CHAPTER 71: WHERE THE RIVER GOES

  SPECTRE—NOVEMBER 26th, 1992 | MORNING

  ?

  A single hand gripped the railings along the catwalk.

  Leroy barely held himself up. The Vigor was wearing off, and with each passing second, he felt his weariness and his fatigue compound and double. The Stoneskin that plugged up his injuries—courtesy of Janice—from his fight with Dean was now hurting more than it helped. Each and every one of his bruises and scuffs felt aggravated, and the knuckles he’d bashed across Marcus Velvet’s face were sore. Everything in Spectre was oddly quiet.

  Leroy glanced over the mezzanine.

  On one end was the dance floor, now a verifiable battle field. Stray piping and chunks of concrete mingled with all manner of debris. Rachel Chen laid peacefully in the center of a crater that had to have been Cameron’s doing. Aria Remeau was dead, torn apart, most likely, by the likes of Tania.

  He shifted his gaze forward.

  At the tail end of the catwalk was the Spectre’s 2nd level bar. Emilio la Cerva’s gargantuan body did not move, and was covered in a mixture of blood and sputtering ether that doused his monstrous silhouette in a strange purple. As Leroy got closer and closer, he noticed that the supply tubes which fed ether to his various ligaments had all been cut and severed. His body was, to a similar effect, littered in claw marks and scratches that cut so deep they exposed bone. Tania’s doing.

  Around the platform there were arm-sized holes in the metal flooring that matched the hole in the concrete wall that Emilio had made when he’d tried to hit Leroy and company, where Gideon saved them from a near certain flattening.

  As he made his way down the metal stairwell, he saw more of Emilio’s mess—when he’d been rolled in a massive containment vat, there were a bunch of hirelings alongside Maude Dupre. They were all dead, flattened by his heavy handed strikes into bodies that looked less than human. Maude Dupre, COO of Bluestein Philterworks, had been long gone. She must've slipped out, Leroy imagined, as soon as she’d let Emilio loose.

  Not far from the empty containment vat, Leroy saw Cameron, Tania and Arthur in the hallway atrium. A few feet from them was Clayton Trench, laid out with his stomach on the ground. Only a few remnant insects crawled out from him.

  Every third step Leroy took, he had to stop for a moment to breathe.

  Arthur was the only one still conscious. He sat up against a wall, Canis strung over his lap, with despondent eyes that looked like they had seen far too many ghosts. After several more labored steps, Leroy reached the bottom of the stairwell and crossed over to them. Cameron looked worse for wear. His gray pullover was stained in blood, and while it was hard to tell, so too were his black cargo pants. Blade shrapnel was lodged into either one of his forearms. Open cuts and lacerations trailed along his thighs. His chin was swollen, his cheek bruised.

  “Idiot,” Leroy muttered.

  It didn’t take a genius to piece it together. Rachel was only alive because Cameron must have used all of his vials of pasteurized demon blood to keep her from dying. But he’d won. If he hadn’t, Rachel would be standing, and not at the center of whatever destruction Cameron had created. Good. He was getting better. Stronger.

  Guts hovered over his unconscious body. The wind-sprite’s single eye seemed agitated and hyper aware. Tufts of green and white energy spiraled out from it, and it looked at Leroy like it was warning him.

  Tania was back to her normal, no-stepped self. And very naked. Leroy removed his leather jacket, crossed over to her, and placed it over her body. His black turtleneck was soaked in sweat. Old Man Winter chittered inside Leroy’s gun harness, and the two remaining waterkins he had sloshed around on the opposite side of his torso as he paced over to Arthur, holding himself up by keeping his hand pressed against the wall with every other step.

  “Captain Holmes. Where is he?” Leroy asked.

  Arthur looked up at him. His eyes were the same; despondent. He shook his head.

  Leroy furrowed his brows. “Arthur.”

  “He… I… I don’t know,” Arthur muttered. “But he’s not himself. Not anymore.”

  “What the fuck do you mean, you don’t know?” Leroy asked, his tone sharp.

  “He’s gone! Okay!? Fuck! I… I, damn it man, I fucked up, couldn’t do it,” Arthur said. “We couldn’t do it, old man. Clayton, he was too strong, and I had a shot, couldn’t take it, and, and, and—”

  Leroy crouched down and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Slower, Arthur. Breathe.”

  Fear lingered in the young warden’s gaze. Arthur inhaled and exhaled.

  “Whatever you did to him, with that gun,” Arthur said, nodding towards Old Man Winter. “It only lasted for so long, and, when push came to shove, Clayton and his swarm were… they were too much. We held em’ off for as long as we could, but it all happened so fast, and, fuck, I couldn’t pull it off. Holmes, he trusted me to pull it off, and I fucking failed, and now he’s… he’s, he’s—”

  “He’s what, Arthur?” Leroy asked.

  Arthur glanced towards Clayton. “He’s.. just like him. A body that’s a hive. Not dead, but not alive.”

  Leroy’s mouth opened and closed.

  He pressed his back against the wall and slid down onto his rear next to Arthur. There was a brief moment of anger, where Leroy deluded himself into thinking that somehow, this was Arthur’s fault. If Leroy had the energy, the path of least resistance would’ve been to beat him upside the head, berate him, and make it his burden to carry. It would’ve been easier to do that; to shift the blame, to weigh down this kid—barely twenty years old by the looks of him—with the immense weight of a guilt that didn’t belong to him.

  Some of Gideon’s last words rang truer now than when he was still alive and kicking.

  That’s what you do. Screw them over and use them to your end, and you can’t see how the dominos fall later down the line.

  “Cameron’s sprite, it held him off for a bit, but… he had a moment, a window of opportunity, and he slipped out. Left. Don’t know where the hell he is, or where he’ll end up, but Leroy, he’s dangerous,” Arthur said.

  “Yeah,” Leroy said.

  No cold whispers emerged, but old ones came back to haunt him, and they were louder than whatever Arthur was trying to tell him. The young warden was trying to explain something, but Leroy only heard the warning he’d refused to listen to. The omen he thought to be false.

  If you wanted to save him, you’d handle this yourself. In your own way. Yet you stand here about to enter the belly of the beast, bringing it the very lamb that it seeks to slaughter, a shepherd of danger. This is a mistake. A folly. Your fool’s errand.

  Leroy gritted his teeth. Yaerzul’s voice faded.

  In came Marcus’s.

  But here we are. Back to the danger. And, might I add, you’re a damned fool—bringing Captain Holmes here. To me. You’ve gone through all of this trouble only to put him in the same position he would’ve been if you’d followed through with your end of the bargain, Leroy.

  Leroy leaned the back of his head against the wall.

  Arthur had just finished saying something that Leroy couldn’t make out, and his awareness only snapped back into place at the tail end of what he was saying.

  “... where’s Gideon?” Arthur asked.

  Leroy stared up at the top of the hallway atrium. “Dead, Arthur.”

  Arthur brought a hand to his head. “Yeah, I’ll be too after Marshal Whitfield finds out I let a member of the Cruciform Division die. I’m fucked, man.”

  “But Marcus is too,” Leroy said.

  “Yeah?” Arthur asked, turning to face him, face brimming with indignation. “And was it worth it, old man?”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Leroy glanced towards Cameron and Tania. He studied Arthur’s hand, and the burn marks that persisted even still. He thought of Captain Holmes. He thought of Gideon. He thought of the price they had all paid in blood to keep Leroy’s secret, and what he’d earned from their sacrifice. A name. One that he could run towards.

  “Yeah,” Leroy said. “I think it was.”

  ?

  Leroy lingered outside of the payphone just across the street from Spectre.

  His eyes glazed over, hypnotized by the pale silver and yellow lights of the Civic and Occult Authority cruisers that clogged up the street and served as an impromptu protective detail around two ambulances. It had been a while since Leroy had seen any of those. Being prepared and carrying a handful of pasteurized demon blood had a way of solving most health-related problems, but there were certain things that required more intervention and proper attention from proper professionals who knew what the hell they were doing—Cameron in particular needed help that Leroy didn't know how to offer.

  “That complicates things, Waters,” a voice said. It had an earned haughtiness about it.

  A few emergency responders carried Cameron on a stretcher into one of the ambulances. Opposite of him in the other ambulance was Arthur, covered in a blanket, refusing to let paramedics examine his hand. Canis had been leaned up against the back of the ambulance next to him. Tania, still wearing Leroy’s dusty leather jacket, had already been placed in the same ambulance as Cameron.

  “Yeah,” Leroy said. “I’ll find him.”

  “There isn’t a him to find, Waters. Not anymore,” the man said.

  Leroy turned to face him.

  Chief Montgrave wore a black trench coat over his Civic and Occult Authority uniform. He was neither tall nor short, and had a slightness to his frame that passerbyers were liable to underestimate. Not a single blemish stained his face, and it looked no older than forty, but spoke with the cadence of a man who’d lived several lifetimes.

  His skin was deathly pale, and his eyes were an albinic pink with a slight glow to them. His hair was as white as snow and stretched just below his ears, haphazardly styled with some sort of mousse. A thin and well-groomed beard covered his face. Black leather gloves covered his hands, one of which held a cigarette between it. He tapped out the ash off the end of it, brought it back to his lips, and inhaled.

  “Holmes knew the risk of helping you. He knew, fundamentally, Waters, that there was a possibility of this happening from the outset,” said Chief Montgrave.

  “He knew he might die, not that he’d become what he is now,” Leroy said.

  Chief Montgrave took a drag from his cigarette. “There might yet be something to be done about his condition. Assuming he can be found, that is. There are exorcists. Soothsayers. Witches, who have spells neither you nor I know about or could dream to know of.”

  Leroy scoffed. “Sounding awfully hopeful, Chief.”

  Chief Montgrave exhaled a plume of smog. “One must be, in a place like this. The easier option is to face reality for what it is. I choose, then, to live in delusion. To do anything other than that would be at the cost of my sanity. And sanity is needed in my line of work.”

  Leroy exhaled.

  “But having hope, Waters, does not absolve me of my deeper sentiments. The very human and very real ones, which persist in moments such as this,” Chief Montgrave said.

  Leroy waited for him to continue. Chief Montgrave finished his cigarette and threw what was left of it onto the ground.

  “I am not privy to the specifics of your arrangement with Minister Rostavich. He has seen to it that I may not ever know any of that, Waters, but this I do know—he values you for more than what you are truly worth,” he said, turning to face Leroy. “And what you are not worth is one of my best men, or, the utter headache that I had to deal. Minister Rostavich wasted my department’s time and resources by ordering me to put a protective detail and a shelter-in-place ordinance on the entirety of the Commonwealth Council.”

  “Yeah,” Leroy said, his breath heavy. “I know.”

  A handful of constables carried the unconscious body of Rachel Chen out of Spectre. Another constable carried her sword, the Blade of One Hundred alongside her.

  Idle chattered continued among the constables lingering outside of the nightclub, each of which, Leroy suspected, were likely trying to figure out what to do with the bodies of Aria Remeau, Emilio la Cerva, and Gideon Draves. There wasn’t much that could be done to Marcus’s corpse, because it wasn’t a corpse at all—just a pile.

  Chief Montgrave rested a hand on his hip.

  “The one good thing to come out of this mess, I suppose, is the death of Marcus Velvet,” Chief Montgrave admitted. “Though his testimony might have proved useful in the case that Captain Holmes was building on the Philterworks Incident.”

  Leroy grimaced. “Look. His entire network of informants has nobody to answer to now, and with him gone and Spectre a damned wasteland, his drug hub is done for good. No coke. No kush. No molly. No more ether.”

  Chief Montgrave was quiet at that.

  Leroy shuffled his hands into his pockets. “The case—you taking that over?”

  “No,” Chief Montgrave said. “That will be passed to Deputy Chief Longshore. Between her and District Attorney Hhaledi, I expect Bluestein Philterworks will be dealt with swiftly once a trial is to be had. You can expect to be called to the stands, Waters, as an expert witness. You and that criminal underarbiter of yours.”

  Leroy raised a brow and smiled to himself. “Go figure. He was on the opposite side of the stands not too long ago.”

  “And might yet still be, Waters, if the two of you don’t learn to express some self restraint,” Chief Montgrave said. “There’s more, Waters.”

  Leroy inhaled. “So tell me. I’m running out of steam here, and I’ll be needed at Garland Heights General Hospital soon once those ambulances scurry off.”

  “Allure Artificery was attacked this morning. Constable Heathcliff and Constable Briggs were killed,” Chief Montgrave began, “and we apprehended a man known as Dean Dresker at the site of the attack.”

  Leroy’s eyes widened. “Would’ve been two people there. Esme and Janice, are they—”

  “Both fine,” Chief Montgrave said. “By some stroke of luck.”

  Leroy released his hands from his pockets and clasped both hands behind his head. He squatted down along the ground and exhaled, only to slowly rise back up to his feet.

  “And where are they now?” Leroy asked.

  “Safe,” said Chief Montgrave assuredly. “Safe and under protection at Garland Heights General.”

  “Were they hurt?” Leroy asked.

  “Not that we are aware of, no, but it is standard protocol in incidents like these,” said Chief Montgrave. “We’ve grouped them with another collateral victim of yours, Silvio Lieberman.”

  Leroy opened his mouth to speak, but Chief Montgrave beat him to it.

  “In no small part, Waters, I’ve lost one of the best damned captain's the Civic and Occult Authority has ever seen, and two good men who worked under him. And you, arbiter, have somehow managed to endanger not one, not two, but three civilians and a valuable witness in the form of Tania Ackerman amidst completing whatever twisted arbitration note Minister Rostavich handed to you.”

  Leroy stepped an inch closer to Chief Montgrave and pressed a finger into his chest.

  “And you, Chief, have enough evidence to bring Bluestein Philterworks down, not thanks to me and the lives it took to put this case on your fucking table. Sure, whole thing is a mess. A big shitty fucking mess. Won’t deny it, won’t argue with you. Whole thing blew up into something I never would’ve expected—and yeah, people got hurt. People who shouldn’t have. People who didn’t deserve it. But you wanna’ take a guess, think about what might’ve happened if none of this had come to pass?”

  Chief Montgrave glared at him, his albinic eyes humming with a power that Leroy should’ve feared. “Careful, Waters.”

  “My underarbiter found Tania Ackerman hooked up to a goddamn machine, being pumped for blood like goddamn piece of cattle. Bluestein managed to do all of that with your entire department none the wiser, and the Argent Group aided and abetted the whole damn thing. And all of it, Chief Montgrave, all of it, happened right under your fucking nose. How long has Bluestein had its luxury boutiques in the Commonwealth? How many of their marked-up fucking potions do you think were made at the expense of someone’s life? How long did it take for you and your fucking department to notice any of it?”

  Chief Montgrave’s gaze narrowed.

  “This is the part where I tell you the answer, asshole. Never. You never noticed. Thing is, I know I’m not a fucking saint. I know I mess up! I know, Chief, if there’s a way to do something wrong, one way or another, I’ll do it—but don’t you stand here with your nose all turned up in my face and tell me that I didn’t hand you the one of the biggest fucking victories your department has ever had. ‘Cause I did, and I know you know I did.”

  Leroy heard more of Cameron in his words than himself. For the first time in what seemed like a long time, his anger wasn’t bitter, it wasn’t cold, and it didn’t bite at the recipient of his rage like frost. It left his mouth like hot wax that burned to touch. And it felt good. Better than good.

  “You’ll be expected in city hall, Waters, when the proceeding begins,” said Chief Montgrave.

  Leroy brushed past him and veered away from the telephone booth they had both been standing in front of.

  He reached into his pocket and found the keys to his black Cadillac, which had been parked in an alley not too far from Spectre itself. He flipped out his key fob and twisted it into place. The trademarked sigilmasonry of Mulder & Sons hummed a low hum. He opened the door and closed it, and twisted the keys into the ignition.

  The ambulances tasked with taking Cameron, Tania, and Arthur to the hospital all closed the doors. Civic and Occult Authority cruisers parted out of the way to allow for the ambulances to exit.

  Leroy let his arms rest idly by his sides. As the car turned on, the radio station had already been set to 99.3 the Rat.

  “Annnd now for one of our latest favorites, folks, ‘Where the River Goes’, by Stone Temple Pilots,” said the radio announcer.

  one more chapter left (and an epilogue.. AND a little bonus project I have been working on for a big send off!)

  I'll have some important announcements lined up for when the epilogue chapter, but in the meantime, I want to take a moment to thank some of you awesome people for the new string of ratings, plus a brand new review from the very kind henningbaer, thanks so much good sir!

  (Also, Chief Montgrave was briefly mentioned waaay back in , and maybe a few other times earlier in the story, but he hasn't made an official appearance up until now.)

  LEROY WATERS

  ARTHUR YEAGER

  CHIEF MONTGRAVE

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