Action: Pulse Pounding Tales Volume 2

THE MISSIONARY by Paul D Brazill

The moon tears me apart. Rips at my flesh. And then I am transformed into a man-wolf that is consumed by a red hot rage. My eyes drowning in crimson. The smell and the taste of blood. The howling.

I stumbled out of a drunken dream and awoke in a burnt out house, my joints throbbing. Throat like sandpaper. Almost choking on the stink of the place.

A bitter, cold February ached for the warmth of spring. Seagulls screeched, sirens screamed and motorbike roared in the distance. A gunshot echoed through my brain. It was dawn and The City was yawning – painfully, desperately.

I struggled to my feet, grasped the window ledge and looked out at the day through bleary, bloodshot eyes. Lighting flashed, thunder boomed and the heavens were gutted.

I stuffed a hand in my raincoat pocket and pulled out a can of Special Brew. Sipped on the sweet beer, slowly and methodically. Coasting a little. Watching the sheets of rain try to cleanse The City. Some chance.

Across the street, a bolt of lightning hit the church steeple and a flock of black birds scattered from the roof before perching on a cluster of graffiti stained gravestones.

A shiver sliced through me and I knew the man I’d been searching for was here.

I finished the beer, crushed the can and threw it into the corner of the room. Unzipped, took out my limp dick, closed my eyes and pissed against the wall.

‘I know you’re there,’ I said when I’d finished, pushing my knob back inside my trousers.

‘Have you been waiting long for this moment, Detective Dalton?’ hissed the voice from the shadows.

‘Long enough,’ I said, turning.

‘Yes, all good things come to those who wait. Or so I have heard,’ said the man in the black suit and wide brimmed hat.

His face was as white as fear, with the consistency of putty. His eyes as black as the darkness between the stars. The Missionary looked just as I’d envisioned him. A stone cold killer. Unkillable, they said.

I’d been undercover for just over a fortnight now. Sleeping rough. Integrating with the homeless. The bums. Waiting for The Missionary to strike again.

He was a creature of legend. Of nightmares. The hit man with a one hundred per cent record who got his kicks wiping out those he considered impure. The poor and the disabled. Whores and hobos. The drunks.

And now he was in front of me. Grinning. He took out a Luger from a shoulder holster and caressed it. He kissed the silhouette of an angel that was carved into the ivory handle.

I shivered as he took a step toward me and pressed the gun against my forehead.

‘A last request?’ he said.

‘Maybe we can go for a beer and talk this over? Man to Missionary? ‘

‘No,’ he said, scratching the scar that sliced down his nose with a skull and crossbones ring that was on the bony index finger of his left hand. ’I think not.’

I took another cigarette from the packet.

‘Another nail in the coffin, then,’ I said.

The Missionary grinned.

I sat on an upturned wooden crate. Lit a cigarette. It tasted foul.

The Missionary took out a bible, held it high and started to sing.

‘Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet.

Never failed me.

Yet.’

It was beautiful and, at the same time, horrible.

My hands were shaking with the hangover and the fear. Sweat was oozing through my pores. If ever there was a time when I would have been glad to transform into a werewolf, welcomed that curse, it would have been now. But the cold light of day was no use at all.

And still The Missionary sang.

And so I joined in. As loud as I could, though my voice crumbled like a moth’s wings. Loud enough, though. Loud enough to cover the sound of movement in the pile of trash behind The Missionary.

Loud enough to smother the sound of Duffy crawling through the rubbish and edging slowly toward The Missionary, red cord stretched tight between his fists.

I sang loudly and with all of my still beating heart.

The Missionary’s corpse was quickly zipped into a black body bag and put into the back of the Black Mariah. The cops and SOC team yawned and scratched themselves as they wandered around the derelict building, ignoring Duffy and I. Indifferent. Bored. Jaded. All of the above.

Detective Ivan Walker sipped on a cup of take away coffee, clearly pissed off.

‘Self-defence, eh?’ he said.

He dropped the cup and rubbed his red eyes.

‘Well, yeah,’ said Duffy, through a mouth stuffed with peanuts. ‘When The Missionary is ready to whack you, you don’t try to reason with him, do you?’

Walker growled.

Duffy ran a hand through his inky black quiff. Leaned close to Walker.

‘Well, what else could we do, Ivan?’ he whispered. ‘There was no full moon there to help us out, you know? Roman can’t just turn into a werewolf when he fancies it, eh?’

Walker rubbed the pentangle shaped star on the side of his neck.

‘And,’ continued Duffy. ‘The Missionary is responsible for how many hits? One Hundred? More?’

‘Probably more,’ I said.

‘So, there you are. Good riddance to bad rubbish. It’s not like he was some innocent victim,’ said Duffy. He blew up the peanut bag and clapped it between his hands.

The bang made the SOC photographer jump and drop his camera. Duffy grinned. Walker glared.

‘Yes But just think how much information he could have given us if you’d kept him alive,’ said Walker.

‘Keep him alive? Almost nobody has ever clapped eyes on him. He’s a phantom. You should be thankful that we managed to trap him. We were lucky to get out alive,’ said Duffy.

Yes, I thought, as I caught a familiar look in Walker’s eyes. Too lucky, maybe.

The morgue was stacked with corpses. It had been a busy weekend.

The Missionary had been responsible for a few of them but a lot of the cadavers were due to a battle between Count Otto Rhino’s Frog Boys and Ton Ton Philippe’s zombies. The other stiffs were just innocent bystanders. Though it was becoming increasingly difficult find anyone innocent in The City.

‘So, you’re not going to tell me who hired you to catch The Missionary, then?’ said Walker, as he smoked a death black French cigarette.

‘Confidentiality, Ivan. You know the drill.’

‘But they told you that Ton Ton Philippe had paid The Missionary to take you out?’

I sighed.

‘That’s what the little bird told me.’

‘Mmmmm.’ Growled Walker. ‘And would that little bird be a green-eyed songbird who has a most peculiar relationship with Count Otto Rhino?’

‘Maybe yes, maybe know. Maybe, baby, I don’t know,’ I said.

Although, Walker was right. The songbird in question, Daria, had indeed given me the aforementioned information. Although, why, I wasn’t sure. She wasn’t exactly the most reliable of sources. A real mystery, that one, for sure.

Some people believed she was Rhino’s lover. Other’s said he was her father. I just figured she though she owed me after I saved her sister/lover from Ton Ton Philippe. Maybe.

‘Are you ladies finished with your gossiping?’ said Dr Gaynor Green.

The statuesque coroner’s gaze was as chilly as the room we stood in. Her white uniform splattered with blood. A glinting scalpel in her hands. But she was still breathtakingly beautiful.

Once upon a time Gaynor Green had been a beauty queen and a hostess at Rhino’s Private Gentlemen’s Club. But she had seen something there that had changed the way she lived her life. Something that she never talked about.

She became a Hare Krishna for a while. Then a scientologist. And then a Buddhist.

Finally, she went to medical school and took a job in the morgue because she knew she’d never run out of clients in The City. She even moved into the place and rarely left, she said, because she liked the silence, although a Motorhead song was blasting out of the speakers at the moment. She switched it off.

‘Well,’ said Walker.

‘Well what?’

‘Well, is there anything you can tell us about The Missionary’s body?

‘Well, I’m no art expert but it’s a very well sculpted piece of work.’

‘Eh?’ we both said, and walked towards her.

Dr Green tapped the corpse. The sound echoed around the room.

‘A very realistic sculpture. But a sculpture none the less.’

And she was right. On the morgue slab was a perfect replica of The Missionary. But where the hell was the real thing?

Not for the first time this week, I was the only customer in Duffy’s Bar. And that suited me down to the ground. The Missionary had haunted my dreams and I was in no mood for idle chitchat.

Duffy was reading the latest National Geographic. The stained cover featuring a massive orange spider. He sipped from a bottle of Kozel Pale.

I pumped a ton of coins into the Wurlitzer Jukebox. Lightning Hopkins finished and Dino crooned about drinking wine. I contemplated my glass of whisky. The ice cubes shimmered in the wan light.

Outside the wet pavement reflected the bar’s flickering neon sign. As Dino segued into Dusty, Ivan Walker rushed past the window wearing a long black raincoat that flapped in the breeze. He burst through the door. He was not a happy man. Even by his morose standards.

Duffy set about making an espresso for Walker who took off his raincoat and sat next to me.

‘Found a penny and lost a pound?’ I said.

Walker’s eyes turned to slits.

‘She’s dead,’ he whispered. ‘Dead.’

‘Who? What and where?’

Duffy placed an espresso in front of Walker who knocked it back in one.

‘Gimme what he’s having,’ said Walker.

‘Are you sure?’ said Duffy, shocked. ‘You haven’t hit the hard stuff since…’

‘I’m sure,’ said Walker, his voice like a thunderstorm.

Duffy poured Walker two fingers of Dark Valentine. I nodded. He topped me up.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘Gaynor Green. She’s been murdered.’

‘Doctor Green? What? But why? How?’ I gulped my drink. ‘She never left that morgue. It’s like Fort Knox. Impossible to break into.’

Then cogs started to click.

‘No sign of a break in. But whoever killed her got out easy enough, though,’ said Walker. ‘And they took that statue of The Missionary with them.’

Duffy caught my eye. Scratched his acne-scarred face.

‘We’ve been duped, Roman,’ he said. ‘Taken for a ride.’

And he was right, I realised. Dead on.

Daria had hired me to whack The Missionary who, through some sort of supernatural trickery, had transformed himself into a statue – maybe like the Golem, from Jewish folklore. And then, when he’d got into the morgue, he’d transformed himself back and killed Gaynor Green, making sure she never told whatever she’d seen at Otto Rhino’s Private Gentlemen’s Club.

Duffy took down a bottle of Dark Valentine black label, the good stuff, and filled up three glasses as Mel Torme sang ‘Gloomy Sunday.’

And then the night dissolved.

I am transformed. I stalk the street. Howl. Roar. And I am ready to tear The Missionary limb from limb. And anyone who gets in my way.

BIO:

Paul D. Brazill was born in England and lives in Poland. He is an International Thriller Writers Inc. member whose writing has been translated into Italian, Polish and Slovene. He has had bits and bobs of short fiction published in various magazines and anthologies, including The Mammoth Books Of Best British Crime 8 and 10, alongside the likes of Ian Rankin, Neil Gaiman and Lee Child.

He has edited a few anthologies, including the best-selling True Brit Grit- with Luca Veste – and is the author of Guns Of Brixton, Gumshoe and 13 Shots Of Noir.

He blogs, reviews and promotes top fiction right here at You Would Say That, Wouldn’t You?

His character ‘Roman Dalton Werewolf P.I.’ has featured in a number of anthologies and collections and even has his own blog page right here.