Contractor: Chapter - 43

The crossroads of life.

“Why?” I croaked as I regained control over my voice. “Why did you take so long? He’ll suffer enough in whatever form his existence takes next, our job was to kill him quickly and efficiently.”

“I’m sorry. Give me a second here.” Ryan’s his voice louder than it needed to be. He pulled back his hood and pulled out his earbuds. Now that I was listening closely I could hear the loud music from where I was sitting. “What was that?”

“Why did you torture him like that? The goal was to be quick and efficient.” I repeated. He offered a hand to help me up but I ignored it and pulled myself up with a shelf ledge. “I know you have some issues, but that was messed up. Inhumane.”

“Your goal was to be quick and efficient. Mine was retrieve a kidnapped girl and inflict pain on her captors.” His expression was dark all of the sudden. “I did what I came here to do. You should be grateful I didn’t wait until he was done with you.”

“Well I guess it’s too late to change things now.” I hissed, gesturing to Harley’s dead body. “So where’s this girl of yours? Where’s Amy for that matter? I heard them talking about storing her around here earlier.”

“Right here.” Amy groaned as she rounded the corner into the aisle. “Jerk had silver bullets made special just for us. Normally a bullet wouldn’t be a problem, and even I didn’t know this, but silver just hurts a lot worse. The metal is hard enough to survive being fired but still soft enough to leak when it’s embedded. It also gets embedded instead of going right through. My body kept thinking every single stupid silver particle in my blood was a bullet. So not only did I get to pull a bullet out by hand but I’ve been circulating silver particles in my bloodstream and I feel sick every other minute.”

“Ouch.” I paused for a second, something didn’t add up. “Wait. How did you get out of your cage?”

“Idiot decided to come back and shoot me a few more times, opened the cage so he wouldn’t miss.” She sighed as she slumped against a shelf clutching her chest. “I could tell he wanted me to knock him out, hardly even put up a fight.”

“Yeah, Harley can do a thing pretty much exactly like Dante can to me and Hope can for you.” I rolled my eyes. “All he bothered to tell us was that Harley would be persuasive.”

“Probably wanted to buy himself some time to make things up with Hope.” Amy gagged. She looked horrible but she was still laughing. “Maybe get around to finally enjoying himself. He’s been doing nothing but work since he took the job.”

“The job as Death or the Job as Hope’s boy toy?” I laughed, both sounded pretty hard.

“I don’t understand anything you guys are saying.” Ryan had gone back to his blank emotionless self. “So I’ll be going. I’ve got a girl to find.” Without another word he slowly started to make his way back up the row of shelves, taking a second to look inside each occupied cage.

“So how did he resist the mind control thing?” Amy asked. I could tell she wasn’t really interested, but I guessed the distraction would be nice.

“Apparently he was listening to loud music with some ear buds, you know what those are right?” Amy glared at me, but didn’t comment. “I guess the mind control thing Harley was using only worked if you could hear what he was saying.”

“I’ll give you a heads up before you try that with Dante. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter if we hear the orders or not, the fact that our souls are getting them is enough to compel us.”

“Thanks. Saves me some time and pain I guess.” I had actually been thinking about trying it, just to see if it would work. I’d had my doubts to begin with, and while I knew I couldn’t trust Amy implicitly, I believed her on this. “I don’t think I’d even be able to get headphones or any kind of music player.”

“Nope.” Amy grunted.

“Indeed.” Dante hummed. His sudden and quiet appearance gave me a small panic attack. I jumped and turned on him, almost landing a punch before I froze in place. “I apologize, I didn’t mean to startle you. I honestly thought you knew I was here.”

“Liar.” I grumbled. “You did that on purpose and we all know it.” I relaxed my fist and shoved my hands into my pockets. “So are we done here?”

“Well Harley is dead, so I can add that to a list of things I don’t have to worry about.” Dante reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a small notebook. “Kill Harley Hill, check.” He scratched out what I assumed was exactly what he had just said in his notebook with a pen I didn’t notice he had been holding. “However neither of you actually killed him, which is a problem.”

“It’s not like we didn’t try.” It wasn’t my fault that Ryan killed him before I had the chance, I didn’t even know that it would be a problem. “I mean Amy got herself shot with a silver bullet that’s making her sick and I’m apparently not stealthy enough. That Ryan got him at all is kind of a little miracle.”

“Who is Ryan and why should I care?”

Screaming from another aisle prevented me from replying. The second the screaming started Dante vanished from in front of me. The screaming stopped and a second later Dante reappeared with Ryan hanging by his hood in one hand and a girl hanging limp across his other arm. Both were unconscious and Dante looked tired. Not like he’d just exerted himself, but like he just wanted things to be over with. He had no right to feel that way, having only been there for a little over five minutes, but I knew exactly how that felt.

“Again, what is this mess and why am I dealing with it?” Dante sounded slightly more aggravated than before.

“Well, the guy in the hood is Ryan Kage, psychopath, and the guy that killed Harley. So you might want to keep him alive a little longer. The girl I’ve never seen before and I’m guessing Ryan was trying to get her out of a cage?” Dante nodded. “So she’s the reason why he killed Harley and helped us at all in the first place. He’s been pretty vague as to how they’re connected and I guess I’ve kind of just been assuming she knew who he was this entire time and I guess I was wrong?” Dante nodded.

“From what I understand from the three seconds I let her stay conscious he’s been stalking her for over a year.” I cringed. It fit too well and I couldn’t believe the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. “She also seemed to have been severely abused and probably taken advantage of in ways I don’t think anyone wants to hear about.”

“Nope.” Amy grunted. She had been quiet for a while and I’d almost assumed she’d passed out but I guess that wasn’t possible. “I figured he was a creep, no one else would have acted like he did. That psychopath thing isn’t news to me either, he was obviously faking all of his reactions.”

“Well, I had to figure that out the hard way.” I sighed. “Care to tell me why you didn’t tell me?”

“I don’t like spoiling innocence.”

“Do I look innocent to you?” I had sort of gotten the impression that she understood what kind of background I had.

“You’re right. Next time we meet a psychopathic stalker or murderer, I’ll let you know.” At first I thought she was making a joke but it was incredibly likely that this wouldn’t be the last time that situation came up.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” Dante butted in, once again more aggravated with every passing second. “Let’s get down to business.” He dropped Ryan carelessly to the floor and handed the girl over to me. “Wake up mister Kage, I need to do some business with you.” Dante gently nudged Ryan with his foot. “I know you’re not still unconscious, I’m not a fool.”

“What do you want then?” Ryan calmly sat up and looked up at Dante.

“You have something that I want. I have something you want. I just want to make a trade.” Dante sighed. “I’ll give you this girl if you sign off something that you have recently acquired by murdering a man by the name of Harley Hill. All I need you to do is sign this piece of paper.” Dante produced a weathered piece of parchment from what appeared to be nothing and squatted down to Ryan’s level. He held out the paper but Ryan didn’t respond.

“The girl, June, isn’t some kind of property you can just hand over. She isn’t yours to give and she isn’t mine to take. I came here to rescue her.” Ryan’s response, which had taken him what felt like several minutes to come up with, shocked me. It sounded nothing like what I expected a stalker to say.

“So you can stalk her again?” Dante added. Again, Ryan didn’t respond. This time, I think, because Dante was right. “Tell you what, I’ll change the deal up.” Dante took back the paper and pulled out a blank sheet of clean white paper from a pocket. “You obviously don’t want June here to remember a thing that’s happened to her recently. Particularly realizing that you’ve been stalking her. I imagine there are several other things she’s probably better off forgetting, and in the interest of retaining her previous normal behavior I think you’ll agree with me.” Ryan nodded slowly. Dante was dragging his pen across the paper at an alarming speed as he spoke. It looked impossibly effortless for someone who wasn’t even looking at what he was doing. “She’ll be much happier and better off if she just forgets this whole mess.”

“So what am I giving you in return for this?” Ryan wasn’t stupid, nothing is ever free and he knew it. I’d actually almost forgotten why we were even here myself and I had to think a little to remember the mirror shard.

“I deal in spiritual commodities, items of an otherworldly nature passed on through right and inheritance. Harley had a particular item I want and when you killed him it passed to you by right. The object in question is something you will never be able to fully utilize or even properly acquire in physical form.” He wasn’t doing a very good job at selling how useless it would be to Ryan, I could tell he wanted it pretty badly and saying you wanted something is not the best way to get it. “I, however, will be able to do so and I would gladly share my profits with you.”

“I don’t need money.” Ryan looked about as convinced as a rock. I could tell Dante had some sort of plan to sell his pitch, but I had no idea what he was thinking.

“Neither do I, and this particular item won’t be granting me any. It offers benefits beyond physical value, things I think you would be very interested in.” Dante smiled, he must have been getting close to his closer. “Have you ever wanted to experience life like everyone else? Ever want to have honest feelings and emotions? Love, despair, joy, pain… give me what I want and I can give you anything you desire, no strings attached.”

“That sounds too good to be true and I don’t trust it. What’s stopping you from just killing me and taking what you want?”

“Believe it or not, I’m a nice guy and I don’t do that sort of thing.” It took a lot of effort for me to keep a straight face as he said that. “I know I messed up some things here and I simply want to make up for that. Whether you agree to hand over what I want or not I will still erase the recent events from June’s memory. Everything else is just a bonus, if you were smart you’d take me up on my offer.”

“How about a counteroffer.” Dante’s hand stopped dead in its tracks and he stared curiously at Ryan. “You wipe her memory, I give you the thing, and you give me a job.” I was stunned by the change in his attitude. His offer had come from out of nowhere, I had not once gotten the feeling he would ever want to be where I was. Who would ever want this voluntarily? “June forgets, I don’t have the temptation to bother her ever again, you get your piece of junk, I get a more meaningful purpose in life.”

“That’s an interesting offer.” The paper in Dante’s hands burst into flames and he held out a smoldering hand. “I’ll agree to that. Do you accept this verbal contract Ryan Kage? Knowing full well you put yourself in my complete service?”

“Uh huh.” Ryan hummed and shook Dante’s hand. I was already confused enough, I didn’t even want to think about what was happening.

“Looks like you've got yourself a job.” Dante smiled and the fire died in an instant like the air had just run out. “How do you feel about tailing someone for me for a while to start off?”

“I can do that.”