Sharp102

  They were three men and all of them had pistols in hand. And they weren't shy to use it. There was a barrage of gunfire at the office we were in. Hopper and I dove to the side, taking cover behind a cabinet. I whipped out my knife and started carving a pentacle on the wall.

  “What are you doing?” Hopper said.

  I rolled my eyes. “What do you think? I'm trying to escape.”

  “No, we aren't done yet. I still didn't find the document,” he said, sneaking a hurried gnce at the hallway outside.

  “If we don't get out now, then even our corpses won't be found,” I said as I finished drawing the pentacle for the dismantling ritual.

  “Now isn't the time to run!” he snapped at me and pulled out his own pistol from his coat.

  He leaned out and fired at the doorway where the men were standing. A wall of fire erupted out of the ground. “You idiot,” I said. “How long is that fire supposed to keep us safe?”

  “Long enough for me to get a hold of some somnia.” He was about to look into his hold-all when a loud fizzling noise caught our attention.

  One of the men at the door stood with a rge can in his hand and the fire had disappeared. It took me half a moment to realize that the can in the man’s hand was the fire extinguisher.

  Of course, this pce also was a science b. Of course, they would be better prepared in case of an accident.

  The men at the door burst into the room the next moment and grabbed a hold of us. One of them twisted my arm behind my back and gripped the back of my neck, like a chicken that was about to be sughtered.

  One of the other two tackled Hopper to the ground while the st man confiscated Hopper's hold-all and my reticule.

  “You both really thought you could just break into the main office and get away with it?” the man who had Hopper pinned down said with a scoff.

  “A boy can dream, you know,” Hopper said with sass.

  While the two men who had restrained us checked our pockets for any weapons another set of footsteps rang out down the hallway. A man in his mid-forties entered the room. He had bck hair that were turning gray at the temples and a cleft chin. He wore a navy blue waist coat over a shirt and trousers of the same color. His shoes were shiny bck and they gave him air and authority of a man who owned things and did with them as he saw fit.

  It didn't take much effort to deduce that this man was probably a Wyndham. He showed a sense of mock surprise when he looked at Hopper.

  “My, oh my, of all the people, I wasn't expecting to find General Hopper himself, sneaking through my humble establishment.” He casually pushed his hands into his trouser pockets and smirked. “Last I heard, you were transferred off to Orowen after your magnificent stint of witch hunting here.”

  Hopper grit his teeth and said nothing. Wyndham held his gaze with his smug look. The man next to him who still had my bag was pointing his gun at Hopper and I.

  Wyndham crouched in front of Hopper and cocked his head. “You still haven't told me why you are here,” he said. “If you answer me like a gentleman, I won't have to do anything drastic.”

  Hopper smirked. “Just remember if anything happens to me, questions are going to be raised. There will be an investigation. You need to be really delusional to think you could actually get away with it.”

  Wyndham scoffed. “You really think I'm that reckless?” he said. “We won't kill you, Hopper. We will hand you over to your own friends. And they will execute you for the good of everyone.”

  Hopper frowned, puzzled.

  “You didn't get it?” Wyndham said, grinning like a school boy who was about to reveal the most scandalous gossip he'd heard. “We’ll turn your blood green, Hopper. The Inquisition will not let you walk among the masses with that tainted blood. Then they'll burn you. Did you forget the drill, my friend? You sent so many people to their stakes to be burned.”

  Hopper just gred at the businessman.

  “Tell me what you were doing up here!” Wyndham snapped.

  “You can kiss my ass.”

  Wyndham's muscleman dealt a diligent punch to Hopper's face for the insult. The blow cut a line on Hopper's lip, blood oozed.

  Wyndham leaned closer to the prone man. “I'm a very cautious person, Hopper. And I don't take unnecessary risks,” he said. “I gave you a chance to live. But you chose to sign your death warrant.” Then he rose to his feet and turned to leave. “Take him to the storage and dope him up with sulfutrin.” He gave a dismissive wave. “Then report him to the Inquisition.”

  “What about the girl?” the man holding me asked.

  Wyndham paused and looked at me, as if he was noticing me for the first time. He only spared me a momentary gnce before shrugging. “She is a girl. Do what you want. Just make sure you don't leave any traces after.” He started walking again.

  Gotta hand it to Wyndham. His words had scared me for a moment. But then I remembered something. I looked at the man who was still holding my reticule. I yelled, “It's time to do your duty. Come out!”

  There was a sound of gss bursting inside the bag and bck mist issued out of the crack in the closing fp. The mist materialized into the shape of a woman with a subservient look.

  “Save me from these three men!” I snapped.

  The woman nodded and zipped at the man holding me. The men were still stunned at what had just transpired. The man holding me fired his gun. But the bullets merely passed through the Abyssal being's ethereal body.

  My servant phased through me and disappeared inside the man. He gasped and then he winced, his grip on me loosened and I pushed him off me. The man stumbled backwards, gripping his chest, as if suffering from a severe heart attack. His gun fell out of his hand. And then he was puking blood on the floor.

  The sight made my stomach churn but adrenaline was coursing through me. I grabbed the gun and turned to the man who was holding Hopper. He was still weirdly mesmerized by what was unfolding in front of him. But the sight of the gun in my hand jolted him back to reality. He fired at me. And I fired back. The only difference was, I fired three times in succession, right into his stomach. He was thrown backwards, blood spurting out of his gut.

  I looked at Wyndham who had already taken off running. I took aim and pulled the trigger, managing to stop him before he could escape the hallway, but since this was my first time holding a gun, the bullet I fired got him in his left buttcheek.

  ****

  Yes, I did feel sick in my stomach at first. The man I'd ordered my abyssal servant to attack had died from some kind of intense internal hemorrhage, apparently. The man that I'd shot had gone unconscious and had been bleeding like a stuck pig. As for Wyndham…

  Well, he couldn't stop crying. I didn't bme him.

  Even though I was feeling nauseous, getting fshbacks of Yazara in heaven, I still forced a sense of bance upon myself. With slightly trembling hands I reached into my reticule and dug around for a healing ointment.

  The man who had puked a gallon of blood was beyond saving. But at least I could use the ointment on the guy I had shot.

  And no, I didn't care for him one bit. If he was a stranger dying on the street, I would've probably kept walking. God knows how many homeless junkies I'd passed by in my previous life, not giving them a second gnce or a thought. Carelessly assuming that they were just bcked out while it was obvious the suckers had overdosed themselves to death.

  Yet, I used to keep walking on.

  This wasn't anything like that. I wasn't a paragon of morality. Nor was this my first encounter with death. No, this was a step of caution.

  I didn't want nightmares of guts spilling all over the floor because I pulled a trigger. I didn't want to hear the thunder of gunshots in my head. I didn't want to be a murderer.

  And so I emptied half of the ointment on the man's Swiss cheese belly. Since I shot him point bnk, the bullets had passed clean out of his back. So there wasn't any need to worry for the projectiles to get trapped in his body if the wounds were sealed.

  The ointment did its job. The man was still unconscious because blood loss was blood loss. But at least his torso wasn't looking like a tennis racket anymore.

  My heart stopped racing a bit. And I decided to ignore the other corpse that was lying behind me. I took their guns away and turned to Hopper instead, who was now interrogating Wyndham (his name was Ernest, by the way).

  “If you want me to make the pain go away, then open your mouth, Wyndham,” Hopper said, grabbing the man's waistcoat and giving him a firm shake. “Wasn't it you who created the whole green blood hysteria?”

  Even though Ernest Wyndham was still in the middle of crying, he looked at Hopper, befuddled. “It was you.”

  Hopper spped the man across the face. “Answer my damn question!”

  Ernest cried harder, gripping his bleeding butt tighter. “Yes!” he nodded. “It was me!”

  “Why?” Hopper said in a cold, ruthless voice.

  Ernest sniffled and looked at the man, terrified and stunned by the intensity of Hopper's penetrating gaze. It was enough to get him to start singing.

  He told us that he got the idea from Alistair Hammer, William Hammer's father when they had been enjoying some ale one evening. Alistair had told Ernest that William had been researching the nature of human blood and he had made an interesting discovery. The phenomenon where the color of blood changes for some reason.

  Ernest had dug further into the concept and with the resources at his apothecary he had tested out that Hammer's theory actually had some merit to it. Ernest had been fascinated and decided to take advantage of the fear of getting bewitched that had slowly spread through Ravenwind.

  Destiny had been on his side since a lunatic like Hopper (the real Hopper) had been stationed at Stonebarrow at the time. So Ernest had managed to convince Alistair with promises of expansion of their respective businesses to become an investor for this project of his.

  Since Hammer's family manufactured fertilizers, it meant they had a good amount of sulfur in their stock, since it was one of the ingredients in some fertilizers. And sulfur was what caused the green blood condition.

  Wyndhams made the drug that would cause that condition only after a few doses. They smuggled these into the medications of their regur customers. While the drugs were taking effect, Wyndham and Alistair Hammer paid a few people to spread the rumors of the green blood being a sign of a curse among the lesser educated parts of the Stonebarrow society.

  And like it went with most rumors, they became more and more embellished as they started going around. And thus, the Spirit of Darkness was a thing that caused the green blood.

  Once the rumors had spread well among the masses, Wyndham lodged a compint about several people being cursed. Since the real Hopper was an idiot, he bought into the narrative of the green blood being cursed. And just like that more than thirty people had been executed.

  “And then William Hammer was put on the watchlist because he was ardently trying to debunk the green blood theory,” I said.

  “William was the only obstacle in our way,” Wyndham said. “Since, he actually knew the science behind the green blood. Alistair knew that if his son managed to convince the government that the green blood wasn't a real curse, he would lose the share of revenue that he was going to make.”

  “Where was this extra revenue even coming from?” Hopper said. “From what you've told, I can only see that you just spread the rumor and sleazily slipped your sulphur spiked drug to the oblivious people. Where is this other money coming from?”

  Wyndham hesitated before saying, “You are right, spreading the rumor and smuggling the drug is all that I told you. But after…after you were transferred and William left town after an ugly fight with Alistair, we released a medicine that would make people immune against getting cursed or affected by the Spirit of Darkness. Of course there was no Spirit of Darkness. Or any immunity boosting elixir. It was just a sugar pill.”

  For a moment, I was baffled. “And people believed you? Are they actually buying this?”

  Wyndham nodded sheepishly. “Fear is a great motivation, you know? Thanks to Hopper, thirty people of this city were executed just because the color of their blood was different. No one wants that to happen to themselves. We just…pyed by the rules of the business. To sell your product, you sometimes have to create a demand for that product yourself.”

  Sharp102