“So you let him get away?” asked Burrzie.

  “Lady Beat was there and there was nothing I could do,” said Petrov. “Ghost Thing sure is a slippery customer, quite literally.”

  Dead Head needed a few of his thugs to go deal with a problem with the Northside Daggers so Burrzie was driving was Pharaoh, Dice, Hustler Petrov up to the Daggers’ spot. Petrov was in the back, top hat removed so the two small horns on his head were quite visible. All three of them has seen Petrov around the warehouse, so they were getting used to the “demon’s” grotesque appearance. Petrov held his cane between his legs, hands resting on top.

  Burrzie was driving. He had a blue baseball cap on and a heavy coat. Dice took the passenger seat, the long-time thug sporting a close shave of blonde hair and thick eyebrows. Then there was Pharaoh. He got that name back when he lived in Quebec when someone found out about his Egyptian heritage. No matter. Pharaoh took the moniker and owned it, turning the insult into a nickname.

  Through long hair tied with wooden beads, he looked over at Petrov. He spoke in a faint Québécois accent. “I can’t believe how many times Ghost Thing has gotten away, though.”

  Burrzie took his eyes upward, pursing his lips out as he thought. “It’s only been twice now, right?”

  Pharaoh puttered. “Yeah, I suppose you are correct. Guess it feels like more because, uh, wasn’t it Ghost Thing that interfered with that case up on Sunrise?”

  Pharaoh was correct, although no one felt inclined to keep the small talk going. The car feel into silence so Pharaoh changed the subject: “What are we doing with the Northside Daggers anyway?”

  “We’re gonna put the fear in them,” said Dice.

  Burrzie tilted his head back to address his voice to Pharaoh. “Boss wants us to intimidate them. Get them to stop messing around our turf. Get violent if necessary.”

  No more was needed to be said. Pharaoh got the picture.

  There was a weird smell in the car– something like a chemical plant– and Dice didn’t think it was the car itself, nor the neighbourhood, but rather the one non-human passenger sitting behind him.

  “Something in this car stinks,” said Dice, “and I think it’s zombie man behind me.”

  Petrov scoffed at the accusation. “For your information, my body produces less of an odor than humans.”

  Saying that bugged Petrov a little, though, as it required him to separate himself from humanity.

  Dice lifted his arm and sniffed into his shoulder. “Me? I smell fine. Can you even smell, Petrov? I mean... you don’t have a nose.”

  “Yes,” said Petrov. “It’s a sense I kept with me even after my... resurrection.”

  Dice flashed a smile back at Petrov. “You can smell, huh? How about hearing, then?” He reached over and turned on the radio. Rock music erupted from the speakers. There were a couple in the back so Petrov could really feel the blast of screamed vocals and cacophonous guitars.

  Dice looked back to make sure he caught the shadow man’s expression of annoyance reflecting in the window. Dice snickered.

  Rock music. Hustler Petrov had hoped it was a fad but when he was resurrected in the nineties, he was disappointed to find out that rock music had flourished in the decades he was “asleep”, and not only that but other genres had caught on to culture as well.

  Why couldn’t jazz have made a comeback? Petrov asked himself.

  Even without ears, Petrov has the ability to hear sound but when the clash of an overdriven guitar reverberated his side, he wished that wasn’t so.

  “And our final song for the evening was PJ Harvey with ‘Down By The River’, uh, wait, ‘Down By The Water’. Ha-ha. Tomorrow is daylight savings time so you are going to get an extra hour to sleep if that’s what you’re doing. This has been Saturday night with Zed over here at Star FM, Toronto’s number one rock station. Take it easy.”

  The Northside Daggers had a small depot as their place of operations– a small lot with two garages and a catwalk picked out by Olly himself, the gang’s leader. A cold wind blew over the place’s front yard, a concrete lot with tanks, barrels and wooden crates scattered around. “Whatever– it makes the place look more legit,” as Olly described it.

  Schwartz was in the garage, cleaning up a scattered array of tools. Ellington was in the back, taking a load off of his feet by propping himself up on a wooden crate by the catwalk ladder. Olly and Ren were out front; one with a metal pipe, the other with a chain. They heard that Dead Head was going to send a couple thugs after them and needed to be out there to scare them off.

  Olly, a hardened man with his hair cut bald, watched the streets. “Can’t believe these poseurs think they own us.”

  “I heard they’re a big gang,” said Ren.

  “A big gang full of idiots.” Olly looked over to Ren. “You know that bust at that Sunshine Centre? That was them. ‘Think they were also the guys that got busted at that construction site.” Olly let out a searing chuckle. “Complete idiots!”

  There was a car rolling down the street– a sedan with its paint job a dark brown close to black. Tinted windows. Headlights off. Even before the car turned into the lot, Olly knew it was them– Dead Head’s men.

  The car stopped in the centre of the yard, the engine cut, and doors opened. Burrzie and Dice were the kind of fella Olly was expecting, but Pharaoh looked a little tribal for gang standards. Then Olly looked over and saw Hustler Petrov. The creature put his top hat back on and straightened his jacket.

  Olly’s posture lost some edge. He wasn’t expecting four of them.

  He had been in tense situations before, though, so Schwartz, watching from the garage, expected his leader to handle this situation. Olly tightened his throat and spoke hard. “This place isn’t Dead Head territory.”

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  Burrzie walked forward, clenched fist at his side. “The boss wants–”

  “Dead Head won’t be having you guys doing business on his territory,” said Dice, cutting off his companion.

  It was then that Dead Head’s guys realized that nobody was designated the leader, the someone who was supposed to do a majority of diplomacy. Dice and Burrzie exchanged a look, a silent demand to one another to step down and let the other talk, neither of them sure how they should have responded to each other.

  As far as he was concerned, it was Hustler Petrov’s turn to take the stage. He walked out front, cutting between Burrzie and Dice. Olly and Ren got a good look at Petrov and both had trouble maintaining their composure in the face of a spectre or whatever Petrov was supposed to be. Olly was a skeptic but his ability to rationalize why he was looking into the face of some kind of shadow person was falling short.

  “Gentlemen,” said Petrov, stamping his cane down before him. He lowered, almost bowing as he spoke, “We come before you to politely ask you to stop associating on Dead Head’s territory.” He raised his head, a celestial eye gazing at Olly and Ren from underneath a top hat rim. “Do we need to re-examine which neighbourhoods belong to Dead Head?”

  Ellington was in the back corner, watching on, and when he saw Petrov stand before them, a deadly chill came over him. “What the hell is that?” he asked as quietly as a grave. A primal fear in the back of his mind demanded that he do something about that shadow creature, so Ellington slid to a nearby toolbox– a special one he kept around. If he could open it quietly, he would get himself a very useful weapon.

  “Dead Head doesn’t own anything,” said Olly. He had to hide his discomfort with talking to a shadow person, so he peppered his statement with an insult. “You... haunt!”

  Petrov tittered. “Please, sir, I am no ghost.” He knocked the top of his cane. “Far from it.”

  Not that far from it, thought Pharaoh, knowing what he knew about

  Olly raised his metal pipe. “You’re not going to tell us where we work, so if you ain’t got anything more, I suggest you leave.”

  It was supposed to be an easy bullying for both parties. Nobody’s attempt to intimidate the other was working so the tension in the air was heating up. Dead Head had orders for something to be done, and the Daggers knew it.

  Dice tried his best to be discrete as he reached in his back pocket for a weapon. Burrzie looked around the yard for a weapon to pickup. Pharaoh stayed back and peeked inside the car to see if somebody left something in there.

  “Pity,” said Petrov with a face calm as the sky on a full moon, “I was hoping we could be civil.”

  Petrov’s eyes lit up with a violent craving. He raised his cane and swung it down on Olly. Olly dodged out of the way but Olly’s attempt to strike Petrov with his pipe missed. When Ren tried whipping his chain around Petrov, the shadow man ducked and swung his cane up Ren’s body. A dark light emerged from the tip and grazed Ren’s body. Ren fell back, the discomfort of that magic singing him stung deep. She shook and got a breath, looking down at what the attack had done, although nothing seemed apparent.

  Dice and Burrzie joined the fray. Burrzie picked up a glass bottle and took a couple swipes at Ren, although Ren was quick to bring himself out of his shock and step back from Burrzie’s attack. Dice showed a knife and tried getting it to Olly, but Olly picked up another weapon– a crow bar– and swung at Dice and Petrov as they approached him, keeping the thug and the shadow man at bay.

  Schwartz saw what was going on so he picked up a wrench and hopped over a few boxes to join the fight. Pharaoh, who could only find a metal barrel lid as a weapon, intercepted Schwartz and took a hefty downward swing at the guy. Schwartz dodged out of the way fast enough to avoid the majority of force from the attack but the lid knocked his wrists and got him to drop the wrench.

  Olly was something of a fighter. Dice came at him with the knife but Olly could slap the thing away with his pipe. All Dice needed was to land one blow, though.

  Once the fight got going, Ellington didn’t care too much to be quiet. He ripped open the toolbox, got the pistol and turned towards the fight. Looking into the sprawl of chaos, he knew there was little chance he could fire into the place and not hit once of his own. He climbed up the ladder to the top of the catwalk and ducked behind a wooden board but up against the rail. Peeking over at the fight, he had good sights on Dice, so he took aim... and fired.

  The bullet hit Dice’s knife and the weapon snapped out of his hands and fell to the floor. The gunshot spooked everyone, including the Daggers. Pharaoh forgot about Schwartz– the guy was unarmed at the moment– and jumped behind some boxes, hoping they were sturdy enough to stop bullets. Dice ducked behind a car, Burrzie spotted Ellington on top the cat walk and hid by some barrels, hoping he was out of sight. Even if his supernatural body could have taken a bullet better than his human friends, Petrov didn’t want to get hurt so he ducked behind a crate.

  The Daggers stood back, not wanting to get close to Ellington’s line of fire. They let him do some work and hoped he got one of Dead Head’s men.

  Ellington fired a few more shots, taking out the tail light on Burrzie’s car. Burrzie thought about getting beneath Ellington and attacking him through the grate of the catwalk but Ellington’s gun made a better weapon than whatever objects Burrzie could attempt to throw up at the guy.

  Some of the tail light’s glass got on Dice’s sweater so he wiped it away and screamed, “Petrov! Get up there and do something!”

  He worried that his garments would be harmed, but Petrov emerged from the crate and ran to beneath the catwalk. Ellington looked down and panicked; he couldn’t see the monster anywhere. Where did he go? Then, Petrov jumped up, clearing the ladder with a single leap. Before Ellington had a chance to turn the gun towards Petrov, Petrov look the end of his cane and jabbed it into Ellington’s chest. A light of dark energy burst through the other side, taking as violent as a shape could take without dealing bloodshed.

  Ellington dropped the gun onto the grate, his body toppled over, and the man was still.

  None of the others knew what exactly happened, but Dice saw it as an opportunity to run for his knife. Seeing that their sniper was taken care of, the Daggers went back to fighting. Schwartz went back to the garage to get a weapon, Ren went after Burrzie, and Burrzie went after Olly.

  Olly swung his pipe at Burrzie, knocking his on the shoulder hard enough for a crack to ring in the air. Burrzie stood his ground and tried decking the guy in the face. Burrzie’s fists only grazed Olly and Olly’s swing with a pipe was enough to get Burrzie to stumble on the ground.

  While down there, he saw an opening on Olly’s legs. Burrzie stamped his boot into Olly and got the guy to keel over. Olly groaned but he shook off the pain and struggled back to his feet.

  And who was waiting up there for him? It was Dice, knife in hand. He raised his blade high and slammed it down into Olly’s back. The blade punctured enough flesh to ruin vital machinations of the human body. Olly groaned, dropped his weapons, and clutched his chest as best as his weakening grasp could. His tortured howl rang through the air.

  Ren and Schwartz stared at Olly; they knew that they were watching their associate’s end.

  So Ren dropped his weapon and took off into the alley between garages. Schwartz returned outside and saw Olly collapsed on the ground with crimson leaking from him. Where did Ren go? Did he book it? The fight was a lost cause, it seemed. Schwartz went back through the garage and out the door on the other side of the floor.

  Dice took the blade out of his fallen foe and wiped it on a nearby rag. Everyone got a breath. The fight was over.

  “Are we done here?” asked Dice.

  Petrov hopped down from the catwalk. “I believe we are. Come now, let’s leave before the cops arrive.”

  Pharaoh looked up at Ellington, the man’s lifeless body resting on the grate floor. “Thanks for that, Petrov.”

  Petrov grinned and tipped his hat.

  There were no sirens heard so there was still time to get away. Burrzie picked up all the pieces of his tail light he could find and stuffed them in a pocket. Everyone got inside the vehicle, Burrzie started the ignition, and the sedan pulled out, leaving Dice’s body to cool in a pool of blood.

  They were quiet as they drove away. Police sirens blared across walls, though. Burrzie was nervous– he had never been a getaway driver– but he made a couple turns without crossing paths with the police so everyone got to feeling in the clear. A few turns more and they were well out of any search area.

  “Was kinda hoping that went better,” asked Burrzie.

  “We’re all alive,” said Dice. “It went perfect.”

  “I mean the bloodshed,” said Burrzie.

  “Their bloodshed,” said Dice, “not ours.”

  Almost like they didn’t want to jinx it, the four of them kept quiet on their drive back to home base. And– Petrov the most thankful for this– the radio was kept silent.