CHAPTER 1

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Rico ran, knowing his life depended on his tiring legs. He looked over his shoulder, knocking branches and vines away as he ran. He pointed the AK47 over his shoulder and it shook as he blindly fired a burst.

He heard a screaming in the distant darkness and ran into a tree, crashing back to the ground. He leaped to his feet, his face bleeding and his nose hurting. Where the hell was he now? Everything looked the same in the night of the jungle. He could hear the river flowing in the distance but couldn’t fathom what direction it was coming from.

‘Fuck it. It doesn’t fucking matter. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The monster is gonna get me.’

There was another scream in the jungle and Rico began to cry. He could hardly move for a minute. The scream in the distance rose to a higher pitch and it energized the bandit into motion. He ran away from the scream and careened through the undergrowth.

They’re all dead. All the guys are dead. And after all the loot we scored!. Oh Jesus!

He smashed through one more layer of leaves and found, to his dismay, that he had come full circle. He was standing on the bank of the river, the river boat was beached to his right, decorated with the entrails of his friends. Paco’s head was slowly bobbing away in the current of the river.

There was a crack in the underbrush behind him and he turned and fired, discharging every last round in the magazine.

‘Fuck off! I’ll fucking kill you.’

He wrestled for another magazine in his pockets, crying freely with terror, feeling urine spread across his pants as the rustling thumping noise grew closer through the vegetation.

With a gasp of excitement, he slammed the new magazine into the gun, racked a new round and raised the gun, certain that he would now be okay.

Then he died.

CHAPTER 2

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‘I can’t believe the place hasn’t been torn apart,’ Ardia gazed around the dingy room. Despite the fact that her English came out without a flaw, the flush in her cheeks betrayed her true emotions. Razmik also noted that she was careful to avoid eye contact. It was probable that there were tears hiding just behind those hard but beautiful eyes.

Razmik reverently picked up a mug that lay on its side on the dusty carpet and placed it carefully on the small table. His own hands betrayed a slight tremble. When he spoke, his English was just as flawless, though heavy with his Armenian accent. ‘They are all too afraid, Ardia. Afraid of me and… afraid of what happened here.’

Ardia just nodded. She said no more for a little while and simply eased her long and beautiful body around the room. Razmik could not comprehend this young woman’s appearance. She looked nothing like her mother had. She looked like a blonde Greek goddess, like Athena. But more beautiful.

‘Razmik, surely you don’t have time to waste here with me’, Ardia spoke with her back to him and her voice was shaking. She was more than just practicing her English now, if she were to speak Armenian then her voice would be cracking. ‘You have much more important things to be doing. I do appreciate it, Raz, I really do, but you don’t have to.’

Razmik wiped dust from a wall mirror with his sleeve and took a moment to observe the old, rugged face that looked back at him. Not bad at all for a man in the neighborhood of 60 years old.

‘Ardia, I am invested in what happened here. I cared for you mother. Unless you need to be alone here, unless you tell me that you need to be alone here, then I will stay. Also… your mother was under my protection. This has made me seem…’

‘Weak?’ There was no accusation at all in her tone.

Razmik shrugged his big lean shoulders and said, ‘Or foolish…or… I don’t quite know the English word for it. This has created an opportunity for my enemies. Vulnerable! It has made me seem vulnerable.’

Ardia cocked an eyebrow, her eyes were glassy, ‘Vulnerable, Razmik?’

Razmik shrugged again. He was a consummate shrugger, always seeming not to care until the time came for decisions to be made and then he could act with absolute and terrible certainty.

Ardia turned back to the disheveled room. The furniture was scattered in chaos and there were still those awful brown splashes on the walls, splashes that had been red a few weeks ago. Staring at the aged blood and the dust and smelling the stale air, Ardia was suddenly overtaken with a feeling of despair.

‘We have waited too long, Raz, the trail must have gone cold by now.’

Razmik started to shrug but stopped himself and said, ‘This particular trail was so hot, to begin with, that I doubt much will have changed.’

‘Raz, don’t start babbling the same nonsense as the locals-’

Raz held up one solemn finger to stop her, ‘Let's not make up our minds just yet. Jumping to conclusions will not help us get satisfaction.’

Rage flashed across Ardia’s face, her voice rose into a hot roar and then collapsed into a broken sob, ‘Jump to conclusions! Jump to conclusions? How can you want to waste time pursuing the nonsense ramblings of these peasants? My mother is dead!’

Her fist flashed out and struck the wall. Not just the plaster turned to a cloud of dust beneath the force of her blow, but the mortar and brick splintered and cracked as well. She stared at the terrific damage she had just done to the wall of her dead mother’s house for a moment and then collapsed into a dusty armchair, sobbing.

Raz looked at the hole in the wall and his face was grim. Ardia had spent weeks in mourning, wondering why someone would kill her mother. It had yet to occur to her that the death of her mother might have had something to do with the beautiful daughter who could break gigantic men with her bare hands and smash holes in brick walls with her fists.

He turned his head to the crying goddess on the chair before him and reached out a tentative hand to place on her shoulder, then withdrew it, then extended it again. Before he could place it on her shaking arm the satellite phone at his waist erupted with sound.

Ardia spun to look at him, her face streaked with tears, ‘Is that…?’

Razmik shrugged, as usual, and lifted the blocky phone to his ear, ‘Yes?’

He wandered out through the front door of the house and Ardia followed him. Even though he stood several yards away from her she could hear every word that he said and could nearly make out the mumbled Armenian words on the phone.

In Armenian, Razmik said, ‘It is important because I said so. I do not care about the cost.’

Ardia looked out at the scattered houses that wound down the hillside. They were the homes of farmers and laborers, the homes of the peasants that had made outrageous claims about the killers.

‘We do not call her a whore! If you say so again then it will be the last you ever say!’ Raz’s voice was strained with anger, ‘Now tell me if you can get the footage!’

Ardia went back inside. This was a moment of peace within the house, without Raz. He wanted to help, and she truly wanted his help. He had been her mother’s employer for years when her mother had slept with men to make a living and later, when Ardia’s talents had been discovered, he had become her employer as well. Ardia’s mother had already been retired by then, kept in this little house on a stipend from Raz. And in this house, Ardia’s mother still kept her chest, the chest that Ardia had never been allowed to look into.

She crept into her mother’s bedroom, steering around the toppled furniture that had lain on the floor since her mother’s murder. She didn’t look at the browned blood on the walls this time. She stalked into the small bedroom, past the small bed, and found herself standing before the old wooden chest. There were secrets in here. This was where her mother had always kept her secrets. They were the secrets of a life that had driven her mother insane, secrets that had brought her mother to this town as a child with nothing, all alone. Secrets that had driven her to drugs and prostitution. Secrets that may very well have led to her murder almost sixty years after her arrival in these slums.

Ardia tentatively reached out and with a sharp twist broke the small padlock and then lifted the latch.

CHAPTER 3

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Father O’Connor sat on the woven chair beneath the lean-to at the front of his hut, rolling a cigarette. There may have been a severe lack of many comforts in the jungle but there was certainly no shortage of fresh tobacco. The sounds of the jungle echoed all around him, broken by the distant rumbling of a boat engine.

Many of the tribesmen in the little jungle village were sitting aimlessly. A small minority continued with their regular activities, fletching arrows, gutting fish. Too many were lost in a sort of malaise over the sickness that had swept through the village, many more were lying in their huts, sick or dying. O’Connor didn’t know what they were ill from, but he had flown a doctor in who had easily identified the sickness. It was treatable. It could have been caused by the logging efforts upstream poisoning the water, it could have been a disease carried by the North Americans who had come to destroy the jungles. It could have been neither. All that mattered was that it was easily treatable. The only problem was that up until now the drugs had been hijacked by gangs operating downstream.

O’Connor eased himself up from his chair as he fumbled in his pocket for matches. His face looked like seventy, but his body had the lean wiry look of a youth that works hard each day. His eyes looked older than time.

As he struck his first match, a small child, wearing nothing at all, crashed into him while he tried to light his freshly rolled cigarette. The match fluttered to the ground and sputtered out. The child hardly stopped before running back to his friends, pausing just long enough to say, ‘Sorry Padre.’

He was not Father Con O’Connor here, he was Padre. He struck another match and touched his cigarette to life. He then continued to wander down to the little dock that he had built with his own hands on the bank of the river. The boat appeared around the bend in the river and even from here, with his old eyes, he could see the boxes of medicine.

Puffing generously, with his cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, he picked up a coil of rope and tossed it to the pilot of the boat while calling, ‘You seem to have made it unmolested this time, Carlos.’

Carlos, a strapping Brazillian, held up his hands in absolute amazement, ‘Padre, you would not believe what happened. The story made me almost too afraid to come. It made me almost more afraid than the river pirates ever did.’

O’Connor stood frowning while Carlos tied the line to his river boat, ‘Tell me, Carlos, tell me what you heard.’ He tried to sound simply interested, or excited, but he looked concerned.

‘Oh Padre’, Carlos said, passing hefty cardboard boxes to the priest. ‘The story cannot be true, but it would make you pray to God to keep you safe at night.’

O’Connor stacked boxes on his little dock and said, ‘Go on Carlos, I want to hear.’

Carlos looked at the priest with a kind of embarrassment, ‘I don’t believe any of it, Padre. I believe in Jesus, like you do, I am just telling you the story.’

O’Connor smiled, but he was growing impatient, he needed to know what had happened. He needed to know how far things had gone. ‘Of course, Carlos, of course.’

Carlos smiled, still embarrassed, ‘they say it was a monster that came out of the jungle. One of the whor… one of the girls on the pirate's boat saw a big thing… like a bigfoot, a sasquatch, Padre. That's what she says to anyone who will listen. Whatever it was, it don't matter much because those pirates are not gonna bother anyone anymore.'

O’Connor grimaced now and his eyes flashed with deep anxiety, ‘How do you mean, Carlos?’

Carlos looked at the priest and for all of his protestations his eyes said that he really believed the story he had heard, ‘They’re dead, Padre. Not just dead, Padre, but, you know... in pieces.’

O’Connor sunk to his haunches at this and stared into the murky waters of the river as it swept by. He reached into his pocket and withdrew his tobacco and papers and decided that this morning he could have another. ’

Carlos was briefly stuck for words and in that brief pause O’Connor had rolled and lit another cigarette and had drawn deeply. ‘Padre… I dunno, they were all found in pieces. I didn’t see it. That’s just what they were saying earlier this morning when I was loading the boat. But I hear it was really gruesome.’ Carlos said nothing for a minute then gave the priest a huge smile, ‘But hey Padre, I got here and nobody stopped me for a tax, nobody stole the medicine. The people here can get better now… Is that, is that a sin? To be happy about that?’

O’Connor said nothing, just looked at the water and smoked. He was certainly not happy.

***

Night had fallen long ago and there was no sound of humanity in the village. There had been some celebration earlier when the medicines had been brought in, and some of O’Connor’s flock had already shown improvement. He was very happy about that.

He sat up in his little hut that night and smoked cigarette after cigarette, his insides bound up in knots as he waited for Homer to come back to him.

It had been twenty years since he had more or less adopted Homer, after his mother’s… unfortunate end.

The night crept by in painfully slow minutes and hours and the priest eventually found himself sick of smoking. He rummaged in his case and withdrew a small bottle of rum that he rarely touched any longer. When he turned back to the opening of the hut, the moonlight was completely blocked by a huge shadow that had appeared as silently as the sun rises. Giving a sudden start, O’Connor dropped his bottle. With a sound like the gliding wings of some massive bird of prey, the shadow swept out one impossibly long and thick arm and caught the bottle. A huge rough hand pressed the bottle back into the priest’s and a deep voice, like a frog’s croak, said, ‘Padre.’

O’Connor paused for only the briefest moment, ‘Padre is it now? Not father?’

The black shape shifted slightly, like a child being scolded. It was huge, stooping as it was beneath the low ceiling of the hut, the shadow could have been seven or even eight feet tall, and was so broad as to defy belief.

The deep croaking voice seemed sullen, ‘I did as you told me.’

The priest's face was flushed with a kind of resentment, ‘You did murder, so you did. Did I tell you to do that? Don’t be putting your sins on me.’

‘I didn’t do any sins, I did what you told me.’

‘Did you not commit murder? And you won’t sit for confession.’

The voice was defiant now, ‘I committed no murder.’

‘So these stories I have heard of the pirates being ripped to shreds, what are those?’

‘I was fighting God’s fight… Father… And I did what you asked. You got your medicine.’

‘Oh-ho, so I am Father again? That’s some version of the truth you have for yourself, Homer. And I am getting the message. You did what I asked. You hunted them out, you found them, and God forgive me and you, you fucking tore them all to bits. And now you want me to tell you that I did my bit for you? You're waiting to hear that I filled my side of it?’

The shadow said nothing and moved almost not at all.

‘Fine then. Well, I did what I could, but things have not gone as well as they could have.’ The priest got up and went back to his little chest. He opted to put the bottle of rum back, unopened, and withdrew a small paper package.

‘I have been exchanging letters for some months now with a woman from Armenia named Patil. The woman may have some connection with your father. I cannot know for sure, all I know is that there may have been a common factor in her past and the past of your own mother.’

‘Patil was a deeply disturbed woman and some of the letters I received were both suspicious and fearful, some of them were pure ranting. I feel Patil may have shared things with me, because of my collar, and because I met her once, many years ago, and showed her kindness, that she might never have shared with anyone else.’

The huge shadow had eased over and picked up a globe of the earth that O’Connor used to teach the children of the tribe. He held it in the moonlight by the doorway and ran one huge, thick finger along the surface until he found Armenia.

O’Connor went on, ‘Patil kept a diary Homer. She told me about it. She said she kept it since around the age of five when she was made homeless and I finally convinced her to send it to me. The book, of course, is written in Armenian, so it will not be of use to us for some time.’

‘For some time?’ the shadow croaked, ‘How can it ever be of use to us unless we learn this Armenian language?’

The priest smiled slightly and waved a small, thick book at him, ‘I am starting with the dictionary and going word by word. I will translate it for us, though god knows it might take some time.’

The croaking shadow was a little more forgiving now, ‘Why do we need this book when we can just write to Patil and ask her all our questions?’

O’Connor pursed his lips, ‘Because Patil died a little over a month ago. She was murdered in fact. This package was sent to me by her daughter, with a note in English.’

‘Do you have the note?’

The priest placed a small slip of paper into the enormous stubby-fingered hand. The shadow again turned the note to the moon and, in what could only have been the faintest light, quickly and easily read the text.

Dear Father O’Connor,

I have enclosed a package that my mother wished to send to you. I have not opened it, I will respect the privacy the two of you seem to share. I do not know you, but I know that my mother has been swapping letters with you for some time and it seems to have been doing her a lot of good.

I am very sorry to have to tell you that my mother died some weeks ago. I am even sorrier to have to tell you that she was murdered in a very brutal way. If you know anything about who might have wanted to do her harm then I beg you to share that knowledge with me.

Yours,

Ardia

The shadow turned its massive head back to the priest and stared silently for some time. The priest stepped up to him and reached out to the giant’s face and gently wiped away a sparkling moonlit tear, ‘Don’t worry Homer. Patil may be dead, but we might still have her secrets here’, he tapped the package, ‘we can still find him.’

The shadow stepped back slightly but nodded, and made a big beast-like snuffle, ‘I want to meet this Ardia… and she will help me find my father. And then I will kill him.’

CHAPTER 4

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Ardia stared down into the chest with her eyes wide in shock. She reached out to touch the carefully folded fabric, as though it might only have been a mirage. Then, when her fingertips brushed against the tightly woven cloth she pulled them away as though she had touched something fiercely hot.

What is this?

She looked over her shoulder to make sure she was still alone even though her inhumanly acute ears could still discern his faint talking outside.

After only a moment’s hesitation, she scrambled to her feet and pulled an empty rucksack from the bottom of her mother’s wardrobe. Like a killer rushing to conceal the guilty secret of a fresh victim, Ardia hurriedly stuffed the bulky roll of material into the bag. She feverishly stuffed the material into the bag and had just fastened the latch when she became aware of Razmik standing in the doorway.

‘Ardia?’

‘Razmik! How long have you been standing there?’

Razmik cocked an eyebrow, ‘I just got here. Did you find anything of interest?’

‘No, no’. She could feel that her face was flushed and turned her head away from him, her long blonde hair falling in front of her eyes, ‘Did your phone call turn anything up?’

‘Yes, actually, we have some footage of this house on that night. It’s not very good, apparently, but Petrov feels it is something that we really need to see.’

‘Who was taking video way out here in the slums, Razmik?’

Razmik smiled, ‘Police that are supposed to be looking for my people, but instead supplement their income from what we do. They were conducting a surveillance operation where I told them they would certainly turn up nothing of interest. I own the house you see, so they were taping here that night under the pretense of observing me.’

Ardia stood up, excited, ‘If they were recording here then they must have captured my mother’s killer on tape!’

‘Apparently not. Or not quite, the action was very quick and the recording was of the front of the house while the killer, or maybe killers, came through the rear. Petrov, the cop, my cop, says the content should be of interest. It may not be conclusive, and it has certainly been expensive, but we should go right now. If that is, you are ready to go.

‘Yes, immediately, let’s see what they have for us.’

Razmik paused for a moment and his eyes strayed to the pack and seemed ready to say something. Instead, he gave a patented Razmik shrug and went back through the door.

Ardia looked at the bag with brief revulsion, then scooped it up and followed the mob boss.

As the big jeep trundled along the old tracks, the two rode in silence. A hundred yards ahead of them on the road, Razmik’s bodyguards rode in a similarly new and shining SUV.

‘Where exactly are we going, Razmik?’

‘Petrov wants to meet us in secrecy. He cannot afford to be seen meeting me in public. I have somewhere to be when this is over so one of the helicopters will come for me. You don’t mind driving the jeep back when this is done?’

Ardia leaned back in the passenger seat and closed her eyes. She felt suddenly very tired, and Ardia rarely suffered from fatigue, ‘Of course I can. How far have we to go?’

‘Only a few more minutes.’

The machine trundled and bumped along for another few moments before Razmik spoke again, ‘Ardia, the bag…’

She shook her head, ‘Not now, Razmik. I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘If it has anything to do with our hunt for your mother’s killer then I think it would be better that you tell me about it rather than-’

Ardia cut him off, ‘It doesn’t. Or at least I don’t see how it can. It really can’t. I will tell you about it when I feel like I can. It has nothing to do with what we’re doing. I am sure of it.’ But she wasn’t sure at all.

They rounded a bend and a run down shack rolled into view. There was a gleaming sedan parked outside the shack and Ardia felt that the car must surely have been as conspicuous as walking down the main street with the infamous Razmik. No police officer in Armenia could afford the luxury of a new Lexus without being crooked.

The escort SUV pulled up outside the shack and two well-dressed men quickly got out, sidearms still holstered, but their hands hovering near where the guns were concealed. One of the men ducked into the shack and then reappeared a few moments later.

Razmik pulled up his vehicle and got out with Ardia following. Razmik patted his jacket as he approached one of the guards and held out his hand in a sort of pleading gesture. The bodyguard smiled and produced a cigarette which Razmik promptly took and lit, ‘Thank you, Abraham. Do you even smoke anymore?’

Abraham chuckled, ‘The boss has to get what the boss wants.’ Abraham spoke in English. All of Razmik’s employees spoke English in his presence. The bilingual nature of his organization had helped greatly in international trade.

Razmik smiled and patted the man on his shoulder. Then he stepped inside and Ardia followed.

The hut looked at least as poorly inside as it did on the outside. Petrov sat on a rickety chair, at an even more rickety table, his face lit by the glow of an old laptop.

‘Razmik.’

‘Petrov,' Razmik responded, handing the fat older man a thick envelope. ‘You have something to show me.’

Petrov nodded and his multiple chins jiggled, ‘I can show you but I cannot give it to you. I can’t take the chance of you being found with a copy of this video if you are ever…’

Razmik bristled slightly, he was certainly unfamiliar with the notion of “no”, but Ardia placed a hand on his shoulder and told Petrov, ‘That’s fine. We are very eager to see what you have.’

‘Good,' said the detective, ‘sit.’

The two pulled up chairs and the fat old detective pressed play, ‘It was a rainy night Razmik, and the attackers came from behind the house. But there is one moment when something can be seen. It… it scares me Razmik. It might scare your young lady companion here as well.’

Razmik smirked and said, ‘Whatever it is on this video that might scare you, this young lady companion here should scare you more. She will be quite alright.’

The video showed the front of Patil’s house. There was a light on inside. Petrov tapped a key on the laptop repeatedly and the video sped up. He let the video resume at its normal speed when the shape of a helicopter appeared in the near distance behind the house. Something caught Ardia’s sharp eyes for just one moment. It was probably just one frame of video where the rainy conditions and flickering shadows aligned just correctly, but Ardia’s eyes fixed on what appeared to be a stain on the side of the helicopter. It looked like mud or rust, in a rough heart shape. It seemed familiar.

A shape passed inside the window of the house, Patil hearing the rumble of the helicopter and moving to investigate. Then there was a blur of movement on the roof of the house and seconds later the light inside the house went out.

‘That’s it’ said Petrov.

‘That’s it?’ Razmik was unhappy, ‘I just paid you an awful lot of money for an awful lot of nothing, my friend.’

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Petrov only looked at the gangster and tapped a few keys on the laptop. A frozen image leaped onto the screen. It was a still from the video and it showed the shape on the roof of the house with as much clarity as could be hoped for. The picture was still hazy and the figure was just a shadow. It was still enough to make Razmik drop the cigarette from the corner of his mouth and draw a gasp from the usually cool Ardia.

The figure on the roof of the house was huge, seemingly eight feet tall, thicker in all proportions than any man could be and it was certainly not human.

‘Is that… is that a Gorilla?’ Ardia asked with disbelief.

CHAPTER 5

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‘Ooh, I’m slipping,' O’Connor mumbled to himself as he looked at the significant dent he had made in his supply of rum and tobacco. He sat at his ramshackle little table with paper, pen, Patil’s diary, and his Armenian dictionary. The night was about as dry and cool as the guts of a pig and the priest was dripping with perspiration.

He stared down at the page of writing in his own script. The translation was pretty good, if he did say so himself, considering he had never had a word of Armenian before. Then, as he looked down at the page of writing in the moonlight from the window, the light was eclipsed by darkness and this was the only warning of Homer’s arrival.

‘How are you faring?

‘You have been doing this appearing thing since you were maybe two years old,' the priest was good-naturedly flustered by the sudden and stealthy appearance of his ward, ‘and in twenty years I have not gotten used to it.’

Homer, still cloaked in shadows, pointed a massive finger at the half empty bottle of rum, ‘I thought you had decided to stop drinking, Father.’

The priest slapped his thighs, 'No, no, no no. I opted to take a wee break. I heard a great joke on that topic. In Ireland, we have a word for people who decide to stop drinking… quitters!’ O’Connor slapped his thighs again and roared laughter.

Homer did not laugh, but his tone expressed mild amusement, ‘Very good, Father. But, may I ask, have you gotten anywhere with your translation?’

The priest, still chuckling, wiped a tear from his eye and offered Homer a sheet of paper, ‘Yeah, I have. It is really quite some story. This piece was written when she was only five years old, or so she claims. The handwriting itself is a little crooked, I suppose, but if my Armenian is as good as I think it is, and it probably isn’t, she could really make herself understood. It is very impressive for a child.’

Homer’s shadowed head dipped in a nod and looked down at the sheet of paper, ‘May I?’

‘Please do,' said O’Connor, reaching for the bottle of rum and his pouch of tobacco, ‘I’ll just entertain myself a little while.’

Homer looked at the priest a moment longer and then turned his attention back to the sheet of paper.

21st of November 1967

This is the first time I am writing in my diary. I need a friend and because I have no friends then my diary will have to be my friend. My diary will have to hear all of my secrets.

It is so cold on the streets and I am so hungry. Sometimes people give me food to eat, scraps of bread mostly. One old lady brought me two pieces of bread with some meat in between them. I think that was two days ago. I don’t think I have had anything to eat since that. I am sleeping in a pile of straw tonight, in a shed that has only three walls.

I think I should write about more important things than this. I think I should write about what happened. I just don’t know where I should start and I am not sure how to write about the things that happened to me.

I never knew about anything but the way I lived my life in that place, but I can see that other children don’t have to live that way. In the last few weeks, or days, or months, I have seen children playing. I have never seen any of the things done to them that were done to me.

What is funny is that even though I sleep in the cold, and even though I am always hungry, I am still happier than I ever was in that place.

Writing in my diary is a good thing. It is helping me get sleepy. It is very hard to sleep in the scary dark. In the scary, cold dark. I should write about the things that happened. I should definitely write something because I don’t want to forget about it. The doctor is still alive, I am sure of it, and I want to make sure I never forget about him. When I am bigger and stronger I will make him wish he could sleep in the scary, cold dark instead of what I do to him.

Even though I sleep in the darkness now, I used to sleep in a bed in a little room. The room was really just the size of the bed and a little bit of space to stand up. And the little room had a door that was almost always locked, so I could not get out.

There were lots of children there, in that place, and even more pregnant women. Lots of women came and went in the place. The doctor spent most of his time in the rooms with them, the rooms with all the sharp tools and that big humming machine.

Almost every day, the doctor would take me into the room with the tools and take blood with long needles. Sometimes, he would put a very very long needle into my back and instead of blood the stuff that he took out of me would be kind of like water. Sometimes I would be tied down to a kind of table and be put in a machine that buzzed and I think it took pictures of my insides. Sometimes he would cut pieces of my skin and take them away. He gave me injections and tablets so much sometimes that I could not remember what happened for entire weeks at a time.

We went to school for hours and hours almost every day. We only learned about maths and words. I have met some children since I escaped and even the ones who are older than me talk like little kids. And they can hardly read or write at all. I met one who was my age and she had a little book with only a few big words on every page and mainly just silly pictures.

They locked us up at night. All of the children. We never got to play together but sometimes, while lining up to be locked in our little rooms, we could talk quietly for a few minutes. I look normal and lots of the children did. Lots of the children didn’t look normal, though. Lots of them were missing parts of their bodies like arms and legs, or their arms and legs were much too big or much too small. One of the children had skin that was black like coal and looked like it was just as crusty and hard as well.

That was what life was like in the place. Every day we all had to suffer. And the doctor was unhappy with me. I was a disappointment to him. I think it was because I was normal. Sometimes, when the doctor got very disappointed with one of us, the guards would take them away and we would never see them again.

Then a few weeks ago, it was late because we were all lining up to go to bed, something happened. There were loud banging noises somewhere in the place, maybe it was outside. We never went outside, but it was there somewhere. Most of the bangs must have been guns. Most of them came really fast after each other in rattling bursts. Some of the bangs were so loud that the floor shook.

Most of the guards that were with us drew their guns and went outside as well. We waited for a long time. The shooting continued the whole time, but it seemed to be getting closer and closer. After a little while we could hear shouting and screaming as well and then, just outside the door, there were the very loud sounds of guns. Then there was a terrible scream and a tearing sound. There were a couple more shots and then a really loud smashing sound as something big and heavy crashed into the door that we were all staring at. The door bent when it was hit. Then there was a very short silence.

We all held our breath as we looked at the door. I think all of the children knew that something bad was happening and that it was bad for our captors. And that meant that it might have been good for us. We had all been born there and we could not imagine another way of living but deep down I think we all knew it had to be better for us.

The few guards that remained with us had their guns calmly pointed at the door. But when the thing came in none of them fired a shot. One moment the door was there and the next it had just been ripped away. Then the thing just stepped through. It was so big, bigger than any man could ever be. It was so tall and so strong looking. It looked like a…

Homer looked up from the sheet. ‘It looked like a what?’

O’Connor’s eyes had grown a little bleary and the level of the bottle had dropped somewhat. ‘I don’t know, Homer. I can’t quite read the word and it is somewhat hard to discern a smudgy word in a language that you don’t speak.’

‘What does the word look like?’

‘Uh, Homer, Armenian is not even written with the same alphabet as we use. I cannot hope to figure it out without context. This translation is going to require a lot of patience.'

‘That is… very frustrating.’

‘Fuck it is! Tell me that’s not all you have to say to me now? I did just translate a whole passage of text written by a little girl in a language I don’t know and an alphabet I can hardly begin to read at all, let alone fluently.’

‘No, I am grateful Father. And we have learned something here. I am not sure exactly what we have learned, though.’

O’Connor smiled. ‘There is a connection. I don’t know if you can see it, considering your entire world experience seems to have existed in this jungle. But I think it sounds pretty clear that some kind of experimentation’, he slurred the word, ‘was going on.’

‘And how does that help us?’ Homer asked.

‘Well, Homer, where the hell do you think you came from if it wasn’t something that started out in a lab somewhere?’

‘What do you mean father?’

‘I mean that you’re a seven foot tall, six hundred and something pound gorilla-man!’

CHAPTER 6

_________________________________________

Ardia and Razmik stared at the computer screen in disbelief for a time while Petrov just regarded them cautiously.

‘You see it too then? I felt I must have been going mad. I mean, I am sure that the image is distorted by the wind and rain and the darkness, but it sure as hell does look like some kind of ape, doesn’t it.’

Raz turned to look at him with skeptical eyes. ‘Just the head and shoulders. The rest of it looks like a man. Whoever it is was probably a big man to begin with and was wearing a lot of layers and gear on his body and body armor too. And some kind of headgear.'

Ardia’s sharp eyes peered at the image and she had to admit to herself that she could not be sure. If it was a man then it was the most gigantic man she had ever seen. But it had to be a man really, didn’t it?

Petrov agreed with Razmik, ‘Oh, of course, there is a logical explanation. But Razmik, even you must admit that the image itself is somewhat… unnerving.'

Razmik just shrugged as usual and commented, ‘Thank you for the material. I am not entirely sure it is worth the sum that you just received, but it will do.'

‘Razmik, I took a big risk showing you this. I do need to be compensated for the risks I take on your behalf.’

Razmik just pursed his lips and remained silent while Ardia finally dragged her eyes away from the screen and said, ‘Petrov. You can keep the video but you are going to give me a copy of that picture.’

Petrov guffawed ‘Razmik! Where did you get this girl? She is feisty. Well, kitten, what would you do for me if I gave you the picture?.'

Razmik looked like he had grown utterly disinterested. ‘Ardia, we will have to leave fairly shortly so if you have to do this, then do it quickly.’

Petrov guffawed again, a little less genuinely this time, ‘What is she going to do Razmik? What are you going to do? I am sorry, kitten, I cannot risk these pictures turning up somewhere else.'

Ardia leaned in close to Petrov and spoke very quietly, ‘Petrov, you really cannot risk not giving me the picture.' As she spoke she took hold of the steel armrest of Petrov's chair and squeezed.

When she had removed her hand Petrov kept his gaze locked on her and, without looking down, moved his hand over the deep impression her fingers had left in the hard steel, molded to the shape of her grip as though it had been soft putty. The color leached from Petrov's face and a stream of barely audible, half choked Armenian curses hissed out under his breath.

The daylight seemed very bright after the dinginess of the shack. The air was swollen with the rumbling sound of the helicopter as it swept in for a landing. Ardia tucked the disk containing not only the picture, but the video as well, into her jacket.

‘You really don't want to advertise the things you can do, Ardia. It will draw attention to yourself', Razmik scolded.

Ardia smiled, ‘Who will he tell? What can he discuss about a secret meeting he had with the local gang leader who is bribing him to look the other way? Do you really think Petrov is going to go back to his other “hard as nails” corrupt cop buddies and tell them that he was intimidated into backing down by a pretty girl?’

Razmik shrugged, this time with a wry smile. ‘I have some business to attend to over the next few hours. If you can return with Abraham and the cars, I will be back later tonight and we can discuss what we do next.'

The helicopter landed in the yard behind the shack and Ardia had to shout to be heard over the sound of the engines and the buzz of the blades as they cut through the air, ‘Of course, Razmik. I have to say…' She looked unsure of how to go on, but go on she did. ‘I am very glad to have your help in this. I really do appreciate it.'

Razmik started to shrug and then stopped, instead he said, ‘I would not have it any other way. I knew your mother for a very long time and you have been tremendously useful to me as well. We will do everything we can to get justice.’

Ardia smiled, half distracted. Something around her had caught her eye and she could not figure out what it might be.

Abraham stepped up to offer his boss the pack of cigarettes from his jacket and the grizzled old gang leader took some with a grateful smile. He then waved at Ardia and turned to the helicopter.

If another few seconds could have passed, then the whole investigation would have died there. If the sun had been in Ardia's eyes then everything would have just fizzled out. If there had been a sudden movement somewhere or a loud noise, then she would have turned her head and never have noticed it.

Instead, Ardia glanced down as Razmik reached for the helicopter's door. She saw the splash of brown paint on the side of the chopper and it was instantly recognizable. It was in the clearly unintentional but nevertheless unmistakable shape of a heart. Her eyes glazed in the fraction of a second that followed. The connection made itself for her and took very little thinking on her behalf. This helicopter had delivered her mother's murderer to the scene of the crime. No, not this helicopter. Razmik’s helicopter.

A roar that cowed the bellowing engines of the helicopter escaped her lips and she leaped at Razmik with her teeth bared in a savage grin and her eyes wild with madness.

CHAPTER 7

_________________________________________

‘Manaus?' Homer's voice was full of puzzlement. Then he hesitantly added, ‘This will be one of those places without trees, I suppose.'

O'Connor smiled, ‘Yes Homer, you know very well that cities are amongst the vast list of places where trees are either absent or quite scarce.'

The two companions were walking through the trees some distance from the village, where none of the villagers would be disturbed by the sight of Homer. In the daylight, Homer was a dramatic and terrible vision. From a distance, he could be mistaken for a man, a rare species of man perhaps, more physically imposing than the most powerful athlete ever to live. He was a towering figure of perhaps seven feet in height, but built with the hulking width of shoulder, arm, and leg of some stone-age throwback. On closer inspection, Homer was somewhat removed from humanity. His strong muscles were simply too big and round. His arms were too long and his bare feet were the prehensile grasping instruments of the great apes. His body was covered in thick dark hair, not as furry as a beast, but a thick covering that left his body dark and his grayish skin largely invisible. His face was that of an ape-like man, or a man-like ape. It was broad and fearsome, his canines were wide and long. Somehow his appearance was not quite handsome but had a sort of primal appeal. The priest seemed like a parody of a man alongside Homer's huge shape.

‘When… when will we go?’

O'Connor smiled, ‘You will be quite alright Homer. You will come with me and learn to hide yourself in the shadows of the city the way you learned to hide yourself in the shadows of the jungle.'

‘When do we leave, Father?' The ape-man spoke with the nervous trepidation of a child who was about to learn to swim or sleep alone in the darkness for the first time.

‘Soon, Homer, soon. We have a few things that we have to deal with before we go.’

Homer’s small eyes peered at the priest’s face as he leaned his massive form forward to view the man. O’Connor’s face was suddenly withdrawn and apprehensive.

‘You’re angry, Father. Are you angry with me?’

‘No, Homer', a pre-defeated priest decided it was time to address the issue. ‘I am not angry. But it is time we spoke about what happened with the pirates.'

Homer was immediately defensive, ‘They were bad, evil creatures and they deserved to die.'

O'Connor shook his head, ‘And it is up to you to decide who lives and who dies?'

‘There was nothing to decide. They have robbed from the people of the forests and forced themselves on women for as long as I have lived. There was nothing to decide. It was God’s will.’

O'Connor shook his head again, with his head bowed in despair. Homer's "it was God's will" defense was his standard strategy when he broke O'Connor's rules, or rather when he broke one of the ten commandments. ‘God said that thou shalt not kill. Is it his will that you should defy his laws whenever you see fit?'

Homer said nothing as they walked along a little longer. After a time the priest realized that Homer's little eyes were wet with tears. ‘What's wrong, Homer?'

‘I am sorry’ Homer croaked, ‘I am sorry. I didn’t truly mean for it to happen.’

‘Are you sorry to me, or sorry to God for what you did?’

The clever little eyes flickered for a moment while the giant creature made up his mind, ‘I am sorry to God.’

O’Connor sighed, ‘I am sure you are. Tell me what happened.’

Homer pursed his lips, unhappy with his poor success at convincing the priest that his sorrow was for sinning rather than for upsetting his adoptive father, ‘I hunted them, father. I stood on branches a few feet above them. I stood in the shadows directly alongside them. I stood outside the window of their cabin, just beyond the light, and stared at them. They are even less aware of their surroundings than the people of the village.’

‘Homer, the people of the village are more attuned to the world around them than I ever imagined a person could be.’

‘Not to me, Father. They can't see me, they can't hear me. They cannot even sense me as I can sense the smallest and stealthiest creatures of the jungle.'

O'Connor smiled wanly. He had heard "with great power comes great responsibility" but in Homer's case it appeared to be "with great power comes even greater conceit".

O'Connor said, ‘Tell me more.'

Homer was shaken when he tried to explain what happened next, ‘I was only supposed to frighten them. Maybe hurt them, maybe a little. I was supposed to stay unseen and give them the message that Carlos, and our village, was off limits to their terrible ways. But instead, when the time came… Instead, when I first put my hands on them… I can’t say it. I don’t know the words. I don’t know the feelings I had. I can barely remember it.’

‘Tell me, Homer', the priest said firmly. The ape would not submit to a formal sacrament but for the sake of the man's soul that dwelt within him, O'Connor added, ‘Let God hear it, as well as me.'

Homer frowned suddenly and showed a little of his terrible pointed canines. Then he stopped and his little eyes darted around before settling back on O'Connor's face, ‘Very well. I lost all control, Father. I completely lost my ability to decide. My hands took over, my heart took over and my whole world became about violence.'

‘And was it terrible?’

Homer hesitated and half-heartedly said, ‘Yes.'

‘Homer, tell me the truth. I know how it felt for you, and you do too. Was it really terrible?’

Homer's shoulder's sagged and he shook his head, ‘No. It felt right, Father. I felt so exhilarated. Every time I broke one of the little animals with my hands, it felt so good. But that only makes it more of a sin doesn't it?'

O'Connor smiled weakly, ‘Maybe it was God's will.'

Homer abruptly stopped walking, ‘Really?'

‘Well… I think that maybe, the way you are isn't your fault. You seem to have been made this way, Homer. Maybe God intended you to do these things for the good of the world. Maybe it is just very important that you focus these feelings on the right people.'

Homer's eyes suggested that he believed O'Connor's words even less than the priest did himself, ‘Why have you changed your mind so suddenly?'

‘Because we need to go away from here and we can’t leave the villagers at the mercy of the pirates. Homer, if we are going to leave here then you are going to need to kill again.’

CHAPTER 8

_________________________________________

Ardia leaped forward with a blistering, inhuman speed. Abraham responded with a quickness that did him credit. He was, after all, a veteran of action across the globe, the warrior Jew with his roots sunk deep in battles fought in the name of Israel. He came forward and in one discrete motion reached for her like a snake striking, while his other hand swept under his jacket for that big terrible sidearm that he kept concealed beneath the folds. Ardia sent the much bigger man sprawling with a backhand strike. He twirled on his feet before stumbling to the ground in a semi-conscious daze.

She seized Razmik by the throat and hoisted him from his feet, smashing him against the helicopter.

Razmik did not even try to defend himself against her, he simply clasped her wrists to try and take some of his own weight off of his neck.

'You know what happened. Why have you been lying to me?' she spat in his face with the force of her shouting.

Razmik coughed and spluttered as he wriggled in her grasp, fighting for the air to speak. After a moment's terrible staring, Ardia decided to loosen her grip just enough for the gang leader to speak and lowered him to his feet. She still maintained a huge pressure on him, pressing his back painfully into the rivets that lined the outside of the helicopter.

'Ardia, what are you talking about? I don't know what you are speaking about.'

She pressed her face in very close to his, and her voice had a demonic flare in it now, 'This helicopter, Razmik, is the very same helicopter as we just saw in the video on Petrov's computer.'

Razmik's eyes flared wide in alarm, 'What? No Ardia, that surely can't be possible. How do you know that? Can you really be sure? If it is true then someone close to us cannot be trusted.'

'You are the one who cannot be trusted', her voice was more of a broken sob now, 'I trusted you and you have been lying to me all along.'

'No Ardia, I really have not. I want to find whoever did this almost as much as you do. You are jumping to conclusions. I can’t believe that you would suspect me of-'

At that instant, the engine of the helicopter leaped to a higher whine and the machine lurched from the ground. In the split second that followed Ardia met eyes with the pilot, his face largely obscured by his headgear, and the man's eyes were seized in fear. She released Razmik and tore the door of the helicopter open, dragging herself inside. The pilot was shaken by panic and indecision, clearly not relishing the thought of climbing into the sky with the devil woman pulling herself into the helicopter with him. He released the controls and leaped for his own door, diving headlong out of the other side of the helicopter. The engines dropped to an idle and the heavy craft returned to the ground with a thud that jarred Ardia's bones. Razmik had to dive aside to avoid being caught beneath the big machine. By the time Ardia had extricated herself from the cockpit and dashed around the helicopter, the pilot was vanishing over the top of the sandy hillock behind the shack. Ardia lurched forward but felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned her feral gaze around to meet Razmik.

'Don’t kill him. You need him. We need him.'

Ardia only nodded, though there was a flavor of apology in that nod, and was gone. She moved with such a speed that it defied logic. Her toes barely scraped the dusty ground as she careened up the hill. The pilot was halfway down the steep decline on the other side of the hill when Ardia reached the crest. His feet were shuffling on the uneven surface as he dragged his pistol free from his holster. Many amazing tricks could Ardia perform, but deflecting bullets with her skin was certainly not one of them. She simply dove forward, crossing fifteen feet and descending ten. The pilot was a credit to Razmik's closest associates and managed to fire off two shots, both of them admirably near misses, before her outstretched arms smashed into him, driving him to the ground with awful force. She felt bones in his shoulders and ribs shatter with the force of her strike. He screamed in sudden agony. Ardia showed no pity whatsoever and scooped up the fallen handgun and thrust it into the belt of her jeans.

'Don't cry, your pain has not even begun yet! You have questions to answer.'

With that she grabbed the writhing man by his ankle and began to drag him back over the hill, moving at an ambitiously fast, and cruelly rough, pace.

CHAPTER 9

_________________________________________

Homer’s massive hand crushed the bandit’s throat like a bundle of straw. Homer was hanging from a stout low hanging branch in the shadows while he dispatched the third sentry. His heart was pumping with feverish excitement as he felt the life sputter out in his grip. The experience was tainted with the distinct knowledge that he should not be receiving such a climactic thrill from this act because it was almost certainly a sin.

With an effortless flick, he threw the corpse back over his shoulder into the vegetation that bordered the camp and scrambled higher into the tree, wrapping his massive limbs around the trunk as he looked down on the camp.

It was little more than a clearing really, with some vague efforts made at fortification. In reality, the pirates here had nothing to worry about from attackers, it was the innocent villagers of the region that had cause for concern. At least that had been the case until now. There was very little that the roughly erected chain link fence and fixed machine guns could do to protect them from him.

There had been exactly forty-nine pirates in the camp when he had arrived. Now there were forty-six. He leaped from the trunk of the tree and used the branch of another tree to catapult to the ground and then bolted through the darkness like a terrifying and silent shadow.

They were mostly asleep, which was good because they were mainly armed with automatic rifles. His heart began to hammer with excitement again as he crept up around a wooden shack. He had seen, from the trees, that three of the pirates were playing cards at this late hour of the night, on the porch of the shack.

Glasses clinked as they were refilled with spirits and the bandits chuckled stupidly.

It only took a moment. Like the angel of death, if the angel of death was a gigantic ape-like creature, Homer erupted around the corner. A stone, small to him, but a couple of kilograms of rock to anyone else, flew from his right hand like a bullet and smashed the skull of the bandit sitting furthest across the table. As the other two opened their mouths for the air to scream, his hands snapped out like snakes to grab each of them by the throat and silence them forever. He stepped back into the shadows, leaving the corpses to tell the story of what had happened.

Forty-three remain. I really think I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

Back in the trees. The smart thing would be to begin skulking into the cabins and tents to snuff them out in their sleep. But, despite the incredible excitement he felt with each kill, there was something distasteful about the idea.

Another bandit, slinking out to the fringe of the camp to relieve himself, died as Homer smashed his skull to pulp against the trunk of a tree. Then he did relieve himself, as his bowels released in death.

Forty-two are left now. How long before a corpse is discovered and I need to make myself scarce?

He leaped to the roof of one of the cabins and lurked over the doorway. Despite his incredible size, he was able to not only move silently but avoid the collapse of the roof of the structure because of his massive broad feet and sense of balance.

Suddenly there was shouting. Homer's little eyes widened with sudden fright. Electric lamps leaped to life all over the camp as the babbling roused the inhabitants.

I knew I should have hidden the card players. My excitement gets the better of me, again.

Then a new kind of magic filled the world. He had seen electric flashlights before but the gigantic beam of white light that came from the little watchtower was like a terrible miracle.

Is that what a floodlight is?

His heart leaped to new speeds of racing as the light swept past him, over him, and onwards. The millisecond of relief he felt when the light went by did not last for long when he realized the light had almost immediately halted its movement and was now sweeping back to where his suspicious shape had been spotted. The camp had quickly erupted into a cacophony of yells and thumping feet as heavily armed bandits dashed to and fro.

At a loss for a better idea, Homer raised his gigantic arms over his head and smashed the roof of the shack that he was standing on to pieces. The bandits that were watching the passage of the floodlight caught the briefest glimpse of the devil-creature as he sank into the structure with the debris of the roof.

Inside the hut was a one-armed old man and two bandits, these two fully awake with their rifles already swinging towards him. He struck one in the face with a fist and the other was caught in the gut by the back of his other hand.

The old man was frightened but calm and venomous. ‘Monster? You come back for me?'

‘I don't know you. Are you one of them, or a hostage old man?'

‘I am the fucking chief here, you monster! You could not kill me before and you won't do it this time.'

The pistol in the chief’s one arm belched fire and Homer felt agony in his torso. He lashed out wildly, barely knocking the pistol from the man’s hand. Then the door of the shack was kicked inwards and bullets began to hail inside.

‘No!’ the old man shrieked, ‘you’ll kill me, you fucking idiots.’

It didn't matter, Homer was on the retreat. He bowled through the crowd at the doorway, no longer concerned with dealing death but simply desperate for the safety of the trees. He did not try to kill any of them this time but the simple flailing of his arms sent the half dozen men flying, two of them spraining joints. Then, like a bolt of black lightning, he was gone.

‘Come back you morons, God fucking dammit!' the chief screamed after the men as they ran into the jungle darkness after the monster, their AK47s rattling and flashing in the night. Most of the men stopped, but four or five gave chase, their blood hot with the battle.

Jose ran up alongside the chief, echoing his shouts, ‘Comeback you ingrates, do as you're told!'

The chief sighed and wiped his face with his one shaking hand, ‘It doesn't matter. They are already as good as dead. The monster will make short work of them in the shadows of the jungle.'

Even as the chief spoke there was a short blood-curdling scream in the far darkness, followed by a burst of gunfire and another terrible scream, from another voice.

‘Keep the lights on, and make sure that one-third of the men are awake and sober with guns in their hands for the rest of the night.'

Jose met the chief's eyes for a second, ‘What was that thing chief?'

‘I don’t know, Jose.’

‘You seemed to be familiar with it…’

‘I don't know what it is Jose, but I met it before. Twenty years ago it ripped my arm off. And now that it's back, we are going to kill it.'

CHAPTER 10

_________________________________________

‘I am sorry Abraham.’

The two of them had stood in silence in the poorly lit corridor for far too long. The sounds of Razmik torturing the pilot, behind the door of the walk-in freezer in the broken down hotel, were muffled.

Abraham took out the pack of cigarettes that he kept for Razmik, looked at it, and put it back in his jacket for the tenth time that night. ‘No need to apologize, Ardia. Really.'

Ardia shook her head, looking down at her feet, ‘I really mean it. I am sorry.’

Abraham took out the cigarettes again, sighed with defeat, and lit one, ‘It really is quite okay, Ardia. I can see where you were coming from. And don't worry about my pride. You're not any regular woman.'

Ardia smiled slightly, ‘You’re sure your manhood hasn’t been completely destroyed by being battered by a pretty thing like me?’

Abraham shook his head, blowing smoke and rubbing his bruised face, ‘No. I was there when you killed the Karimovs. My manhood is very much intact.'

There was a sudden burst of screaming that penetrated the freezer door. Abraham said, ‘That's his piece de resistance. The fucker will start babbling now. They always do.'

‘Does he… does Razmik do this often?’ Ardia asked,

‘Eh, he used to. Apparently, it used to be one of his things, his main thing really, back when he was a grunt.'

‘That would have been before your time here, though, wouldn't it?'

‘Oh yeah, but the guys still talk about Razmik. The old timers treat him like a legend.’

Ardia opened her mouth to speak but she was interrupted by the freezer door clicking open. Raz stepped out and shut the door behind him. His face was coated in sweat from the exertion, on top of the fact that the broken down old cold room retained heat terribly well.

‘Well?’ Ardia asked.

Razmik cast a scornful glance at the cigarette in Abraham's hand and then answered, ‘He is a little bit unusual, I think.'

‘How so?’

‘He doesn’t seem to be that afraid of me. Or of the things I do, for that matter. Something else has left him far more fearful.’

Ardia didn't say a word, she just opened the freezer door and stepped inside. Razmik squeezed past her and cast a blanket over the pilot, leaving his head uncovered. Razmik shrugged with a weak smile, ‘I would be embarrassed if you saw my… work.' With that, he stepped back outside and closed the door.

The blanket still didn’t leave a great deal to the imagination. The blank room contained a bank of batteries with wires running under the blanket to the man bound to the chair. There was a small folding table with an assortment of nasty looking metal tools, more than one of them already bloodied. For that matter, the part of the blanket that covered the man’s left hand was soaking through with blood. The room was already stinking with the smell of excrement.

‘I have nothing to say to you, you fucking devil witch.’

‘You will’ Ardia replied.

‘No, I really won’t. They certainly won’t let me live if I talk. And they will do worse to me.’

‘Worse than what Razmik has been doing?’

The pilot spat at her and missed, ‘I have endured worse in my previous careers.’

Ardia cast her mind to the terrible torture that the pilot must have already endured at Razmik's hands and saw one solitary downside to the gang leader's policy of hiring his henchmen from the special forces and veterans of the world's wars.

‘We will kill you if you don’t answer our questions.’

‘They will kill me if I do answer.’

‘Be reasonable and consider your options', she drew the pilot's pistol from her belt. ‘If you don't help us, then we will definitely kill you. You are tied up and completely at our mercy, there is absolutely no doubt that you will die if you don't help us. On the other hand, you might be able to escape them, whoever they are. We might even help you do that.’

The pilot did not say anything for a minute and Ardia decided it might be best to give him a moment to reach the logical solution.

‘You will help me?’

'You know the kind of resources Razmik has at his disposal. We will set you up somewhere that they could never find you and give you something to live on.'

His eyes flickered a little as he thought. He opened his mouth to speak but Ardia interrupted him, 'Did Razmik not offer you anything? Did he just dive right in with his...toys?'

The pilot nodded, pale faced.

'Well decide and decide quickly. You can talk now and we will help you, or Razmik can come back and start on your other hand.'

There was a very long silence.

Eventually, the pilot looked up at her, tired and weak, 'I have your word that you will help me?'

'Even better', she said, 'you have Razmik's.'

The man slumped slightly, defeated or relaxed, 'Alright.'

Ardia smiled, already imagining the terrible ways she could kill the bastard that had helped her mother die.

There was a sudden resounding crash from outside the freezer door.

The pilot looked suddenly terrified, ‘That's it. I'm fucked. They're here. Even you can't stop them, you fucking witch.'

Ardia didn’t have time to answer as there was the sound of a gun firing once and then another slamming noise.

She pulled the door open and slammed into what could only be a freshly erected brick wall. Looking down, she could see Razmik and Abraham sprawled on the floor. Then she looked back up at a figure that was more than seven feet tall. The figure was wrapped in a cloak. Though the face was largely obscured there was little concealing the glowing red eyes, the shining canine teeth and the fur that covered the gigantic forearms.

‘Shit.’