INTERLUDE: ONLY AN OFFER

  SOUTH END—OCTOBER 17th, 1992 | MORNING

  ?

  David left their warehouse-loft that morning without telling Mercedes or Cameron where he was going.

  He imagined that if he told them, Mercedes would be happy to go along with it and nod her head like she usually did, proceeding along with his machinations—no questions asked. Cameron, on the other hand, would find every reason to throw a conniption over David’s lack of forthcomingness, have his tantrum like he usually did, and then? He’d do exactly what David wanted. Like always.

  He had to make it right.

  Not because it was the right thing to do, or because he’d wronged anyone, but because the South End Sables were currently sitting on stolen weapons that belonged to Brinehaven’s primary arms manufacturer.

  If the rumors surrounding Alistair Company Limited were to be trusted, they’d put two and two together and figure out the Sables were idling around with them. Worse, they might even think the Sables had something to do with their shipment crashing outside of Oldport. A ludicrous idea—but suits and ties like that would be looking for fingers to point, for someone to blame. Who better than a South Ender?

  It wouldn’t be hard for a company like that to find a way to put David away forever, or, if they wanted to, to kill him outright. The fallout from the Hausser incident was spreading like wildfire, and as much as he thought himself a genius for leaving her alive to up their street cred, he wasn’t delusional about the consequences catching up to them.

  If and when the Civic and Occult Authority found out, Alistair Company Limited wouldn’t be far behind them, and when that happened, the constables and whoever they sent after the Sables would be the least of David’s worries. That crate of Reign 18s needed to be out of their hands and into someone else's, sooner rather than later.

  David put the black van into park. He’d driven the only car they had between them north of Oldport, where the 8th Street Gang’s turf was all but non-existent, and the Lancaster Boys reigned supreme.

  His side of the tracks. It was almost odd being back. At least here, he knew he’d be able to find someone to offload that crate to. He regretted not taking it with him, but the rush of the morning had gotten the better of him. Make the deal first; that was the most important thing. Better to have a confirmation in advance than to be caught with the crate.

  David happened to know just the guy. Somebody with enough of a name to justify the risk of buying those guns, someone far more likely to want them over the likes of Elizabeth Hausser. The only thing that had stopped him before was pride.

  At any rate, there was a way forward. A path to bigger and greater things, just like he’d always told them. David could see it. It was always his vision, and they’d never see it. Couldn’t see it. He didn’t even want them to see it. It was his and his alone. Someday soon, there wouldn’t be a divided South End.

  There would be one big family. His family. An entire borough braving whatever the other boroughs had to throw at them; a proper rival to the Syndicate out of Dockside, and more than just a thorne in the side of the Civic & Occult Authority. Under one banner, the streets would be safer, and there’d be a system in place that kept everyone well-fed in cash payments. Dogs that were well-fed were loyal; someone like Cameron Kessler had proved as much. Loyalty en masse would make him a king, and if he was a king, he’d have a castle with walls—a seat of power built on the bodies of every gangster and kingpin that had the audacity to doubt him.

  David looked at himself in the rearview mirror of the black van he’d been driving and smiled.

  It wasn’t about money, or reputation, or even power.

  It was about creating a legacy. His legacy. Working on that principle alone, he knew he was destined for more. Destined for greater. And in making such a legacy, there would be hiccups. Chaos, disorder, and situations steeped in the ugly and uncomfortable. Situations like what had occurred at the Hausser Company Lot, and situations that had to occur today; where he’d be walking into the belly of the beast that had long sought to see him consumed entirely.

  David exited the van and made his way down an alleyway.

  Men and women in dress shirts and jeans stared him down. Joey Farside. Verona Stravos. Trevor Manning. People he used to run with, some of which he’d even taken a bullet for, and newer additions to the Lancaster Boys he’d never seen. Newbloods who were eager to prove themselves, who even took a step forward, only to be held back by the old guard who knew better than to let them.

  David smiled at them, feeding off their anger and their jumpiness, before arriving at a large open garage door. The man posted in the front was about four inches shorter than David, but had a weathered, muscled face.

  “David. You’ve got some nerve coming back here,” he said.

  “Rodrigo. Chester’ll be happy to see me. I’ve got an offer he can’t refuse, something so good that it’ll take that sour taste right out of his mouth when he sees me,” David said, leaning up against the side of the garage’s door frame. “Why don’t you go tell him I’m here?”

  “For your sake, it’ll be better if I take you to him.”

  ?

  Around him, most of the warehouse was outfitted with barrels hooked up to makeshift vats with extraction tubes. At the sound of a timer, black and tar-like liquid flowed through the tubes into the hands of workers who ensured that the liquid was evenly distributed into small vials. Blud. The whole place reeked of it, and while it had been years since David had been here, once you’d gone noseblind to such a stench, it never went away.

  Rodrigo had taken David to the far corner of the warehouse, a makeshift lounge of sorts, with a single billiards table, old leather couches, and a bar that had been custom-installed. Thugs and lackeys lingered around, leaning against steel pillars and sitting at the limited seating of bar, which lacked a bartender.

  A jukebox played ‘Get Down On It' by Kool & the Gang through its speakers. Chester's taste in music had always been particular. Funk, disco, and nothing else.

  Half a dozen women dressed in promiscuous prints—cheetah, leopard, and so on—laughed in dazed glee, watching as Chester tried and failed to make his next pool shot. On a table in front of them were beer bottles, empty blud vials, and recently used syringes. They twirled separate vials in their fingers, pasteurized demon blood, and were likely waiting for their high to hit its peak before downing the nasty green. They were playing with fire. By delaying their second dose of clean p-blood, they risked overdosing any minute.

  “And how much does Velvet want, again?” Chester stood over a billiards table.

  He was getting up there in years, and since ascending to boss, he’d lost the physique that once made him fearsome. His height was still there; somewhere around six-foot-four, but his dusty-gold dress shirt barely fit him these days, and Chester’s patchy beard couldn’t hide his lack of a jawline.

  A man stood opposite of Chester.

  “Thirty percent is the going rate. As you know, Spectre’s pull is immense. Should you accept this offer, you’ll all but double or triple what I imagine your blud distribution makes you here in the South End—”

  David stepped forward in spite of Rodrigo insisting that he wait, and saw that the man had shoulder-length black hair and streaks of gray hair just above his ears. Medium build, adorned in a black tee shirt, a navy blue blazer and navy blue slacks. His eyes were brown and kind.

  “Hah! Thirty percent—” Chester’s smile shifted to a frown as David stepped closer.

  “Chester,” David said coolly.

  Chester threw the pool table at David and he quickly stepped to the side, hardly surprised. It was on the lighter end of the reactions he had been expecting since he arrived. “You little shit! I damn well told you to never come back here, or you’d be leaving this place in a fucking bodybag!”

  The black-haired man in the navy-blue blazer raised a quelling hand. “Let’s all—”

  “Quiet!” Chester spat, pacing towards David. “Rodrigo, why is he in front of me?”

  Rodrigo’s eyes widened. “I—”

  Chester, with a lumbered breath, grabbed hold of Rodrigo and slammed him into the billiards table. He held him in place and punched him in the face four times in a row until the man was groaning and without any sensibilities left of him. The women in the background, still high as ever, laughed at the whole display, stumbling into each other.

  Chester held both hands over his knees, wheezed, and pointed a bloodied hand in David’s direction. “Start talking.”

  Same old Chester Lancaster. It almost brought a smile to David’s face. “Here to offer you an olive branch, Chester. Something to make up for my leaving all those years ago.”

  “Left me high and dry, you did,” Chester noted, springing back up to his full height. He snapped his fingers and held a hand out towards one of his lackeys, who brought him a bar towel for him to wipe his bloodied hands on. “Could’ve been something under my wing, Davey Boy.”

  “Maybe so. But if I hadn’t left, I wouldn’t be here today, would I?”

  “Get to the damn point. What do you have for me?”

  “Me and mine came across a crate. A shipment—”

  The man in the navy blue blazer cleared his throat. “The deal, Mr. Lancaster. Are we set for thirty percent, or should I return to Cyprus Alley and tell Mr. Velvet that I took our business elsewhere?”

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  Rage flushed over Chester’s fat-swollen face. He turned to his group of thugs lingering around the lounge. “You and you. Take him outside.”

  “What? What are you doing? Hey—... hey! Let go of me!”

  Chester shoved past David and shoved his bloodied hand rag into the man's mouth just as the two thugs closed in on the man and restrained him. “If you’ve got any damned teeth left when they are done with you, you can tell Mr. Velvet that the Lancaster Boys don’t like his damned offer.”

  David turned and watched as the man was hauled through the warehouse and out the front. “Mr. Velvet? As in—”

  “The crate, Davey Boy,” Chester said.

  “Right. We came across a shipment just outside of Oldport. Weapons. Minted weapons, pre-artificed, by the likes of Alistair Company Limited. Reign 18 handguns. I’m sitting on more than a dozen of them, and for a fair price, they’ll be yours,” David said.

  Chester laughed. “A fair price. A fair price! Hah! HAH!”

  It was a haughty, wheeze-filled laugh, the kind that would’ve been endearing if it wasn’t coming from the lungs of Chester Lancaster. David’s face drew down in discontent the moment he heard it. He knew what was coming next, and tugged on Pauper with his opposite hand. Silver glowed along the arrays and symbols on the front of it, and he held his hand forward in preparation of what was to come.

  Beyond the sound of the blud being pumped from the barrels and through the makeshift vats, he heard cries of agony echo through the alley he’d walked through to get to the warehouse. Whoever that man was was fighting for his life, and David didn’t need to see that to know that.

  “Easy, Chester,” David warned.

  “Me? Easy? You want me to take it easy? You self-assured, naive, bastard of a boy. I took you in when you were nothing. When you had nothing. You had a legacy waiting for you here, and for a reason I can’t fucking figure out, Davey Boy, you threw it away. And you think all these years later, a fucking crate with some, what, dainty handguns will fix that? Hah! Some olive branch—and you want to sell it. You want me to pay you for it. Now that there is the kicker. The cherry on top of all of your damned stupidity.”

  “It wasn’t mine,” David said.

  “What? What the fuck are you on about?” asked Chester, voice lined with scorn.

  David furrowed his brows. “You were handing me a legacy. It wasn’t one I’d be building for myself. So I left.”

  Chester whistled.

  The remainder of his men—five of them, all with guns—sallied forth with their trigger fingers ready. David furrowed his brows. He could’ve used Cameron and Mercedes at that moment. Bulletproof skin and a sprite that blinked flames would’ve covered his bases. Pauper got him far, but it wouldn’t guarantee he’d get out of this place alive. Not unless he acted first.

  Power surged in his glove.

  David threw his hand forward. A small concussive wave hit the floor in front of Chester and those gathered around him.

  The billiards board thrashed into Chester and his goons. Stray bullets zipped through the air. Laughter continued from the blud-induced women, and the chorus of ‘Get Down On It' by Kool & the Gang blared through the speakers.

  David was lucky. Only two bullets managed to graze him, one on the side of his torso, and another along his thigh—the second one deeper than the first. Blood spattered onto the ground, and it was clear to him that his time to make for the exit was limited. “Get him, god damn it! And where the fuck is Sean?! Someone call him, damn it!” shouted Chester, thrashing his way out from under the billiards table.

  Three of the five Lancaster gunmen were up on their feet again. David booked it, and they fired incredulously as he ran. Gunshots echoed throughout the warehouse, prompting the workers tending to the blue-packaging stations to duck under their shoddy workbenches. Bullets lodged into the makeshift vats and pierced through uncouth rubber tubes, spraying the tar-like liquid all over the ground.

  David pivoted, knowing they couldn’t have been far behind him. Kinetic force swelled in the arrays of his glove. He pushed. The three gunmen flew backward along the ground and slipped on the blud leakage.

  Again.

  He pushed, and the men were propelled further along the greased floors, crashing into the sides of workbenches.

  Two gunmen were still unaccounted for, lingering closer to the lounge. They shouted and tried to get the attention of the Lancaster goons closer to the front, but by that point, David had already run back into the alleyway, and the goons in the alleyway were already standing at the ready, only ten or twelve feet from David. The sounds of the jukebox faded into obscurity, alongside the drivel and shouts from Chester Lancaster.

  David’s eyes widened.

  Joey Farside. Verona Stravos. Trevor Manning. The three of them had sallied forth, alongside the goons that had dragged out Mr. Velvet’s messenger. David gritted his teeth. Behind him, two gunmen were closing in. In front of him, knives and tire irons and bats were raised—all of which were already slicked in blood.

  Explicits anchored in warnings were shouted in David’s direction, but he glazed past them. That messenger was left to die. His navy blue suit was stained a deep burgundy, and dirt and mire tousled his long black hair. His chest lifted up and down, slower and slower, until it didn’t.

  “Hey! You listening to us? Take off the glove—”

  David didn't need to.

  Behind all of them, a burst of energy exploded outward from the downed body of the beaten man; the same one from before. The one who Chester had so easily dismissed, and the one who'd been turned into a victim.

  Ancient symbols of power cradled the man tightly, and the silhouette of a creature appeared in front of him, large and nondescript. It squatted over his body and its silhouette was made up only of what seemed to be black smoke and cinder. Its voice was dissonant and otherworldly, entrenched in all that was old and wrong and twisted, and with each word spoken, the Lancasters enforcers present held their hands to their ears and cried out.

  David dared to look closer at the display. He squinted and tried to make out what was happening, but saw only one thing: the feeble hand of the man who’d been left to die shaking the hand of the thing that had approached him from the depths of Hell itself. Black ash splashed outward from the silhouette that loomed over him, and the voice that had plagued everyone’s ears faded with a punctuated bellow.

  David felt it deep in his chest; the authority of a newfound power that didn’t belong to him. Envy soured his features and plagued his face, drawing his brows down in blatant anger. It should have been him.

  But it wasn’t. And the enemy of an enemy was his friend.

  Utter silence filled the air as the man brought himself back to his feet, nearly wobbling before he anchored himself into a halfway upright position. His body was still bruised and battered, one eye swollen shut, one shoulder dislocated. A mark emerged on his neck, burned into place like a brand that settled into something resembling a tattoo—proof of ownership. A brand. A brand that was alight in a purple-black glow, and a brand that certainly didn't belong to David.

  The Lancaster enforcers stared at him, too dumbstruck to understand what had happened.

  The man lowered himself to the ground on one knee and plunged his hand down into the shadow cast by his body. In an instant, something far larger emerged from all of the shadows present.

  Massive necrotic fingers leaking a dark energy emerged—one finger for Joey Farside, another finger for Verona Stravos, a third for Trevor Manning, and a fourth and a fifth for the two thugs who’d dragged him out into that alley on Chester’s orders.

  Each of the fingers skewered through them, and when the massive shadowy hand closed, it brought each of the Lancaster together in a twisted and visceral display that made David want to vomit. The hand closed like a hydraulic press, combining each of them into one pile of blood and viscera and limbs.

  Blood spattered outward and covered the surrounding walls and windows of the alleyway. An arm and a leg, or what remained of it, skipped across the ground in front of David. He wanted to hunch over and reel in disgust, but there was a greater part of him that saw the display as something more.

  A skeevy and possessive smile stretched across David’s face as the man huddled over towards the entrance to the warehouse, still overwrought by his injuries, but unbothered by them.

  He nearly stumbled to the ground, but before he could, David rushed over to him and supported him upright.

  “Seems like we’ve got our sights trained on the same person,” David said.

  “Seems so,” the man said plainly.

  Inside, the workers who bore witness to the whole display were screaming and abandoning their stations en-masse. What remained of Chester’s gunmen and enforcers stood with their mouths agape with faces drawn taut across their faces in blatant fear.

  “David St. James. What’s say you and me make a deal—”

  “I just made the only deal I’ll ever need,” the man interjected, his words heavy and painful. “No more deals. No more errands. No more dirty work. Today is the last day I do anything on anyone else’s behalf. Your help would be nice, but I don’t need it. I don’t need anyone. So no, no deal. Only an offer.”

  David held his breath and waited.

  Dark energy leaked from the symbol on the man's neck, pulsing outwards with an intensity that could have very well made David drop to the ground if it persisted. “You can work for me, or, you can let go.”

  His words cut through David like a dull and serrated blade, and they forced him to confront the reality of what awaited him. His future. His legacy. On the far side of the room, Chester Lancaster stared in David’s direction; his eyes expressing a simple truth—that David was both his promised son and his biggest disappointment. Beside him, cradled on his shoulder, was a man who had more power than he’d ever witnessed. More power than David could ever hope to have, whose very existence confirmed to him something that he never, ever wanted to admit. It was something he’d worked his whole life to defy, something that he thought was conquerable on sheer willpower, assured delusion, and uncontested commitment.

  That something was this: people were meant for greatness.

  And David wasn’t one of those people.

  In the distance, the jukebox had long since shifted to a different song, but David didn’t hear any lyrics or rhythm. The only thing he heard was the distant laughter of those women Chester paraded around, still high on the blud they’d taken.

  “I—... yeah. I accept it. Your offer,” David said.

  The man turned towards David. His tussled black hair, framed by those distinct gray streaks, shifted as he adjusted his posture to try and stand more upright. Overhead, flickering lights revealed a single opened eye. It was focused and undeniable, in a way that made him look strong in spite of the injuries on his face that stood as a testament to the prior weakness he’d just shed.

  He offered David his hand. “Gideon.”

  David shook it.

  DAVID ST. JAMES

  CHESTER LANCASTER

  GIDEON DRAVES

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