A single drop of water was all it took to bring him back into the light. He struggled to comprehend where he was at first. He remembered the stab wound sorely enough as the searing sensation crept across his thigh once again. Yet he awoke alive and not face down in a pool of mud and his own blood. He thought that if he did wake, he would see Nissaro standing over him, ready to cut a smile into his mouth that reflected the assassin’s toothy mask. Instead, he found himself inside a chapel with the face he awakened to belonging to that of a stone caryatid. Water drops were falling from her grey, stone fingertips and her hollow eyes looked down upon him in dark judgement.
Hideo lifted himself to move from the hard and cold bench he had been laid on. He immediately grunted in pain. Every muscle in his body flashed in strong aches and his left leg stung as if a reptile from the southern jungles had bitten it.
As he raised himself to stand, he noticed that his torso was wrapped in blood-stained bandages. Hideo frantically felt his face in the hopes of feeling his mask. All he felt were his cold, swollen cheeks. He had been in this city for merely a week and already someone now knew the face behind the ninja in the papers.
He could hear the hard raindrops outside hammering against stained-glass windows and the sound of soft chanting from inside the chapel’s hall. The chapel near the Green Goat, he then realised. Someone must have dragged him from the mud and across the road under the cover of darkness before Wes and his underlings could finish the job. What a pitiful embarrassment that would have been. After everything he had faced in Arkovia, all the monsters he had survived, and the battles he had endured… only to be beaten to death by some odious drunkards.
Hideo forced himself to his feet, putting the agony in the back of his mind. He walked down rows of wooden benches and approached a giant bronze statue at the end of the chapel that towered high above him. It was a female deity with four faces and four arms. Each of her hands clenched into fists, pointing upward to the leaking ceiling. The front face appeared wroth, with bulging stone eyes and an open mouth that was screaming, whether in rage or pain, he could not say. Hideo could not see the face at the back, but the two at the sides both appeared quite the opposite. Their countenances were calm and content, at peace and in harmony with the world, like a mother cradling her child for the first time.
Blurred moonlight was shining through the stained-glass windows, assuring Hideo that he must not have been out for long as the sun had not yet risen along with the rest of the city. The pain in his left leg struck him again, and he fell to his knees. He was foolish to have allowed a common street criminal to take him by surprise. He cursed under his breath and the chanting from afar stopped.
“You should be resting.” The unseen voice was soft yet stern. Hideo quickly tried to stand before a woman in violet robes grabbed his arm and flung it over her shoulder, supporting him back to the nearest bench. She looked younger than Hideo expected a priestess to look. She was in her third decade, with short-cropped brown hair above the shoulders that she hid under her mauve hood.
“Where am I?” he asked as she delicately rested him back onto a bench that was covered in splinters.
“In a safe place. I heard a crash outside and saw you in the mud.” She grabbed a bronze bowl and retrieved water from a basin next to the giant, incongruous goddess. Her footsteps echoed across the chapel as she returned and began to drape a blanket over him. Hideo resisted, attempting to rise to his feet again. “Stop,” she snapped. “You just survived a stabbing.”
“Believe me, I’ve come out of much worse,” he assured her. He looked around the chilly and empty surroundings. It was just the two of them, with no one else, and nothing else, present. “Where’s my mask? and…” Hideo stopped himself from finishing the next question.
“Assassin garments?” she kindly finished for him. “I’m not blind. It was clear what you were up to, and what you are. No ordinary dagger-for-hire dresses like… this.” She looked away. “When I read about a supposed ninja lurking around the city at night, I thought the heralds ran out of real news and told fairy tales instead.”
She gave Hideo the bowl of water. He tilted it up and started glugging it down. He had not realised how thirsty he had become, how weak he felt, how dry his throat and lips were. “The tiger’s face,” she commented as her gaze turned to the vague direction where she had perhaps hidden his suit. “The lightning markings down the back, the strange sapphire mask. It’s all very impressive.”
Hideo savoured the last swallow. Such a banal liquid had never tasted so sweet. He gulped, “I earned the suit. It’s more advanced than what the rest of my clan wear.”
“Yes,” her violet eyes inquisitively flickered up and down his bandaged wounds, “and it clearly helped you.”
“It’s the only thing I’m proud of,” he said, ignoring the sarcasm as he rested his head back on the wooden armrest. Fiery teeth bit into his thigh once again and he grunted. Perhaps it was the pain that was making him so honest and unthinking when talking with this woman.
“How did you end up in a puddle of mud out in the rain?” she inevitably asked.
Hideo handed the bowl back to her, admiring the judging caryatid that watched them from above with sombre curiosity. “Will you call the City Watch on me if I don’t answer that question?”
“I’m just focusing on making sure you don’t die for now.” Her eyes narrowed on him. They were pure violet and her hair under the mauve hood was chestnut and stringy. “Well?” she sharply prompted. “Are you also the one the streets are talking about?” Her voice had become hesitant. “The assassin that tried killing the Duke?”
“No,” he answered. It did not surprise him that people thought he and Nissaro were in cohorts, or one and the same. From an outsider’s perspective, why would they not be together? They were both assassins in threatening attire. She showed the mildest sign of relief to his answer, even showing the beginnings of a smile.
“But I was there that night,” he finished.
The Priestesses’ smile dropped.
“Ironically, I was trying to kill the assassin-” Hideo started coughing violently, and the priestess ran to refill the bronze bowl. “I don’t want anymore,” he protested between coughs and wheezes.
“It will help,” she insisted, handing the water to him. Hideo reluctantly accepted it from her hands. He took mild sips this time as if it were hot soup. “Why do you wish to kill this man?” she asked after a while. A cold breeze wafted and whispered in the dark as Hideo struggled to answer appropriately.
“You know what I am. It’s what I’ve been ordered to do.” He took another slurp on the cold, dirty water.
“Then why have you been ordered to kill this man?” she rephrased.
“In order to prevent him from killing important people.”
“Like the Duke?”
His final slurp went down the wrong way, and he broke out into another coughing fit. His chest was beginning to feel burnt from the inside. When he wheezed out the last cough, he looked up at the concerned priestess. “The Duke is just the beginning for them.”
She appeared anxious by that last remark. Hideo was surprised that she believed what he was saying, even if it was all true. “What’s your name?” he asked, trying to move the subject on to something else as quickly as possible.
“Evalina Doucet,” she answered. “And yours?”
Walked myself into that one. “It’s perhaps best that you don’t know anything else about me.”
“All I ask for is a name to call you by? Not a big revelation.”
Hideo sighed. “Very well. Titan Tiger.”
The Priestess frowned. “That is not your real name.”
“Correct. It’s my clan name,” he said. “I would prefer not to give you my real one. It’s bad enough you’ve seen my face.”
“Apologies. Would you have rather I let you bleed and die in a gutter?” she answered sharply. When Hideo did not answer she asked, “Did the man you seek do this to you?”
Hideo grimaced, but not at the pain. At the memory. At the embarrassment of his failure. If Xerxes ever heard about what happened at the Green Goat, Hideo would never hear the end of the Thane’s admonishment. “He had friends. Not the friends I was hoping to find him with, though.”
“Is he responsible for these, too?” The Priestess delicately lifted Hideo’s scarred and burnt hands. She presented them as if she thought that he had never noticed them before. His hands were bare, showing every long mark that sprawled from his wrist and up to his fingertips. The markings that mirrored the lightning patterns around the back of his assassin suit. They were splayed out, wild and maroon. Hideo flinched them away from her.
“I did that to myself,” he said, more curtly than he had intended to.
A look of horror crossed her pale face. “You clearly need help.”
Hideo did not know how to respond to make her understand, but he was beginning to feel that he was perhaps being too brash with this kindly woman who rescued him from a muddy gutter and cleaned his wounds. He sighed and looked down at his scarred hands and clenched them in and out. They still hurt. They always hurt. They would never stop hurting. “I grew up in the Shards. It was me and my older sister who took care of me. Every time I went to bed, she would kiss me goodnight and then put a dagger under my pillow, just in case I needed it. It hasn’t got any better around here, has it?”
“No,” the Priestess answered sombrely. “Poverty is rampant. Crime dominates. But it is just as much the Gargoyle’s fault as it is the crown’s. This is a forgotten borough, so it was inevitable that some corrupt lord would take hold of it. Those that work for Thorne thrive whilst those who do not wish to stoop to his level hide in fear at night.” The Priestess stopped for a moment to listen to the hard rain pinging against the chapel’s roof. Drops were leaking from above and small puddles were beginning to form in front of the bronze feet of the four-faced statue. “Tell me about your sister?” she asked.
You are a Night Fang. Do not confide in this woman. “She took what jobs she could get. Barmaid, cook, forager. Then she worked as a pickpocket for the Gargoyle when she was shunned and no one else took her.” What are you doing?
“She was looking out for you,” she said with soft understanding. “The streets are cold and unforgiving. What other choice would she have had?”
“It was a choice she should have never chosen,” Hideo said bitterly. “One night she returned home, and I could tell she was afraid of something. She put me to bed and acted as if everything was normal. She left through the broken door of the shack that we lived in and never returned.”
“You believe she abandoned you?” The Priestess asked patiently.
“No.” His answer was firm and confident. “I don’t know what happened to her, but I have my theories and the Gargoyle is one of them.” He clenched his stiff, scarred hands. Miraculously, his leg no longer burned in pain the way it had moments ago.
The Priestess scowled at him knowingly. “Bloodshed isn’t the answer.”
A strong wind blew, causing the chapel doors to shake and rattle. The Priestess sat next to him. “You already intend to shed someone’s blood. What will shedding more achieve?” she asked after a while, when he did not answer. The doors continued to shake aggressively from afar. “You cannot prove it was him. It’s a cold city. Anything could have happened to her. She might have just abandoned the whole city and started anew.”
Her last suggestion stung fiercer than the stab wound. He was an obstinate and difficult child. He had no doubts. Perhaps his burden was too much. Hideo flexed his burnt hands. “Whatever happened to her, it’s perhaps time the Gargoyle was knocked from his safe little tower regardless. I was most displeased to learn he was still here, even after all these years. I must have words with him, anyway. He knows where to find-”
There was a heavy banging coming from the chapel doors this time. Hideo turned to look; his eyes fixed on the doors like a cat watching its prey.
“It’s just the wind,” the Priestess reassured him.
“No,” he whispered, raising his burnt hand to hush her. “The door was rattling, but that banging was too aggressive. Did anyone see you take me here?”
“I don’t bel-”
“Shush!” Hideo turned to face the door again.
The banging sound returned. “Blue bastaaard…” a familiar, raspy voice yelled from the other side of the doors. “We know you’re in there, blue bastard.”
Hideo could surmise that the banging was from some sort of weapon Wes was using. Swords were hard to come by in the Shards, so perhaps a pickaxe or a hammer. Hideo forced himself to rise, despite the pain. “Where did you hide my suit? My gauntlets? My mask?”
“I didn’t hide them from you!” she whispered back indignantly. “They’re on the other bench.”
“Hide in the confessional booth,” Hideo ordered as he hastily grabbed his assassin gear and donned his half-metallic, half-crystallised breastplate. The silver and snarling horned tiger illuminated in the dark. “Don’t leave it until I say that it is safe.”
“I’m not hiding,” she stubbornly objected. “Some of my other sisters are asleep in the lower chamber. I’m not letting these men near them.”
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
Hideo was fully in his assassin clothing by this point, donning his helm. The crystallised side felt as cold as ice. He put his curved dagger into its small sheath and flexed his scarred hands. “I won’t let them reach the lower chamber. I promise you this.”
“It’s like you said. We can’t cower from the Gargoyle anymore. No, while I appreciate your valour, I want you to be the one to conceal yourself. Having this end in violence would be an affront to this place of worship.” She turned and kneeled in front of the four-faced statue that watched over them with a dozen stone eyes. The banging was getting more aggressive, one of the chains around the door’s lock snapped.
“What goddess is that?” Hideo asked, indicating to the towering bronze statue she knelt in front of.
“Pax,” she answered solemnly. “The goddess of peace.”
“Huh, she wouldn’t like me very much,” he coldly jested, trying to add levity to an otherwise bleak situation, but the Priestess did not respond. She knelt in front of a displeased Pax and begin to whisper a soft chant. The Night Fang climbed up one of the pillars and hid behind the caryatid.
The doors burst open and bashed against the stone walls. Chunks of wood flew out onto the stone floor and cold winds led a vanguard through the chapel, followed by the four thugs the Night Fang had previously beaten earlier in the night. The henchman with white and red face paint had a broken nose and the one with the monobrow was limping but appeared no less furious. Wes lagged, stroking the pickaxe he used to bash down the chapel doors.
The four thugs stopped to let Wes go ahead of them as he approached Evalina. The Priestess stood to her feet and smiled at the hooded, pickaxe wielding maniac as if he were here to pray with her. “If you are looking for the man with the horned tiger on his chest, he left long ago.” The Priestess was strangely courteous in the way that she informed him.
Wes spat on the floor and wiped his lips with a muddy sleeve. “Bullshit, My Lady. We could hear you talking to him.” He raised the pickaxe with his left arm, the brunt of the weapon inches from Evalina’s chin. The Night Fang clung to the back of the caryatid, watching, His nails dug into the cold stone.
Wes looked up at the giant bronze and multi-faced statue. “Pretty.” He spun his eyes around with a casual whistle. “Come out, blue bastard,” he yelled again, his slimy voice echoing through the chapel “Or I start swinging. It’s nasty business what I’ve been tasked to do, but it can be less so if you just lend yourself to us.” He tauntingly twirled the pickaxe. The Priestess did not flinch.
“Why don’t you talk to me instead?” she offered kindly. “He fled as you arrived.”
“Isn’t withholding the truth a sin in your religion, My Lady?” Wes asked spitefully. He slammed the pickaxe into one of the wooden benches and shards of wood burst out. “It won’t be wood I hit next, Ninja,” Wes called out, still looking the Priestess in the eye. “You know what, M’Lady? You deserve honesty. Thorne told us no witnesses. If the ninja comes out now, then hopefully no more poor souls will have to be caught in this.”
“Would you really fall so low as to kill me in my own place of worship?” The Priestess asked calmly.
There was a long, tense silence as Wes continued to look around the chapel with a grin. He dragged the pickaxe across the ground, the iron’s hisses screeching throughout the chapel as he peered down each row of benches. The front face of Evalina’s goddess looked down on the men defiling her home in stone horror. Hideo began to understand why she looked so wroth if this kind of treatment to her followers was standard in the Shards. Wes’ henchmen then proceeded to knock over ornaments, but what caused the Night Fang to strike was when a chamber door beside the Pax statue opened and an old, frail priestess walked out, rubbing her dazed eyes.
“Tut, tut!” Wes theatrically exclaimed, “Another witness. This is all on you, assassin.” The wall around Evalina’s face broke, and she grabbed onto the pickaxe, wrestling it off the hook-nosed thug. The old priestess shrieked and fled behind the statue, as if she expected Pax to come alive and protect her.
The Night Fang landed on the thug furthest away, the only one he would be able to take unawares. His hands fully charged. He sent shockwaves into the bald, scarred goon’s shoulders and pushed him into the ground. The Night Fang then slammed his head into the stone floor for good measure. The three remaining thugs turned to face him. The Night Fang glanced to see Wes kicking Evalina away.
The Night Fang gracefully dodged the punches, and knife thrusts from the remaining henchmen. He countered one slash by grabbing the greasy-haired thug’s arm and launched a well-placed hit with the palm of his left hand into the thug’s elbow. The thug’s arm made a snapping sound, and he screamed in agony. He fell to the floor, cradling his limb, a sharp, bloody bone sticking out of it. The remaining two thugs backed away in horror. The Night Fang spun and kicked the thug with face-paint in the stomach and the goon flew into one of the wooden benches, breaking an armrest in half. The final goon came swinging with a machete, but the Night Fang turned and grabbed his wrist, twisting it. He struck a fist to his stomach, then his face, then made use of the back of his heel to stomp the goon into the ground.
He then turned his attention to Wes. The Gargoyle’s lieutenant had grabbed the older priestess from behind the statue and was holding his pickaxe around her throat. “So, the assassin does have a soul,” the hooded brute smirked, but then his look darkened. “Let me leave or she'll-” a vase shattered over the back of Wes’s head. He let go of the old woman as he fell and splayed across the stone floor like a rag-doll. Evalina stood over him. Her face had paled as she realised what she had done.
She snapped out of her trance and hugged the old priestess. “Are you hurt?” she asked desperately. The older priestess shook her head, but her eyes were filled with tears and dread. Evalina hugged her tightly and shielded her away from the scene.
The Night Fang had run out of patience with this nightmarish night. He picked Wes up by the throat and slammed the low-level thug against the wall next to the bronze Pax statue; her contented face at the side, watching them with an approving joy.
“Where is Nissaro hiding?” the Night Fang asked fiercely in his ghostly voice. With his free hand he pointed to the monobrowed henchman. He was writhing around the ground and cradling his arm, too pained to even shriek right. The bone was still protruding from the elbow. “Do you want to see what your bones look like, too?”
Wes groaned, disorientated. “He’s in the Gargoyle’s tower, preparing himself,” he answered through blood-stained teeth. He plunged Wes into the ground, proceeding to repeatedly punch the hooded rat in the face over and over, resisting the even darker urge to charge his fists. “Threatening innocent people like this may have given you power here before,” he echoed through his black and sapphire mask. “But while I’m here, it’s ending. You so much as look at this chapel again, I’ll do what the City Watch should have done with you a long time ago.” He raised his now pulsating arm for one more hit. He could feel the palms of his hands start to burn until he felt soft fingers touch his shoulder.
“Enough,” Evalina’s voice was but only a whisper yet enough to stop the Night Fang.
Hideo looked down to see Wes’ battered and broken face, blood covering his crooked nose. He turned to see the frail old woman curled up in a corner by the statue, weeping. Other priestess that heard the commotion were gathered around her. Some were trying to comfort the old woman, whilst others watched the Night Fang. They were all afraid of him. He had defended them, yet he was a monster in their eyes.
“What demon do you become at night, Titan Tiger?” Evalina Doucet asked, her voice shaken.
The Night Fang looked at her with sorrowful eyes. He spoke in Hideo’s voice. “Get the City Watch. They’ll get medical help for everyone here.”
He walked down the chapel and towards the broken doors in sullen silence. He could still hear the old woman weeping and the only conscious henchman shrieking over his snapped arm.
“Wait!” he heard Evalina’s soft voice call from afar. Her pacing footsteps echoed through the chapel as she caught up with him. “Whatever you do with the Gargoyle and the men you seek; I hope you make the right decisions.” He nodded and turned to leave again, but she grabbed his arm and tightened her grip. “People are afraid of him,” she whispered, “the Gargoyle and that masked assassin. Don’t let the people of this city become afraid of you, too.”
*
The Night Fang looked up at the Gargoyle’s tower as it stood tall above the skyline, looking as if the pointed end were about to pierce the moon. The structure befitted the owner. Stone gargoyles sat around the edges of each balcony and above every arched window. The tower was black, a soot-black that made it appear darker than other buildings in the Shards, which was a most impressive feat.
Back at Darkfall, the fangs were trained to plan their entrance and strategize a form of attack. This involved observing the number of enemies and exits in the surrounding area. He did not have the time or patience this night. Strategy be damned. His thigh was still bandaged and stung under his shrouded leg wrap, but he was becoming better at ignoring the pain. He handled Wes and his thugs, but confronting the Gargoyle’s many henchmen and potentially Nissaro would be a massive leap. He no longer cared. His mind was not clear as it should have been. When he was hitting Wes, all he saw was the Gargoyle standing over Hiroko’s lifeless body. He inhaled and exhaled, trying to maintain a focus. The doors broke with one easy, swift kick.
The long corridor was empty at first until two of the Gargoyle’s men walked out of an arched doorway. They were not armoured, only wearing dirty coifs and jerkins. They yelled and cursed when they saw the Night Fang approaching down the hall, the sapphire side of his armour illuminated by the orange glow of sconces that were hanging down the gothic wall. They both retreated into the room they had emerged from.
The Night Fang heard clanging sounds as he paced down the hallway. The henchmen reemerged again, each of them holding a steel mace. The Night Fang spun and dodged the first swing as the mace impaled itself into the stone wall. The Night Fang kicked the ugly, square-jawed thug back and twirled around him, hurling a punch at the second thug before he could lunge. The bigger of the two grabbed the Night Fang from behind, wrapping his arms around his torso. The Night Fang lunged his head back into the grappling thug’s nose, the brunt of metal and sapphire causing a crunching sound when it hit. The grappler grunted as the Night Fang repeatedly kicked the second charging thug back with his zaffre boots. He lunged his helm back a second time, and the grappler finally let his grip go. The Night Fang turned to face him, feeling rather peeved. He delivered a knife-hand strike to the side of the handsy man’s neck. His opponent grabbed his throat, trying to breathe as he slid down the stone wall.
Two more brutish men in stitched jerkins came running down the stairs, their footsteps pattering down the hallway, maces in hands. One fatter underling in a blood-stained coif took a swing, but the sapphire assassin managed to grab the previous thug’s steel mace from the floor and parried the attack. The maces glinted in the dark hallway as they crashed into each other with a chime. The Night Fang then countered by elbowing the fat thug in the stomach and kicking him directly in the lower abdomen, launching the goon into the one following behind him.
Under his mask, Hideo was breathing heavily, taking this opportunity to rest against the side of the wall to regain stamina whilst the two brutes licked their wounds and stood to their feet. The Night Fang took one last deep breath and pushed himself forward, charging his right hand and hurtling his fist into the side of the fat brute’s round head. A spark flashed from his hand as he slammed the brute into the damp wall. He kicked him in the round head again for good measure. This time, the fat brute did not get up again. The Night Fang pulled back, the pain in his left-hand simmering down. He was restrained in the usage of his power, and he meant to keep it that way.
The final henchman, observing what happened with a hanging jaw, turned and fled up the stairs. The Night Fang gave chase. The twirling, spiral stone stairway was steep and never-ending. The Night Fang noticed how the henchman kept tripping, slowly losing speed. He grabbed the man’s ankle and pulled it. The goon went tumbling down behind him. He continued to roll down the stairs limply. It became clear that he had already lost consciousness.
The Night Fang reached the top of the stairs to be faced with a looming arched iron door. The night's events were starting to take a toll on the assassin. He was tired, his thigh throbbed, and his hands stung. The Gargoyle was on the other side of the door, yet no one seemed to be coming out to greet him. He could finally lay eyes on the man who had caused both him and his sister so much grief. The man who might have been responsible for her vanishing. As he took a moment to regain his strength, he wondered what the monster would look like. The Gargoyle had such a powerful influence over the city. since Hideo returned to New Jade, Adrian Thorne was reported to have rarely been since outside his tower.
The Night Fang kicked the iron door, and it flung open with a hard crash. Iron against stone cried out. He found himself staring into a large chamber. Various wardrobes and desks surrounded the interior and gargoyle statues were mounted above bookshelves. Two more henchmen stood holding crossbows. Beyond them sat a small, bold man with a hooked nose, dressed fully in black. A giant archway behind the Gargoyle’s desk overlooked not just the Shards, but the entire city. Orange, white, and jade lights flickered across every borough and near Hook Harbour.
Hideo was not sure why he was so surprised to see that the Gargoyle looked more like a frail old man as opposed to the smirking, smiling monster he was expecting. The Gargoyle stood up from his desk and glared at the otherworldly assassin that stood before him.
“Who are you?” he squawked.
The Night Fang wasted no time answering him in his own way. He ran towards the bodyguard on the crime lord’s left side who aimed his crossbow, but before the thug could trigger it, the Night Fang was already on him, putting him in an armlock. The other bodyguard fired his crossbow, but the Night Fang deflected the bolt with his left gauntlet, which only left a small dent in the crystalized sapphire. The Night Fang delivered a devastating blow to the head of the bodyguard that he had locked into his gauntleted arm and twisted him away. The crossbowman went crashing into a bookshelf, the many pieces of literature toppling and falling onto his unconscious body.
The Night Fang narrowly dodged a second steel bolt from the last henchman that stood between him and the Gargoyle. He managed to run up to the crossbowman and slammed him into the Gargoyle’s desk. The bodyguard pulled out a knife from his leather belt. The Night Fang grabbed the wrist that held the blade with one hand and reached for a small stone ornament of a weeping angel from the corner of the desk. The stone angel sobbed into her stone hands as the Night Fang crashed it into the back of the crossbowman’s head. He slumped.
The Night Fang then turned his attention to the crooked old man that was crawling away in fear. He picked the quivering man up and pressed him against the wall next to the open arched window. The light of fires throughout the landscape illuminated the city. People. outside of New Jade commonly held the misconception of it being a sparkly kingdom straight out of a fairy tale but the Hideo knew the true darkness that lurked under it.
“You housed an assassin last night,” the Night Fang’s demonic voice echoed. “Where is Nissaro now?”
The Gargoyle just cackled hysterically. “You miserable little shit, you have no idea of the kind of fire you’re playing with!”
The Night Fang pressed his gauntleted forearm deeper into the Gargoyle’s neck. “Nissaro. Talk.”
The Gargoyle’s cackles burned into howls and sobs. “Do you have any idea what they would do to me if I told you anything? Being hung, drawn and quartered would be a blessing.”
“It would be poetic justice for what you’ve done to the people of the Shards.” Behind his mask, Hideo was grinding his teeth. It took everything in him to resist the urge to just drop the crime lord out of the window. “And if you know where the rest of the Inferno Clan are, then you’re going to talk about them, too.”
The Gargoyle scoffed and spat venom when he spoke. “Just kill me and be done with it.”
After a long pause, the Night Fang finally spoke. “Very well.”
He pulled the crime lord away from the wall and hung him out of the window, grabbing onto his long and curved collar with both of his scarred hands. The Gargoyle started screaming and wailing, kicking his legs against the nothingness below. “Talk!” the Night Fang yelled as the moon watched over them from above and the orange, jade, and white lights flickered far over the horizon.
The Gargoyle was no longer a ruthless crime lord, but a scared old man. “He’s attempting to redeem himself after failing to assassinate Hugo Barlet,” he cried out hopelessly as his legs dangled in the air. “The Duke and the Duchess are attending breakfast in Lord Fostmoore’s house in Drakelyn at dawn. He is not intending to fail again.”
It could have ended there. The Night Fang was meant to end it there. Hideo chose not to. “And what of Hiroko?” he asked. “What did you do to her?”
“Who?” the old bald man squawked.
“Hiroko!” the Night Fang echoed. His voice was as wild as a flaming wraith’s. “She worked for you! She stole for you, sold for you!”
Adrian Thorne’s eyes seemed to focus and roll back into some form of rationality. “The Arkovian girl?” he remembered. “She stole from me. I sent my men after her, but she got away! I haven’t seen her in years!”
A gust of wind swooped through the night. Thorne was thrown from side to side within the Night Fang’s grip, which was precarious at best. He started kicking the air. “Please, for the love of all the spirits, PUT ME BACK INSIDE!”
The Night Fang pulled the old man closer to him, to a point where he was mere inches away from his black and sapphire mask, his blue eyes blazing into Thorne’s damned soul. He could feel his hands shaking from within. Whether or not he spoke the truth, he still admitted to trying to kill her. It would be so easy…
The Night Fang threw the Gargoyle back inside and the old fool crashed into his desk, which toppled over into the centre of the chamber. It was in time for the watch guards in soot black armour and kettle hats to witness it as they flooded the chamber, all pointing crossbows at the assassin. Athena emerged from the crowd of armoured law enforcement, her night-black hair blowing in the wind. There was a glint on her silver and jade star badge. “Halt!” she yelled as she held up her own steel crossbow. The Night Fang turned back to face the open window and gracefully jumped out of it.