Page 39 of Reaper (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter #10)

I t seemed like only yesterday that I’d dangled a man off the roof of a building by his ankles.

Probably because it had been yesterday when I dangled a scrawny banker off the roof of a building by his ankles.

Now here I was, contemplating doing it again, only this time off my balcony, which wasn’t all that different from the roof, since I live on the top floor of my building.

It is a little more recognizable to any passersby, since it would be my apartment, and my building isn’t nearly as tall as the bank building I hung Piss Boy off of the night before, so I gave it some serious thought before I hoisted Pete up by his belt and flipped him upside down, walking toward the sliding glass door while he struggled in my grasp.

“Come on, Murray, what are you doing?” he asked, his hair brushing the top of my coffee table. I didn’t crack his skull open on the furniture, but only because there might be information inside that gourd that I needed.

“The name is Harker, asshole,” I said through gritted teeth.

I was inordinately pissed off at Pete for turning out to be one of the assclowns running things at the fight club, and it was totally my fault.

I liked Pete, and I usually don’t like anybody.

It keeps things a lot cleaner if I can maintain a consistent level of misanthropy in my life.

But I was stuck in a cage, and Pete was the first person there who didn’t obviously want to murder me, so I’d let my guard down a little. And he betrayed me.

Okay, yeah, I was totally pretending to be someone I wasn’t in order to shut the whole fight club thing down around his ears and send him plunging into unemployment and possible death, depending on how his boss treated loose ends, but I wasn’t interested in exploring the inherent hypocrisy in letting someone betray you in an undercover situation and how that created feelings that were totally disproportionate to our actual level of friendship.

I was just feeling pissy, not to mention I’d been awake for most of two days hunting these assholes down, and I needed a nap.

So I wasn’t nearly as charitable as I’d usually be, and I’m not known for my charity.

“Who runs the fight club?” I asked, holding Pete off the ground in one hand as I opened the door. The sticky heat of Charlotte in the spring slapped me in the face, like getting wrapped in a soggy warm blanket.

“Dude, I tell you that, he’ll murder me!” Pete’s voice went up a notch when he realized how soft the traffic noises were way up here.

“What do you think I’m about to do to you if you don’t tell me?” I asked.

“I thought you were the good guys? Like, the government or something. You can’t kill people!”

I lifted him up until his face was level with mine, albeit upside down.

His legs dangled back over my shoulder because of the position he was in, but I trusted him not to try to kick me in the head on account of the whole falling to his death thing.

“Are you stupid?” I asked. “Governments kill people all the time. Admittedly, they usually aren’t as direct about it as I am, nor are they nearly as precise, but don’t think for a moment that I work for the government because they do a goddamned thing to restrain my baser impulses.

Which right now, consist mainly of seeing how many cars on South Boulevard you’d bounce off of before you hit the ground. Kinda like Frogger, only messier.”

“Dude, put me down and I’ll tell you everything. I swear.”

I did just as he asked, dropping him in a heap on the balcony.

His hands were bound behind him, and his ankles were tied, so there was nothing to break his fall but the concrete, but that was his problem.

He should have been more specific in his request. “Okay,” I said, kneeling down by his face. “Who’s in charge?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I don’t like much,” I replied. “I’m notoriously hard to buy gifts for. Now. Who. Is. In. Charge?”

“Mort.”

Good thing he was already on the floor because that name would have loosened my grip for sure.

I’d never considered Mort might be in charge of the whole shitshow, not even in my wildest speculations.

It seemed more likely that Luke himself had bankrolled the whole thing decades back and forgotten about it than Mort setting up an underground fight club.

“What the fuck did you just say?” I asked, glaring down at him. I could see a purple tinge across his skin, which told me I had power leaking out of my eyes again. It happens sometimes when I’m not paying attention, and I very much was not paying attention at that moment.

“Mort is the real boss. It was weird at first, having the owner show up in different bodies all the time, but I got used to it after a while. I never let him possess me, though, no matter what he promised. That seemed…I dunno, just weird.”

As a hitchhiker demon, Mort moved from body to body at will, usually with express permission from the body’s original owner.

Some people wanted to know what it was like to be possessed, some people wanted the built-in excuse of “there was a demon inside me” to do awful shit, and some people he just bribed.

I’d never known him to take over an unwilling meat suit, but I’m sure it happened.

“ That’s what struck you as weird, Pete? You were helping run an underground fight club for monsters with a were-tiger recruiter and a vampire manager, and a little demonic possession was what crossed the line into weird for you?”

“I grew up around witches and faeries, man. Paras and cryptids were part of my life. But demons? Nah, I never had any dealings with them until I started working for Mort.”

“What was the deal? Why did Mort set this place up?” I’d always thought he was content with his place as owner of one of the few real Sanctuaries in Charlotte, and a primo information broker for all things magical and spooky.

“I got no idea, man. I barely know the guy. Jeremiah and Rachelle dealt with him a lot more than me. I was mostly there to handle any fighters that Mort wanted us to pay special attention to.”

I paused in my near-steady stream of muttered profanities. “What? Mort wanted you to pay special attention to me? Why?”

Pete shook his head. “Dude, I didn’t ask questions. I just did what I was told and cashed my paychecks. I’m stupid, but I’m not stupid enough to ask a demon why he wants somebody to get special treatment in cage matches.”

Not the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, honestly. I turned this new information over and over in my head, but it still made no sense. “How long?” I finally asked.

“How long what?”

“How long have the fights been going on?” I asked.

“Right after the pandemic, as soon as things started opening up again. So I dunno, four years or so?”

Okay, so it wasn’t something he started as soon as he got to Charlotte, because Mort had been here before I arrived a couple decades back.

I thought back to anything that happened around the COVID times that would have made him want to launch a new business venture, but nothing came to mind.

“Did he ever say anything around you about why he was running this place? Was there some goal he had in mind?”

“Man, I have no friggin’ idea. And honestly, I never cared.

There were folks beating down the door to fight, and even more folks beating down the door to watch the fights.

We had people flying in on private planes from New York, Chicago, Miami, even some from England and Europe.

I heard one time that there was a resort in the Caribbean that offered our fight trips as a tour for their highest rollers. ”

The pride in his voice made me want to puke.

“You said you grew up around cryptids and paras. How could you want to participate in something like this? People were dying in these fights? And that’s not even getting into the fact that they rigged things so nobody ever left a winner. How could you do that?”

His pale face flushed under his freckles, and he scowled up at me.

“Yeah, I grew up around you freaks. My mother was part faerie, and my father was a witch. My whole life was all about magic, and nature, and being at one with the universe, and all that bullshit. But nobody ever spared a thought for Pete. Poor, useless Pete, with no magic, no faerie glamours, not even the tiniest points on his ears. I wasn’t even an afterthought to them, I was invisible.

Because I was the worst fucking thing they could imagine for their child— human .

” He spat on the last word, a big glob of phlegm right by my shoe.

“I’m sorry they treated you like shit,” I said. “I really am.”

“Like you give a fuck.”

“You’re right, I don’t really give a fuck.

You’re lying there whining about being human?

About being normal ? About being able to walk in the sunlight, something my uncle hasn’t been able to do for half a goddamned millennium?

About being able to look somebody in the eyes without shielding and not be afraid you’d burn out their soul and leave them a drooling husk?

I haven’t been able to do that since fucking Prohibition, you sniveling little bitch.

Your mommy and daddy didn’t love you enough?

What about all those shifters who have to chain themselves in their basement once a month because they don’t have complete control when they’re transformed and they don’t want to murder anybody?

What about the faerie knight I fought beside who may never be allowed to go home, and will just be stuck on this plane, slowly growing weaker and weaker until the separation from his people and his world kills him?

“So no, I don’t give a fuck that your parents didn’t love you.

I don’t give a fuck that you’re so goddamned insecure that you helped Mort and the rest of your crew commit murder on the regular, slaughtering people who just wanted to try and make a better life for themselves and their loved ones.

And I don’t give a fuck how big a mess you make when you splatter all over the sidewalk, you pitiful little bitch.

” And I snatched him back up off the floor by his collar, grabbed his belt with the other hand, and pressed him over my head, ready to send him flying off into space.

“Quincy, stop.” I froze at the words behind me. There’s pretty much one person who can regularly sneak up on me and calls me “Quincy.”

“Why?” I asked Luke without turning around. “You’ve killed more people than some standing armies. Why do you give a shit if I kill this asshat?”

“Because it affects you more than it does me. I grew up in bloodshed and was a warrior before I was a monster. You are neither. You are a protector, Quincy, and every life you take is one you could not save. I have seen how that affects you, even if you have not. Please do not allow anger to add another red mark to your ledger.”

I put Pete down, then shoved him back onto his ass and turned to Luke. He had a look of infinite sadness on his face, and I realized that every body I dropped had a cost to him, as well. “I’ve killed hundreds, if not thousands of people, Luke. Why say something now?”

“Seeing you in that arena, fighting against nigh-impossible odds, and reveling in the challenge…I was so incredibly proud of you, Quincy. You were fighting for something greater than yourself, for someone other than yourself. You were fighting for the others in the cages, whether they wanted your help or not. That is valiant. That is just. That is honorable. But this?” He gestured to Pete.

“This is none of those things. This is power for power’s sake.

This is killing because you can, not because you must. This…

this is what monsters do. If you kill this man, it may feel good for an instant, but the cost to your soul is something you will feel forever. ”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

Luke turned, and in a blink, he was gone.

I stood there for a long moment, letting his words sink in, letting them really penetrate my consciousness, then I looked down at Pete.

I knelt and freed his wrists. “Count Dracula just saved your worthless life. Get the fuck out of here, and do better. Be better. He gave you a second chance. Don’t waste it. There won’t be a third.”

Then I walked into the apartment, leaving all the doors wide open, and went home. I don’t know what Pete did, and frankly, I didn’t give a fuck. Luke hadn’t saved him. He’d saved me. Again.