Darkness Girl: Trickster God

Chapter Four: The Price of Death

The boy played with the flat brim of the cap in his hands and looked around the room. He sat back in his chair, trying to look casual, but the heel of his hi-top sneaker drummed rapidly on the concrete floor. Regan sat opposite him with her legs crossed and her hands folded on her tartan skirt. She watched him without a word and brushed a strand of blue-dyed hair behind her ear. Somehow this seemed to unsettle him more.

'Calm down,' she said. 'It's just murder.'

The boy licked his lips. They were sitting on the third floor of an abandoned office building. Gusts of wind occasionally whistled through the broken windows and rustled the piles of semi-translucent sheet plastic that lay scattered about the floor. Everything was coated in a thick layer of concrete dust. They were sitting on some office chairs that had been either too old or too broken to have been taken when the building was abandoned. Kessler stood slightly apart from them, resting her hand lightly on the remnants of a shattered windowpane. She brushed her hand from time to time across the jagged points of glass as if she wanted to test the tensile strength of her skin.

'There's this guy named Chris Lewis who deals drugs out of a club in City Cross called Sultan's,' said the boy. 'He's a low level pusher, so the investigators don't even care about him enough to do anything about it.'

'I don't really care,' Regan interrupted him. 'If you want him dead, I'll kill him. He won't get deader just because you have good reasons.'

'He sold my friend the drugs that killed him,' said the boy. 'Got him hooked on the stuff and then kept pushing them at him until his brain was like a sponge.'

Regan sighed and looked out through one of the grimy, broken windows.

She'd seen it before. It didn't matter what she said; people felt the need to justify themselves. There was usually no way to derail them after they'd started.

'I tried to help him,' said the boy angrily. 'But do you know how hard it is to kick something like that when you have some greasy piece of crap offering them to you every second day? I had to watch my friend die.'

He stood up and pulled a wad of notes from his pocket held together with a rubber band. He threw it down on the floor where it kicked up a small puff of concrete dust.

'There's your fee,' he said. 'It took months to earn it. I want Lewis dead.'

'Do you have a picture of him?' said Kessler from the window.

'No, but he's easy to pick. He's got long hair he keeps in a greasy plait down to his ass and he wears these little round glasses with purple glass in them. I've never seen him without them.'

'Does he have a craft?' asked Regan.

'What do you mean?'

'Lewis doesn't sound like he's got much protection, and you strike me as more of an act-first-think-later guy than someone who'd wait for months to get revenge. So, I figure there must be a reason you wet yourself and went looking for another solution. My guess is Lewis has some sort of power you can't stand up against.'

The boy shook his head.

'You talk about killing like was nothing,' he said. 'It's not that easy for people who aren't screwed in the head. No offence.'

Regan shrugged.

'I don't care if he's got a craft,' she said. 'I'd just like to know in advance. If we go after this guy and he starts shooting fire out of his hands then you and I aren't going to be friends.'

The boy drummed his hands on his thighs and made some mildly irritating popping noises with his lips. He looked like he was deciding whether or not to speak.