Wolfe launched himself upward, his free hand touching his chest as he did. He tried to swing his manacled hand around and knock educated thug on this ass, but the open end of the cuff caught in something, and instead Wolfe slung himself sideways, giving educated thug the time necessary to get his gun out.

Knowing he was seconds from death, Wolfe didn’t even hesitate, simply throwing Cereboo into the space between him and educated thug. Wolfe felt like a bit of a douche for letting his doggo take the shot, but, well… Cereboo came back when he died. Wolfe didn’t.

The crack of a gunshot, whine, and following enraged barks were painfully loud in the relatively small boathouse, but Wolfe didn’t let it stun him. As Cereboo leapt onto educated thug—who abandoned his verbosity for screaming—Wolfe extricated his cuff from Rhett’s, where it was stuck, and stood.

Then he dropped back down and crawled to the slight protection of the speedboat in the center of the boathouse. A hail of gunfire went through the space he had been half a second earlier.

The other five thugs hadn’t been far behind.

He touched his deck again, and red washed over him—the familiar power of his Soul Hunter mantle. Between the increased defense and the resistance to Mortal damage that being Infernal gave him, he would take only about a third the damage from the mooks and their guns as he would otherwise have taken.

Feels like old times—Cereboo and a mantle against a pack of thugs.

Rhett yelled, and a notification popped into Wolfe’s view that a deckbearer had pulled their deck.

Okay, not exactly like old times.

Educated thug went down beneath Cereboo, and Wolfe ran out and ripped the gun from the dying thug’s hands, then peaked around the front side of the speedboat.

When he didn’t immediately get shot, he wasted a thug and pulled back, rapidly scuttling to the other side.

“Castor, Wolfe’s free! We need backup!”

Wolfe ordered Cereboo to attack the thug nearest the water, then lunged around the speedboat himself on the side furthest from water. He shot at two thugs rapidly, dropping them, while Cereboo absorbed bullets and brought another down.

The last one turned and started to run, just as a crazy demon burst into the room. It looked like an insane Koa-Tuo had birthed it after mating with some fishing gear, and it smashed the door to the boathouse off its hinges before leaping across the scattered crates. It landed and slashed at Cereboo but did little damage thanks to Cereboo’s huge resistance to the Infernal.

Wolfe ran to the side, aiming to go out the boathouse window and around behind Castor, whom he figured was coming in hot on his demon’s heels, but when he attempted to push the wooden slats open, they were stuck, briefly halting him.

“Die!” Castor screamed as he entered, firing at Wolfe, who hissed as a bullet went through the meaty part of his left bicep. He hit the ground, ignoring the seven damage—as much as Deputy Charleston’s punch, which either said something awesome about the deputy chief or really bad about the pistol Castor was using.

But it also meant Wolfe was half-dead, and he got his first injuries notification—a 1 point penalty to his stats, except Health.

“Did that hurt, Wolfe?” Castor called out, faux kindly.

Why do so many of my enemies try and taunt me? Do they think I’m going to suddenly become incompetent?

“Want me to kiss it better? Kiss it better with my gun?” Castor continued.

And why are so many so very bad at it?

Wolfe swiped and tried to play Cerberus’ Home for Wayward Hellhounds, but nothing happened except a notification appeared. Insufficient space on field to play that card.

Huh.

Wolfe instead played a single Angry Hellhound.

Even as he did, another notification appeared. Malviere has been slain. Her card returns to the deck, and the timer is reset.

Wolfe was shocked—Malviere was back at his house. With Ms. Timo, Shel’s sister Lucy, and Shannon.

Which meant someone was fighting there.

Oh, shit.

Maybe they’ll kill the Venegeful Orphan too, and let Shel know something is going on.

Wolfe tried to put it from his mind as another fish hook demon joined the fight, snarls and exploding boxes heralding its arrival.

Wolfe looked at his remaining cards. Another Angry hellhound, A Pack Howl, and his Fireborn Hellhound. He only got one, and that would also bring his cards on field to max.

He opted for the another oldy but goody, the Fireborn Hellhound. He wished he had a bit more synergy, but he still had the equivalent of seven power worth of demon dogs on the field.

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He stood, his gun and gaze tracking together for Castor, but he didn’t see him.

But his mantle made him deadly to other Infernals, so Wolfe spent a moment blasting one of the Fish hook demons to pieces. The other managed to get a hook into the skin of his Angry Hellhound, and ripped it out. His Angry Hellhound yipped and dropped to the ground. But Cereboo and the Fireborn Hellhound hit the demon and began ripping it to pieces.

At the same time, a giant Crab appeared and rushed the field.

Castor leapt out from around the side of the speedboat to shoot Wolfe three times in rapid succession. Wolfe was blinded by pain that felt like getting hit in the chest three times with bone cracking force, but his mantle prevented his death—but he was left with huge penalties and three Health. Wolfe stepped inside and knocked the gun from Castor’s hand, only to have his knocked from his hand in turn. They went chest and chest, wrestling as they pushed each other around, grunts and huffs of exertion as the coppery smell of blood slowly overwhelmed the smell of the river.

Wolfe could normally take a chump like Castor in almost no time, but he was severely wounded. A lance of pain went through him as Castor managed to elbow one of his chest wounds, and his wounded arm gave in slightly. Castor used that to push Wolfe back. In the space, he drew his huge knife and lunged for Wolfe.

Wolfe caught the descending knife by using a cross-wrist block, but Castor pushed him back, and Wolfe tripped over the side of the speedboat. Both went down, and Castor landed on top. Wolfe tried to get the advantage, but Castor had started on top, was younger, and wasn’t riddled with bullet holes. The bloody scramble ended advantage Castor, with Wolfe trapped against the metal bottom of the speedboat, Castor above him.

He quickly got his angle, mounted above Wolfe, and tried to stab Wolfe again. Wolfe again caught the knife, but he was in dire trouble. Castor was now pushing down on the knife, with his weight backing his play. Wolfe was nominally stronger, but his weak arm and Castor’s superior position meant the knife inched ever closer to his chest, bit by bit. Wolfe’s limbs were already shaking with the effort to keep it away. They would give way soon, and then Wolfe’s story would end.

"Give in, it’ll all be over soon,” Castor whispered, his breath smelling of onions.

Wolfe glanced to the side at the disassembled propeller lying in the bottom of the speed boat and gave a last desperate, spasming heave to the side, throwing Castor and rolling. Castor let go of the knife and tried to post, but Wolfe hit him, driving him partially onto the exposed screws with their combined weight. Castor screamed and thrashed, not nearly dead but agonizingly wounded. Now, every thrash they made also wounded Castor more, and Wolfe finally managed to post on top of Castor, their positions reversed from a few seconds ago.

“You give up,” Wolfe said back. “I’ve been not giving up for twenty-five years, and I’m not about to change that for a stupid POS like you.”

That sounded better in my head.

Wolfe was still tiring, however, and Castor wasn’t dead.

Both men also still had cards in front of them, moving in and out of each other’s bodies without interacting with them, and Castor managed to swipe, switching his cards.

Wolfe needed to stop him from summoning, and fell chest to chest with Castor, putting all his cards inside Wolfe’s body. Castor couldn’t get Wolfe off him, half screaming, half grunting as each effort pushed the broken propeller parts deeper into him.

It only required a few moments of Wolfe stopping the summon for the air to suddenly reek of brimstone.

Castor looked up into four hellhound mouths. He had time for one scream before he was silenced forever.

Wolfe hit Level Twenty-Five. He dismissed the notification telling him that he had hit the level for a new perk, instead slumping back down onto the metal bottom of the speed boat for a moment, trying to recover.

He had imagined hitting level twenty-five to be more epic, somehow.

He rested for thirty seconds next to Castor’s corpse, but then managed to half-heave, half-crawl out of the boat. It wasn’t over yet. A ‘surgeon’ would be here soon, and Wolfe was in no condition to fight. He went over to educated thug, hoping he would have the keys to the handcuffs.

A quick rifle through his teeth-punctured, burned corpse showed that he did, in fact, have the keys. Wolfe managed to walk his way over the Rhett, barely able to stand. One hand on castor’s gun, one hand holding the keys to Rhett’s cuffs.

When he reached the lieutenant, Rhett was staring at Wolfe with wide eyes. “You just killed seven armed men, including a deckbearer, in a couple minutes.”

“Turns out I suck at nearly everything—but I am stupid good at one thing, which is being the ‘find out’ to every evil jackass that ‘fucks around.’”

Rhett snorted. “Sucking at nearly everything including one-liners, I take it?”

Wolfe ignored the banter, and held his newly acquired gun to Rhett’s head in one trembling hand. “We need to have a talk about where this goes next.”

Rhett narrowed his eyes, his jolly demeanor gone like a fart in the wind. “Spit it out, then.”

“I’m pretty sure you can guess by now that I didn’t kill Emmett, and who the real enemies are. So what’s going to happen is, I’m going to set you free, and you’re going to forget you ever heard the name ‘Wolfe.’ We make a deal—I get to keep my anonymity, and you get to keep your life. Sound fair?”

Rhett stared at him for a few moments, eyes occasionally crossing to look at the gun pressed to his forehead a mere inch from his eyes.

“Fuck you,” Rhett said.

“Really? That’s it? Just ‘Fuck you’?” Wolfe asked with exasperation. “Maybe your pride is wounded, being beat up by your fellow officers in blue and saved by some random thug, but don’t let it stop you from thinking straight.”

“You’ve heard my answer,” Rhett growled.

“Why? Why not even just pretend to agree and then arrest me later? Is turning me in worth dying for?” Wolfe asked, truly baffled. “Why not even give me the tiny hope I might get to lead a normal life, finally, so I won’t shoot you?”

Rhett was silent for a moment before speaking. “You think a man like Anderson woke up one day and decided ‘I’m going to betray my fellow officers?’ Of course not. He did some tiny thing, barely noteworthy, and probably for a seemingly good reason. Maybe his mother was sick, and someone in your line of work offered to take care of all her bills in return for ignoring just one shipment of drugs. And it made sense to him. Victimless crime, save his mother. But it tainted him, and made him susceptible. The next bribe maybe he justified as his wife deserving it. Then that he deserved it. Then it was just his lifestyle. Even if he wanted to turn back, he can’t, because he’s a criminal now too. He may not realize it, but he’s already ended the life he loved—now it’s just a matter of time till it catches up with him. And he’s the worst kind of criminal—the one that betrayed the trust of a society he swore to protect. I’m going to do my job, and I’m going to Divine well do it right.”

“You can’t do your job if you’re dead, asshole,” Wolfe said.

“Men like you don’t understand,” Rhett said. “When I die, and go before the Divine council, there won’t be anything to explain away.”

Rhett was the definition of self-righteous. Wolfe’s hand trembled as he began to tighten his finger on the trigger, looking in Rhett’s eyes.