The Exorcist Doctor

The storm was merciless tonight.

Rain lashed against Maeve's skin with a sting like acid needles, seeping through her dress, burning against her arms and cheeks until every step forward felt like wading into a sea of thorns. Still, the northernwestern quarter of Blightmarch stretched before her in silence. It was completely deserted and forgotten. Tall buildings rose like skeletal towers, windows gaped with broken glass, and not a single lamp sputtered to life along the street. The city seemed to have turned its back on this place—even more than some of the slums and lower pipes—and only shadows were left to roam.

But the letter had said her mother was here. This was the neighborhood of her employer's manor, so… where was it?

13 Ashen Row, Nocturne Quarter, Blightmarch.

That's here, right?

Her jaw locked tight. The signboards in Bharncair were anything but accurate, but through the haze of rain, she eventually spotted the building at the end of the street: a tall, rotting edifice crouched like a mourner in the dark. It didn't look like a building in use, but then again, it was Bharncair. She didn't think people lived down in the pipes just six months ago either.

Her body screamed with every step, but she climbed the slick stairs to the front porch regardless, pipe still clutched in hand. At the door she knocked. A hollow echo spread through the ruined district.

No answer came.

She tried again.

Only silence.

Impatient, she grabbed the handle—and to her surprise, it turned beneath her palm. The door swung inwards without resistance.

She blinked.

Huh.

Peeking her head in, the air inside the foyer was colder. Darker. It may have been a lodge before with its high vaulted ceiling and its grand staircase at the end of the foyer, its bannisters now dusty with cobwebs and its wall-mounted lanterns all cracked and shattered, but what it used to be didn't concern her now. So what if it used to be a place of comfortable living and visit in a neighborhood that'd clearly failed to stay alive?

Right now, a great cavity yawned in the center of the foyer. A giant hole collapsed into the depths. The wooden floorboards along its rim were jagged and loose, crumbled as if swallowed whole. At first, Maeve thought nothing of it—decay was everywhere in this city—but then her gaze fell upon a scrap of pale fabric lying at the edge of the chasm.

A piece from a deep green dress.

She immediately hurried into the foyer. Dropping to her knees, she lifted the shred of cloth and pressed the sodden fabric between her palms. It was her mother's dress. She was certain.

The pit gaped before her, swallowing sound and sight alike. Dread slithered down her spine. Alana was so weak now—so terribly frail—that if she'd somehow fallen while waiting for Maeve…

Her mother had always stood tall before her as an Exorcist, warding off all sorts of horrors while Maeve trained to be able to do the same one day. That strength had kept her alive then, but that strength was gone now.

It was Maeve's turn to stand in front.

She drew a long, shuddering breath, forcing her shoulders straight. Her eyes swept the abandoned foyer one last time—wary like she'd learned to be in Bharncair—before she gritted her teeth and hopped down the hole.

Her pipe was ready in her hands as she dropped.

A few seconds later, her shoes hit stone with a jolt that rattled her already weakened knees. She faltered immediately. She stumbled. She slammed shoulder-first into a cobblestone wall, hissing in pain. Her enhanced strength and toughness were still there, but… well, it had to be good enough.

The tunnel she landed in stretched long in both directions, walls sweating damp and lined by torches that sputtered in stale air.

… What is this place?

An underground escape passage for the old lodge?

That could be it. The pipelines ran under the entirety of Bharncair, so it wasn't uncommon to find tunnels of some kind under every building. She was sure if she dug deep enough, she'd also find a few tunnels underneath the clinic.

It didn't matter where she was currently. She closed her eyes briefly, letting instinct and her 'Scent Latch' mutation guide her nose.

The faintest scent—familiar and fragile—immediately threaded through the rot and ash.

Mom.

To the left. Her muscles burned as she forced her body down the left end of the tunnel, running as fast as pain would allow her to. Her steps splashed through muddy puddles, her shadow flickered across the walls from torchlight, and she didn't stop for what felt like ten minutes of continuous running until the long tunnel gradually turned into a darker, narrower corridor.

Cells yawned on either side, bars black with rust. There were no torches here and only a few grated slits on the top of the walls, letting fractured beams of moonlight leak in.

An underground prison.

And she stopped running when her mother's scent took a sharp left turn, rounding into the shadow of a cell.

Her eyes widened immediately.

Alana sprawled on the floor, her clothes torn to rags, her body so thin and battered that Maeve's chest tightened as though pierced.

"Mom!" Maeve rushed inside, dropped beside her, and lifted her gently into her lap. "What happened? Are you alright? Get up! I'll take you to the clinic!"

Alana's lips parted slowly, her voice a rasp dragged from a broken throat.

"Run, Maeve," she mumbled. "He… lied. To me. You… have to—"

Maeve froze. The air changed. Her nostrils flared. Something sharp and rot-smelling slithered close—

And she whirled just as three iron pipes swung at her head from behind.

The attacker was a man with six arms, his full-face mask stitched from patchwork leather, and the three iron pipes he swung at her was meant to kill. Too slow, though. She ducked, swept his legs out from under him in one swift arc, and then smashed her pipe into his face to drive him hard into the ground. His head cracked against the wet cobblestone, his body crumpling into unconsciousness.

Stolen novel; please report.

Maeve stood heaving over him, her lips curled.

Repossessor.

Her blood chilled. She snapped her gaze back to Alana, panic swelling.

"Up! We have to go!" She hauled her mother's frail form upright, forcing them both out of the cell. Her hands trembled as she hissed, "We're leaving now!"

But as soon as they stepped out into the corridor, more shadows moved.

Two hordes emerged from both ends of the corridor, closing them in. More Repossessors. There were at least twenty of them, six-armed Spider Afflicted clad in patchwork coats and brandishing morphing weapons that groaned and twisted as if alive: hooks and pipes, blades and chains, all rusted and in sore need of maintenance. Their leather masks gleamed with damp under the moonlight slits, and she couldn't see a single one of their faces.

No matter.

Her heart pounded, but she set her jaw. Slowly, steadily, she lowered her groggy mother against the wall, brushing her hair back with a trembling hand.

Then she rose to meet the charge.

The first wave of Repossessors came snarling. Her pipe was no Mistrender, but it was close enough to a blade. She smashed through weapons, broke bones, and shattered masks. Her speed completely blindsided the first wave. Her pipe and fists were charged with anger as she landed blow after blow, powering through all ten of them with sheer brute force alone.

The second wave was stronger. One of the Repossessors' sawblades ripped through her pipe, ridding her of her weapon. Another clung to the ceiling before dashing down to headbutt her, to which she responded by gritting her teeth and kicking him in the jaw hard enough to break all his teeth. Two, three, and four men managed to tackle her to the ground, but she bit her tongue and squeezed blood from the pores of her skin, lashing the men around her with toxic burns that made them scream and stagger away.

Twenty-four men fell before she swung her fist at the twenty-fifth man in a frenzy, not even caring to look him in the face—but the twenty-fifth man caught her fist with one arm, and then his eight other arms snapped around her wrist, clasped like cold iron.

Lorcawn wasn't wearing his brass glass tube mask, so he sent a small smile her way before twisting her, flinging her back into the cell as though she were nothing but cloth.

She struck the wall with a crack that made the stone shudder. Pain tore through her ribs, white-hot, as she collapsed to the floor gasping. Her mother's cry rang sharp, but was quickly choked off as Lorcawn's boot sent her sliding back into the cell as well.

Maeve's ribs screamed with every breath as she tried to lift herself from the cracked stones, only for the iron weight of boot-leather to pin her hand to the ground.

She cried out as Lorcawn's heel ground into her bones, but her glare rose to meet him anyway, her throat raw with anger.

"What… are you doing here?" she growled. "What did you do to my mom?"

The old gangster loomed over her, his silhouette bristling with eight grafted arms that twitched and flexed like carrion spiders. The rest of the Repossessors filled the doorway behind him, making absolutely sure there was no way she was getting past them again.

"I didn't do anything to her she didn't sign herself up for, girl," Lorcawn said. He pressed his weight harder onto her hand, and the pain made her choke. "A year ago, she was still working as a bodyguard for another boss. Some piss-poor gang with delusions of grandeur. My boys wiped them out, and I kept her alive because of her beautiful, beautiful arm. It's got blood that sings when it flows. See?"

He turned half a step, and one of the arms grafted to his back twitched grotesquely. The skin was pale and spotted, but his eyes—clouded muddy gold—lit with a sick glee as he gestured towards it.

"She's only alive because I need her blood to keep it fed every once a while," he said. "But isn't it such a coincidence that she also turned out to be your mother? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I knew she was a disgraced Exorcist from the start, so I had my hunches that the two of you could be related since I first saw you. I would've gotten bored of her months ago if I hadn't thought she might be useful in the future."

Maeve's stomach lurched. Rage boiled hot in her chest. She bucked against his boot, snarling and trying to reach for him with her free hand, but he only pressed down harder.

Her bones creaked. She screamed through her teeth.

"Stop!" Her mother's voice cracked the air like brittle glass. Alana dragged her frail body upright against the wall, her arms shaking as she reached toward them. "Please! Don't… don't hurt her! You… you said that if I did what you asked—if I brought her here—we could leave! That was all you wanted, wasn't it? To drag her away from that clinic? You've got that now, so let us go!"

Maeve's heart twisted. She turned her head, her vision blurring with sweat and blood and something else as she saw her mother's trembling figure.

Alana looked so terribly, terribly weak propped up against the wall like that, and Lorcawn saw it too.

He tilted his head slowly, lips curling.

"A deal?" His chuckle rattled from his chest, dry as snapping bone. "I said I'd listen to your condition, but I didn't say I'd honor it. Did you really think you were in any condition to make any demands of me? Were you truly, truly so desperate?"

Alana gritted her teeth, and that told Maeve everything she needed to know.

It was that desperate.

It was that cruel.

So Lorcawn bent slightly lower, his arms twitching like bugs as he considered Maeve pinned beneath him. "In fact, I feel I'm missing something." He turned his back towards her once again, showing off an empty hole on the back of his coat. "Ever since Fergal took his sister's arm from me, I've been feeling… unbalanced. Itchy. I feel like I'm missing a new left arm. Maybe I'll take yours."

"No!" Alana's voice shattered into sobs. She stumbled forward, falling to her knees with the sound of a body already broken. "Take me instead! Take my right arm! Take my legs, take everything, just… not her! She's all I have left!"

Maeve froze.

Something ugly and desperate welled up in her.

Lorcarwn was silent for another moment. His face was unreadable. Then his laugh came like gravel spilling from a crypt, and he shoved Alana back to the wall with four hands.

"It's too soon for pain for all the humiliation you and that Raven put our name through down in the pipes," Lorcawn said, crouching and bringing his old, wrinkled face close to Maeve's. His breath smelled like rot and copper. "I'll let you rot down here first with the mother who betrayed you. You'll stew in your toxic blood for weeks before you start crying for my Blood-Draining Knife, and then—and only then—will I answer your plea by harvesting your arm."

Then he stepped off her hand at last, making Maeve hiss, clutching her wrist to her chest.

"You... piece of shit," she growled. "It's you. It's always you. You... toy with the hearts of men, sick and elder alike, and you—"

Lorcawnn sighed. "If that is still a surprise to you, then you are even less of a Bharnish than I thought you had become."

The Repossessors moved as he stepped out of the cell, chains and bolts rattling as they swung the door shut. Thick iron latches slammed into place, one after another, until the sound was like a coffin nailed tight. Still Maeve managed to rise halfway, glaring through the bars as Lorcawn glanced over his shoulder.

"You know," he said cheerily, "I almost can't believe how well this all went. If you thought like a Bharnish and suspected your mother even just a little bit, you wouldn't have come... but now that the Heartcord Clinic's strongest arm has been pulled away from the clinic—of her own volition, in fact—the clinic's defenses are now completely gutted. By tonight, my assassins will have scoured it clean."

Her blood turned into ice, and he saw it. His smile widened.

"It'll all be because of you," he said. "A shame you'll never see your dearest husband's face again, nor your little friends. But perhaps I'll be kind." His voice lowered into a cruel murmur. "Perhaps I'll bring you their heads and lay them at your feet. Wouldn't that be sweet? The Raven and his Caser: a matched pair, fresh for harvest."

The bolts slid home, iron on iron, and the Repossessors filed after their boss. One by one, the torches hissed out in their hands until the hall was drowned in a suffocating dark, broken only by thin veins of moonlight trickling through the grated slits above.

Maeve clutched her wrist to her chest, trembling, yet her eyes never left Lorcawn's back as he receded into shadow. She glared at him with every shred of fury left in her body, willing her hatred to pierce through the gloom.

And then—her vision flickered.

A faint, impossible flash smeared across her sight. Red drowned the edges of her vision, and her breath hitched.

There was a Myrmur inside him.