Darkness Girl: Trickster God

Chapter Five: Human Scum

The dance music pressed against Regan's ears at the very border of the pain threshold. The crowd surged to the music like one coordinated beast, bodies convulsing and limbs flailing. Green laser lights played across the dance floor and reflected off the occasional wisps from the smoke machine. A DJ on a stage in front of the dance floor held a set of headphones to his ear and nodded to the music as he twisted a knob to meld the songs into a rushing wall of sound. On the upper floor people pressed dangerously hard against the flimsy safely railing that stopped them falling down onto the floor below. No one seemed to be worried. Regan stuck to the corners and watched the main floor. In front of her, a man in a white t-shirt dropped his drink and barely noticed as sticky liquid and chunks of ice spilled across the dance floor. The glass disappeared into the forest of bouncing feet.

Regan waited for two hours in the stinking stuffy room, surrounded by people who kept trying to drunkenly grind their bodies against her. Regan touched the hilt of her sword under her jacket. She wanted to kill Lewis and get out of here.

It was awkward trying to conceal her sword. It was shorter than Kessler's katana, but a few inches of black scabbard were still exposed beneath the hem of her jacket. She relied on the darkness and the shifting shadows to make sure no one noticed she was armed.

Eventually Lewis arrived. He entered alone with a quick left-right look that should have been a dead give away to anyone watching that he wasn't there for the music. Soon he was having a huddled conversation in the corner with a group of four men.

He was shorter and thinner than Regan had expected and his skin had the unhealthy pallor of a smoker. Whenever he moved, the sheen of sweat and oil on his forehead caught the light in a way that made her feel like she needed to wash her eyes. Regan started to move towards him across the dance floor, gently moving people out of her way and slipping between the groups of writhing dancers. She stopped behind a group of girls and gripped the handle of her sword.

Something felt wrong. There was a tension in the air that shouldn't have been there.

The music washed against her in waves as she scanned the room. It only took her a second to pick them out of the crowd. There were four of them. A boy and a girl looking down from the upper level and two girls - one in black one in red - making their way across the floor towards Lewis.

There was another team.

Regan had to admit, they were well camouflaged. She almost hadn't noticed them. They were dressed in the same type of clothes as all the other people in the club and there was nothing about them that would have distinguished them as killers, but they moved with a level of purpose that betrayed them. Regan realised she had seen then before, while she waited outside for Lewis. She looked around for the boy with the glasses who'd been with them, but he wasn't there.

The two girls on the floor were close now. Regan watched them carefully. They weren't just beautiful, they were stunning, and their movements flowed like water. The one in red smiled and placed a hand on the small of Lewis's back to get his attention, and the one in black neatly stepped in to separate him from the group of men he'd been talking to. The manoeuvre was smooth and coordinated, and they'd kept their thousand watt smiles on the whole time. Lewis was already starting to move before he'd had time to think. Regan saw him nod in agreement.

She followed them as they shepherded him away from the dance floor. She heard the girl in red laugh. It had a fake, tinny quality and went on half a second too long. The girl in black stroked the back of Lewis's ponytail and leant in close to talk to him. Regan smiled when she noticed the girl subconsciously wipe her hand on the material of her dress.

This was too roundabout for silencers. If they'd wanted to kill him he'd have been dead on the floor by now. Even so, Lewis must have sensed something was wrong. As the girl in red threw back her head to laugh again, his mood suddenly switched. He gave her a violent shove that sent her flying backwards and made a break for the door. The girl in red hit the ground, and her head made a dull smack as it slammed into the unforgiving surface of the dance floor.

Regan swore. She saw the boy and the girl on the upper level pushing through the crowd, but they were struggling to move through the seething masses of people. The girl in black ran after Lewis. Regan caught a glint of metal in her hand.

Lewis slammed into the people around the door and drove his body through the crowd, sending them into a confused mess. Regan watched him dodge the bouncers, then she turned and ran for the back door. Any obvious move to follow Lewis would be noticed by the two people on the upper level. She couldn't afford to let them discover her target, but she couldn't let him escape either. Thanks to the other team, Lewis had been spooked. If he got away he'd find a rat hole to scuttle into and she'd never find him again.

It took her only a few seconds to push through the back door and run down the alley that led to the front of the building. As she got closer she could hear screams. She rounded the corner and almost collided with a boy fleeing in the opposite direction. She pushed him out of the way.

Further down the street, the girl in black had tackled Lewis. She had him on his back and was sitting on his chest with the knife at his throat. The people waiting in line for the club didn't know what to do. There were a lot of screams and one or two were making shouted, frantic phone calls. Other more morbid bystanders were holding up their phones to film the attack. The bouncers were nowhere to be seen. One look at the knife in the girl's hand was probably enough to convince them that it wasn't worth dying for ten dollars an hour.

Regan hung back instinctively. She still wasn't sure where the other two members of the team were. She slowed down and carefully moved closer to put herself in striking distance.

'Just stay still!' the girl growled to Lewis. Her voice sounded slightly out of breath.

Despite the knife, it looked like she barely had Lewis under control. With the way he was squirming around, Regan was surprised he hadn't cut his own throat already.

'It's all a conspiracy!' Lewis yelled. 'You can't silence the truth!'

'Stop moving around you idiot!'

'I tell the truth they won't give you! Free energy! It's out there! Free energy! This is what the government does!'

The pair who'd been watching from the upper level ran past Regan's vantage point. They were both holding short knives. From the shape of them, Regan guessed they were throwing knives.

'Have you got him?' yelled the boy.

'Yeah. He just won't settle down.'

On the ground Lewis struggled and started to convulse. His limbs flopped and shuddered against the ground and a deep hiccuping noise began in his chest.

'What the hell?' said the boy.

The girl holding Lewis looked down at him as his throat gurgled like a blocked drain.

'He's going to puke!' yelled the other girl, but it was too late.

The girl in black was about to die.