Pariah #02: the Hunt

Pariah #2: The Hunt

Perils of Azure City

By Void

******

Published by Void

Copyright 2015 by Void

Everything contained within this story is a work of fiction, and comes under the blanket of fantasy. The story contains graphic and explicit adult scenarios depicting sexual and violent themes that may be offensive to some readers. Nothing depicted in this story is intended to glorify or encourage the reality of that content - it is all purely fantasy.

Names, characters and places within this story are used fictitiously or are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblances to actual persons, alive or dead, or locations, or businesses are unintended and coincidental. All characters depicted in this story are aged 18 or over.

This story is intended for an adult audience ONLY. Only read if you are aged 18+. Keep out of the reach of minors.

Contents

Part One: The Gathering Storm

Part Two: The Detective and The Artist

Part Three: Chasing Dragons

Part Four: The Twins

Part Five: Rapture

Part Six: Contact

Pariah #2: The Hunt

Perils of Azure City

Part One: The Gathering Storm

While there were some places in Azure that were continuously bathed in never ending noise, such as the city centre or the Feldyne industrial estate, there were many other places that fell silent as a crypt come the dead of night. In the neglected district of Gallowgate silence was a given at most times of day and the locals knew to be wary of any noise that broke through the gloomy quiet. Noise always heralds

something

, and that something was often trouble.

Tonight was no different.

Gun shots shattered the ambient silence of the Azure night, followed by garbled screams and cries for help. Then silence descended once more, like the return of darkness once a candle has been snuffed out. The pall of dead sound lasted a few moments before there was another eruption of distressed shouts and gunshots, this time longer than the last. Then, inevitably, silence resumed. Another candle snuffed out.

Unmistakably trouble, though tonight it was an unusual kind of trouble. The screams and cries were from the lips of men not used to being the ones in trouble - like a pack of hyenas encountering a lion for the first time. The alarm came to them in new and surprising ways as they gave voice to an emotion that they had never needed before.

Fear

.

More shouts, more shots fired, more calls for aid - more silence, more candles turned out.

Fabien Garcia was not having a good night. Not anymore. The old warehouse that had always been a haven where he could play god with the lives of the women they brought back there was now more like a crumbling tomb that he was desperate to escape.

Something

had cut the power to the warehouse, killing the lights and turning off the aria that they had been using to keep the girls quiescent in C block. Now that same something was stalking Garcia and his men through the warehouse, picking them off. He had seen it as he mustered some of his people to fend it off in B block. Now his people were gone and he was running.

It wasn't human. It couldn't be.

As he burst through the doors into C block he heard one final outpouring of noise from behind him as the last of the men in B block was discovered and then put down. Garcia didn't bother looking back, he had given up on the guys back there the moment that the thing hunting them revealed that it was bullet proof, sweeping the tail of its cloak around its body to impossibly deflect the incoming shots. He had been too scared to try and run past it, and instead ran away from it, further into the warehouse. If he could get through C block then he could still make it out the back door on the other end - he just needed to hustle.

Ahead of him he could just make out the forms of Roland and his two people as they stood guard over the girls that were strewn about the floor on dirty blankets. He was relieved to see that he wasn't alone; glad that he had asked Roland to stay behind and make sure the girls didn't move now that the aria had ceased.

Roland saw him coming and called out to him, his own near-panic clear in his voice, 'Garcia! What the hell, man? What's...'

'We're under attack - everyone's gone,' Garcia shouted back hastily as he kept running towards them, 'We need to get out of here, we need...'

One of the big speakers they had used for the aria back in B block came flying past Garcia's shoulder. It struck the man on Roland's left square in the chest and sent the man crashing to the floor in a crumpled heap. Small ball bearings fired by Garcia's other shoulder and impacted on the floor between him and Roland, exploding into balls of dense smoke.

'Oh shit!' Roland called out in alarm, and Garcia heard the distinct clicks of a man readying his weapon.

Realising what his colleague was about to do, Garcia threw himself to the ground, hugging as low to it as he could. The moment he reached the floor he heard shots as both Roland and the man with him opened up on whatever they thought they had seen behind Garcia. Through the smoke that now obscured their vision, Garcia realised they were simply firing blindly.

'You dicks!' he shouted as they stopped firing, 'You could have fucking killed me!'

'Shut up,' hissed Roland through the smoke, '

Listen

... I think there's...'

Garcia heard thuds in the smoke ahead of him followed by muffled gargles and then heavier

thuds

. A hint of blue light broke through the smoke before he saw the distinct shape of a person hurtle out of the smoke and into one of the heavy shelving stacks.

As the smoke cleared, Garcia could see no sign of Roland or his people.

Wide eyed, he climbed back to his feet and nervously glanced about him, 'Roland? You still there, buddy? Anyone?'

He wasn't going to make it to the doors, he knew that now. It didn't matter if he made a dash for the back doors or doubled back to run for the main entrance - he wasn't going to get away. He needed a new play.

He ran to where Roland had been, seeing his guy crumpled on the floor but seeing no sign of Roland himself, and made his way to the girls on the blankets.

He drew his pistol and pointed it at the first of them, dragging the insensible girl to her knees, 'Hey! Hey, I know you're out there! I can't get you but I can sure as hell kill this girl here, do you understand me? I'll do it! I got plenty of girls here that I can do in.'

Silence greeted his voice. He darted his eyes around the room, trying to spot his attacker through the darkness.

'Show yourself! You got three seconds to let me know where you are before I end this slut's life... One... Two...'

A hooded figure stepped from the darkness a couple of meters to his right, specks of blue light shining out at him from under the hood. 'Here I am,' it said, its voice icy cold.

Garcia reoriented himself to face the figure, still pressing the barrel of his gun against the back of the girl's head. Getting a clearer look at his attacker he could see it was a beautiful woman. The sleek curves of her body were clearly visible through the form-fitting black and jade bodysuit she wore, obscured only by the dark cloak fluttering around her body. The sight of her made him wish it was possible to turn the aria back on.

It had been a gamble that his attacker would have any interest in the girl's life but it was the last option he had seen open to him. Garcia felt elation run through his veins as he realised that it had actually worked.

'Alright then,' he said cautiously, watching her for the slightest sign of threat, 'You don't want me to hurt the girl, right? So I'm gonna need you to be nice and compliant, yeah? How about you start by taking off that cloak.'

She gave a wry smile, the light intensifying in her eyes, 'I think you've misjudged this a little bit.'

Garcia was about to issue another command, to put her in her place and start to assert some control over the situation now that he had leverage, but before he got a chance the woman was already moving, coming at him like a bolt of lightning. He pulled the trigger on his pistol but found it wouldn't budge, as if the safety had been switched on. He glanced down at it to see blue light emanating from around the trigger, giving evidence to the telekinetic force she was using to prevent him from firing.

His confusion at why he couldn't fire did not last long. She reached him in a second and he was rocked by blows from her long legs before she followed up with a jumping haymaker to his face. He felt his nose break followed by the warm rush of blood cascading down his face as he collapsed to the floor beside his former hostage.

He looked up at the dark figure of the woman as she bent down to him, the blue light fading from her eyes until her face was lost in shadow under the hood. As darkness closed in on his vision he felt her hands go to his pockets and she pulled out his mobile phone.

'This will be a big help, thanks,' she said as she stood back up over him, 'I'd hoped this was what that bulge was in your pants... Now, while I have your attention I'd like to ask you a few questions about Vincent Malone and Club Surrender.'

Garcia felt somehow disconnected from his body as it refused to move when he told it to, rendering his fear and adrenaline entirely impotent. He stared up at the figure looming over him, 'Pfft, I'm telling you nothing, bitch. You've messed with Malone and he's gonna get you back for this; he's not going to let you destroy his kingdom in the 'Gate,' he spat blood, 'You think you can make an enemy of Underhaven and just walk away? They got folk way scarier than you are, and they're gonna be coming for you, chica. There's a fuckin' storm coming and you're gonna be right in the eye of it. You...'

Her foot came down hard on his throat and cut him off mid-speech, '

Good

,' she said emphatically. 'You're already wrong about not telling me anything, but you're going to go quite a bit further. Now then, I'm going to break a bone every time you lie to me or refuse to answer me, and they aren't going to be

my

bones... But don't let that worry you too much; a coward like you is probably going to get out of this ordeal with no broken bones at all - other than your nose, of course.'

Garcia widened his eyes up at her in fear. She spoke with such calm assurance; he believed every word she said. 'You... You would do that? But you're like a heroine or something... That's not what you guys do.'

The woman chuckled darkly before pressing her foot harder into his throat. 'I'm a girl that puts on a mask and goes off into the night to beat up the most dangerous men in Azure with her bare hands. I'm a vigilante enforcing my, quite likely warped, sense of justice on others. Do you really want to test what I

won't

do?'

He shook his head, 'No...'

'Good,' she said, lifting her foot off his throat, 'Then let's talk about your boss.'

*****

Later...

Detective Chris Blake had always possessed a good nose for predicting trouble, and his uncanny ability to read a situation, from the bizarre to the mundane, had been what made him so proficient at his job. It was what had propelled him up from cadet to detective investigator in double-quick time, and what would likely see him make sergeant well ahead of his peers - even if he would decline the role when the time came.

He'd had a feeling that he would be getting the call tonight; he was sat outside his favourite coffee shop waiting for it an hour after his shift had ended. When the clock struck two-thirty in the morning he had been considering turning in for the night, but then the call finally did come through.

There'd been another incident in Gallowgate.

He just had a sense that what he'd seen at the Harrington depot the previous night was the beginning of something - though he wasn't entirely sure what it was the beginning of. The deliberate nature of how the depot had been targeted left Blake with the impression that there would be more to come, and the condition in which they had found Tyrone Bennett suggested that someone was angry.

It was something Blake could understand. The testimonies from the girls they brought out of the depot had been difficult to hear. The men that had held them there disgusted Blake more than any other case he had worked. The cynical, large scale of how it had been done was horrifying, and Blake knew that it was just going to be the tip of the iceberg.

The implications were sobering.

Underhaven - a name long thought to be a myth back at the precinct - was real. They were very much the real deal, active on a level above anything he had seen before, and it sent Blake's teeth on edge to consider how this had gone on unnoticed for so long. It hit him hard, and he resolved that he would do all that he could to take the whole thing down. He made a promise to the victims that he would do better. The ACPD would do better.

He pulled up at the outer limits of the cordoned off area and got out of his beaten up old Impala. The sight of the warehouse was remarkably similar to the one from last night, and the symmetry of it was lost on no one as they went about documenting the scene.

Detective Mary Locke stood waiting for him at the yellow tape. She raised her eyebrow at him as he approached, 'You're off the clock, Blake - I thought you had an early start tomorrow?'

He smiled at her, 'Oh, I do, but...,' he gestured around at the scene, 'Well, you know.'

She returned his smile with a thin one of her own as she lit a cigarette, 'Yeah, I suppose I do.' She brought the smoke up to her lips and took a long drag. Blake could tell by looking at her that this case had gotten under the veteran detective's skin like it had his.

'So, what do we have?'

'Déjà vu,' she said between tight lips as she kept her cigarette in her mouth, 'Exactly the same as last night: Girl dials nine-one-one from the scene - seemingly on the phone of one of the suspects - and uniforms arrive to find unconscious men surrounded by crates of all sorts of illegal product along with a host of abused women.'

She took the cigarette from her mouth and blew a cloud of smoke, 'Eleven beaten up suspects and six victims... Though given that the suspects are in the state they're in, I'm sure some mug is going to describe them as "victims" as well... Meta containment are already on their way to inspect the scene.'

Blake let out a soft whistle, 'They don't hang around, do they?' He let his gaze wander to the shackled men being led to the back of one of the police vans, their bodies clearly marked by the pounding that they had received earlier that night, 'So I take it that the girl who made the call has positively identified the Pariah, like last night?'

Locke nodded, 'Yup. Multiple accounts describing the same rough appearance, multiple suspects describing the same telekinetic hoodoo, and the woman that made the call said her saviour introduced herself as Pariah... It's fairly conclusive that our meta vigilante is involved in this.'

'The hooded avenger, huh?' Blake mused, 'I have to say, I'm starting to feel pretty sodding redundant here - this lady is doing our job for us.'

'So it seems,' she agreed, 'Either way this is being treated as an investigation into both the Pariah and Underhaven cases... It leaves a bad taste to be gunning for the vigilante with the same zeal as the syndicate of rapists, but that's how it is.'

'Let meta containment worry about the Pariah,' Blake said, trying to reassure his partner, 'Let's just see if we can chase this up, maybe get ahead of the curve on this thing and nail Underhaven to the wall,' He watched as the blacked-out vans from meta containment began to arrive, 'I get the feeling that this is going to escalate over the next few days... We're opening up a hornets' nest here.'

Locke followed his gaze and gave a grumble of agreement, 'You can say that again. The whole thing is a shitting mess... If this is what Underhaven are like when no one can see them, I shudder to think what they'll do when they're being pushed like this.' She idly flicked ash onto the pavement as her expression darkened, 'And while I'm thinking about things that make me uncomfortable, I think we need to have a word with internal affairs and see if we can follow up how this hasn't been flagged before - someone

must

have been covering this up.'

Blake wanted to disagree but found he couldn't. Locke was right, and it was an alarming prospect that they may have to contend with people in their own department to get to the bottom of this. Underhaven clearly had a lot of influence and it made the case increasingly unpleasant to touch.

'Yeah...,' he trailed off and let out a long breath that misted in the cool night air, looking out over the surrounding skyline as he considered the tangled mess he was about to try and unwind.

His eye was drawn to a flicker of movement up on one of the rooftops across the street and he stared up into the darkness for a moment. For a split second he thought that he could just make out a human shape up there, looking down at them all, but he disregarded it as his imagination chasing phantoms.

'...It's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.'

*****

Elsewhere...

'Mistress Weaver, the last of the team has arrived.'

Bethany Weaver sat in her luxury leather armchair with her back to the door, looking out through the one-way glass that formed the back wall of her chamber. The glass looked out on to the writhing mass of bodies on the main dance floor of Club Surrender as they revelled in the club's atmosphere. The wall was proofed against the sound coming from the other room and in contrast to the wild noise just inches away, her chamber was deathly silent. She liked to watch, in cold detachment, how the drunken youth cavorted and indulged while they were lost in the swirling tide of music. She found the sight relaxing, like watching a crackling fire.

She needed relaxing tonight.

Weaver stood from her chair, revealing herself to be dressed in a red silk dress that clung tightly to her voluptuous figure. It had a slit cut into the leg of the dress that came all the way up to the top of her right thigh, revealing her perfect, snow-white skin. Short, vibrant red hair framed her face just down to her jaw and was cropped such that she had a fringe that almost perpetually covered her right eye. Her eyes were deep green and contrasted with the white and rich red that coloured the rest of her.

She turned her graceful features towards the speaker, her visible eye staring out with clinical calm, 'What of Lohman and Thane, have they sent anyone?' she asked, her dead pan voice matching the look in her eye.

The man who had interrupted her was dressed in simple black clothes with a long leather trench coat, and his manner was similarly plain, though considerably more lively than the red mistress. His long black hair was pulled into a pony tail with two small wisps of hair coming forward to act as a fringe, and the features of his face were darkly handsome. All the shadows in the small chamber seemed to lengthen towards him as if they were trying to reach out to him.