The interior of the flop house was bare, dusty, and poorly lit. In short, it was the perfect disguise. The basement, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more different. I wandered through a massive bar that buzzed with laughter and manic energy. Alcohol flowed like flood waters and clouds of pungent blue-gray smoke hung thick in the air. Dangerous-looking men and women crowded around long tables, drinking, shouting, gambling. The rattle of dice and the clink of coins changing hands could be heard even over the boisterous laughter and the occasional threat of violence.

“Pull another Matriarch, Roland, and you’re liable to lose a finger, you dirty whoreson!” a man bellowed from across the bar. He had a voice like a cement mixer and looked like a second cousin to the Elder Bear we’d killed.

This place was also more than just a bar, however.

There were several wooden stalls set up, manned by a variety of shifty-looking merchants. Fences, if I had to guess. Fences were basically the ye-olden equivalent of money launders. They took stolen property that couldn’t be sold anywhere else without raising eyebrows and turned it into spendable cash—for an appropriate fee of course.

A huge crowd of especially rowdy patrons were crowded around a sunken pit near the back of the main hall. I slipped between tables and edged pasted drunks and servers until I could get a glimpse of what was going on below.

Dug down into the ground was a sandy, bare-knuckle fighting ring. A pair of bloody, shirtless men beat the absolute shit out of each other while a bookmaker at the far side of the pit scribbled out rapidly changing odds on a chalk-covered blackboard. One of the combatants—a lanky redhead with the build of a boxer—landed a devastating haymaker right in his opponent’s mouth. His opponent happened to be a scrawny-looking kid, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. Blood and teeth flew in a grisly crimson arc and the boy staggered in pain, teetering for a long moment before pirouetting like a ballerina and faceplanting in the dirt. His eyes fluttered closed.

A thunderous boom went up, shaking the rafters overhead as some people cheered and others jeered, coins and paper notes changing hands.

“Alright, alright,” the greasy, rat face man writing the odds barked, his voice as pinched as his face. “Settle up and go grab a drink. Next round starts at nine bells.”

The crowd dispersed with muted grumbles.

I let the press of bodies sweep me toward the bar where the patrons were doing as they were told—buying rounds and talking shit while they waited for the next fight to start. It was a perfect opportunity. I bought a flagon of amber honey mead, which was just the right amount of sweet, and started circulating through the crowd. Looking for people who were drunk enough to talk freely, but not so drunk that they were incoherent. It was a fine line, but it didn’t take long to find what I was searching for. A small group of five had congregated around a table and had sullenly broken out a deck of cards.

From the glassy sheen in their eyes, I could tell they were drunk and from the dejected looks plastered across their faces, I knew they’d just lost big on the fight. Bingo.

“Mind if I play?” I asked, turning the question into a suggestion with a subtle use of Arcana. I plopped down without waiting for a reply and pulled out a leather coin purse filled with bronze and silver crowns. “Just won a heap, so I’ve got coin to burn.” I enhanced only the last part so that the words would stick in their heads. These guys were thieves and now I was a mark.

“Course, friend,” said a man with basset-hound jowls for cheeks. He went from looking dejected to nearly salivating in the blink of an eye. He shot a quick look to each of the other group members, an unspoken message passing amongst them like morse code. “The more the merrier, innit governa? Game’s Bahjang, you ever play?”

Bahjang was like the unholy lovechild of Texas Hold ‘Em, Rummy, and Spades and it also happened to be the card game of choice in the vast majority of Inns and Taverns I’d visited over the past month. When deployed, if Marines weren’t fighting or training, they were smoking, bullshitting, and playing cards. There wasn’t a card game I’d met yet that had bested me and Bahjang was no exception.

“Eh, once or twice,” I replied with a shrug. “Never did quite get the knack for it, but what the hell.” I jangled the bag. “It ain’t my money I’m spending now, is it? Deal the cards!”

My new buddies were only too happy to oblige in separating a fool from his coin. Truth was, I could’ve wiped the floor with them without batting an eye. Not only were they drunk, but they were also terrible players and had about a million tells apiece. One had a nervous finger twitch. Another licked his lips when he bluffed. A third subconsciously tapped at the table any time he had a decent hand. Between Master Mentalist and my natural aptitude, these goat humpers never stood a chance.

But I didn’t beat them.

Instead, I used every trick in the book to lose. If anything, losing was harder than winning with how bad these jokers played.

Thing was, if I cleaned ’em out, they would’ve turned angry. Angry and mean. Everyone likes to win, though. So instead, I fed ’em drinks and lost my coins, winning only often enough to keep me in the game. In no time they were singing like songbirds. With a little touch of Honeyed Words, I gently guided the talk from fights, cards, women, and heists to politics, monsters, and, most importantly of all, Akser Erdemir, the dead information broker. They didn’t know much more than I did, but they had the names of five people who they swore up and down had seen the whole thing themselves.

Knowing I wasn’t going to get any further with them, I cashed out with a pained wince and excused myself from the table.

I worked the bar crowd some more and found the first name on the list, Sabo Sandor. Naturally, ol’ Sabo was passed out at a table in the corner, snoring loudly enough to wake the dead. I grimaced. He was as useless as tits on a bull. After a little asking around I found out that the second name on the list, Olgeir Lokason, was out on assignment and wasn’t due back for a week or more. That was a dead end, too. Unfortunately, I never got to name four or five, because witness number three found me first.

It was the big ol’ hulking sumbitch I’d seen earlier who clearly shared a common ancestor with the Elder Bear. He also hadn’t come alone. Four more thugs built like a squad of shit brick houses accompanied him. They were covered in tats and from the Billie clubs and daggers they were carrying in scar-riddled hands, I knew I was elbow deep in shit.

“Name’s Bramin, heard you might be looking for me. Well, you’ve found me. What I wanna know, is who the fuck you are and why in the bloody fuck you’re asking around about Akser?” Grizzly-Fucker growled at me, crossing his thick arms, trying his best to intimidate me.

“It’s nothing to be alarmed about,” I said, keeping my tone flat and soothing. “I’ve been sent to ask around about the killings. I’m here to help.”

He snorted. “Been sent by who, I wonder? Because I know it bloody hell wasn’t me, and I’m the co-owner of the fine little establishment you happen to find yourself in friend-o. Bet you’d know that if the member’s ring on your finger actually belonged to you.” He paused and leaned forward, a sneer on his lips. “Which it don’t. You ain’t a blooded member of the Society of Vicious Whispers, no sir. So how’s about this? You want to know about Akser, and I want to know about you, so let’s have ourselves a friendly little chat down in the ring, eh? See if maybe we can’t get some straight answers out of you. Boys!”

He snapped his fingers and the thugs closed in around me.

Meaty, calloused-covered hands grabbed at my arms and wrists and dragged me unceremoniously through the crowd. Drunks and rabblerousers alike jumped over themselves to get out of our way. My Brawn was up at twenty-two—three points outside the range of even elite human athletes and strongmen. If I’d had a mind too, I could’ve gotten their grubby goddamned hands off me, but not without bringing the whole club down on my head. They pulled me over to the edge of the fighting pit, then gave me the old heave-ho and tossed my ass right down into the sand.

I turned an easy flip and landed in a crouch before straightening.

It was an impressive display. At least, it was impressive to everyone except Bear-Fucker.

He jumped over the rickety wooden retaining wall and landed with a thud that rattled the floor.

“I consider myself a fair man,” Bramin said, pacing slowly as he talked, “so here’s the wager I have for you, buddy boy. You beat me in a legitimate, bare-knuckle brawl—no weapons, no shifty chicanery—and I’ll tell you what you want to know about Asker. Or, and I suspect this is the more likely scenario, I beat the horse piss out of you and start breaking your fingers and your toes until you tell me what I want to know.”

A bloodthirsty cheer erupted from the assembled bargoers and gamblers, who’d all packed in around the pit to see the mayhem.

“How’s that sound to you, then?” he asked. Before I could answer, he continued, “It doesn’t matter how it sounds, because that’s how it’s gonna be. Before we begin, I feel obliged to let you know that I happen to be the reigning pit fighting champion here. I’ve never lost a bout. Not in ten years. Some say it’s because I’m a man of great talent, other say that it’s because I’m Steelborn.” He reached up and cracked his knuckles. “Me? I say it’s both. Now, with the formalities outta the way, how’s about we have that chat...”

I smiled. This was not exactly how I’d envisioned this night going, but I was never one to turn down a good brawl, Steelborn or not. Honestly, I almost felt bad about what was going to happen.

But only almost.

“Let’s rumble, bear fucker,” I said, raising my guard.

***

Bramin came at me fast, head low, shoulders square, hands up in guard. It was a classic boxer’s pose. He was big, had arms like a gorilla, and fists like a pair of honey-baked hams. Based purely on his build and the way he moved, I knew he favored throwing punches. He closed the distance fast and tried to push me up against the wall, where I wouldn’t be able to retreat from his bludgeoning knuckles. I saw what he was doing and circled right so that he wouldn’t be able to plant his feet and just rage on me.

With a grunt, he darted forward but I launched a sharp front kick, catching him in the gut, then followed it up with a wicked shin-kick to his thigh. His leg buckled from the impact and his eyes widened in shock. With my strength, a clean, well-place kick like that to anyone who wasn’t Steelborn would’ve broken the leg, but he shook off the blow without even a wince. Still, I could see the gears cranking away inside his head. His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, and his forehead creased in a mixture of concentration and worry.

With just a couple of kicks, I’d gone from being an easy exhibition match to entertain the boys, to someone who was a real threat.

Suddenly, all the playfulness in his posture was gone, and he was all business. He lunged in, bringing up a punishing knee aimed at my sternum. I brought my forearm smashing down into the top of his thigh, unbalancing him before the knee could ever land. He recovered quickly, completely unphased, and immediately unleashed a flurry of jabs and crosses.

He was unnaturally fast—especially considering his size—but with my enhanced Finesse I was able to duck, juke, and sidestep each blow before they could land. He faked with another jab-cross combo, then followed it up with a big hook, meant to cave in a few ribs. Agile as I was, I couldn’t avoid the hit, so instead I hunched in, turned my shoulders, and dropped my elbow, intercepting the punishing blow with my arm instead of letting it collide with my side. Bramin hit like a sledgehammer. Bright lances of pain raced down my arm and made my fingers tingle.

But now I was inside his guard now, where his reach wouldn’t be as much of a strategic advantage.

I grit my teeth, adrenaline surging through me, and peppered his torso with a counter barrage of lightning-fast punches. My fists landed with meaty slaps against his bare skin. It was like hitting a brick wall. Unfortunately for ol’ Bear Fucker, though, he wasn’t the only one who hit like a sledgehammer. He staggered back at the onslaught, each blow chipping away at his stamina and his confidence. He’d come into this fight expecting to pound away at some mongrel street dog, but now he was learning the hard way that the mongrel street dog was actually a rabid pitbull with a helluva bite.

Still, he was strong and absorbed punches that would’ve leveled a lesser man.

I kept right on lobbing fists, knowing that eventually he would break.

Instead, he let out a barrel-chested roar that rippled out like a bomb blast. My bones rattled and my stomach tried to twist itself inside out. I had no idea what ability that was, but I could feel the ebb of Arcana and spent Stamina lingering in the air like a haze. Bramin had just used some sort of enhanced Steelborn ability on me.

Before I could recover, he dropped an elbow into the back of my spine—an attack that would’ve been fatal to anyone other than a Vigil with Diamond Body. Suddenly, anger surged through me. This son of a bitch would’ve killed me on a whim to show off in front of his thugs, all because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, asking about the wrong thing. Red hot rage invaded my vision and I no longer cared that this was supposed to be a straight up brawl. This chuckle fuck had just tried to kill me, and I wasn’t gonna let that stand.

I launched myself upward with explosive speed, driving the top of my head directly into his nose and his stupid, grinning mouth.

The sharp crack of bone ripped through the fighting pit like the report of a shotgun blast and a hot wave of crimson blood splashed through the air.

He fell back with a shocked cry, giant fingers groping at his ruined face, trying to contain the deluge of blood. I didn’t relent for a second. I drove another front kick into his guts, this time activating Rend. I wasn’t entirely sure the ability would even work without a melee weapon equipped, but sure enough, I felt primal power surge along my arm and erupt from my fist. He doubled over with a whoof. At the same instant, I brought my knee up, slamming it into his face with every ounce of strength I could muster.

With a strangled cry he toppled, landing on his back like a felled tree, a great plume of dust billowing up around him. I could’ve stopped there. Probably should’ve. But in the Marine Corps, fighting wasn’t about self-defense. It wasn’t about disarming the opponent. It was about maximum damage. It was about survival. And this was a fight for survival because this guy would’ve killed me for shits and giggles.

I couldn’t kill him because I needed the intel he had and I also didn’t want to bring the wrath of every man and woman in this place down on my head, but I was going to make sure he couldn’t try to kill me again. I planted a boot in his ribs, knocking the air out of his lungs, then straddled his chest. He was clutching his face, struggling to gulp air. I drove another fist into the side of his head, then another. Bramin fought back, bucking and struggling beneath me, but his movements grew more lethargic every second.

I raised my hand, ready to deliver a final blow—

“Enough,” a stern female voice boomed a split second before an unseen wall of force sideswiped me, lifting me up and slamming me into the wooden pit wall.

Someone had just hit me full force with a Kinetic Blast.

I stood, searching the crowd for the threat. She was easy enough to find.

Willowy, long auburn hair, green eyes sharp enough to cut glass, and long flowing satin robes with a thick golden chain draped around her neck. Bramin had said he was co-owner of this joint and I had no doubt that the lady standing above me was the other half of that partnership. She radiated danger. But that wasn’t the only thing I had to worry about. The crowd of spectators was looking down on me with shocked expressions.

A moment later a murmur began to ripple through the crowd.

“Vigil…”

“He’s a bloody Vigil…”

“Fuck, best we get out our asses out of here…”

That’s when I noticed the fragile Glamor I’d been holding in place had shattered like a crystalline vase.