Chapter 11
Ballardsville
It didn’t take long for Zed to get his people moving. They weren’t exactly disciplined but most of them figured out that if they were moving out at this time of night then they were expected to do so on the down low. It was late and everyone else was asleep, if they were disturbed, they mistook the shuffled feet for drunks stumbling about with a need to relieve full bladders.
In the dead of night, Malky strolled through the gate unchallenged after handing off the package to Zed. It was just a box with a crystal the podium in Fenton would recognise. Once delivered it would release the promised funds.
He moved silently across the courtyard, heading for the old golf house. The three-storey building remained the centrepiece of the complex. The newer lodges and shoddy huts were where the mercs and slaves slept respectively. A few eyes watched him from the slave huts, but they didn’t call out or do anything to give him away.
The main entrance at the front of the golf house was locked. A quick examination of the mechanism confirmed that Ballard hadn’t changed the locks. That was a mistake because Malky still had a key in his inventory.
Putting it in the lock, he turned the key, and it clicked loudly in the quiet of the darkness. With a slight push, the door swung open, and the tall knight ducked his head low to avoid the head jamb and entered.
The place was cleaner than expected. Mia had given him a rundown on what kind of state the bikers had made of the place. His mother, who used to be a housekeeper here, would have been mortified. Somebody had made an effort to rectify that in the intervening months and for that, Malky felt oddly grateful.
Stepping away from the welcome rug, Malky quickly realised he was not alone, there was a figure standing in the shadow of a doorway that led into the bar area. He summoned the broadsword to his grip and adopted a combat posture. The shaded figure cowered away at the appearance of a weapon and after peering into the gloom he could make out that it was someone with a slight figure.
“Come out here,” he whispered. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
The figure stepped out into the corridor and the moonlight that filtered through the front door illuminated her. It was a scantily clad young woman, petite, maybe a few years younger than Mia. Everything about her screamed timid and afraid. Malky’s instinct was to call her over and take care of her, but in the Darkwyrlds looks could be deceiving and only the cautious prospered.
He held his ground and kept a reasonable distance between them. “What is your name?”
“Shirley,” she answered, her voice low and difficult to make out. Almost like she didn’t want to be heard by anybody else that might be nearby.
“My name is Malky, I used to live here with my friends Mia and Keith. I’ve come looking for a man called Ballard. Is he here?”
Shirley nodded slowly. “Have you come to kill him? Him and the other officers?”
“Have they hurt you?” Malky asked back instead, still a tad cautious about revealing too much of his intentions to a stranger.
Tears welled at the edges of Shirley’s eyes, and she nodded. “When they came and killed Terror, wearing their uniforms, I thought they were here to save us, but they didn’t. Instead, they just took his place. The Hellhounds might have been crueller, but somehow what they’ve done is worse. Killed hope. If I help you, promise you won’t leave me behind, leave me here, for whoever comes next. I don’t think I could take it.”
The young woman’s story practically broke Malky’s heart and filled him with resolve. “Never, I promise. I’ll burn this entire place to the ground and take you somewhere safe. You can stay with me, or I have a friend that will take you in. You’d like her, she is very kind and likes to grow things.”
Shirley trembled in place and tears poured down her cheeks and she suddenly ran forward. Foolishly, Malky moved his sword arm out of the way and let the waif of a girl wrap her arms around him. Good fortune shone down upon him that night and there was no dagger plunged into his heart.
Not a literal one, at any rate. The young woman sobbed in his arms for a solid three minutes, though, and by the end, the fury in his heart had been stoked into a furnace.
“Enough of your caterwauling, Shirley,” a sleepy voice grunted from the bar area. “It’s fucking tiresome and I’m trying to sleep in here.”
“I…I’m sorry, Officer Woyczek. I’ll be quieter,” she answered the unseen man with a snivel.
Malky calmy pulled Shirley’s arms from around him. She was a bit reluctant to let go but couldn’t put up too much of a fight. He was considerably stronger than she was. Malky raised one finger to his lips to indicate that she should be quiet, guided her over to the staircase and sat her down on the second bottom step.
“How many?” he whispered very quietly in her ear and motioned to the bar with his head.
Shirley lifted a single index finger to indicate that the former police officer was alone.
With Shirley out of harm’s way, Malky stepped into the bar.
He was familiar with the floor layout and knew which spots to avoid stepping on to prevent unwanted creaking that might give him away. The room was carpeted and that helped him move quickly and quietly across the room. Officer Woyczek lay on his side, splayed out on one of the green leather couches that ran along the back of the wall. It was difficult to tell what kind of condition the couches were in the near dark. There was just enough light for Malky to make out his dozing form and tell that he was indeed on his own.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Back for more are you? I knew you liked it really,” were Officer Woyczek’s sleazy last words. He died as he lived, as a useless sack of shit.
Malky’s sword sliced through the back of his neck and pinned him to the couch while the knight drew a dagger from his belt and finished him off with a series of kidney strikes.
When the knight emerged from the bar, the dark work done, Shirley jumped to her feet, eager to help further, but sucked on her lower lip with fear. “There are four more here tonight including Ballard, they are all upstairs. But what about Zed and his men?”
“They’re gone,” Malky assured the nervous young woman. “Stay down here. I’ll return shortly.”
The big man ascended the stairs quietly. Although if he were heard, he could have been mistaken for Woyczek who had been sleeping off some earlier indulgences. There had been several empty bottles on the table near the dead man.
The first two men Malky came across were easy enough to take care of, he caught them sleeping and ended their lives before they woke. They hadn’t looked like former police officers, they were older and didn’t look to be in the best of shape, so presumably, these were some of Ballard’s friends whom he’d brought on board.
The final officer proved to be a more difficult quarry. He was a large African American man who proved to be a lighter sleeper than the older men. He opened his eyes just as the knight loomed over him and rolled out of the way, summoning armour to his form as he went. Malky’s first thrust with the broadsword winged his shoulder but didn’t do too much damage.
“Assassin!” the man yelled, got back to his feet and bull-rushed Malky, relying on his bulk to barrel him over. Metal armour clashed with metal armour as the two big bodies collided, but Malky didn’t topple over as his opponent had hoped. In such close quarters, melee weapons were trickier to use, and the fight degenerated into an all-out brawl on the floor.
Ballard responded to the shouted warning, rushed from his bed chamber and kicked the door to the room open violently, taking in the scene before him. “Kenyon, what the hell is going on in there?”
There was no immediate answer as the two armoured men battered away at each other, with Malky on top. Ballard summoned his pump-action shotgun, ol’ Betsy and aimed. “Hopkins! Garrett! Get out here. Woyczek, get your lazy drunken ass upstairs now.”
Ballard squeezed the trigger, not caring who he hit. The buckshot wouldn’t be fatal to a man in magical armour, but it would certainly hurt at this range.
Malky had spotted the shotgun from the corner of his eye and leaned back, letting Kenyon sit up so that the back of his head intercepted most of the impact. It was enough that Kenyon’s body went to jelly like a boxer who’d just taken a big hit. He lost his grip on his opponent momentarily and his upper body thumped to the floor.
With such an opening, Malky summoned his Kite shield, rammed the pointed end under Kenyon’s chin and pressed the glyph to fire the bolt at point-blank range. It if didn’t kill the poor bastard outright, it pinned him to the floor through the back of his gullet.
“Hopkins! Johnson! Garrett!” Ballard yelled out again and backed up a few steps.
“Dead or defected,” Malky informed him, his voice dripping with hate and menace. Kenyon was alone, but there had been other girls in the rooms with Garrett and Hopkins. None of them appeared to have been there willingly. “It’s just you and me!”
The big man sprang back to his feet and chased down the corrupt Chief of Police who backed away from the door and managed to trip himself in a fruitless attempt to create some distance between them. Ballard collided with the upper banister which knocked ol’ Betsy from his grip and the shotgun fell over the edge and clattered onto the hallway flooring below.
Shirley was quick to react and grabbed the weapon. Not that Ballard ever had an opportunity to retrieve it.
Ballard stumbled and fell to his knees, then crawled away like a piggy, but not fast enough. The bottom of Malky’s boot met his exposed rump when he passed the staircase opening and the police chief was sent tumbling down a flight of stairs.
Ballard slammed into the plaster of the wall when the steps took a ninety-degree right turn onto a small landing. Malky hopped down the short flight of stairs three at a time and blocked off any escape route while Ballard shook his head and recovered his senses.
“Please…” he begged. “I have…have a wife, a son. They need me. Please…please, don’t hurt me. I can pay…pay you. Zed! Zed! For God’s sake, where the fuck are you, Zed!”
The words tumbled out in a hurry as did the comingled tears and the sweat of terror.
“Is his family in the building?” Malky’s question was not directed at Ballard but to Shirley who was further down, at the bottom of the second flight on the ground floor.
“No, they are in a townhouse elsewhere, I think. Ballard’s never brought them here. Doesn’t want them to know what he is doing, I reckon. None of them do.”
“Good,” Malky said, his eyes returning to the petrified Ballard without a hint of mercy in them. “No child should see this.”
“Nooooo!” Ballard screamed and held his hand up to shield himself as the edge of the broadsword descended. Without armour, the arm was cleaved off and the blade bit deep into flesh. Malky didn’t stop with the wet work until the deed was done.
By the end, there was a gaggle of other young women, none of them wearing much in the way of clothes who had gathered at the top of the landing and looked down at the carnage with a mixture of fear and joy.
“Is he dead?” one of them asked tentatively.
“Yes, yes he is,” Malky answered. “They all are.”
***
Gathering the rest of the enslaved, freeing them, and then guiding them over the river to the part of Flint governed by Lieutenant Hernandez took the rest of the night. Malky was tired, both physically and emotionally, but he had promises to keep, people depending on him, and he wouldn’t let them down.
Shirley barely left his side during the whole process. Most of the others were happy to be taken away by Hernandez but she was reluctant to part with him. Nevertheless, when she found out he planned to return to the farm at the golf course, she agreed to remain behind. It probably helped that she was utterly exhausted and Malky promised to be back before she woke.
He only returned to the golf course to keep another promise. It took a few more hours, but eventually, he doused everything in gasoline and then lit a match and let it all burn to the ground. If Zed or any of Ballard’s friends who had the good fortune not to be here tonight were inclined to come back and pick up where Ballard left off all they would find was a smouldering ruin.
That left Malky with one last task before he could rest his head.
Not far from the golf course was Glenwood Cemetery and he made his way there. Malky fell to his knees in front of a wooden cross placed in front of a grave dug only a few months earlier. A single word had been etched in the centre.
Keith.
Whoever buried him hadn’t known any more about the interred than that.
Malky couldn’t even be sure that it was his friend who had been buried in this plot. Mia confessed that Torin’s people had left the bodies where they died. They were buried later by a detail sent out by Hernandez. They did their best, but there were no guarantees mistakes hadn’t been made.
It didn’t matter, it was just someplace for him to go and grieve.
Malky knelt there for the better part of an hour, memories weighing him down. He tried to think of something to say, something meaningful, but ultimately opted for something short and taciturn. A reminder of their friendship in all its forms. The good, the bad, the heartbreakingly bittersweet.
“It’s over.”
That summed it up in every way he could think of. Malky patted the ground, rose to his feet, shook off the ache in his knees, and then walked away. It was time to move on to the next chapter of his life.
And he had some new promises to keep.