Pariah #2: 'The Hunt'
Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2014 9:24 pm
Hello and welcome to another of my fledgling attempts at writing a (full) story. This will be the continuation of the arc started in the 'New Arrival' story and as such I respectfully point you in that direction if you want a proper introduction to this story. You certainly don't need to have read it for this story to make sense - it will merely be of benefit to you if you want to have a deeper understanding of this world and our heroine. Because I consider introductions and foundation building to be finished in the previous story, I intend for this one to be much more concerned with *things happening* and just getting right into it in the assumption you already know the background.
Just as the last story started life as a doodle that got out of hand, so to has my delusions of grandeur got the better of me with this story. It continues the arc against Underhaven and I anticipate the ordeal to be a long one as Pariah moves from one encounter to another. I confess I am using this as an excuse to practise different styles of writing and types of scenes, so I really do apologise if it seems to meander off target on occasion. A particular concern I have there is that I intend for there to be quite a lot of conflict in this story, with one or two drawn out fights... How do we feel about heroine battles? Is it a good thing, building up the peril and part of what you'd expect in heroine fiction - or is it a bad thing, wasting time and not really at home in stories like this?
If anyone wishes to contact me directly to leave feedback, make a request/suggestion, ask or answer a question then you can reach me here: [email protected]
Fair warning: As before, there will be hard sexual content as well as graphic violent and sexual themes. There will also be lots of exposition and indulgent story telling - so if you're purely interested in peril or purely interested in clean heroine action, either way you may want to skip along the bits that don't agree with you.
Hope you guys enjoy.
Edit: If you haven't read the first chapter, then you can reach it here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=22170&p=76020#p76020 (thanks to tallyho for the suggestion)
P.S As before, if you're looking to skip right to the sexual peril, then head to Part Five.
Pariah: The Hunt
Part One: 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 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 passed 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 passed Garcia's shoulder. It hit 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 fog that now obscured their vision, Garcia realised they were simply firing blindly.
'You dicks!' he shouted when 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 a 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 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 coming 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 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 Gallowgate,' 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.'
'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.'
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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 going to be just 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 tonight, ‘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. 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.’
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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 latex dress that clung to her voluptuous figure in all the right ways. 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. Her 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.
When he spoke again he sounded tired, as if he was in some kind of constant resignation, ‘This is too high profile now for Lohman to have his name anywhere near it, though his people tell me that they will do what they can to handle the police. After tonight, though, no one is going to be able to make this go away without some heads rolling first… It may actually need to be you who eventually handles the police, like you did in the Abrahams debacle.’
‘I expected as much,’ she said simply, ‘Lohman was only ever going to be useful if he had to be. And Thane? What of the Outsiders?’
‘Thane has sent one of his Outsiders along …’ the man said, unable to hide some unease from creeping into his voice, ‘Though I honestly feel that their involvement is unnecessary here; we can do this with our own people. Involving any help from Thane just complicates things - I don’t trust them.’
‘No, neither do I,’ she agreed, ‘But this needs to be done sooner rather than later – tonight leaves me in no doubt of that. The Pariah is going to come for us every night until we put a stop to it, so the more muscle we can use to end this quickly the better.’
‘I respect that but I think we could end this quickly enough with a simple trap. I think a team like this is overkill, frankly. If we are to believe that Lenny Finch nearly…’
‘Enough, Shade,’ she said quietly, ‘Mr. Drake wants this done quickly and I agree with him. We need to be sure of bringing this to an end before we lose Gallowgate and a whole lot more besides. Take me to them.’
Shade looked like he might try to debate it again before he nodded and led her from the office towards the V.I.P lounge. They walked together through lavish corridors that ran throughout the Club as private access passageways, passing multiple black doors with moans and sighs coming from the other side.
Shade turned his head back to her as they neared the lounge, ‘After this I will be heading out to make sure Mr. Drake and the Sanctum is safe. I will leave Snow to help you keep order here, if it pleases you.’
‘It does.’
He held open a heavy, padded door for her as they came to the V.I.P lounge. Club Surrender had multiple different lounges and dance bars but this was by far the most exclusive of the club, reserved only for Underhaven business. The room was opulent in the extreme with expensive, luxurious fixtures, and exquisitely beautiful women danced about the room for the pleasure of their guests.
Waiting for them in the lounge was the hunt that they had gathered. The disparate figures stood apart from each other around the room, awaiting the arrival of the red mistress in their own ways as they barely tolerated each others company.
There were six in total.
Two of them were from Shade’s team: Ogre and Dryad. Like many metas in Azure, they had long since adopted a ‘street name’ in place of their regular names which served to add to their mystique and further obscure the identity of who they used to be.
Ogre was a hulking brute of a man with a sprawling network of tattoos over his body all the way up to his shaved head. He stood in the centre of the room intensely staring down anyone who dared to come near him, idly clenching and unclenching his big fists with impatience. The big man was topless save for an armless, brown leather jacket and dressed in torn black jeans, his abundant muscles gleaming in the low light of the room. He inclined his head at Shade respectfully as they came in, acknowledging the only person on earth that he felt answerable to.
Dancing alone on the dance floor was Dryad, and she was a sharp contrast to her fellow enforcer. Her full, curvy figure swayed hypnotically as she danced; her wide hips and generous bust barely hidden behind the dark silk bands that were tied around her torso. Her thick brown hair came almost all the way down her back and it swished around her body as she moved. Her tanned skin seemed to throb in the lighting of the lounge, seeming every now and then to change between different shades of purple. She grinned at the new arrivals, her yellow eyes glinting with desire, and she flicked her dark tongue out at them provocatively, extending it a fraction further than should be possible.
At the bar sat Wesley Fontaine, very much out of place with the luxury of the lounge. He was a rugged, unkempt specimen of a man dressed in worn old clothes. Unlike the two enforcers, Fontaine had no meta abilities and generally lacked the presence of the others in the room. However Fontaine was the one true hunter of them all, having spent the last ten years stalking and kidnapping women first for his own pleasure and then later professionally for Underhaven. He raised a glass to Shade and then gave a deferential half-bow to the Mistress.
Over by one of the exotic dancing girls were the Ryder twins. The two goth sisters were pressed in either side of the dancer, hungrily kissing her and openly exploring her body with their hands. The young twins were dressed in similar black clothes with netting covering much of their bodies, and each had a long leather whip wrapped around their waist. Their long black hair differentiated them only by differing coloured streaks; Alice having purples streaks while Lara had red. Though not metas, the savage cunning of the goth twins had long made them the red Mistress’s favoured problem solvers and they had been the first selected to deal with the Pariah. They didn’t even acknowledge the new arrivals, oblivious to anything but the dancer they were lusting after.
Relaxing with his feet up on one of the cream leather sofas of the lounge was the one person in the room who was not a member of Underhaven. He was a lanky, hairless man swathed in a loose fitting vest and equally baggy jeans. He had been sent to help by the Outsiders: an underground cult of metas gathered together under the enigmatic leadership of a man by the name of Thane. The group shared an understanding of sorts with Underhaven, and the two had formed something of a symbiotic relationship in recent years as they both spread their influence throughout Azure. Weaver knew the strange, sneering man as Mask – a particularly odd fish, even from a bunch of unusual people – and she began to wonder if Shade was right about involving the Outsiders. Mask lolled his head to the side to face the newcomers and his face broke into a smile that was much, much too wide.
Apart from the gathered team stood Vincent Malone, flanked on both sides by two heavy set goons. Up until two nights ago Malone had been an up and coming leader of Underhaven, creating his own personal empire in the Gallowgate. He had been ambitious and vicious in equal measure on his way up as he had garnered increasing favour from the red mistress and Mr. Drake, eventually being trusted with overseeing their Gallowgate operations. He had thrived in the position, establishing greater and greater power until it had all started to come crashing down around him with the intervention of the Pariah. No one wanted this ordeal brought to an end more than Vincent Malone, just as no one had a greater interest in bringing down the heroine. He ran a hand through his slick brown hair and nervously touched his short-trimmed goatee as he turned his attention to the red mistress.
Weaver felt no need for introductions or pleasantries, instead cutting right to business as she entered, ‘You all know why you have been brought here today. We have been attacked by a masked vigilante with meta capabilities – seemingly a telekine – and it is clear that she will continue stalking us until we deal with her… So to that end I am charging each of you with the task of putting an end to the Pariah by whatever means you deem necessary. I have spoken with Mr. Drake, and he has intimated that he would prefer she be brought to him alive – broken or otherwise – but I honestly don’t mind so long as this threat is removed.’
Fontaine spoke up from the bar, his voice gruff, ‘Dead or alive? Is there a difference in reward for either?’
‘As I said, Mr. Drake would prefer she be taken alive, so the reward is greater – though part of the payment here is the hunt itself. I chose you all because I knew you would relish the encounter as well as the opportunity to do as you wish with her should you defeat her…,’ as she spoke she let her gaze fall onto the Outsider, ‘Though I cannot say if that is much payment for you, Mask.’
The hairless man sneered at her and came to his feet, his body seeming to shift and ripple until he looked like Mistress Weaver when he reached his feet, ‘Oh, the hunt is all very interesting,’ he said in her voice, ‘I’m happy to just see what the Pariah is made of… I know Thane is keen to know.’
Weaver stared back at her doppelganger, unimpressed, ‘Good,’ she looked away from Mask and addressed the room again, ‘Then you all know what to do. Malone will offer what assistance he can, though I expect you all to look out for his interests in Gallowgate since that seems to be the Pariah’s target,’ she looked from one to the other, ‘Any questions?’
Fontaine spoke up again, ‘Do we know anything about this broad?’
‘Not really, no,’ Weaver answered bluntly, ‘She seems to have telekinetic abilities, advanced combat training and sophisticated equipment. It is clear that she has good information on us and it's fair to say she is interested in ending us. Her brief history in this city suggests that she fancies herself some kind of hero – targeting the criminal fraternity. That is all.’
Malone cleared his voice and spoke up, trying not to sound intimidated by the company of all the metas in the room, ‘Uhh, my one guy that got away from her, Lenny Finch, says that she was nearly taken in by the aria – so she’s not invincible and she doesn't know about everything,’ he hesitated a moment, ‘Though she did break free of the aria… and I guess she knows more about us now…’
Mask snorted, his appearance taking on the aspect of Malone as well as his voice, ‘Thanks for that massive ray of insight, boss, you're a big help.’
Weaver spoke up before Malone could reply to the mockery, ‘If there are no more questions then I suggest you all get on with it. I’m not sure where, but I’m confident that the Pariah will strike again tomorrow night - see to it that it is her, and not us, who is hunted.’
The gathered hunters grunted their assent and made their way out of the lounge - except for the Ryder twins, who instead started to lead the dancer over to the cream sofas to take their tryst to the next level.
Shade stepped forward to his two enforcers before they could leave the room, 'No games, understand? Get this done.'
Ogre smacked his chest, 'I'll break her and lay her before you in chains - it is as inevitable as the setting sun.'
Dryad brought a hand to her lips to stifle a chuckle at the intensity of her colleague and stepped in close to Shade, capturing his attention with her penetrating yellow eyes, 'It is all a game, Shade,' she whispered, her voice like velvet, 'It has always been a game.' She trailed a finger up his chest and a slight haze seemed to radiate out from her body, causing Shade to take a rare step backwards.
He considered labouring the point but instead stood aside and let his people pass.
The red mistress watched as the team filtered out of the room, each of them intent on their new goal of capturing the Pariah, and she allowed herself a small smile as she considered the trouble she was unleashing unto the heroine.
Overkill, perhaps, but it seemed fitting treatment for the vigilante who had the temerity to go to war with Underhaven. If Malone and the remains of his empire of professional rapists weren’t enough, the six deadly criminals she had just added to the mix certainly would be. It was a hellish cocktail of perverse retribution that virtually guaranteed one, inescapable, conclusion.
One way or another, the Pariah would fall.
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So that's the first part, and our adventure is set up... I've probably bitten off more than I can chew with that set up... I'm not sure including this big tangent to do with the Outsiders was a clever idea at all - let alone having quite so many hunters to deal with. I probably should have had, like, two hunters... That would have been much more manageable, huh? Nevertheless! I think I will try to make a go of this for now. It will just mean that this story probably has a few parts to it.
I think I've just learned a valuable lesson here about containing my ambition...
Just as the last story started life as a doodle that got out of hand, so to has my delusions of grandeur got the better of me with this story. It continues the arc against Underhaven and I anticipate the ordeal to be a long one as Pariah moves from one encounter to another. I confess I am using this as an excuse to practise different styles of writing and types of scenes, so I really do apologise if it seems to meander off target on occasion. A particular concern I have there is that I intend for there to be quite a lot of conflict in this story, with one or two drawn out fights... How do we feel about heroine battles? Is it a good thing, building up the peril and part of what you'd expect in heroine fiction - or is it a bad thing, wasting time and not really at home in stories like this?
If anyone wishes to contact me directly to leave feedback, make a request/suggestion, ask or answer a question then you can reach me here: [email protected]
Fair warning: As before, there will be hard sexual content as well as graphic violent and sexual themes. There will also be lots of exposition and indulgent story telling - so if you're purely interested in peril or purely interested in clean heroine action, either way you may want to skip along the bits that don't agree with you.
Hope you guys enjoy.
Edit: If you haven't read the first chapter, then you can reach it here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=22170&p=76020#p76020 (thanks to tallyho for the suggestion)
P.S As before, if you're looking to skip right to the sexual peril, then head to Part Five.
Pariah: The Hunt
Part One: 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 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 passed 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 passed Garcia's shoulder. It hit 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 fog that now obscured their vision, Garcia realised they were simply firing blindly.
'You dicks!' he shouted when 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 a 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 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 coming 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 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 Gallowgate,' 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.'
'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.'
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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 going to be just 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 tonight, ‘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. 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.’
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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 latex dress that clung to her voluptuous figure in all the right ways. 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. Her 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.
When he spoke again he sounded tired, as if he was in some kind of constant resignation, ‘This is too high profile now for Lohman to have his name anywhere near it, though his people tell me that they will do what they can to handle the police. After tonight, though, no one is going to be able to make this go away without some heads rolling first… It may actually need to be you who eventually handles the police, like you did in the Abrahams debacle.’
‘I expected as much,’ she said simply, ‘Lohman was only ever going to be useful if he had to be. And Thane? What of the Outsiders?’
‘Thane has sent one of his Outsiders along …’ the man said, unable to hide some unease from creeping into his voice, ‘Though I honestly feel that their involvement is unnecessary here; we can do this with our own people. Involving any help from Thane just complicates things - I don’t trust them.’
‘No, neither do I,’ she agreed, ‘But this needs to be done sooner rather than later – tonight leaves me in no doubt of that. The Pariah is going to come for us every night until we put a stop to it, so the more muscle we can use to end this quickly the better.’
‘I respect that but I think we could end this quickly enough with a simple trap. I think a team like this is overkill, frankly. If we are to believe that Lenny Finch nearly…’
‘Enough, Shade,’ she said quietly, ‘Mr. Drake wants this done quickly and I agree with him. We need to be sure of bringing this to an end before we lose Gallowgate and a whole lot more besides. Take me to them.’
Shade looked like he might try to debate it again before he nodded and led her from the office towards the V.I.P lounge. They walked together through lavish corridors that ran throughout the Club as private access passageways, passing multiple black doors with moans and sighs coming from the other side.
Shade turned his head back to her as they neared the lounge, ‘After this I will be heading out to make sure Mr. Drake and the Sanctum is safe. I will leave Snow to help you keep order here, if it pleases you.’
‘It does.’
He held open a heavy, padded door for her as they came to the V.I.P lounge. Club Surrender had multiple different lounges and dance bars but this was by far the most exclusive of the club, reserved only for Underhaven business. The room was opulent in the extreme with expensive, luxurious fixtures, and exquisitely beautiful women danced about the room for the pleasure of their guests.
Waiting for them in the lounge was the hunt that they had gathered. The disparate figures stood apart from each other around the room, awaiting the arrival of the red mistress in their own ways as they barely tolerated each others company.
There were six in total.
Two of them were from Shade’s team: Ogre and Dryad. Like many metas in Azure, they had long since adopted a ‘street name’ in place of their regular names which served to add to their mystique and further obscure the identity of who they used to be.
Ogre was a hulking brute of a man with a sprawling network of tattoos over his body all the way up to his shaved head. He stood in the centre of the room intensely staring down anyone who dared to come near him, idly clenching and unclenching his big fists with impatience. The big man was topless save for an armless, brown leather jacket and dressed in torn black jeans, his abundant muscles gleaming in the low light of the room. He inclined his head at Shade respectfully as they came in, acknowledging the only person on earth that he felt answerable to.
Dancing alone on the dance floor was Dryad, and she was a sharp contrast to her fellow enforcer. Her full, curvy figure swayed hypnotically as she danced; her wide hips and generous bust barely hidden behind the dark silk bands that were tied around her torso. Her thick brown hair came almost all the way down her back and it swished around her body as she moved. Her tanned skin seemed to throb in the lighting of the lounge, seeming every now and then to change between different shades of purple. She grinned at the new arrivals, her yellow eyes glinting with desire, and she flicked her dark tongue out at them provocatively, extending it a fraction further than should be possible.
At the bar sat Wesley Fontaine, very much out of place with the luxury of the lounge. He was a rugged, unkempt specimen of a man dressed in worn old clothes. Unlike the two enforcers, Fontaine had no meta abilities and generally lacked the presence of the others in the room. However Fontaine was the one true hunter of them all, having spent the last ten years stalking and kidnapping women first for his own pleasure and then later professionally for Underhaven. He raised a glass to Shade and then gave a deferential half-bow to the Mistress.
Over by one of the exotic dancing girls were the Ryder twins. The two goth sisters were pressed in either side of the dancer, hungrily kissing her and openly exploring her body with their hands. The young twins were dressed in similar black clothes with netting covering much of their bodies, and each had a long leather whip wrapped around their waist. Their long black hair differentiated them only by differing coloured streaks; Alice having purples streaks while Lara had red. Though not metas, the savage cunning of the goth twins had long made them the red Mistress’s favoured problem solvers and they had been the first selected to deal with the Pariah. They didn’t even acknowledge the new arrivals, oblivious to anything but the dancer they were lusting after.
Relaxing with his feet up on one of the cream leather sofas of the lounge was the one person in the room who was not a member of Underhaven. He was a lanky, hairless man swathed in a loose fitting vest and equally baggy jeans. He had been sent to help by the Outsiders: an underground cult of metas gathered together under the enigmatic leadership of a man by the name of Thane. The group shared an understanding of sorts with Underhaven, and the two had formed something of a symbiotic relationship in recent years as they both spread their influence throughout Azure. Weaver knew the strange, sneering man as Mask – a particularly odd fish, even from a bunch of unusual people – and she began to wonder if Shade was right about involving the Outsiders. Mask lolled his head to the side to face the newcomers and his face broke into a smile that was much, much too wide.
Apart from the gathered team stood Vincent Malone, flanked on both sides by two heavy set goons. Up until two nights ago Malone had been an up and coming leader of Underhaven, creating his own personal empire in the Gallowgate. He had been ambitious and vicious in equal measure on his way up as he had garnered increasing favour from the red mistress and Mr. Drake, eventually being trusted with overseeing their Gallowgate operations. He had thrived in the position, establishing greater and greater power until it had all started to come crashing down around him with the intervention of the Pariah. No one wanted this ordeal brought to an end more than Vincent Malone, just as no one had a greater interest in bringing down the heroine. He ran a hand through his slick brown hair and nervously touched his short-trimmed goatee as he turned his attention to the red mistress.
Weaver felt no need for introductions or pleasantries, instead cutting right to business as she entered, ‘You all know why you have been brought here today. We have been attacked by a masked vigilante with meta capabilities – seemingly a telekine – and it is clear that she will continue stalking us until we deal with her… So to that end I am charging each of you with the task of putting an end to the Pariah by whatever means you deem necessary. I have spoken with Mr. Drake, and he has intimated that he would prefer she be brought to him alive – broken or otherwise – but I honestly don’t mind so long as this threat is removed.’
Fontaine spoke up from the bar, his voice gruff, ‘Dead or alive? Is there a difference in reward for either?’
‘As I said, Mr. Drake would prefer she be taken alive, so the reward is greater – though part of the payment here is the hunt itself. I chose you all because I knew you would relish the encounter as well as the opportunity to do as you wish with her should you defeat her…,’ as she spoke she let her gaze fall onto the Outsider, ‘Though I cannot say if that is much payment for you, Mask.’
The hairless man sneered at her and came to his feet, his body seeming to shift and ripple until he looked like Mistress Weaver when he reached his feet, ‘Oh, the hunt is all very interesting,’ he said in her voice, ‘I’m happy to just see what the Pariah is made of… I know Thane is keen to know.’
Weaver stared back at her doppelganger, unimpressed, ‘Good,’ she looked away from Mask and addressed the room again, ‘Then you all know what to do. Malone will offer what assistance he can, though I expect you all to look out for his interests in Gallowgate since that seems to be the Pariah’s target,’ she looked from one to the other, ‘Any questions?’
Fontaine spoke up again, ‘Do we know anything about this broad?’
‘Not really, no,’ Weaver answered bluntly, ‘She seems to have telekinetic abilities, advanced combat training and sophisticated equipment. It is clear that she has good information on us and it's fair to say she is interested in ending us. Her brief history in this city suggests that she fancies herself some kind of hero – targeting the criminal fraternity. That is all.’
Malone cleared his voice and spoke up, trying not to sound intimidated by the company of all the metas in the room, ‘Uhh, my one guy that got away from her, Lenny Finch, says that she was nearly taken in by the aria – so she’s not invincible and she doesn't know about everything,’ he hesitated a moment, ‘Though she did break free of the aria… and I guess she knows more about us now…’
Mask snorted, his appearance taking on the aspect of Malone as well as his voice, ‘Thanks for that massive ray of insight, boss, you're a big help.’
Weaver spoke up before Malone could reply to the mockery, ‘If there are no more questions then I suggest you all get on with it. I’m not sure where, but I’m confident that the Pariah will strike again tomorrow night - see to it that it is her, and not us, who is hunted.’
The gathered hunters grunted their assent and made their way out of the lounge - except for the Ryder twins, who instead started to lead the dancer over to the cream sofas to take their tryst to the next level.
Shade stepped forward to his two enforcers before they could leave the room, 'No games, understand? Get this done.'
Ogre smacked his chest, 'I'll break her and lay her before you in chains - it is as inevitable as the setting sun.'
Dryad brought a hand to her lips to stifle a chuckle at the intensity of her colleague and stepped in close to Shade, capturing his attention with her penetrating yellow eyes, 'It is all a game, Shade,' she whispered, her voice like velvet, 'It has always been a game.' She trailed a finger up his chest and a slight haze seemed to radiate out from her body, causing Shade to take a rare step backwards.
He considered labouring the point but instead stood aside and let his people pass.
The red mistress watched as the team filtered out of the room, each of them intent on their new goal of capturing the Pariah, and she allowed herself a small smile as she considered the trouble she was unleashing unto the heroine.
Overkill, perhaps, but it seemed fitting treatment for the vigilante who had the temerity to go to war with Underhaven. If Malone and the remains of his empire of professional rapists weren’t enough, the six deadly criminals she had just added to the mix certainly would be. It was a hellish cocktail of perverse retribution that virtually guaranteed one, inescapable, conclusion.
One way or another, the Pariah would fall.
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So that's the first part, and our adventure is set up... I've probably bitten off more than I can chew with that set up... I'm not sure including this big tangent to do with the Outsiders was a clever idea at all - let alone having quite so many hunters to deal with. I probably should have had, like, two hunters... That would have been much more manageable, huh? Nevertheless! I think I will try to make a go of this for now. It will just mean that this story probably has a few parts to it.
I think I've just learned a valuable lesson here about containing my ambition...