One of the things that you learn during your first few deployments overseas is that even if no one is actively lying to you (mostly they are, but lets assume for the moment they are not), the information you are presented as fact is incomplete, and the conclusions presented are at various angles to reality. The first thought is to check the official story against the independent press. That theory works until the first time you watch a media report about a place you just came back from, and find it so far distant from the events you witnessed on the ground that you have to ask twice exactly where this news was about. One of the first jobs he loved in the army was scout. He never really got out of the scout mindset. Sure assaulter was fun and made his blood boil, heavy weapons was amazing, but when you patrolled a lot you got a sense you were always moving in a bubble, that real life stopped when you came on the scene, and resumed when you left.

Scouts were about getting in close enough and deep enough below notice that regular life went on in front of you, and you got to make up your own mind what was really going on, down on street level. Nick Conlon was a good ID to play scout.

I had a business card. Nick Condon, Thorne Confidential Asset Recovery, complete with my cell and a link to a website dad had too much fun creating. Honestly, the thing was one big trap. Anyone who came looking painted an electronic target on their back and got an army of little bots tracking each and every activity the internet. Always good to know whose asking after his baby boy after all.

We had a good spiel too. Thorne Confidential Asset Recovery was essentially a broker between those who had stolen goods, and goods could include objects, data, and people, and their rightful owners. Discretion was their name, and if you had heard about their deals, then somebody needs their throat cut. I wasn’t actually looking to drum up business, but I was looking to build a reason why I might be seen around the places where heavy business went down, and an even better reason not to be in any one’s pocket while I did so.

New York city is hard on a goblin. I don’t mean to whine, but my senses are cranked through the roof compared to the human I used to think I was, and New York is just a little much. It is too loud all the time, it is dirty beyond what I was used to from Canadian cities and a lot more than I was expecting from what I had seen in the media. It was active. I mean all the time. I get the city that never sleeps, and industrial sectors are like that everywhere, but this place is literally never asleep.

Sirens, gunshots, people being thrown through buildings, sword fights, fireballs, and more knock off merchandise than I saw on the streets of Hong Kong.

I was sitting in my favourite seat in Yaojing Diner, it’s a cute little family Chinese American restaurant that has been serving a mix of Cantonese and American diner style cuisine since the gang wars at the turn of the century before this when I saw an armoured car go off like it hit an IED. My senses are a little more enhanced since my last tour in Afghanistan, so I actually caught the drone movement of the little rhomba like drone that scooted beneath the armoured car at the traffic light to take out its engine. The lights flickered, leaving the leering fox headed demon sign of the Yaojing’s eyes and my own green lit goblin eyes the only lights in the shadow as the blast shook the street and the tired electrical grid had a moment. When the lights flickered back on, armed men were using clearing strips to burn the locks on the armoured car doors and pulling out the stunned guards to zap strap at gunpoint while they emptied the car.

Connie (she refused to let gweilo like us butcher her Cantonese name) looked over and in her sing song accent. “They must be stupid. If even one of them gets away before a hero gets them, you can get that meal free.” The little old lady was confident. This was a mom-and-pop diner, and their margins were thin enough to shave with. Are superheroes really that common here? From the back, her husband Hong called out.

“Twenty dollar on the Devil, we are two blocks from the Kitchen!” Hong called out. I looked, and there was a board on the wall. Devil on one side, Bug on the other. Each had between fifteen and seventeen marks under it. What the heck was that about.

Other customers started slapping their money on the table, and calling out their bets, for Devil or Bug. I held out a twenty dollar bill, and gave Connie my best “lost little boy” smile, it didn’t charm her panties off, but it got me a smile and a playful swat. “How should I bet, sweet Connie my love?”

“Twenty dollar on the Bug” Connie yelled out, taking my money. She whispered to me. “The Devil is close, Hells Kitchen is around the corner almost, but it is Sunday. The Devil doesn’t do much business on Sunday’s. Hahahahahaha, maybe he’s in church!” She laughed.

I looked down at my copy of the Daily Bugle and worked out what she was talking about. Daredevil the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen took down hard anyone using killing weapons in his territory. Gangs learned to stick to fists and clubs if they wanted to have any chance of walking the streets and swaggering, rather than being found beaten half to death and left in piles under the street lights. The Bugle called him a fraud, a clear coverup of police brutality, after all, no pictures could be found of him in action and the police had never come close to arresting him. Now, who the hell was the bug.

Twip, twip.

You almost had to be a goblin to see it. Something swung by above my viewpoint, and as it swung through, it shot two lines of something and left with two knock off AK’s from our good bandits.

“I know lots of placed do door crasher sales, but you have to at least let it get to the stores first, and I’m pretty sure they don’t want you to use explosives to actually crash the doors.” A figure clad in red and blue, a black spider’s web lacing his suit dropped on the top of the armoured car. Ah. The bug must be Spiderman.

Two of the guys still had guns, and they opened up on Spiderman. He was fast. Faster than me? I don’t think his actual muscle twitch speed was faster than mine, but his reaction was freaky. He was reacting before the danger was fully there. I mean I am a combat vet, a full on goblin, and my situational awareness is literally magical, but I swear this guy is faster. They fired off a lot of rounds, but I swear he was letting them get close so he could keep them firing up at him, rather than anywhere the bullets might bounce among the squishy civilians. I sipped my coffee and watched him work. He laid out two with punches that he watered down so much, one of the guys tried to hit him back. He left them webbed upside down from the street lights, but the other two split and ran down two different alleys. The first he took out with the money. I kid you not, he webbed a bag of money, hit the guy with it like a yo-yo trick and webbed him to the wall when he hit it face first.

The second guy he chased. I paid my bill with loose bills and walked whistling out the front door. I turned down the alley Spiderman had chased his prey down and found what I was looking for. Right side up, face to the wall, pinned by the web was our last bandit.

“What the fuck do you want buddy. You think this is funny?” Our webbed would be robber was feeling a little embarrassed and a lot vulnerable right now.

“I think it’s hilarious babycakes! But I am here on business.” I say, leaning carefully against the wall clear of the webs. How tough was that stuff? How far could he shoot it?

Our gangster was getting a little worked up. “Listen buddy, you lay one finger on me and the people I work for will make you wish you have never been born.”

“Sunshine, you just aren’t that pretty. If I swung that way, which I might, you would be a possible love interest when the world was out of sheep. No. I just wanted you to pass along my card, and my respects to those you work for.” I said as I casually took my card out of my card case. Fucking love having a business card, or card cases. This was kind of an indulgence on my part, but I was going to geek out in the moment with it.

“Nick Condon, Thorne Confidential Asset Recovery, at your service,” I tipped my had to him. I had added a fedora to my suit glamour when I hit the alley just because Cagney had one in the movie and he used it in conversation like a boss.

“What the fuck would we need you for? The boss has all the muscle he needs, and more!” My goon on the wall objected.

I turned my hat in my hands, flicking imaginary dust off the band.

“Well see, sometimes you do a job, like tonight maybe. A job you took on fair and square, only when you do the job you find out that the job wasn’t what you were told it was. You end up holding something you don’t want to get caught with. Maybe the target is a trap? Maybe the buyer backed out? Maybe through no fault of your own you touched something that will get everyone associated with it killed in truly horrible ways. Well that is where we come in. We broker deals to get the original owner back their property, no drama, no bloodshed, and with whatever money is required on whichever side to make it as if nothing unpleasant ever happened.”

Now I had his attention.

“You’re not a cop?” The thug asked.

“Please. I have nothing against them, I just have nothing particular for them either. They have no place in our business friend, and when they get brought into it, like any amateurs, people get hurt, and life gets complicated. My employers dislike complications. We like simple. We take sticky situations, like yours, and make them, less sticky.” I said simply. Establishing my bona fides in the shadows was the whole point. I had to be a face known to those who walked the shadows, not a threat, but not a chump either.

“Yeah smart boy? Then how about getting me out of this one, if you’re so good at sticky situations?” Our little thug smirked.

You know what? I was not sure how strong the spider thread was, but this was brick. I knew I could punch through it, so if the spider thread wouldn’t yield, the thing it was stuck to would.

I put my loafer against the wall and my silk hankerchief around the thread. I had no intention of being stuck to it, nor leaving DNA or magical trace behind on the thread for whoever came looking.

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK, Riiiiiiiip

Okay, so my thug was out, and in his underwear, his clothes being entirely too fastened to the thread to get out. I placed the card in his hand, added a cane to my glamour and whistling made my way down the alley, leaving a half naked confused thug to spread the word about my services. So Spiderman and Daredevil both worked this area. Spiderman’s thread was the real thing. I can break threads of it, but the brick breaks first. Of course, spider web is like paracord. If one strand wont do, use two. If enough threads are used, you can hoist a main battle tank. Sure I could break a Spider thread, but I am willing to bet if he wrapped me up in enough of them I would be a goblin-in-a-blanket waiting for police pickup.

I had been a good goblin, I was going back to Yaojing Diner for pie!

Daytime networking was about making a shadow for you to hide in, a mask that was part of the scene so that people could see, then ignore you. Daytime networking was work, and boring as hell. It also was a good way to sit back and watch my money burn. New York is frigging expensive, even living somewhat cheap.

However, the city that never sleeps doesn’t really like the night. It spend more energy trying to hold it back than some countries have to use at all. It creates a sort of gloomy twilight, a netherhell between the darkness and the light where shadows rule and predators prosper. I’m not lying, I am in love. This place is a goblin paradise. I have no doubt why this is both the crime and superhero capital of the United States; this place is the invitation to wickedness that Las Vegas dreams of. In the night, I hunted.

There are lots of gangs here, but you have to be careful, not all of them are real. I mean to the civilians on the street they may seem real, and as far as mugging and rape go, they are about the same, however, there are definitely two tiers here. There are the children playing at being bad, whom I mostly ignore unless they forget they are scavengers and try for live prey, then there are the predators. These gangs are controlled, regulated, directed, and observed. Do you know the myth about the virgin with the bag of gold? There is the legend that Genghis Khan swore a virgin with a bag of gold could ride across his empire without fear. It was true for a while. It was true because when it didn’t work, whole provinces were put to the sword, villages burned, and thousands put to painful death for the crime of breaking the law of the Khan. That virgin could ride with her bag of gold across the whole of the land because she passed in the shadow of a beast.

Here on the streets, the gangs were part of that shadow. I saw blind children carrying enough drugs to finance a half year of vacation walking undisturbed to the drug houses. No one went with them, but the real enforcers of the various street level gangs watched and loomed at street corners and on stoops with hard cold eyes for anyone who even looked like they were thinking about following. They stood in the shadow of the beast. I wanted to know a little bit more about the beast before I poked it, and after all, there were many beasts in the jungle called New York, I needed to know the order of the beasts, and what kept order among the beasts before I poked them too hard.

I was a goblin, I was not some fairy prince with a retinue of sorcerer/knights riding behind me. I was an ambush predator who didn’t even have a real idea how his powers worked, not even sure that the court I told to go fuck itself took it lying down. For all I knew, there was already a hunt after me. I was on a scouting mission right now. I needed eyes on the ground, I needed ears in the shadows. And cash, let’s not forget cash. Mom wants to do my laundry, so a loving son cannot disappoint.

It started with the pimps. I would love to say I had a plan. Honestly, this is where my problems started, where my plan went off the rails. When you are a soldier deployed in bad places, you often have to overlook abuses you burn in your soul to stop because you are under oath and under orders to follow your rules of engagement. You have zero discretion about choosing when to use force, when to intervene. There are good reasons for it which I fully support, in theory. On the ground, and knowing that to make policy your foreign affair officials will make deals with truly bad people who simply happen to be more agreeable than the other (often also bad or worse) people you are there to fight, and when your boys bad guys are hurting people you just have to close your eyes and not see.

The problem here is, I wrote my rules of engagement, and when I saw something I wasn’t willing to let pass, I rewrote them on the fly without a plan. Bad goblin. No pie for you.

There were two concentric circles, real ugly bastards in the sort of flashy punk bling that shouted “PLAYA”, with guns in every form of flash from nickel plated, chrome, to the big moron in the middle whose Desert Eagle, he wore two of them, was fucking gold. There was enough gold worn to melt down and make a statue of me. Hollow sure, but life sized.

Stolen novel; please report.

The problem was the inner circle, it was working girls. The majority of them could not have been of age, but the one in the center who was about to be the main event looked to be early twenties dressing sixteen and with eyes that looked like they had seen a few bad centuries.

“Sugar, sugar, sugar. Why you got to be like this? You are a good bitch, you make good coin, you do a good job of teaching my fresh meat how to spot the cops and you keep your mouth shut when you are not using that golden fucking throat for what god intended. Then you go and fuck it up by trying to stir up trouble with my girls?” The pimp, a white guy who looks like he should be doing commercials for tanning oil or cross-fit posed in his half buttoned shirt to flex. His tone was soft and reasonable, but his setting was ruined by who he was performing for.

Sugar, was a black girl who looked less underfed than most of the street meat, she was on her knees with her neck pulled back by her hair and a gun shoved in her temple. Her face was controlled but angry. She knew she was going to die and she still didn’t break. I don’t know what drove her here, or why she didn’t get off the streets, but whoever thought they were disposing of her when they flushed her onto the streets made the same mistake the idiots did when they flushed baby gators down the sewers. Oh yeah, that is real by the way. The biggest now is about sixty feet, and something in the water makes those buggers a lot smarter than the wild ones. Too much magic maybe? Some sort of super soldier failure washed down the pipes? Either way, leave the sewer gators alone, they are too tough for you. Sugar, well she had eyes like those big crocks, dark wells of eternity. You could kill her, but she would not break.

“That shit you put them on fucks them up Tony! They get stupid. They don’t make the tricks use condoms, they don’t ask questions before they get in the cars. It isn’t just the cops busting them. Tina and Xia FUCKING DISSAPEARED. They got in cars with guys that weren’t right and now their bodies are in the goddamned dump just because you put them on some sort of Barbie drug to make them a little prettier, and a lot more biddable.” Sugar responded, anger vibrating in a voice that tells me she is from a lot farther south than New York, I am a Canadian, so who am I to judge. New York alleys are very cosmopolitan.

Tony opened his arms wide.

“I’m doing the girls a favour. Take a hit of Barbie and you want to party all night long. Every John will be the best ride of your life and your pretty little head won’t want to do anything but want more. It keeps them happy!” Tony said, and his crew laughed. Half the girls smiled blissfully, clearly the ones on whatever the fuck that Barbie thing is, the other half looked terrified and resigned, like they knew the rest of this story but hoped if they stayed still enough they would survive it. Fuck the streets here were cold in a way that had nothing to do with the summer heat.

“THEY GET DEAD!” Sugar screamed. No longer able to keep her mouth shut. “You want to survive on the streets here, you have to pay attention. Who is just a creep who want’s to bang someone young as his daughter? Who want’s to see what your face looks like when he cuts off your tit and shows you the inside? Who is a cop just looking for an excuse to bust you? Who is a cop just looking for an excuse to take a freebie and beat the crap out of you, because he is going to set you straight. Who is another pimp out looking to turn you into an object lesson about who owns that corner, and dump your body in front of your fucking Cadillac. You know smart girls earn you the best money, they stay clean, they don’t get pregnant, they don’t get busted, they don’t turn snitch for anyone. The only thing Barbie gets them is hurt, or dead.” Sugar fumed.

Tony came and took over the grip on her hair, he stroked the side of her face with the golden .50 caliber pistol. Seriously, from the steroids muscles to the pistol he was not strong enough to control, Tony was trying too hard.

“Sugar, sugar, sugar. You always were a smart girl, but most of these bitches aren’t. Barbie makes them happy, and it makes the John’s happy because it leaves each of them thinking they were the worlds best lover, and that brings them back for more.” Tony smirked, as he stroked her face with his pistol, leaving it at her lips as if for a kiss or blow job.

That is when Sugar either decided she was already dead, or quit giving a fuck about survival. I wonder if she knew which it was?

Her voice suddenly so sexy and playful I admit I my lower goblin was half way to spear length and rising fast.

“Oh Tony, they can just fake it. I mean, I had you convinced that you were so good that I did everybody else just for a chance to get squashed underneath a shaved gorilla who confused fucking with doing speed push-ups on a mattress.”

That was when I fell in love. I mean, that was a BURN. I started laughing. I mean full on Goblin laughter. I was in the air when Tony lost his shit. He swung back like he was going to pistol whip her, then changed his mind, pulled the hammer back and pointed it at her head.

Did I mention I was in the air at that point. I had been clinging to a fire escape three floors up in the shadows, and when Sugar got her kill shot on Tony the Pimp’s ego, I decided she got to win this round and live. I sprang at him before he switched from bitch slapping, to brain splattering as his main plan.

My foot drove the gun offline and down, a shot banged out and blasted a hole in the pavement that sprayed bits dangerously at the circle of girls and goons but thankfully didn’t kill anyone.

I let my glamour drop on my face, and clad my body in what my instincts told me was hunting garb of leather vest, pants, and boots. My claws, fangs, and ears on full display, I stopped to have a moment. I mean, this was my big introduction.

“Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Oh Sugar, I may be in love. That was FUCKING epic. I am a fan madame, a devoted fan.” I picked her off the ground, and kissed her hand with a theatrical bow.

Guns were coming up in the circle around me, if I stayed here, she would be dead as soon as people started pulling triggers. If I stayed in the circle, the rest of the girls would become meat shields. This was tactically a really stupid place to be, but my blood was up and theater was going to happen. It was a Midsummer Night, and I was feeling Puckish.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Tony the pimp screamed as he drew the other .50 caliber gold plated Desert Eagle from under his right armpit with his left hand, then transferred it to his right, as besides wearing two weapons he wasn’t strong enough to control, he wore two when he could only shoot right handed. Honestly, killing him was an act of reverence to every small arms instructor the army ever graced me with. This one is for you guys!

I patted Sugar on the hand, and bowed slightly. “Your pardon, my lady, but it is garbage day, and if you don’t have the trash out on time, they will leave it for the whole week.” I winked, and I could see her face twist from horror to humour as my bullshit broke her mask.

Situational awareness is a goblin thing. I had this timed perfectly. If Tony had a clue that my speech was done with my back to him so that he would feel he had the time to take care of this himself without ordering his goons to open fire, he might have done something regrettable. I could get me out of the line of fire, but I was a goblin not a god, I could not get all the girls out of the spray of everyone else’s blind fire.

As Tony’s big pistol came down, I kicked his wrist into the air, and the pistol with it. In the same motion I bent forward to pick up the pistol I knocked away. I rolled and leaped into the air, kicking off the alley wall about four feet in the air, feeling two bullets of a more reasonable caliber whip past me. I sprang a good twenty feet into the air to get my angle, and the big .50 barked six times while I soared. Six men who were tracking me with their guns took a .50 caliber Action Express round to the head. I don’t know who is wearing body armour, and I don’t care. I don’t actually know how a .50 pistol round will do against a normal vest, let alone a plate carrier, but I know that in mid leap, in the dark, I can put a pistol round through the weak bit in the skull in that triangle around the nose and eyes.

I hit the alley on the other wall, and let the empty gun drop as I kicked off with my full power to put me among the remaining half dozen thugs.

I concentrated on fast, so it was all claw. I was laughing my full on goblin laugh, this was what I was born for. Doing terrible things to worse people. I was Unseelie Fey, a fucking goblin warrior, every night terror mankind has ever had given flesh and form by their fear and on the streets of New York City for fun and fucking profit. I took the punches I couldn’t be bothered to block, then shattered the arms, blowing them backward, giving them new places and directions to bend. I tore out throats, right to the spine. I took a tackle from behind that drove me to my knees, so I reached up with my claws and tore the junk off the guy in front of me, then rolled to my feet and hammered my back into the wall to knock the wind out of the one that tackled me. I pulled my head forward, then slammed it back. The popping of the skull behind me felt, disturbingly good, as I felt it through my own skull.

Tony had Sugar, he was holding her like a body shield as he shouted at me.

“Who the fuck are you?” Tony screamed, backing into the dead end of the alley, coming to rest against the dumpster and carboard recycling bin at the back. There was a metaphor there somewhere.

I bowed again. “I am the Goblin King, this is my city, the night belongs to me, and the ladies in it.

I was drunk off the blood, the killing. I let myself cross a line into full cringe that I will regret forever.

“Through dangers untold. And hardships unnumbered. I have fought my way here to the alley; beyond New York city, to take back the child that you have stolen. My will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great...you hold no power over them.”

I spun her from his grasp with a move I took whole from ballroom dancing. Sugar moved like she had danced before, folding into the crook of my arm in a dip that would have won both of us full marks from the judges. She was staring up at me with disbelief and amusement. Say what you will, veterans recognize their own, she was so used to fear that it had no place in her thinking. She looked back at me and smirked. “Labyrinth? You are giving Sarah’s speech from Labyrinth? Does that make me the fucking baby?” She asked, not quite laughing, but the mix of terror, rage, and fear leaving her at the low boil and ready to explode in some direction as yet undecided. I winked.

Tony had no respect for the moment and charged in. He worked out, like all the time. He stank of steroids and his body held too much muscle for his frame. Bigger isn’t better. When we say someone is big boned, we aren’t excusing fat, we are saying this guy or girl was set up to be big, to carry large amounts of muscle and mass and use it well. Smaller frames when they bulk up, obsessed with numbers on their lifts, actually become less effective fighters. A big slow wolf isn’t a bear, it’s a shitty wolf everyone get away from. Tony was an over-muscled tanning booth roid monkey who mistook the ability to beat women and girls who took it out of an economic survival imperative for being an actual predator.

He charged in with a roar.

I lunged, Sugar still in my hand, got inside the haymaker he was swinging at me, drove my hand through his chest and ripped out his heart. I ate it in front of his dying eyes.

I could hear Sugar puking, she was not alone. The girls were sobbing and puking, about a third of them. A third were being very still, deer in the presence of a bear that just ate the local wolf. A third were, I guess on that “Barbie” drug and just sort of giving the big eyed ‘anime girl’ sort of look. Yeah, that drug was clearly not good for their survival instincts, and the streets required that more than anything else.

Sugar looked at me, standing between her and the girls.

“So what now, we work for you? You know Tony was just a middle man. He didn’t own us. The people that do aren’t jokes like him or I would have run long ago.” Sugar looked at me in real fear now. Not of me. Standing there, covered in blood, eating the heart of her pimp, she looked at me terrified about whoever it was I just poked by killing Tony and his crew.

“No. They work for you, if they want to. If they don’t, then I will send them where they want to be with a little cash to set them up. You work for me, but I don’t want money. I just want to know what is going on, here on the streets.” I said, skipping steps in my own plan, and deciding I sucked at planning altogether.

“With what money? You got a Santa sack full of cash to go with that Goblin King BDSM outfit?” She asked, half way between defiant and curious.

“With their money.” I said, licking the last of the blood off my claws, then jerking a finger at the dead gangsters. “You are going to take me to whoever Tony reported to, and I am going to start killing my way up the food chain. When I am at the top, I am going to sit you there, so you can look after the girls, keep the right cops on the pad so the girls don’t get hassled, and so that you have the muscle to keep other pimps off them and the money to help the girls off the bad shit. If you need clean drugs for those girls that need it, then find me a dealer worth keeping alive and I will keep him on tab.”

She started to shake her head. “They will kill me. I am still on the streets because I have seen what happens when people without power or backing try to step up, they get hammered down, and they get dead.”

I felt my magic stirring. Goblin magic is weird, territorial. There is power to words, power to oaths. I ran my mouth in the dark while blood was on the ground. I had made a pledge to the night, to the hunt, and the powers had heard me.

I placed my hand on her arm, and a black thorn tattoo wrapped around her arm.

“I cannot lie. I am the Goblin King, and this is my city. I have taken back the child they had stolen. You have my protection, and when the killing is done tonight, no one will see that mark on you and dare raise a finger against you.”

Say what you will about the street kids, they are feral. They are wild, they are of the wild. They are closer to real human than the safe ones raised in security. They know the dance of predator and prey, they know the ways of the twilight world, and its laws. They may not know the words for it, but they know the laws. Nature desires order, and if I did what the heroes do, and left a vacuum then the little people like them would be hurt when the lower tiers fought for the open niche in the food chain. I was going to take that spot and do it strongly enough that the lower order predators would fear to disturb me, but without touching the territory of the greater beasts. They would watch me, test me, but not crush me or mine for fear of disturbing the balance between their own higher tier of predator.

I picked up Tony’s two holster rig and set about cleaning his two pistols as Sugar paid off the girls to take the night off. She looted the corpses with the sort of unconcern that let me know that the streets here in New York were not any gentler than Kandahar during my last tour. You don’t get that kind of casual about pulling rings, necklaces, and wallets off corpses unless you do it so often its routine. The pistols needed the cleaning. Thank God he had a few boxes of ammunition in the glove box. He also had rolls of cash. I hoped they were organized, but considering it was Tony, they were probably just wrapped and banded, dumped in a bag, and handed over for people with brain cells to work out later.

When Sugar got into the Caddy, she muttered “I can’t believe I’m driving a pimp mobile.”

I laughed and offered. “It’s now a Madame-wagon if that helps. Now, tell me about who Tony works for, and how they relate to the big fish in the area.” Sugar talked as she drove. She was smart, and smart enough to never let on how smart. If the people Tony works for had any idea how much she knew, they would have killed Tony first, then her. We made six stops that night. I left a circle of thorns burned into each door as my calling card. That and the bodies. I took the cash, left the drugs, took enough computers that I was thankful for the size of the Caddy’s back seat, the trunk was full of cash. Mom now had laundry to do for me, a lot of it. I made about three quarters of a million in one night, I left another fifty K for Sugar to run with. I gave her my card and let her know that I could set her up with a building of her own in a few days. Someplace for her girls (and some boys it turns out) to stay that was safe, clean, and would never be worked out of.

I set up the stolen computers and let dad have his remote way with them.

I had committed what is called strategic overreach. I had taken territory I had no resources to defend, and now I had to leave money to mom, information to dad, and run my little goblin ass off its feet making it clear to New York that the Goblin King had an enforcement arm that was to be feared. I didn’t have an enforcement arm, I was the enforcement arm. I wasn’t planning on setting myself up as a crime lord. I was supposed to be the fucking GOOD GUY. Good guy-ish anyway.

Catchup is a terrible game, and I was now stuck in it. I had to step DOWN my violence on everyone pushing at the edges of my territory. I had to show I could take out their muscle with ease, but that I respected them too much to just go stacking bodies. I had to show that if I failed to protect an asset, and they hurt one of my people, that the ones who did so would die in ways their own soldiers would fear to face. I did not have numbers, I had to use fear instead.

The Goblin King had come to New York City in a night of blood and fire. In the city of a thousand shadows, one of them was now mine.

In a hundred deeper shadows, predators twitched, aware that something new hunted their concrete jungle, and depending upon their nature, they slept on, or they began to hunt.

On a rooftop in Hell’s Kitchen, a figure in blood red armour stared with unseeing and inescapable eyes at a pile of corpses he knew, many of whom he had beaten and left for the police more than once. Daredevil jumped from rooftop to rooftop, he was hunting those who brought death to Hell’s Kitchen, and he would not be stopped. In an alley not far away, a figure crawled down the walls to rescue a camera webbed in place with custom designed motion sensors to activate it. The police who held the alley front closed off would only try to arrest him if they noticed the wall crawler. Spiderman pulled the camera out of the web and wondered at the cops’ words.

“Full on fucking goblin man, green skin, fangs, claws. Ripped out this pimp’s heart and ate it right in front of everyone.” The one cop said to the other who shuddered.

Spiderman looked at the alley, no blast marks, no scent of the damned Goblin Glider, no blast marks from pumpkin bombs. Green Goblin was a psychopath, but eating a heart seemed to be a bit much for him. Likewise, he wouldn’t care if some hookers got hurt. Bystanders were just meat shields to him. Has something changed in the Green Goblin, or was Goblin King a new player?