That Which Can Never Be Taken Back

[The Cinderella Man]

When exactly did it become so damn easy to kill people?

Victor doesn’t know, cannot remember. It didn’t happen instantly, that much he is certain. There was no great turning point after which pulling the trigger became easy, no single event that changed his mindset and turned him into a bona fide killer. It was an erosion of time that got to him, a compilation of good things gone bad and bad things gone worse. That and repetition. If you do one thing over and over again enough times, it becomes a habit, a reflex almost, and soon enough all you feel is the recoil and all you see are the remains of someone less lucky than you. You can’t afford to remember their faces, at least Victor cannot. He has enough bad dreams as it is without the blank faces of his victims, staring at him with their dead eyes for eternity. Instead he walls it all up, cloaks himself in stolidity and calls it strength. But today the demons of the past came to haunt him, and the shell he has constructed is starting to break.

The rain is relentless as he walks down the grassy field of tombstones. It is everywhere now, down his back, in his boots, drenching him to the skin. He doesn’t care, doesn’t even make a move to button up his coat. The carriage has long since slipped around the corner and out of sight, but he knows where it’s going and his feet take him onto the avenue sidewalk, following its route. He doesn’t want to face the woman again. But he has some unfinished business with her and he had postponed it long enough. The streets are hauntingly empty, the downpour’s grey tint chasing everybody away to their abodes, and it almost feels as if Victor Callahan is the only person left in Radasanth.

And a big of part of him wishes he was.

Silas’s words popped into Victor’s mind, the disembodied voice telling him he found someone on the top floor. The ex-con hated this communication doohickey that the weirdo provided. Every time words poured into his head it felt as if someone was disturbingly close, whispering something in his ear and it took a lot of composure not to turn around and look over his shoulder. A thought came to him that this was perhaps how those nutjobs in loony bins felt, and suddenly he could almost understand their insanity. If he had to listen to voices echoing in his head every day, he’d probably book a padded room for himself soon enough. Artemis announced the basement was clear, as if to drive the mental discomfort home.

Victor didn’t rush up the curved stairway. Whoever Silas found, it was obviously not Walter, and there were some more pressing matters to attend to. Once his weapons were back in their holsters at his flanks, the gunman sat on the stairs to assess the damage to his arm. He could feel the blood trickling down its length and the burning pain exploded every time he tried to move it. Pulling the wounded arm out of the coat’s sleeve, he tore away at the shirt to reveal a pair of holes gushing with crimson. Clean through, he thought with some satisfaction. If it were an inch to the right, it would’ve shattered the bone and he’d have to seek a healer immediately. As it stood now, it was just an inconvenience. An inconvenience that hurt like a twisted dagger, but still it was bearable. He sure as hell had suffered worse.

By the time Artemis appeared in the foyer, he was wrapping the wound up in the torn sleeve, struggling to get some pressure on it. The young man barely even noticed him. His eyes were staring at the four fresh corpses and the pools of blood spreading around them, soaking the carpet.

“You... You killed them?” he asked, sounding genuinely shocked.

“No, it was a mass suicide,” Victor mumbled, one end of the sleeve between his teeth as he tied it around his arm. He gave it a good tug, then did a second knot to make it tight. He got up, gave the arm a test run and winced at the pain darting up to his shoulder. He’d make a shitty medic, that’s for sure. “You look surprised, kid. What do you think we’re doing here? Slapping people on the wrist for being naughty?”

“Was it really necessary?” Artemis said, now his eyes and his disapproving frown aimed at Victor.

“Sure it was. Hell, it was self-defense. I knocked on the door, they came at me with their weapons, I shot them. Simple as that.” Artemis wasn’t convinced and Victor didn’t care all that much. He took out the sawed-off with his wounded hand, struggled to crack it open, then proceeded to reload it with bloodied fingers. “I wouldn’t fret too much over these dirtbags. If they’re working for our target, they had it coming.”

“We all have it coming,” Artemis said distantly, and Victor grinned, closing the shotgun with a jerk of his healthy hand.

“You got that right. Now, let’s get upstairs. Our friend has a live one.”

They walked up the stairs in silence, their footsteps muffled by the soft carpeting as eyes glared at them from the hanging portraits. Each face in the painting shared similar lines and structure, with a beard here and a bald head there to differentiate the heads of the DeVir family. It was a clever little detail, Victor thought, certainly something Walter would come up with to give a more genuine feeling to his new identity. None of these men really looked like Walter. They all had proud and sharp lines, strong chins and piercing eyes. Walter Jimes had the eyes of a snake and a face of a boar. Not that it mattered much to people who might’ve visited the manor. Nobody really looked at these things anyways, and even if they did, they would never say out loud that the current DeVir didn’t look like his predecessors out of sheer respect for the host. You don’t walk into someone’s home and say that their father might’ve been the mailman.

After trying two doors and finding a lavish bathroom and a bedroom dominated by a huge double bed with a baldachin, Artemis and Victor finally rendezvoused with Silas. The study was dim, with only a pair of oil lamps offering their yellow light. It had that unmistakable smell of dust and parchment, a scent of ancient knowledge one would get in a library, amidst the endless towers of books and tomes. But there was something else as well, something fresh that stood out in the musty constant of the study. There was a woman, standing behind a huge piano, not amused by the midnight interruption in the least. Victor knew who she was immediately. There was mention of only one woman in the briefing.

“Angela DeVir, I presume?” Victor said, stepping inside the door, the right sleeve of his coat hanging loosely.

“Yes. Now I repeat, who are you? And what do you want?” She stood firmly, undaunted, as if three strange men didn’t just barge into her home in the middle of the night. Her hair was midnight black and long enough to reach her waist, and as a breeze pushed through the silky curtains of the study, it played with its loose locks. Her dress revealed little of her figure, but her face made Victor put her age at late thirties. “If it’s money, the safe is downstairs.”

“We’re not after your money,” the gunslinger said, approaching her with deliberate slowness. She didn’t flinch or back away despite the shotgun in his hand and some hundred and twenty pounds he had on her. “Your husband. I need to have a little chat with him.”

“I see. The Watch sent you? To do their dirty work?” Angela said. She proceeded to seat herself back on the piano stool. “Well, he’s not here. I haven’t seen him for days.”

“And you have no idea where he is?” Victor asked.

“None whatsoever.”

“Of course.” The bulky gunman nodded, then scratched his unshaven chin with the barrel of his sawed-off. “Well, see, for some reason I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care what you believe. I’m not telling you a damn thing.”

“We shall see,” Victor said, then turned to his companions. “Tie her up.”