Singapore was one of the first few countries to utilize barghests as K9, and the first Asian country to do so in the year 2053. Due to the vicious temperament of male barghests, only female barghests are utilized, and even then, Roderick could not help feeling a sense of dread when Rendal and his partner Priya opened the back of their SUV to reveal a pair of black-furred hounds the size of striped hyenas.

It was the first time Roderick saw a barghest with his own eyes. They looked like Belgian Shepherds but their eyes were scarlet, already starting to glow as the darkness of night, accompanied by a light drizzle, gradually swallowed what was left of the evening sky. Their greenish fangs, sharper than a knife’s blade, were slightly more elongated than those of normal dogs and their black fur swayed lightly in the breeze like as though they were submerged underwater. Eerie was the word he would use to describe them.

Constable Priya, whom Roderick had just found out was actually a dhampir, had trouble getting the larger of the two barghests to follow her, for it appeared to be more interested in sniffing her hair bun than doing actual police dog work. It wasn’t until Rendal started issuing commands in a language Roderick did not understand did it finally start listening to Priya.

“Can I… Can I not go near them?” Roderick asked.

“If you’re the type that prays to the cross… Nah, I’m just pulling your leg, say hi to Tidbits and Shortcake,” Rendal replied as his barghest sauntered over to Roderick, sniffed him and unexpectedly sat down in front of him, giving him a puppy-faced look as Roderick felt the air around him suddenly growing colder to the point where he could actually see his own breath.

“Oh, she likes you! Congratulations,” the half-elf K9 officer commented as his partner had to deal with her stubborn barghest again, who was now refusing to move despite her scolding.

“Yeah, why’s your partner having so much difficulty with her barghest? And why is she in charge of the bigger one?” Jason asked as he observed the whole situation.

“Oh, Shortcake’s for beginners. If Shortcake likes you, that’s when the training begins, but she’s stubborn, a bit lazy and despite being the biggest of the litter, she’s… Well, she’s not exactly brave, that’s for sure. Our barghests only responds to Old English for work commands, and Priya’s having a hard time getting the pronunciations right, so Shortcake keeps messing around.”

“And your barghest here is supposed to be mid-tier?”

“Tidbits? Nah, she’s elite-tier. First time I deployed her was last year, during a bank robbery. One of them robbers was a mage throwing fireballs at the cops, so I sent her in through a vent. One minute later, the robbers were screaming for their lives, and then she came out the front door with the mage robber’s right hand in her mouth. Such a good girl.”

Roderick and Jason stared at Rendal with widened eyes, then simultaneously looked down at the barghest wagging her tail at them before looking at each other.

“Keep her really far away from us, thanks,” Jason said to Rendal, with Roderick nodding in agreement as the two backed away from Rendal and Tidbits.

“Rendal, it’s strange, don’t you think?” Priya asked her senior partner as she finally got Shortcake to follow her.

“Strange what?”

“If the victim was bisected in such a manner, there should be quite a large amount of blood on the scene. But there’s so little of it…”

“Yeah, true… Let’s find the upper half first, then let Dr Marog deal with the deductions… Tidbits, Shortcake, sēcan hraw!”

Unleashed by their handlers, the two barghests sniffed the covered corpse before suddenly appeared to have a growth burst, transforming in a blink of an eye into more muscular forms as their heads morphed into that of wolves, dashing into the forested area while Rendal and Priya ran along beside them, somehow keeping up with their speed while Roderick and Jason had difficulty catching up.

“Holy crap, they’re fast,” Jason commented as he and Roderick struggled to maintain a line of sight with the K9 officers and their barghests.

For a brief moment, the two lost sight of the K9 officers, but then Roderick stumbled out of the trees with Jason right behind him to find himself in a small clearing. The barghests were no longer running, instead barking aggressive at a tree which their handlers were staring at.

“You got to be kidding me… All the way up there?” Rendal asked.

Roderick and Jason looked up to see the upper half of the victim’s corpse in the trees hanging from some branches, the face slashed beyond recognition…

Dr Marog inspected the bisected body of Vijay Rajeevan which had been brought back by Jason and Roderick, with Roderick and Xiaoye standing around the metallic slab watching the whole procedure.

“Interesting… Based on the way he was killed, there should have been a lot of blood on the scene, but you’re saying that the crime scene was mostly clean?” the orc asked as he looked up at Roderick.

“Yeah, not sure why, though…”

Dr Marog nodded before pointing to four puncture wounds on the corpse’s chest.

“By my estimations, these are the first wounds to be inflicted on the victim, followed by all these slashes… The bifurcation, however, was done only when the victim has died. Based on these injuries, the police should have walked into a bloodbath. Instead, there was very little on the scene… These wounds are similar to the ones found on the other victims, so there is no doubt our serial killing polong is the one responsible, but I do not remember polongs being vampires, so where has the blood gone?”

“Polongs are made from the blood of dead corpses, right? And since Roderick, Jason and Sierra-3-3 put so many silver bullets into it during the attack on Vera Seow, it probably needed to heal,” Xiaoye suggested.

“Polongs to not heal themselves like that. In fact, by right, bullets should have passed through them, not hurt them,” Dr Marog rebutted.

“Well, it’s just a theory… I mean, didn’t you preserve the corpse of that super-sized pelesit I killed back at Old Changi Hospital a few weeks ago, even though it was supposed to be flamethrower-ed by us? No one has ever seen a pelesit of that size before, right?”

“Well, I managed to save the head and part of the torso, actually. But you’re right. Things may be changing, like an evolution, or a power surge, or maybe someone has grown more proficient in black magic than what has been accepted as the norm… Neither of the three sounds good at all. And I’ll be honest, it is extremely uncommon to encounter a killer polong, and I’ve been having this sneaky suspicion that this one has been altered. The fact that it was able to manipulate the robes it wore to snare Roderick during their first encounter is already proof that it’s a lot stronger and possesses more abilities than a normal one.”

“Well, that’s just great, a mutated polong…”

“Strangely, though, the corpses of the other two victims, Carmen Dattatreya and Robert Gibbs, showed very little signs of mutilation, unlike Jonas Sim and this man here. Both simply had their throats sliced open and were left to bleed to death,” Dr Marog said as he turned his attention back to the cadaver.

“Why the difference? There must be a reason…”

“I can answer that. Amirah and I ran through the victims’ social media posts and whatever other online crap they uploaded. Jonas and the recently deceased Vijay are very fierce proponents of social justice, while Vera, Carmen and Robert are more mild in comparison, although the latter two are quite aggressive themselves. But during our search, we discovered something scandalous,” Roderick said.

“Oh, enlighten us, Mr Harper,” Dr Marog asked, his interest piqued.

“Well, we all know Vijay’s anti-Chinese, but Jonas Sim, well, turns out he’s anti-Indian.”

“So they’re both racists?”

“Yeah, but as for the remaining three, they have no biased opinions apart from, well, blaming white people.”

“So our killer hates the woke, actively murders them, but if he finds a hypocrite, he kills them in a more brutal manner. How does that theory sound?” Xiaoye proposed.

“Sounds pretty accurate, in my opinion,” Dr Marog replied.

“We should inform Inspector Jason and the others of this theory you came up with, sarge,” Roderick said, to which Xiaoye nodded in agreement when the doors of the coroner’s office are thrown wide open and a familiar figure entered the room oozing delusional self-confidence in his sexual prowess.

“Guess who’s back, baby? I bet you missed my handsome face, Miss Di,” Chen Weijin, freshly released from the hospital even though his arm was still wrapped in bandages and plaster, announced his entrance as he approached her for a hug.

“Oh, you’re alive, Gaston. I thought you, like, fall off a castle or something?” Xiaoye retorted as she walked past Weijin, deftly dodging his outstretched arms as she did so without even looking at him, causing Roderick to laugh out loud.

“Okay, that wasn’t exactly my best pick-up line,” Weijin admitted as he turned to follow the two.

“You were in a hospital full of nurses. Didn’t think about practicing on them?”

“Urgh, I got threatened with a lawsuit if I don’t stop flirting with them…”

“Aye, I’ve heard. Bradley’s got a pile of complaints he wants to sort out with you, so good luck when you meet him…”

“Well, isn’t that just great.”

“So, you’re still trying to get me to spread my legs with cheesy lines, or you have something that’s actually important to say.”

“Yeah,” Weijin replied, his tone turning serious, “Jason and Farhan had been telling me about the current case Grey Team is handling. That pelesit you brought back, Hats managed to get a psychic imprint from it. But there’s a problem…”

“Urgh, why is there always a problem?”

“Sidney and Tipnis traced out the gaps from the psychic imprint Hats obtained and ran it through our criminal database, but instead of hitting a match within our local database, we got one from Interpol’s database, and it’s one that the FBI have been tracking for a long time…”

“You mean our killer’s an American?” Roderick asked.

“Bingo. Seventeen facial images matched with the psychic imprint, obtained from California, Colorado, Oregon, Seattle and Vermont, along with a few from Scotland, South Korea and Germany. Each image was obtained during investigations into serial killings that occurred four years ago where so-called progressive liberals were found savagely murdered in random areas. The more woke, the more brutal the murder,” Weijin replied.

“Like what’s happening here in Singapore right now… This is ridiculous. I despise the woke culture as much as any liberal with a decent amount of common sense, but resorting to murder? That’s not how you send a message.”

“FBI call this killer the Woke Hunter. Including the local victims, he’s claimed about thirty-two in the last four years.”

“Thirty-two? What in the unholy fuck, that’s way too much!” Roderick uttered in shock.

“Damn, this killer’s a pure maniac,” Xiaoye added.

“Yeah, Inspector Jason has been informed about this, and he’s called the FBI attaché team. They’re coming over now to confirm if it’s the same guy they’ve been hunting all this while,” Weijin continued as the three of them walked up the stairs to the lobby where Tom was angrily talking to someone on the phone.

“Yes, Superintendent Harper, I am well aware that I only have two stripes left on my sleeves, but orders are orders. You have been banned by Commissioner Siddique from entering the Shades’ headquarters until further notice from both the commissioner himself and Assistant Commissioner Bradley. Now stop calling this number before I make an official complaint to my boss, the Commissioner, the Minister of Home Affairs and the goddamned news station about what an unprofessional glass of sweet honey ice tea you are. Have a nice day,” the desk corporal said in a mockingly polite manner before slamming the phone down so hard he broke the receiver.

“Fuck! Pay cut!” Tom shrieked in frustration upon realizing what he’s done as Nora tossed the damaged phone aside and replaced it with a new one.

“Fifth time that old bugger called. What’s wrong with him?” Nora asked.

“Hey, Tom, Sergeant Nora, was that my father on the line?” Roderick asked as he, Xiaoye and Weijin stared at the two unhappy desk officers.

“Yes, and if you do not mind me saying this, your father is an absolute cunt,” Tom replied.

“What the hell does he want?”

“He wants to transfer you out, and he intends to pressure Bradley into doing so.”

“Frankly speaking, if he wasn’t living next to a church, I would have paid him a visit with my sisters and my mother,” Nora added.

“Which sister, the one with the big bloody hole in her back from Indonesia? No way! She scared the satay man I always buy from half to death, now he won’t sell to me unless I pay him extra! Dia tak cakap pun dia minta maaf!”

“Dey, not her fault wa… Why he kaypoh go look behind her?”

“Damn it, what the hell is my father up to… Why do I have the feeling that it’s got something to do with you?” Roderick said as he turned to Xiaoye.

“Me? I don’t even talk to your dad.”

“No, I mean, I’m not blaming you, I’m just thinking that he’s using you being a cambion as an excuse to pull me out of the Shades, not that I enjoy having to fight with monsters and curses on a daily basis, but… He’s lost control of all my older siblings and now he’s doing his upmost best to try and tie strings around my limbs. I’m fucking sick of it!”

“Hey, Roderick, chill. Your dad’s not here. Even if he does show up, I doubt Tom gives a flying fuck about treating him nicely,” Weijin said to an angered Roderick.

“Yeah, I’ll let him choose between my left fist, my right fist or Nora here ripping his balls off while I hold him down…”

“Aren’t you going to say anything to him, Xiaoye?” Roderick suddenly asked the cambion, who balked before lowering her head and shaking it.

“Sorry, your dad’s the one line I’m not crossing.”

“What? Why the hell not? That night, the way he talked to you like you’re some half-breed-”

Weijin, Tom and Nora went silent immediately the moment Roderick uttered that forbidden word, and Roderick immediately regretted his outburst, his anger having been directed at his partner unfairly. Xiaoye, however, went from an uncomfortable look on her face to a simmering scowl in a blink of an eye: She was most definitely insulted.

“Sorry, Xiaoye, my anger wasn’t meant for you, I-”

“Look, it was just one meeting. It’s not like I’m going to see your dad’s ugly mug again unless my luck’s really low. Now, are we going to get this polong-using serial killer case settled, or are we going to start challenging each other on who has the worse daddy issues, because I damn sure have a lot to get off my chest too,” Xiaoye snapped at Roderick before continuing on her way, with everyone else nervously staring at her and back at her trainee partner who could only sighed in defeat at his screw-up…