” he gritted out. “Doesn’t wear off fast.” Every sensory input was a battle. The weight of the bag strap cut into his shoulder. The smell of the fog, wet stone and coal smoke, was oppressive. The sound of their three pairs of footsteps was a chaotic drumbeat.
They passed a late-night noodle cart, the vendor eyeing them with blank indifference. A group of men spilled out of a tavern, laughing too loud. Koen tensed, his hand moving inside his coat, but they staggered past without a glance. The sisters drew closer to him, their shoulders almost touching his. He could feel the warmth of them through the cold air. The drug hissed.
He forced himself to talk, to ground himself in sound. “Names. What are your names?”
A long silence. Then, from the shorter one, “Lira.” A pause. “She is Amelie.”
“Koen.”
“We know,” Amelie said softly.
They walked. The monumental city gates, towering structures of iron and spell-forged stone, came into view as a faint silhouette against the slightly less dark sky. The trade gate would be bustling in a few hours, but now it was shuttered, the smaller pedestrian wicket gate manned by two bored-looking guards in long coats, steam-powered rifles slung over their shoulders.
Koen stopped in the shadow of a warehouse. His vision swam. He leaned against the cold brick, swallowing back a wave of nausea. The chemical in his blood felt like it was chewing through his marrow.
“We cannot pass them,” Lira stated, her voice flat. “They will ask for papers. We have none.”
“We’re not going through,” Koen breathed. He pointed a shaking finger along the massive wall. “There’s a drain. An old overflow culvert. It’s barred, but the bars are rusted.” He’d used it years ago, hunting a thing that preferred the sewers. “It comes out in a creek bed, half a mile outside the walls.”
Amelie looked from him to the distant guards. “Can you make it?”
“Do I have a choice?” He pushed off the wall, swaying. “Follow me. Stay quiet.”
The culvert was exactly as he remembered: a reeking, black mouth in the foundation stones, barred by iron thick with corrosion. He set the duffel down with a thud. The drug made his muscles feel like frayed rope. He gripped two of the bars, his fingers finding the familiar weak spots. He pulled, his back and shoulders bunching with strain. A low groan built in his throat. The metal shrieked in protest, then yielded with a crack, snapping at its base. He wrestled the twisted iron aside, creating a narrow gap.
“Go,” he rasped, the effort leaving him lightheaded.
Lira went first, sliding into the utter blackness with a whisper of cloth on stone. Amelie followed. Koen shoved the duffel in after them, then crawled in himself. The stench of decay and stagnant water was a physical force. The tunnel was a cramped, slimy tube. He crawled, his knees scraping on rough concrete, the drug’s fever making the cold, wet filth feel like a strange baptism. Ahead, he could hear the sisters’ frantic movements.
Then, a different sound. A boot scuffing on stone. A beam of witch-light lantern cut through the darkness behind them, illuminating the slime on the walls.
“Hey! You there! Stop!”
A guard had heard the noise.
“Run,” Koen snarled, his voice echoing in the pipe.
They scrambled. The light wavered behind them, but the guard didn’t follow into the tight space. Shouts echoed, muffled by stone. The pipe seemed endless. Koen’s world narrowed to the pounding of his heart, the burn in his lungs, the slick tunnel wall under his hands. A circle of gray appeared ahead. Fresh, cold air washed over him.
He tumbled out of the pipe after the sisters, landing in the icy, shallow water of a creek bed. The first true hints of dawn were bleaching the eastern sky from black to a deep, weary indigo. The city wall loomed behind them, monolithic and dark. They were out.
Koen staggered to his feet in the creek, water soaking his boots. He retrieved the duffel, hefting it with a grunt. “This way. Need distance.”
They clambered up the bank, onto a scrubby field dotted with frost. He led them toward a copse of skeletal trees in the distance, a dark smudge against the lightening horizon. Each step was a monumental effort. The drug had won. It had hollowed him out, leaving only a brittle shell. The hyper-clarity was gone, replaced by a deep, cellular exhaustion that made every nerve feel deadened and raw at the same time.
As the first sliver of sun cut the horizon, painting the frost in fleeting gold, Koen’s legs simply stopped working.
The duffel slipped from his numb fingers, hitting the frozen ground. He took one more stumbling step, then his knees buckled. He crumbled to the earth, collapsing onto his side in the brittle grass. A wave of total weakness washed over him, so profound he couldn’t even lift his head. He lay there, panting shallowly, watching his breath fog in the dawn light. The city was behind them. The drug was gone but it left with a final, vicious theft, sapping the last dregs of his preternatural strength. He was empty.