Pariah #03: Wolves Among Sheep

Pariah #3: Wolves Among Sheep

Perils of Azure City

By Void

******

Published by Void

Copyright 2016 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: Silent Night

Part Two: Remorse

Part Three: Interloper

Part Four: The Ogre

Part Five: Clash of Exiles

Part Six: The Wolf Appears

Part Seven: Containment

Part Eight: The Stalker

Part Nine: Alpha

Part Ten: Lost Shepherd

Pariah #3: Wolves Among Sheep

Perils of Azure City

Part One: Silent Night

Azure was not a city that slept peacefully.

Each night the city would come to life in ways that made Azure a restless place at the best of times. Revellers and party-goers would flock to the abundance of bars, clubs and venues to partake of the thriving night-life, and nearly a quarter of all business in Azure would remain open throughout the night, with an estimated sixth of businesses only actively opening once the sun had gone down. While the streets became comparatively clear of traffic, city engineers would get to work to repair roads, burst pipes, cables, or any of a number of vital veins running through the city - their work necessarily loud and unapologetically protracted. Street lamps and a multitude of contrasting hues from varying advertisements and establishments would stutter into life and bathe much of the city in chaotic light until the sun rose the next morning.

The usual rhythm of any large city at night, these were the activities that made Azure - or any city - sleep only lightly.

However, unlike most cities, Azure's emergency service call-outs would surge dramatically each night - up from what was already a significant rate during the day. Fires, traffic accidents, robbery, drunk and disorderly, stabbings, shootings, muggings, rape, arson, meta alerts - the list of events that Azure had to contend with on a nightly basis was long and impressively diverse. The spike in activity would sweep through the city each night as Azure clawed at itself in the midst of multiple living nightmares.

There were some districts that bucked this trend. Most were the upmarket areas where crime was vanishingly rare, but a rare few were places so forlorn that, generally, the emergency services were not called upon. In these places the ACPD or the Azure government held authority in name only; the reality was that a different law, enforced by entirely different masters, was the pervading power.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Gallowgate. It was equal amounts ominous and comedic to observers around the city when they compared the sharp rise in police call-outs throughout Azure to the conspicuous

silence

of Gallowgate. With each passing night the Gate would increasingly take on the aspect of a crypt - a place where once the city lived, but now was long dead.

Until recently.

It had all started to change over the last month. The enigmatic, meta-powered vigilante that the papers had dubbed 'Pariah,' had swept through the district like an avenging phantom, ending gang-rule in numerous neighbourhoods and increasingly forcing the ACPD to step in. Each scene would be left with an emergency call from either a victim or a bystander - in some cases even suspects had been forced to make the call - and the ACPD would arrive to a crime scene littered with unconscious gangers, and with incriminating evidence neatly gathered for their convenience. The vigilante's activity had initially been sporadic and unfocused, with no real pattern to when or where she might strike next, starting with the city at large and then gradually narrowing down to the Gate, with the occasional strike in the neighbouring Old Town area.

A few days ago it had become very, very focused.

The Pariah would strike each night at an underground criminal syndicate known as Underhaven - a group that the ACPD had once thought to be urban myth. Each night the ACPD would be called out to a new crime scene with fresh suspects to apprehend and question to further open up the case. It had acted as a call-to-arms of sorts, rallying the ACPD to involve themselves in an area they had nearly abandoned, and it was noticeably changing the perspective of the beleaguered residents of the Gate - many were now reaching out to the ACPD with newfound hope that their neighbourhood wasn't beyond help.

She

had orchestrated it all. Each and every night the Pariah would hit, each and every night she would summon the ACPD, each and every night attitudes were adjusted.

But not

tonight

.

Detective investigator, third grade, Chris Blake had stayed awake all night waiting for the call. He had spent the entirety of the previous day unravelling and following up leads that had been exposed by the antics of the night before, when the Pariah had struck an Underhaven narcotics lab, and he had been one-hundred percent positive that there would be yet another call-out tonight. Even though he hadn't slept for nearly thirty-nine hours now, Blake had dutifully and resolutely waited for the call from Gallowgate.

It never came. Gallowgate was as silent tonight as it had been since before Pariah's arrival in Azure.

Blake stood on the rooftop of the ACPD second precinct building watching the crisp morning sun rising over the Azure skyline, casting long shadows through the assorted buildings as it washed away the contrasting din of city lights. A hand-held police scanner sat on the ledge next to him, squawking quietly with police transmissions, and he sipped pensively at a half-finished mug of coffee - his umpteenth of the day.

His mood was low, and it wasn't just his gnawing tiredness; he felt a sinking feeling in his stomach that something had happened to the vigilante.

Ostensibly the ACPD was charged with arresting the Pariah as an unsanctioned meta and a serial vigilante - to say the least. Many regarded her as little better - or perhaps even worse - than the other meta-powered criminals running loose throughout Azure. They thought of her as a menace that eschewed the law of the city with impunity as she set about her own personal agenda of terrorising the streets and brutalising its people at will. Blake himself had thought the same when he first encountered reports of the Pariah. But now... Now he found himself admiring the vigilante for her actions. Her targets, the way she handled her targets, the way she dealt with the victims on the scene, and the way she actively involved the ACPD at every turn had painted a picture of something noble - perhaps even heroic - in Blake's eyes. With each new report he had begrudgingly changed his mind on the Pariah, until he found himself now worrying about her welfare.

Whatever the vigilante deserved, Blake felt sure she didn't deserve death or worse at the hands of a group like Underhaven - he wasn't even sure if he honestly wanted her to be stopped at all. His conflicted feelings about the Pariah were in stark contrast to his ever-growing animosity for the group that she was targeting. They

did

deserve the treatment meted out by the heroine - they probably deserved even worse - and if the vigilante's involvement accelerated the end of Underhaven, then Blake could make his peace with that.

If not for her, they wouldn't even know Underhaven existed.

The last night she was active, the Pariah had broken her silence in directly dealing with the ACPD, both speaking to them and leaving them a hand-written note - a warning of the dire risk posed by the suspects that she had left for them. Underhaven was being increasingly revealed as a hugely funded and equipped organisation, far and away above anything Blake had seen before, and the Pariah was starting to encounter people so dangerous that she had felt the need to break her code of non-communication with the ACPD. The subtext of it all gave Blake the impression it was escalating wildly, and he feared the vigilante was reaching waters too deep for her.

Tonight's silence did very little to assuage the concern.

He let out a long breath and looked down at his cooling coffee, casting his mind back over the recording of the Pariah's brief call to nine-one-one which had summoned them to the narcotics lab. It had been an exciting experience to finally hear the voice of the meta-vigilante that they had been chasing after for so long. She had sounded...

tired

. Of what little he could glean from the recording, that was what had stood out the most - though sometimes he felt there was something in the voice that was almost familiar...

'You're an idiot.'

Blake jumped with shock as he was brought out of his brooding thoughts. He spun around to see detective Mary Locke at the doorway back into the building, the veteran detective lighting up a fresh cigarette as she regarded him. Recognising his colleague, Blake forced a smile, 'Erm, I'm sorry?'

'I said, you're an idiot,' Locke replied simply, walking over to join him at the ledge.

'Why's that, then?'

She gave him a sideways look, 'You know why. You haven't slept in much too long, and now you'll be no use today.' She took a long drag on her cigarette, 'God knows we have a lot to do today, and you're in no state to do it.'

'Nonsense. I'm fit as a fiddle,' Blake quipped, 'and besides, I haven't been sat here all night twiddling my thumbs.' He gave Locke an exaggerated admonishing look, 'I've got a lot of work done on our case, while you slept soundly in your bed.'

Locke gave him a wry smile, 'Oh yeah? Go on then, impress me.'

Blake could tell his friend and occasional mentor was trying to take his mind off the Pariah - and he was grateful for the distraction. 'Well, our many guests from Underhaven have been completely uncooperative, as you know, but I'm building a framework of known acquaintances and previous affiliations with each suspect, and a few patterns have started emerging. Not only that but I've started researching what other sites there could be in Gallowgate that could be repurposed like we've seen them do with all the previous locations.' Blake took a drink from his mug before continuing, 'I know those are both very, very long lists, but with any luck I'll be able to correlate the two and we'll have a healthy lead on this thing - maybe we'll even get ahead of the Pariah...,' Blake trailed off. 'You know, assuming she's still...'

'You

have

been busy,' Locke said with genuine admiration, cutting him off before he could recede back into his concern for the heroine. 'Getting ahead of this would certainly be nice... Though we'll have to watch ourselves as we get deeper.' She flicked the butt of her smoke off the rooftop and turned to walk back inside, 'Alright then, I'm going to check out what you have and see if I can help it along some. Go home and get a few hours of sleep, Blake, you're burned out.'

Blake wanted to protest but reason kept him from contesting it. He

did

need to get at least some rest before tackling the day ahead. 'Yeah, alright,' said Blake, finally letting his weariness show, 'but promise me not to wrap this case up without me.'

Locke snorted as she reached the door, 'Yeah, I'll do my best. Phone me when you're ready to come back in.'

Blake watched her leave and then gathered up his things to head back inside. He took one last wistful look over the city skyline before he left, as though perhaps he might catch sight of the call-out he had been waiting for all night.

He couldn't help but hope the next night wouldn't be quite so silent in Gallowgate. In a city where emergency service calls heralded trouble and despair that would disrupt the normal peace, the calls from the Gate delivered hope and relief to an area badly in need of both.

Blake dragged his gaze from the city and made his way to the door, resigned that there would be no activity from Pariah today. As Azure awoke from another night's restless sleep, he would try to get an uneasy rest of his own - so he would be ready to stand vigil the next night.

*****

Elsewhere...

My life has been...

eventful

.

The traumas of seeing my hometown in Everwood Springs ravaged by meta-powered lunatics, followed by a lifetime of actively chasing after - and then confronting - real-life monsters, would be enough to get into anybody's head. The things I have seen, along with the life I have had the dubious honour of living, has burdened me with a generous supply of unresolved grief and a surplus of frustrated rage.

Whether it's my buried fears or my catalogue of regrets, I have a small army of personal demons that I have battled with most of my life.

They haunt my dreams routinely.

It is something that I have grown accustomed to; I gave up on expecting nights of peaceful sleep back when I was still a teenager. In my waking hours I stay on top of all my baggage, I master it and in many cases disregard it so that I can focus on what I need to do. So, it is when I sleep that I allow myself to be vulnerable enough to actually process all the different feelings I have been suppressing. I suppose I ruminate, or at least acknowledge the various emotions that I stubbornly deny during the day.

When I was shaped into the fighter I am today I was taught to cast off the shackles of fear, doubt and sadness; to focus on my task as though I were a tool designed only complete it, entirely aloof from human frailties that might blunt my purpose. My former mentor, Shingen Kamura, had likened it to becoming a blade; shaping oneself into something that transcends human weakness. I took to the skill not only as a method of becoming a more effective hunter, but also as a coping mechanism to relieve myself of the burden of my past. I'm good at it.

Perhaps too good.

However, I

am

human, and I still struggle with these things like anyone would. Kamura was hounded by his own personal demons right up until the day he died, and I know first-hand that he succeeded only in keeping them at bay. Much as he tried to hide it, I knew they would visit his dreams just as my traumas would visit mine. I have resolved much these days, but there are still plenty of nights that my old memories come back to hurt me, and, in the privacy of my own company, I'm as much a victim in the clutches of those nightmares as anybody else.

I've awoken from plenty of nightmares before, screaming or crying, drenched in sweat and shaking with distress - in those moments I am nothing like the blade Kamura taught me to be. Revisiting pain, horror and sadness is just something I've come to expect of my dreams. In some ways, I've even grown to appreciate it as a chance to release pent-up tensions that I've been carrying around, like a purge. I think I take a small measure of ghoulish comfort from the anguish and the torment; they serve to prove to me that I haven't lost touch with my humanity. Not yet, anyways.

I am not, and I haven't been for a long time, someone that sleeps peacefully.

But tonight my dreams are disturbed in ways that I am not accustomed to. Tonight I am struggling through dreams that I have not accepted as a facet of my eventful life so far. I lie in my bed, tossing and turning in the throes of something somewhere between a nightmare and a fantasy. It is deeply unfamiliar to me, worlds apart from the trauma I am grimly resolved to experiencing, and it undermines my considerable self-discipline right down to the core.

I am not revisiting pain or misery; I am not running from or being murdered by a terrifying foe - it is much, much more unsettling.

It is a vivid dream of sexual domination. I am helplessly bound and being utterly dominated by sadistic men and women who seem to take great delight in mastering me. Dark carnival masks hide their faces from me, but their beautiful bodies are plainly exposed for me to see - just as I am revealed for them except for my mask. They pleasure me and take pleasure from me equally as they break down my will with deriding words and possessive touches. I am fighting them, and the pleasure they are forcing on to my flesh, but with each passing moment I yield to them, accepting their control more and resisting just a little less. It is shameful and dirty, but it also blissful and liberating. Their control unburdens me of everything I would be responsible for - all I need do is relax and enjoy the hedonistic delights they lavish upon me, which are many.

My naked body twitches and spasms within the bindings that hold me, writhing against the exquisite touches of my captors as it is overloaded with sordid sensations. My body is completely betraying me, and I can't stop it. I have honed myself, body and mind, for years, for violence and hardship - but this... this sweet, delicate,

delicious

pleasure... it is suffocating me. It fulfils me in unspeakable ways, and my body craves every moment of it like a starving man craves food, or like an addict craves their next hit.

I don't know how to fight this. I don't know how to fight the sinful desires of my own body.

I only know how to surrender to it.

As my pleasure rises and my defiance fades, some of the figures around me remove their masks and lean down so that I can see their faces. I see the dark, exotic features of two young twin sisters, their eyes gleaming with excitement. 'How does it feel, hero?' they ask me together, their lilting voices filled with sadistic glee, 'Tell us how it feels.'

'It feels amazing,' I whimper back to them, unwilling to offer anything but the truth. My desire to submit and feel greater pleasure is now far greater than my will to resist.

Another face comes down to me, this time a handsome devil of a man who is as intoxicated by me as I am by him. 'Tell us you love it, baby.'

I know it is wrong... but I don't care enough to hold back. 'I love it,' I sigh back to him, looking up at him with submissive, pleading eyes as I beckon him to continue my torment.

They all giggle as other figures move around me, their faces still obscured by masks, and voices from all around me call out, 'Surrender, Pariah. Surrender, Evelyn. Surrender, whore.'

Pleasure and debased ecstasy even greater than I have felt so far is offered to me, and all I need do is embrace it. Hands softly caress my face before grasping the edges of my mask, slowly and deliberately peeling it from my face, stripping me of my pride and my strength. I feel my lips tremble as I prepare to offer myself entirely to these people and to this feeling.