“Now what??” Myra asked no one in particular as she spotted the flames.

They were just barely visible over some fourth-floor rooftops on her left; little tongues poking out like mischievous children. She screwed down the rather dusty window on her side of the auto and poked her head out. The fire seemed to be raging in one of those depressing, out-of-the-way apartment side-streets, and she could hear emotional shouts.

She left the auto running as she hurried out of it.

“Go back to that phone booth we passed earlier!” she said to Brown as the man manoeuvred into the driver’s seat. “Call in the water boys, in case no one there has a phone! I’ll go and take a look!”

“On it, Your Highness,” the man replied without inflection and gripped the wheel.

She took off towards the street entrance as the auto screeched into a U-turn behind her. A man came out of the poorly lit area at a run, carrying a young boy with strikingly similar hair. The boy was crying and both were in their night clothes, but neither seemed hurt and so she didn’t spare them a second glance.

The raised voices became clearer, distinctive from one another as opposed to being a general din. As she drew nearer she realised that it wasn’t all panic. Some voices were crying out in anger, and others were oddly joyful.

More people came around a corner at a flight, looking terrified, and one woman was bleeding from a cut on her forehead. Myra rounded the corner herself and saw the scene for herself.

The fire was in a low-grade four-story apartment building, whose front was an open-air staircase. People were still streaming out and down, some carrying children, others carrying hastily-grabbed possessions. Once down on the street things just turned into general chaos, with people scattering down either length of the street. And doing the scattering were brutish men with fake fur collars sewn into their coats and jackets.

They moved about like inept herders, some waving knives or bludgeons, sowing terror in an already terrified bunch of people or simply kicking some who were prone on the ground. Some roared, others taunted, and the only one not moving, the tall man standing like a tree in the middle of all of this chaos, was laughing merrily.

Myra did a quick count of the thugs and estimated they were around ten. She also noticed that the tall one observing all of this was rather by himself, and made a beeline for him. A bent-over woman blindly stumbled in the man’s general direction, trying to escape another goon who was brutally ripping at her hair and night dress. Myra switched directions enough to intercept and the man looked up as she swung the butt of her revolver into his face. There was a loud crack and he fell like a dropped sack.

She finished her dash at the leader, who turned to stare into the gun barrel.

“Police!”

The man ran a hand through his grey, unkempt hair with an air of nonchalance.

“Please what?” he retorted.

“Call off your men, Wolf, and get on the ground,” Myra bit out through her teeth.

“Hm,” he said, still unruffled on the surface even as his eyes glinted evilly in the firelight. “Hey boys! HEY BOYS! She wants us to cut it out! What do you think?!”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

In all the chaos and screaming probably only a few of them heard him, but some definitely did and turned to look at the scene.

“I am not playing games,” she said with cold menace.

“Oh, neither am I, actually,” Wolf replied.

“Do you think I won’t drop you?”

“Hey boys, once she drops me, let her have it!” he shouted, and the confrontation was rapidly drawing more attention.

Her finger was on the trigger, the bastard was bathed in the light of the flames his men had started, and she honestly got the feeling they might charge her if she didn’t fire. But the feral, cruel men on the fringes of her field of vision seemed the types to charge if she DID fire. And then there were the innocent people.

“I have a gun,” she pointed out, hiding any signs of fear and the pain from the falling wall incident.

“Well, we have something better,” Wolf replied. “We-”

The suddenness of the movement behind him almost made her pull the trigger. Two of the half-dressed men fleeing the fire charged him from behind. The gang leader whirled around and evaded the amateurish swing that came his way, ending the movement with a firm jab straight at one man’s chin.

“You bastard!” the other shouted, and a third man came from another direction.

For a moment the situation seemed to explode even further. The thugs charged, a few of their victims tried to fight back while the rest fled even faster, and Myra saw movement coming in from the corner of her eye. She turned and fired, and it took her a second of pure horror to confirm that the man who crashed up against her legs was indeed wearing a fake fur collar. She’d struck him in the hip.

Instinct made her turn the other way before her mind could make sense of anything, and she aimed her revolver at a Hound who was reaching for her gun arm. She fired through his held-out palm, and before he’d even registered the injury she sent her fist up into the underside of his nose. He stumbled backwards, and the knife in his other hand clattered onto the street.

As she whipped around to aim her weapon back at their leader he threw the blow that dropped the last of the three men who’d found their courage. Her blood was up, and his calm at all of this somehow enraged her even further.

“Ho ho,” he said, holding his hands vaguely up, more as if shrugging than anything else. “Like I said: We have something better.”

Wolf pointed upwards and to the side with his right hand, clearly expecting her to look.

“I’m not that stupid!” she growled, wishing Brown would show up already.

“Is that so?” he replied with a happy grin that really underlined his nickname.

He continued pointing and after a couple of breaths she did hear the desperate cries up above. After confirming to herself that none of the Hounds were within immediate reach, she dared take a quick peek.

One of the Hounds stood on a nearby rooftop. Before him he held a young boy, right on the very edge. He was ten years old at the very most, and screaming in helpless terror as the man seemed to toy with the idea of nudging him over.

Wolf laughed.

“See?” he said. “That IS better. Am I right or what?”

The locals had mostly fled by now, and Wolf motioned for his men to start falling back. Two of them cautiously edged near her, seemingly to fetch their hip-shot comrade.

“Leave him,” she ordered.

“No,” Wolf said sternly. “Don’t leave him. Or what comes next is on you.”

Myra grit her teeth in helpless rage and inched to the side, away from the prone, groaning gang member.

“I will hunt you down,” she told him in a hard voice.

“Once you guys are done with the Green Bomber?” Wolf asked as he began slowly backing away. “And the civil unrest? And the break-ins, and the disappearances, and the homeless crisis?”

His injured men were dragged and supported away, as their leader neared the edge of the firelight. As they vanished from sight she could make out just enough of the man to see his grin.

“You’re in Hell,” he said. “You’re all in Hell, and I’m happy to be a part of it.”

He laughed as he joined his men in the darkness. Myra turned and looked at the fires spreading in the building.