Lust Meter System: Conquering Beauties

Chapter 262: A Strange Day

They got there and the first thing that hit was the smell.

Not the visual. The smell came first.

Blood and underneath it something fouler, the kind that came from a body losing control of itself in its last moments.

Liam had smelled it enough times to know exactly what it meant before he saw anything.

Then he saw it, and that was worse.

Two of his guys were on the ground.

Both face up, both with gunshot wounds to the chest, the grouping tight and deliberate.

It was kind of placement that didn’t happen by accident. One still had his eyes open, jaw slack, looking at nothing.

While the other had his hand stretched out beside him like he’d grabbed for something in the last second and come up empty.

The blood around both of them had spread outward and gone still in the concrete, dark and cold.

Liam stood over the first one and looked at him properly.

Young. Twenty two at most. His jacket had the reaper symbol on the left shoulder, the blue and white design sitting on fabric that was ruined now.

The face was one Liam had seen around before. Not a name he could put to it right away, but a face he recognized. Which made it worse in a way that strangers wouldn’t have.

He moved to the second one.

Same jacket. Same age.

His face was turned slightly to the side, expression blank in the way faces went blank when they weren’t faces anymore.

A gold chain had come loose in whatever happened and was lying across the concrete beside him.

Liam looked at both of them for a moment without saying anything.

Something tightened in his jaw.

’Someone did this on purpose,’ he thought. ’Someone came here, found two of ours, and put them down clean. That’s not random. That’s a decision.’

He straightened and looked at Shay.

Shay was standing a few feet back with his hands in his pockets. His face had gone past anger into something quieter and colder and considerably more dangerous.

He was looking at the bodies the way you looked at something you were going to remember for a long time.

Then Liam looked at the third body. Further back from the other two, separated by about four meters of concrete.

Different jacket. Different colors entirely, red and black, a design he didn’t recognize from anything in their operation.

He looked at it for a moment.

Then he looked at Shay.

"I thought you said they were just annoying," Liam said.

Shay kept his eyes on the bodies. "This is the first time they’ve done anything like this," he said. No defensiveness in it. Just a man stating a fact that had caught him as off guard as anyone else.

They walked to the third body together.

The guy who’d come to get them was standing nearby, still shaken, his hands doing small useless movements at his sides the way hands did when a person’s body hadn’t finished processing what their brain had already moved past.

Liam crouched.

The same wound pattern on this one. Entry from the side rather than the front. He looked at the jacket again, at the red and black design across the back.

"So we know it’s not the other group," Shay said from above him, looking over Liam’s shoulder.

Liam studied the entry wound. The blood pattern on the concrete under the body. The position of the hands. He stayed there a moment longer than he needed to.

"I can’t say the same for them," he said.

He stood up.

Shay opened his mouth.

"You bastard Reapers."

The voice came from behind them, loud, making no attempt to be anything other than exactly what it was.

They turned.

Eight people. Standing in a loose cluster at the far end of the space, having appeared from somewhere without either of them hearing it happen.

Shay looked at the man at the front and said "Stan," quietly, not a greeting, just a recognition, the way you said a name when a problem had just walked through the door and confirmed itself.

Stan was big.

He was the kind of big guy that came from years of it rather than a gym, wide through the shoulders, thick through the neck, head completely shaved.

He had a beard dyed white, sitting on his jaw like a statement.

A gold grill caught the light when his lips moved. His clothes were dark, a heavy jacket over a shirt that had seen better days, the kind of outfit put together without much thought.

He was pointing at them with one thick finger, his whole body leaning forward like a man who’d arrived already angry and had no intention of arriving any other way.

Five of the seven behind him had guns. The other two held bats, one each, loose at their sides.

Liam looked at Shay.

Shay was already looking at Stan with his hands still in his pockets, his expression doing the thing it did when he was deciding how much patience he had left for the next few minutes.

"You just declared war," Stan said, his finger still out, his voice going up at the end the way people’s voices did when they wanted everyone within fifty meters to know they were serious. "You Reaper bastards. You declared war on us."

Shay exhaled through his nose. Slow and deliberate. "I hear you," he said. "And I want you to know I’m angry too. But it wasn’t us."

"Bullshit," Stan said. He didn’t even let the sentence land before he had the word out. He pointed again and the guns came up, all five of them, aimed across the space.

Shay looked at the guns. Then at Stan. "Calm down," he said, and the patience was gone from his voice now, something firmer in its place. "I’m telling you, calm down. I’m angry about this too. But listen to me when I say we had nothing to do with this."

"We had nothing to do with this," Liam said.

Stan’s eyes moved to him. Stayed there a moment, taking him in, running whatever was running behind them.

"Shut your mouth," Stan said, pointing specifically at Liam now. "Let me talk to him. You stay out of it."

Liam looked at him.

’Right,’ he thought. ’They don’t know who I am. To them I’m just someone standing next to Shay.’ He glanced at the guns. Then back at Stan. ’Fine. I’ll let Shay handle this.’

He stepped back slightly and said nothing.

Shay glanced sideways at him and a small smile crossed his face before it was gone.

He looked back at Stan. "Look," he said, his voice going direct the way it went when he’d decided to stop being patient and start being clear. "I know you’re angry. You should be angry. Those are your people on the ground. But somewhere in there you’ve got at least one functioning brain cell and it’s telling you right now that someone is trying to make us fight each other."

Stan stared at him.

His jaw moved.

His finger dropped about two inches. His eyes did the thing eyes did when a person was hearing something they didn’t want to agree with and could feel themselves agreeing with it anyway.

"I should shoot you right where you’re standing for talking to me like that," Stan said.

"Yeah," Shay said. "But you’re not going to."

A long moment.

"You’re right," Stan said finally. Like the words cost him something.

Shay exhaled. "Thank you," he said.

Stan looked at his guys and jerked his head slightly. The guns started coming down.

Then he raised his hand again and the guns went back up.

Shay stared at him. "Did you not just hear what I said."

"I heard you," Stan said. His chin came up. "But somebody has to answer for this. My guys are on the ground."

"Okay," Shay said. His voice had gone very quiet and very flat, the way it went when everything that wasn’t essential had left it. "If you shoot, pray you don’t miss."

He said it looking directly at Stan. Hands still in his pockets. Not having moved a centimeter since the guns went up the second time.

Liam looked at him from the side.

’Is he actually saying that with five guns pointed at us,’ he thought. ’Does he know something about dodging bullets that I don’t. Is this man genuinely comfortable right now.’

"Don’t worry," Stan said, his grill catching the light as his lips pulled back. "I won’t miss."

Then the guns were gone.

Not lowered. Gone. Every one of them, pulled clean from the hands holding them, appearing in a neat row on the concrete several feet away from anyone who’d been pointing them.

Stan stared at the empty hands of the five people beside him. Then at the guns on the ground. Then at Liam, who was standing with his hands loose at his sides and his expression carrying nothing particular.

The two guys with bats looked at each other.

"Okay," Liam said. "Now that that’s sorted. Maybe we can actually have a conversation."

Stan looked at him for a long moment. Something in his face shifted. The pure forward anger settling into something more considered, more calculating. The look of someone revising their read on a situation in real time.

"Oh," he said slowly. "I see." He looked between Liam and Shay. Then back at Liam. "Alright. I’m listening."

They talked.

It took a while but it got somewhere.

Stan’s crew had been operating in the surrounding blocks for two years without any serious conflict with the Reapers.

He’d lost two people tonight and he wanted answers, which was reasonable. He’d arrived ready to fight, which was understandable.

By the end of it they’d agreed on one thing.

Someone had set this up deliberately. The body in the red and black jacket wasn’t one of Stan’s people either.

Three bodies. Two gangs. Nobody claimed the third.

Liam looked at Shay. "We need to find out who did this," he said. "That’s where we start."

Shay looked at him. "Okay boss," he said.

Liam’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

He pulled it out and looked at the screen. Read the message. Looked up.

"I have to go," he said.

He turned and left.