Chapter 8: Dirty Work - The Night Market

It was late, or early – depending on who you asked – and the streets they passed through were half dead and flickering under sickly amber streetlights. Tower blocks and shuttered stores swept by the windows in the wash of headlights. The inside of the car was tight and dim, the engine a restrained growl beneath them, barely masking the tension of the city that was refusing to sleep.

Laik drove with one hand on the wheel, the other on the gearstick, knuckles tight and jaw locked. He wore street clothes – thick hoodie, black jeans, the same battered black-and-white jacket thrown over it all. Anything more formal would’ve given the game away. Not that anyone would’ve mistaken him for ordinary. Even here, where the only witnesses were fellow Enforcers and the shifting skyline, he emanated tension like static from a pylon wire.

In the passenger seat, Swan checked his phone which had pinged not seconds before, soaking his sharp features in a whitewash glow.

Laik glanced across.

‘What does the old man say?’

Swan didn’t look up, patiently brushing the screen with a thumb.

‘This isn’t from him. This is from his son.’

Laik gave a dry laugh and flexed his fingers on the wheel.

‘Jesus. He’s not even head of the table yet and already wants to call the shots. Think Mortis knows?’

‘Nothing we do happens without him knowing,’ Swan murmured, still scrolling. ‘Might just be turning a blind eye.’

Laik smirked but didn’t answer. The streets bled past – shuttered storefronts and closed takeaways with smeared neon, the occasional shadow lurking by a bin. He slowed as they neared the river, the car gliding over the bridge, closing in on their destination. It wasn’t the best part of the city: remnants of the manufacturing boom from the 1950s that had refused to modernise, or be torn down, so were left to rot. Overlapping graffiti blistered the walls: murals, tags and gang signs so numerous no one even bothered to scrub them away anymore.

‘How do you want to play this?’ Laik asked.

Swan finally locked his phone and tucked it away.

‘We go in and say hello. Everything else we improvise.’

‘That’s not a plan.’

‘I wasn’t pretending it was one. Alright. This is us.’

Laik pulled up just beneath a blown streetlight and killed the engine. The car settled into silence, tinted windows hiding those inside and their intentions.

From the back seat, Reese leaned forward between the headrests, sleeves rolled, red hair scruffy, and picked something from beneath her red nails.

‘Please tell me we’re not doing another polite knock-and-chat, boys,’ she said. ‘Last time we did that, I got spat on.’

‘That was because you smiled,’ Duncan replied next to her, not looking up. He fastened up his jacket, but not before he checked something metal and compact squatting in an inner pocket. When satisfied, he snapped the buttons shut. ‘Most of the time you look like you’re going to deck someone.’

Reese snorted, falling back onto the leather. ‘I wasn’t smiling. I was… being civil. And I don’t have a look.’

‘Yeah, that look. That one right there.’

‘What look? There’s no look.’

‘There’s a look.’ Swan caught her scowl in the rear-view mirror.

‘Exactly. Stop doing that.’ Duncan stated, emboldened by the validation.

Laik grabbed a pack of mints from the dash, shook one into his mouth, and offered the pack over his shoulder without looking. Duncan took one. Reese didn’t.

Swan swept his hood up and pulled the door handle.

‘Let’s get to it.’

The four of them climbed out. The air outside greeted them with the usual cocktail: diesel fumes, rotten God-knows-what from the bins behind the kebab place, something faintly chemical. The Impreza doors clicked shut behind them, and they took to the street.

It was a fine night for a walk.

The streets were a mess of old brick, loud signs and potholes that had grown too large to ignore. People stooped in entrances, their business unspoken but understood. Rough sleepers sprawled out on benches or in nooks, or foraging through rising piles of rubbish bags. A woman screamed laughter as she passed beneath reams of scaffolding that haphazardly clung to a storefront. In the next moment, a couple of drunks threw profanity at one another, then, when the words weren’t enough, fists.

They walked fast, crossing without waiting for lights, shoes crunching on glass. Swan led them down a narrow side alley that had become an obstacle course of wheelie bins and scrap wood. They emerged out the other side before an old cinema with boards nailed over the front.

The Quality Cinema was a relic from the 1930s and abandoned when local property prices began to freefall from the influx of small-time dealers. Display cases for posters were now broken and empty, but the marquee still read, COMING SOON: TROUBLE, as if its last movie was a premonition for tonight. The steps up had a number of empty beer bottles discarded on them, revealing a flickering neon sign which barely managed to say, SNOOKER HERE.

The lobby of the once-grand picture house was dusty, dirty and altogether unpleasant, the air polluted with stale urine and cigarette smoke, the kind that you tasted for days. Another sign pointed an arrow up a staircase with a single red ball.

‘Alright. We’re here to put things straight. I’ll do the talking. Follow my lead. And let’s not make a noise unless we have to. We’re not savages.’

They ascended the stairs without further words between them. When confronted with a suspiciously well-enforced door, Swan raised a hand and knocked sharply. A slit opened in the door at the top.

‘Who is it?’ a voice barked.

‘Buyers.’ Swan glared. ‘Now open up.’

‘What’s the password?’

Swan rolled his eyes. ‘The password is open the fucking door, else we take our money elsewhere. That good enough?’

There was a pause. Then a heavy bolt slid aside. The door opened with a groan, revealing the haze-drenched interior: snooker tables stretched beneath dim bulbs, with men hunched over cues and drinks. Concert posters of classic rock bands were lined along the walls. The music, an old rock ballad on a tired jukebox, played just loud enough to be unpleasant. At the end, a simple bar that was already struggling with the number of empty glasses.

All eyes turned to them. Dozens of men, women, a few half naked, all halfway into something illegal or immoral. The bartender froze mid-pour. A group of gothic clubwear-clad women, seated in a corner booth, blinked up from their seats, glassy-eyed. Cue sticks lowered slightly.

A man with greasy black hair and biker patch-covered waistcoat slipped from his stool and approached far too confidently. He looked at the Enforcers in turn.

‘You’re all here to buy?’

‘If you’ve got something to sell. Unless we’ve heard wrong.’ Swan quirked his head.

‘We do. Drinks first?’

‘No. Just business.’

‘Suit yourselves.’ He shrugged his burly shoulders and led them to the booth, where the line of leather seating was decorated with bodies, all under the watchful eyes of the rest. The table was littered with half-filled glasses, orange pill bottles and tracks of white powder. The ones capable gave saccharin-sweet welcomes soaked in promise. The others seemed too high or drunk to care.

‘How much you boys looking to spend?’

‘We’ve got deep pockets. That’s all you need to know.’

‘Alright. There’s what we’ve got at the moment. We’ve another six coming in tonight, closer to midnight. But these, they’ll have whatever you want in them, and you can either send them on their way, or you can have your fun, no holds barred. As long as you don’t damage the merchandise, you have free rein.’

Swan’s gaze slid to the first pair of slumped young women who could barely acknowledge their presence. He stepped closer, eyes narrowing, flicking his head to Laik. One of them didn’t even flinch when Laik turned her head to the side. Bite marks, old and new, covered the neck. Fresh bruises purpled the skin. He gently pulled the girl’s arm out to examine the bruising. His jaw tensed. Needle tracks ran down both arms. Laik scanned the others who shared identical injuries.

‘Living drug deliveries. Clever,’ Swan muttered. ‘Get them high, drain them later. They good to be bottled in this state?’

‘I’ve never heard of a problem yet,’ he rasped, proud.

‘What if they OD?’

‘Nobody cares. The girls involved in this aren’t the kind who get missed, if you catch my drift.’

‘Huh. You get a lot of attention doing this?’

‘God, I hope so. Already known as the best provider before the river. You know, if you boys want to invest in the expansion, you can have a seat with the others. Help shape things. Get a freebie or two, even.’

It was fashionable to believe that vampires hated humans.

Centuries of blurry confrontations transformed fact into fiction, and fiction into spectacles. Vampires were reduced from horrors to pageantry on the screen, mocked as children’s toys or worse. It was an easy conclusion to reach.

But, in truth, what they truly despised was each other.

Sure, tribalism was well and rife in the vampiric community, and one could meet a significant amount of prejudice for what you worshipped, when you were born, when you were turned, what customs of the era you adhered to or not.

But nothing drew their ire faster than their own behaving like fools, something which seemed to be rampant in the younger generation. The ones bitten in the last few decades, drunk on myths and media, parroted clichés from books and films as if they’d lived them. Deluded little cliques who mistook theatrics and fiction for tradition, thinking fangs and early hours made them untouchable.

To old blood, they were an embarrassment. A liability.

And liabilities didn’t last long.

Swan’s eyes flashed to Laik, who silently echoed his colleague’s thoughts.

‘Who’s in charge? I want to speak to them. Now,’ Swan put to the man.

‘That’ll be me.’ He weakly shrugged once more.

Stepping forward, Laik refuted the lie with a punch to the jaw. The man crumpled immediately. Cue sticks rose again. Glasses were put down or brandished as weapons. One smashed his bottle against the bar top and held it forward. The more lucid girls shrieked in alarm. One exploded into manic laughter.

‘He,’ Swan barked, pointing at the new mess for all to see, ‘is clearly not who we’re after! A word of advice to everyone here! Do not try and insult me! So, I shall say it again: where is the one running the show?’

A low growl filled the room. A bear of a man eased his stool back and straightened himself, wiping flecks of foam from his lips. He was massive. Ginger beard streaked with grey, decades of tattoos rode down thick forearms. Over six feet and built like one of the tables, the man moved with lazy menace. His black tank top stretched over muscle and gut, all but destroying a Ramones band logo. Those in his presence stepped aside to let him approach. He snorted, easily a good foot in height over Swan.

‘That’ll make you Hayter, I’m guessing,’ Swan sneered. Laik cracked his knuckles in turn. Duncan put up his fists, ready to get some good old-fashioned fighting done.

‘S’right. Any reason you barge in my joint and start swinging?’

‘I don’t know, is there any reason why I hear that you fellas are causing noise? Throwing girls around left and right smacked outta their fuckin’ skulls? Getting picked up by police with teeth marks all over them? Dragging ’em out the water? It’s a bad look. And tell your rabble to step back,’ Swan said, voice deep and dangerous. ‘I see a couple of them looking like they’re itching to do something stupid.’

Hayter’s jaw flexed. ‘Who the hell are you to tell us how to handle our merchandise?’

Laik didn’t flinch. ‘Representatives from the Cavendish Family. We were sent to shut down the trafficking.’

Hayter’s laugh was hollow. ‘Cavendish? Really? Fuck, no wonder she looks like she wants to kills us.’

Reese rolled her eyes and made a silent curse in exasperation.

‘This is Ode territory,’ Hayter continued. ‘You’re out of your depth here, boys, and we are paid up with the ones who matter. You better turn around, trot on home. Daddy’s gonna slap that ass when you get in. Will do when I put the call in.’

Swan stepped forward, eyes icy.

‘Given what you’re doing here, I’m surprised you’re not shut down already. You’ve drawn too much attention. There’re headlines already. Rumours, witnesses, bodies in ditches, for God’s sake. That puts all of us, from the gutter to the towers, at risk. That’s a sin we don’t tolerate.’

Hayter’s face turned red as he spat, ‘Learn to. I’ll be dead before I hand over my business to the Cavendishes.’

‘We have no intention of taking over this’ – Swan coughed deliberately, looking through the smoke haze at his people inching forward slowly – ‘classy operation. Just you working discretely as you know you should.’

‘Hm.’ Hayter nodded in thought, before deciding, ‘Well, I’m gonna keep doing what I do, the way I’ve always been doing. It’s going real well. And there’s nothing the Cavendishes can fuckin’ do about it. And nothing will get that point across faster than their people dumped outside the tower without their heads.’

A collective breath was held. Swan, unexpectedly, let out a chuckle.

‘I’m sorry to hear that. I’m guessing you’re not planning on letting us leave, right?’

Hayter’s teeth squeaked as they ground together. ‘Obviously.’

There had to be a good thirty goons, armed with whatever they could find, each emboldened by their better numbers. They snaked their way around the tables, forcing the Enforcers to press their backs to one another. Burning eyes, borderline animalistic and filled with murderous intent, glared at them from every direction.

‘Well! Since you want to do it the hard way.’ Swan patted Laik on the shoulder, who had been preoccupied with staring Hayter down. ‘Fancy showing them your party trick?’

The confidence from Hayter’s men quickly evaporated as Laik shuddered.

The room seemed to dim with every breath, like the light itself sensed something wrong and tried to flee. A tremor ran through Laik’s arms as shadow bled from the seams of his skin, coiling in inky threads that slithered up his neck, across his face, down his hands. He swelled, taller by inches, then feet. Broader. Denser. Eloped in a steaming, shifting mass of pitch. His fingers thickened, claw-like. The floorboards groaned under his new weight.

The shadows swallowed his face last, presenting a pair of collapsing suns where his eyes once were.

Nobody dared breathe. A good thing too, as they needed their breath for the cries.

Laik launched forward with all the weight of a charging train, slamming into the nearest pool table with such force it exploded. The air was suddenly filled with splinters, green felt, and two of Hayter’s men reduced to a tangle of broken limbs and shrieks. One hit the floor with a noise no throat should make. The other was flung into the air, crashing into one of the hanging lights and ripping it free from its supports. A blur of black limbs sailed this way and that. Snooker cues snapped effortlessly as they struck him. A crack of thunder boomed from the barrel of a handgun, whose owner soon lost both the firearm and the means to hold it. It was carnage.

Swan, Reese and Duncan were already throwing punches, capitalising on the carnage. Hayter had relinquished his bravery and tried to press through others to escape somewhere through the kitchen, but Swan wasn’t going to let this happen. He had tackled someone and stamped them into submission, pulled himself up onto one of the tables, sprinted its length and dived atop of him. He brought his head down onto Hayter’s nose, making it erupt into a crimson spray, buying him enough time to finish the job. Teeth sank into Hayter’s exposed neck. Swan was the furthest thing from gentle as he drove deeper into flesh, into muscle, before feeling the frenzied thudding in his mouth. Then, snapping his jaws together, he tore himself free, ripping away a strip of pale flesh in the process. Blood uncontrollably gushed from the wound, leaving Hayter wide-eyed in terror as his hands fruitlessly scrambled to stem the bleeding.

Swan rose, spitting the torn flesh to the floor, along with any trace of blood that had made it to his mouth. The last thing he wanted was that filth in his veins.

All that remained now, was the rest.

Swan navigated the slalom of wreckage and bodies. ‘Let the Sky Fall’ by Ten Years After crackled through the jukebox, the guitar’s slow, mournful wail echoing through the ruined snooker hall like a bluesy funeral anthem. The beat matched his lazy swagger as he weaved between splinters and growing pools of blood across cracked floor tiles. A light hanging from a single fitting swung overhead.

The Enforcer moved behind what was left of the bar, cracked in half like a fallen tree. He slipped four bottles of beer through the broken glass of a fridge and slammed their necks against the counter, sending the caps spinning to the floor. He took the first drink slow, rolling the taste around his tongue. The jukebox crooned behind him. He nodded along, letting the music soothe his sore bones.

The first bottle went to Reese, perched on the edge of a table, dabbing at her reddened eye with her shirtsleeve, blemishing her freckled skin. The second to Duncan, sitting on some luckless bastard who hadn’t moved since he went down hard, his coat torn open and shirt soaked at the collar. The third found its way to Laik, standing apart, fists still clenched, the last remnants of his other form finally retreating. His eyes were fixated elsewhere, only returning to the present with a pat on the shoulder and the drink offered.

The bottles were struck together, and they each took a mouthful in unison, surrounded by complete carnage.

Laik was the first to speak. ‘The state of you,’ he muttered, eyeing Swan, the blood on his jaw having dried like war paint. ‘Whatever happened to not acting like savages?’

Swan snorted and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Caught up in the moment. Happens to the best of us.’

In the far corner of the room, the group of women huddled tightly into the shadows, their faces slack with exhaustion, eyes wild with terror and tears.

‘What about them?’ Reese gestured with her bottle.

‘Not our mess,’ Swan said flatly, taking another swig.

Laik stretched his shoulders with a wince, then stooped to loot a crumpled pack of cigarettes off one of the fallen. He flicked the lighter he found beside it, lit up, and patiently exhaled. ‘You serious?’

Swan shrugged. ‘Picked their lot.’

‘Bullshit,’ Duncan muttered, his voice low but firm.

Reese shook her head. ‘You think they willingly came along for the ride?’ She gestured again. ‘They’re victims.’

‘Technically collateral damage. And still not our responsibility, unless they’re accountable for some big bad,’ Swan insisted, but it sounded hollow even to him.

Laik stood, flicking ash to the floor. ‘They’re people. Like you were.’

Swan scoffed as he followed. ‘Were, as you point out. Past tense. Playing saviour isn’t part of the job.’ He pushed the kitchen door open and took stock of the contents. He strode to the grimy cooker, flicking the hob knobs as far as they could. The sharp hiss of leaking gas was immediate.

Laik followed, stepping behind the shattered bar, and began rifling through the wreckage. He raised his voice to be heard. ‘It’s not about that. What’s wrong with having a little humanity?’ A lockbox glinted beneath a broken shelf. He jimmied it open with a knife and flipped through the bundles inside.

Swan jammed a pair of stained kitchen towels into the cheap, chrome toaster, the lever clicking loudly as he forced it down.

‘You of all people are saying that?’ Swan called in disbelief, as he walked back in, the door clattering behind, ‘In case the fact escaped you, we ain’t human no more. You more than the rest of us, I would guess.’

‘Yeah, well, whatever I am, an asshole ain’t it.’

‘Really? Why break a habit of a lifetime?’

Laik moved toward the girls with measured steps, the din of the room falling away behind him. They were pressed in the booth, curled in on themselves, coats drawn tight around shaking shoulders. A few flinched at his approach; a couple didn’t even look up, suspecting themselves to be loose ends in need of silencing.

He crouched down, slow and unthreatening, like someone trying not to startle a wild animal. The cigarette in his mouth glowed faintly as he breathed in, then died as it was flicked away.

‘I know,’ he said awkwardly, ‘all this, this here . . . you shouldn’t have been caught up in it. This isn’t your place and it’s not your fault. None of it. This don’t make up for what you saw . . .’

He placed the wad of cash from the lockbox onto the table and eased it before them like an offering.

‘But this’ll get you away from here. All of you find a hotel, get cleaned up. I saw one on the way here, about five minutes up the street. Get yourselves some place warm. And call someone who gives a damn. Family or a friend or whatever, or don’t. Just . . . go. Go somewhere better than this.’

One of the girls, bruised and glassy-eyed, lifted her gaze and blinked slowly at him. Her lip trembled, but she said nothing. Another reached forward, hesitated, then took the money in both hands, clutching it like it might vanish if she let go.

The girls shakily moved to the door in unison, escaping the mess that had been made. Laik returned to the others, took a long pull from his bottle, and let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.

‘See?’ he muttered, not looking at anyone in particular. ‘That wasn’t so hard.’

Swan drained the last of his bottle and set it into the corner pocket of the nearest table. The others got to their feet, stretched their backs. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You just make it harder than it needs to be. I think that sister of yours is rubbing off on you. Christ, if people knew how soft you were becoming . . .’

They made their way out in single file, boots scraping through broken glass and half-splintered pool cues. The front door gave a reluctant creak as Duncan shoved it open, letting the night breathe in around them. The air was sharp, damp.

Laik adjusted his collar as he stepped out, eyes flicking across the street. A stray dog ripped at bin bags for a meal. An impatient car horn was lost somewhere in the city’s sprawl. The group drifted into a slow pace, their footsteps dull against the wet pavement, conversation tapering off into tired silence. Behind them, in the creases of the streets, the night sky flared orange.

The blast ruptured the quiet, a man-made thunderclap. The force rolled through the streets, rattling windows on its journey. Fire tore through the snooker hall’s façade, belching smoke and debris into the street. Brick and timber buckled inward as the roof collapsed with a roar. Car alarms began in panic.

They all stopped to look back at the fire that was now taking hold of the old cinema.

Swan retrieved his phone and thumbed a message to Canis, confirming the job was done. With a stiff prod of the send button, he looked between them. They had taken a few punches tonight, but that had been expected. Enforcers rarely received a warm welcome, especially in pits like that, but it was what made the job so exciting: it got the blood pumping.

All that was needed now was to get home.

But before that, as new sirens began to leak into the air, Swan confronted a much more pressing matter. He struck his hands together.

‘So . . . Food?’