“Here we are, Old Changi’s unknown little brother, View Road,” Xiaoye commented as the combined Shades/Police/FBI convoy arrived at the former asylum.

Despite Old Changi’s reputation, Roderick immediately felt that View Road was much creepier after taking one look at the building. Not a lot of locals are aware of this place, even before the Third World War.

“Shit, the scent of blood is strong here,” Farhan commented the moment he got out of the van.

“No kidding, even I can smell it,” Jason replied as he covered his nose to block out the stench.

“Inspector, what is wrong with this place? It stinks like an abattoir,” Superintendent Harper asked as he approached

“Well, we’re going to find out, sir. In the meantime, I think we better be prepared for an attack,” Jason replied.

“And how does an American learn to create a familiar from Malay culture? I read the documents your people sent to us. It’s almost unbelievable, especially his motives. Thirty-two victims over such petty nonsense?”

“He spent six years hiding out in different parts of Malaysia, he’s got a lot of time to learn how to create one, and also nurture his rage. You know how it is in the United States, sir. The Internet war between the left and the right? Frankly speaking, I find both sides filled with bonkers and bullies.”

“Aye, it’s a bully war,” Xiaoye commented as she and Roderick walked past the two.

“Speak when you’re spoken to, cambion,” Supt Harper snapped back.

Roderick felt a slight surge of anger, but he quickly shook it off. Instead, he choose to ignore Supt Harper when the latter called out to him, instead switching to a brisk walk to catch up with his partner who was assisting Agent Millhart and some of the regular cops in opening the rusty gates that lead to the former asylum’s compound.

“Urgh, the stench’s getting stronger…” Roderick commented as he entered with the group, already feeling nauseous at the heavy smell of blood.

“Aye, our target must be here somewhere… And now there’s also the scent of decomposing corpses. I’m getting a bad feeling about this place,” Xiaoye replied.

“This is reminding me of that wendigo case I had to deal with two years ago.”

“Holy crap, a wendigo? You have got to tell me that story, those bastards give vampires and us cambions a run for our money in the Nastiest Bugger Championships.”

“You don’t want to know. It was… Well, the word ‘bloody’ is an understatement,” Millhart replied with a sigh.

“So, how are we going to get him? This Arthur Bray guy,” Roderick asked, concerned by the fact that they were charging in blindly due to the urgency of the situation: This murderer was killing one person a day, a rate that has never been heard of in the history of serial killers.

“Well, given how rushed things are, I think the only way we’re going to get him is to rush in. I’ll just use my Black Arts to survey the area, see if there’s any traps…”

“Wait.”

Roderick had spotted something, or someone, on the roof of the abandoned hospital. He could not really get an image at first, but then whatever was on the rooftop suddenly jumped down to the ground floor, prompting him to draw his weapon.

“Roderick, what did you see?” the cambion asked.

“Someone’s right there, right in front of us!”

“What do you mean? I don’t see any- Oh…”

Now Xiaoye and Agent Millhart see the person, a Caucasian man with greying, wrinkled skin and bulging eyes, walking towards the police officers slowly and in a sickly manner, but Roderick was able to recognize him through what was left of his facial features: The very same man whose face was shown during the meeting earlier.

“Arthur Bray,” he exclaimed softly.

“What?”

“That’s our guy, Arthur Bray! I recognized his facial features.”

“You can’t be serious, what the hell happened to him?” Millhart uttered in disbelief at the sight of the near-emanciated man befoe them.

“Aye, that bloke looks like wet tissue paper,” Xiaoye asked as she and the other officers drew their own firearm as well.

“Sierra-3-10 to all, target spotted,” Roderick announced through the radio.

“Status?”

“He’s standing right in front of us.”

Then, without warning, the man that Roderick had identified as Arthur Bray rotates his head clockwise in an unnatural manner. Having witnessed a possession, battled an ancient Chinese demon, stabbed a rare species of vampire holding him hostage and made friends with a bird monster that tried to eat him, Roderick was barely surprised, like Xiaoye and Millhart, but the regular cops immediately took a step back in horror as Arthur Bray pointed a finger at them and began speaking.

“You come for us? You protect those who demand your occupations cancelled? The lying dogs of hypocrisy that calls their acts of abuse justice?”

“Okay, why does he sound like he’s got a woman repeating his words right next to him?” Millhart asked, taking note of how Arthur sounded like two individuals speaking at the same time.

Blood suddenly burst from every facial orifice of Arthur Bray’s as he lets out an inhuman shriek. Roderick watched in disgust as the blood formed into a shape resembling a sea anemone, wrapping tendrils around Arthur’s body, who quickly disappeared into the red mass that then reformed itself into an eight-foot-tall woman dressed in red robes with a decaying, patchwork-looking face bearing a Cheshire grin and a pair of grey, blank eyes, complete with sharpened claws on each hand stretching about half the length of an average forearm. She was, without a doubt, a terrible sight to behold, and Roderick could feel the malice emitting from her body.

“Oh shit… He’s gone and become one with his polong!” he heard Xiaoye exclaimed loudly with an unmistakable tone of terror in her voice, right before the police officers with them started shooting at it.

The fused form of Arthur Bray/polong flinched at each shot that struck it, but then it suddenly unleashes a horrifying scream at the direction of the law enforcement officers. Without warning, several windows of the old hospital suddenly shattered, and every door was thrown open right before officers and FBI alike were sent sprawling by-

“Pelesits!” Farhan is heard roaring from the back as about twenty angry insect familiars, each the size of an adult male wild boar, began an attack on the police and the FBI while Arthur Bray disappeared from view.

It was utter chaos. The pelesits were fast, and within thirty seconds, they have injured at least six officers and FBI agents.

An unlucky officer was picked up and thrown against the windshield of a patrol car. Another fell to the ground screaming in pain from a nasty laceration on his shoulder. The FBI were not doing any better: One of Millhart’s men was already on the ground struggling to get a pelesit off him that had already stabbed him with its blade-like legs twice just before Weijin blew it off with a shotgun and Amirah dragged the agent to safety.

“Damn it, he’s gone! Arthur’s escaped!” Ajibade called out as he and Lucas beat down a pelesit that had attempted to dive-bomb them with their batons

“Never mind him for now! Get the pelesits first before they get all of us!” Jason ordered, having managed to retrieve a shotgun which he used to blast one pelesit to pieces mid-air.

Amidst the fighting, Roderick heard his father yelp in surprise, and he turned around only to see Supt Harper being lifted to the air by one pelesit that was larger than the rest of the swarm. Focused on keeping its mandibles away from his face, Supt Harper did not realize that the pelesit was attempting to stab him with its stinger.

However, Di Xiaoye did see it, and she immediately took action.

Running at full speed, Xiaoye used a patrol car as a springboard to launch herself at the pelesit holding Supt Harper, managing to grab hold of its stinger to stop it from stabbing its hostage, but even with her added weight applied to it, the pelesit was still stubbornly trying to lift off. Roderick hesitated, but then he found himself running over and jumping into the air, managing to seize one of the pelesit’s legs. He hissed as his left hand brushed against the bladed parts of the insect familiar’s leg, but his sudden addition to the pelesit’s load proved crucial: Overwhelmed, the pelesit crashed back to ground level with the three officers, and Xiaoye took the opportunity to rip its head off with her bare hands.

“Damn, that’s disgusting,” Roderick commented.

“I don’t got a lot of time to choose how to kill it,” Xiaoye retorted as she extended a hand to Supt Harper, but he rudely brushed it off.

“I can handle myself. Roderick, your hand-”

“Flesh wound,” Roderick replied curtly as he turned his back towards his father and watched as the police officers and FBI agents finally took down the last of the pelesits.

Looking at his watch, Roderick realized that the entire battle took only three minutes despite feeling like an eternity, and while there were thankfully no fatalities among the police and FBI, at least two FBI agents and seven officers were badly wounded.

“Damn it, my men,” Supt Harper started, but then Roderick heard a strange noise and spun around to see Xiaoye now holding up his father, whose left leg was acting strange.

“Amirah! Urgent!” Xiaoye called out to the young police medic, who came running over with Weijin to check on the superintendent.

“Oh, damn, it’s a dislocation around the knee,” Amirah diagnosed after an examination of Supt Harper’s left leg.

“Shit, it must have been the fall he took when Roderick and I were pulling that pelesit down. Sir, I’m sorry, I-”

Supt Harper raised his hand at Xiaoye, and for a moment, Roderick thought his father was about to hit her, but instead, Supt Harper merely gestured for her to stop talking.

“Can you fix it? I’m not crawling back home,” he asked Amirah.

“Home? Sir, you need to go to a hospital.”

“And get put on drips? Absolutely not.”

“Sir, you outrank me as a police officer, but as a certified medic, I outrank you when it comes to medical issues. I can fix your leg, but you still need to go to a hospital.”

“Oh, what sass, Amirah! Never expected that in you, that’s just stunning!” Weijin complimented.

“She’s eight years younger than you, arsehole. Don’t even think about trying your luck with her,” Xiaoye warned.

“Hey, Weijin, can you help hold the superintendent down? I’m about to pop his leg back. Want a green whistle, sir? We got a nice supply from our fellow cops in Australia a few days back.”

“Just do it, I’m not going to giggle like an idiot in front of you all.”

Amirah shrugged.

“Okay, sir, don’t you regret this…”

For someone with such a small frame, Amirah possesses a surprising amount of strength. In a blink of an eye, she had re-located Supt Harper’s leg, and the superintendent’s face alternated between scarlet and indigo as he resisted an urge to scream in pain. Roderick merely stood one side and watched the whole thing go down, unsure whether he should be mad at his father’s continuous dismissive attitude towards Xiaoye or feel bad for the old man suffering an injury that could be quite serious for someone his age.

Several ambulances arrived on the scene not long after, and a familiar paramedic was seen approaching Xiaoye and Roderick.

“We were getting reports of gunfire and police backup on the emergency radio- Nani kore, this place looks like a battlefield… And aren’t those the same as that insect thing we caught at the hospital earlier?” Umetani Aiko asked as she surveyed the scene, stunned by the carnage around her.

“Criminal we were tracking unleashed them on us… ”

“Must have been quite a battle… God, those wounded look terrible.”

“Hey, hot stuff, you mind getting this gentleman to the hospital?” Weijin asked as he and Amirah carried a reluctant Supt Harper over to Aiko’s ambulance.

“Another cambion?” Supt Harper asked out loud when he saw Aiko’s cambion crew chief.

“Good evening, sir. I regret to inform you that this four-man-crew only has one human paramedic. Is there going to be a problem with it?” the crew chief asked in return, his tone cool and calming.

“No, not at all,” the superintendent quickly replied before he gets loaded into the ambulance.

“Is there space for one more, Miss Paramedic? Just the sight of you is giving me a case of tachycardia,” Weijin asked as he suddenly slide over to Aiko.

“Is he even allowed to do this?” Roderick asked Xiaoye, clearly exasperated by what the Taoist exorcist sergeant was doing.

“You two are witnessing the clown king of failed flirting in action right now,” Xiaoye replied.

“I second that,” Amirah added.

Surprisingly, Aiko didn’t appear embarrassed or turned off by Weijin’s weird attempts at flirting. Instead, she merely smiled as she folded her arms and looked at him.

“And what is your name, good sir?”

“Sergeant Chen Weijin, Special Hazard Exorcism Unit, at your service.”

“Sergeant Chen, have you dated before?”

“No, but I’ve lingered around in a bed of thorns for quite some time in my hunt for a rose.”

“That’s sweet, but I’m afraid you’ll have to keep waiting, because I’m a lesbian,” Aiko replied in a teasing manner.

Weijin’s jaw dropped as Aiko winked at him before closing the doors of the ambulance. Meanwhile, Xiaoye and Amirah turned away as they tried their best not to laugh at their colleague’s failure to break his curse of virginity.

Roderick, however, was not in a laughing mood as he watched the ambulance speed off into the night carrying his father, mixed feelings beginning to surge up from within himself…