Chapter 23: Chapter 23: Friends in High PLaces

Keiko tapped her finger against the table of the interrogation room. Her lips were pursed in a frown, any signs of her prior playfulness now gone from her face. The wound in her side had healed completely, but a bloodied bandage was still wrapped around her stomach just to be sure.

Valen had only just finished recounting his experiences at the Primordial Church when the ambulance finally came for them. After a brief inspection the paramedics deemed that their respective healing factors made a hospital visit unnecessary and left them to their own devices after applying some bandages.

The police decided to interrogate Valen again and Keiko volunteered for the job despite the protests of her peers, though they found it hard to argue with someone with more balls than the whole lot of them combined.

Valen was escorted to the same interrogation room he found himself in when he first arrived at the station, where he told the rest of his unbelievable story to Keiko.

She’d been silent throughout most of it. Now that it was over, held her chin in thought while looking at the table.

“Do you believe I need psychiatric care?” Valen asked.

“Oh, no, not at all!” said Keiko, though she didn’t sound very convincing. “It’s just that what you’ve told me is very…hard to believe.”

“I can’t blame you. It took me a while to believe these things myself,” said Valen. “And I’ve experienced them.”

“The Primordial Church has been on police radar for a while,” Keiko admitted. “We’ve suspected that they could be a front for the drug trade. If what you say is true then we might just be right.”

Valen raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to ignore the bit about the Unborn God still being alive?”

“Well I’ve got to entertain the most plausible parts of your story first.” Keiko took out her trusty notepad and scribbled something down. “Let’s put the cosmic revelations for now. What can you tell me about your sister? Valerie, was it? We have people out looking for her as we speak.”

Valen sighed. He’d suspected something like this would happen, but it still went down better than he expected. She wasn’t throwing a straightjacket on him at least, though he suspected that she wasn’t going to be so eager for a date now.

“Like I said, she ran away from home when we were nine.”

Oh well. If she wouldn’t take him seriously about the Primordial Church, then maybe she could do something about his sister. It’d be therapeutic for him to get it all off his chest if nothing else.

“Is there a reason why she ran away?” Keiko asked. “An argument with a parent, perhaps?”

“We never met our father,” said Valen, “and our mother had passed away a little before she ran away. During the Ashen Nights.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Her voice softened in genuine empathy. Even if she wasn’t in Dragon’s Rest when it happened, the Ashen Nights were infamous enough that she must’ve heard about it at some point from the various memorials held on social media for it. “Is there any reason you can think of for her leaving?”

“I know the reason.” Valen’s subconscious gaze drifted to the silver badge depicting a feathered dragon’s head on her belt. “I’m actually quite certain that the police have a file on her.”

“Why would you think that?”

“The reason why she ran away was to hide from the police.”

Keiko’s expression grew serious. “What did she do?”

Valen considered his words. Keiko was going to learn what happened from the police records anyways, but he didn't exactly trust them to be fair to his sister once she read them. He’d have to use his time with her to make sure she knew Valerie for more than her violence.

“You know of the Nocturnal District’s reputation in the sex tourism, yes?”

“Yes?” Keiko’s frown deepened. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“After our mother died and our house burned down in the Ashen Nights, we struggled to rebuild our house.” Valen clasped his one and a half hands together on the table as if in prayer, focusing on the pain of his slowly regenerating fingers to push back buried memories of his mother’s dying screams. “My older sister Vivian became a bartender to support us. I became ill from inhaling ash but the hospitals became too full to treat me. Valerie…she entered the sex trade without telling us.”

“Holy shit.” Keiko’s eyes widened in horror. “Didn’t you say she was nine?”

“Actually, she might’ve been a bit younger when she started. I’m sorry, the memories are fuzzy.” Valen took a deep breath to brace his mind in preparation for the rest of his resurfacing memories. “We thought she was just off playing with her friends. Vivian was too busy to notice anything wrong. I was too sick to notice much of anything. It was only after she ran away that we found out she’d been putting extra money into the jar we had for rebuilding funds. It was disturbing to see how much she made from it.”

“Is that why she ran away?” asked Keiko in a gentle tone. “Gods, I’m so sorry. She was a child. She couldn’t have known that the police wouldn’t have hurt her if they found out.”

“That’s not the reason why she needed to hide,” said Valen.

Keiko raised an eyebrow. “Why then?”

“During that time we had to ration the Blood Plus that we still had. Vivian was barely able to scrape by with less than both Valerie and I combined, but our developing bodies needed more than we had.” Valen tightened his clasping hands and he felt blood seep through the bandages of his two finger stumps. “Valerie was starving. I was dying. Even if we had enough Blood Plus, I needed real blood to heal from my illness. Valerie got that for me.”

“Excuse me?”

“She got me the blood I needed,” said Valen plainly.

Keiko looked unsure whether to be sympathetic or suspicious. In the end, she responded with a neutral “How?”

“She started feeding from her…clients.” Valen cringed at his own choice of words. Client. It was such a generic, inconspicuous word being used to describe the lowest filth of the earth, but there were other words he could use to describe them in polite company. “Only a little at first, after they’ve gone to sleep beside her. When she came home, she transferred the strength she got to me by letting me drink from her arm. She told me she’d been feeding off her friends and made me promise not to tell Vivian. If it wasn’t for her, I’d be dead. And if it wasn’t for me…she wouldn’t have turned out like this.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Keiko softly. “You don’t have to say anything more. I’ll look through the records for the rest.”

“No, no. It’s alright.” It was best if she heard this straight from him so she didn’t get any wrong ideas from the police records. They didn’t exactly have the best record in objectivity when it came to vampires. “I appreciate the gesture but I’d like to tell you the rest of what happened myself, if you’re okay with that.”

“I am,” Keiko assured him. “Please, continue whenever you’re ready.”

“Thank you.” Valen looked down at his hands, clasped so tight that the white bandages around his missing fingers were starting to stain with red. He allowed a few silent seconds to pass for him to calm down enough and relaxed his hands, pressing both palms against the cold metal tabletop. “At some point, Valerie started killing her clients.”

“She killed people?” Keiko seemed surprised, but her voice betrayed neither condemnation nor condonement at the fact.

“No.” Valen looked up from the table to lock eyes with Keiko. “Not people. Monsters. They forfeited the right to personhood the moment they paid my sister for her…services. I don’t care what the bloody law says. They were monsters.”

Silence.

Kieko nodded. There wasn’t a trace of disgust or approval on her face. Just a sad, quiet understanding that she wouldn’t be able to change how he felt.

“I see,” she said after a long pause. “Please, continue.”

“I don’t know when she started killing or why. Maybe she just had enough of the perverts treating her like a plaything. Maybe she had to defend herself against a violent client. Whatever the reason, she started killing the clients and draining them of their blood.”

“How did a child like her overpower full grown men?” Keiko asked. “I know vampires are strong but she was still nine years old, right?”

“The officer who investigated our house after she disappeared said that she would wait until they were asleep and stab them in the throat with a switchblade she hid on her,” Valen explained. “He called it premeditated murder. Honestly, I’d call it karma.”

“It’s still murder,” Keiko reminded him. “But I understand why you feel that way.”

“No, you don’t.” Valen’s gaze softened. “Though I appreciate the effort.”

Keiko gave him a sad smile and stood up from her seat with her notepad in hand.

“We’ll get you and your sister help, Valen,” she said. “I promise.”

Valen let out a rueful chuckle.

“By that I suppose you mean psychiatric help?” he asked. Her silence became her answer. “If I may ask, what explanation would you give for that tentacle creature you saw in the basement just now?”

“I don’t know,” Keiko admitted, “but I find it hard to believe that a high elf like Cyril could turn into something like that. It’s probably just a race I don’t know about, like that jorogumo assassin was for you. The gods made a lot of races, after all.”

Just as Valen suspected. Keiko probably didn’t believe a word of his story about the Primordial Church and Unborn God. She probably did believe him about his sister though, and that his whole story about the Unborn God was just the result of a psychotic break.

No point in trying to convince her otherwise though. The more insistent he was of the truth, the more insane he’d make himself look. Best course of action now was to go with the flow and convince the psychiatrist assigned to him that he was sound of mind. Either that, or hope that the mental hospital was corrupt enough for Enid to bribe him out of it.

Keiko reached for the door only for it to suddenly open in her face.

A grizzled old human with skin like stretched tanned leather stepped into the interrogation room. He was in full police uniform with enough stars on it that even an outsider like Valen recognised him as big deal, and his greying hair was combed under a fancy black peaked cap embroidered with the silver dragon head sigil of the police force.

“Chief Jerad.” Keiko straightened her back to attention. “I was just finishing up here, sir.”

“Good,” said the police chief in a voice hoarse from years of cigar chomping. He looked at Valen and pointed a thumb behind him over his shoulder. “As for you, lad, you’re free to go.”

Keiko’s eyes widened. “With all due respect, sir-”

“What?” Chief Jerad cut her off with a single word packed with all the authority afforded to him by years of hard service. “Do you have a problem with my decision, Detective Takara?”

Keiko tightened her lips into a straight line. Then, after a couple tense seconds, replied with a simple “No, sir.”

“Good.” The police chief’s stern face softened somewhat when his eyes drifted down to the semi-bloody bandages around her stomach. “Now go home and rest, detective. You’ve done enough for tonight.”

Keiko glanced back at Valen in his chair one last time before turning back to her superior officer. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

And with that she left the interrogation room, leaving Valen alone with Chief Jerod, who looked him up and down with a look of mild disapproval for some reason.

“Someone’s here for you, lad,” he said before turning around and walking out the door.

Valen scrambled after him and trailed behind the old man as they walked through the rundown police station. “May I ask who?”

“A friend of yours, I assume,” he said without further elaboration.

It wasn’t very helpful at all, but Valen found his question answered when Chief Jerod escorted him to the lobby.

“Johan?” Valen said, surprised to see the tweed-clad halfling staring at his phone in a sofa chair.

Johan looked up from his phone and his freckled face lit up with a grin.

“Hey Valen!” He carefully slid off the chair that was just a little too big for him and ran up to Valen. His smile faded the moment he saw the two missing fingers on his right hand. “Oh, gods. What happened?”

Valen raised his hand to look at the bloody stumps that he could feel growing back at a snail’s pace.

“It’ll heal,” he said plainly. “I’ve survived worse.”

Chief Jerod grunted, then looked down at Johan. “You sure you can take it from here, Jo?”

“Positive,” Johan replied. “Thanks for the help, James.”

“Hmph. I’m just repaying a favour.” Chief Jerod turned to Valen. “Wait here while I bring you your stuff back.”

“Of course, sir,” said Valen. “Thank you for your help.”

Chief Jerod went back into the station while Valen and Johan sat next to each other in the lobby.

“Surprised to see me?” Johan asked once they were seated.

“A little,” Valen admitted. “I was expecting Enid and Louise, to be honest.”

“They should be asleep right now,” said Johan. “It’s been a long night. I’ve spoken with Louise while you were in custody though. They’re staying at The Grand Skytone. Do you know it?”

“Yeah, I spent last night with them there.”

Johan raised his eyebrow. “You were with the two of them in a hotel penthouse?”

“Yes, but not remotely because of what you’re thinking,” said Valen.

“Why not?” Johan asked. “I mean, you’ve already fucked Louise, haven’t you?”

Valen’s face flushed red.

“Not so loud!” He looked around hoping no one heard what Johan just said only to see the receptionist giggle before burying her face in paperwork.

Johan rolled his eyes. “Still as prudish as ever, I see.”

“Well, excuse me if I don’t like talking about my sexlife in public.” Valen cleared his throat. “Anyways, do you mind telling me how you know the police chief?”

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“It’s…” Johan paused for a moment with a hesitant look on his freckled face. “...complicated.”

“I figured.” Valen sighed and leaned back on his chair. “I still appreciate the help, though.”

“I can help you a lot more if you’ll let me,” said Johan.

Valen raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s discuss it once we get out of here.” Johan offered him a small smile. “Maybe over some food? I know a great burger place around here.”

Valen was about to decline when a low growl in his stomach objected to the thought. His body had lost a lot of blood, and if it couldn’t regain energy through blood then it’ll still settle for regular food.

“That would actually be lovely,” he decided. “Thanks, Johan.”

“Anytime, Valen.”

Chief Jerod returned to the lobby about a minute later with a plastic basket of Valen’s stuff. Not just his phone, but also the butterfly knife he’d opened Clarence’s throat with and the sheathed butterfly swords that he never got a chance to use.

“Take care, lad,” the police chief said as he handed him back his knives. “And keep those blades close. Something tells me you’ll be needing them down the line.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Valen. “I’ll try to keep myself out of trouble. You have a nice night too.”

“Hmph. Polite lad.” Chief Jerod nodded in approval and turned to Johan. “His kind’s hard to come by so take good care of him, ya hear?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Johan, the slightest blush on his face. “You take care of yourself too, alright?”

Valen left the police station with Johan and followed him to his car, a tiny sedan that looked older than everything in his antique shop while being worth significantly less.

“Hop in.” Johan climbed onto the driver’s seat which had been modified to accommodate his height, complete with added length to the brakes and accelerator pedals to allow his feet to reach them.

Valen buckled up in the shotgun seat and adjusted the seat to be as low as possible, though even then he could feel the hair on the top of his head brushing against the ceiling.

In a matter of minutes, they were parked in front of a small burger joint tucked between a taco place and a pizzeria in an unusually quiet corner of Reveller’s Row. If Valen had to guess, this was probably the part of Reveller’s Row meant for drunk people to wander in looking for a place to satisfy the munchies in peace.

Neon lights spelled “The Beefy Boy” in bold red letters above the burger joint beside a cartoon illustration of a portly lad with an entire burger stuffed in his mouth, forcing a greasy, beefy smile on his pudgy face.

Inside, the restaurant sported a retro diner aesthetic with black and white chequered floors, shiny leather seats, and a milkshake bar lined with metal stools, all lit by off-coloured fluorescent lights that provided an low ambient hum that was just soft enough to not be annoying.

The place took some clear inspiration from Eagle’s Nest, a former colony of Dragon’s Rest that overtime became the birthplace of the cheeseburger and home to the most clogged arteries in the world.

Johan climbed onto a seat at the very corner of the restaurant. Valen followed suit, relishing the crisp AC air around him that smelled of delicious burgers and chips rather than the stale toilet water of his cell.

A waitress in a pink dress, a pretty blonde human with a name tag reading “Mandy”, walked up to greet them with a friendly smile that shone in her eyes.

“Welcome to the Beefy Boy!” She handed them both a copy of a simple menu that was little more than a sheet of cardboard with words in it. “Just let me know if you have any questions.”

“Thank you, miss,” said Valen. “Do you have any recommendations?”

“The creamy garlic burger’s our best seller,” said Mandy. “Do you eat garlic, sir?”

“I do,” said Valen. “I’ll have that plus a mixed berry smoothie, please.”

Garlic wasn’t poisonous to vampires, though some of them still acted like it was. Sanguinism, the ethnic religion of vampires, didn’t even forbid it, but the superstition that eating garlic would bring bad luck still persisted nonetheless.

Thressa, goddess of birth, was said to have gifted garlic to mortals for its medicinal uses. Some sects even considered a blooming garlic flower to be one of her holy symbols alongside the risen sun.

She was also the one to curse vampires with their vulnerability to sunlight, so disgusted was she by their unnatural existence. Back in the age of gods, she watched over the birth of every child as part of her godly duties with the sole exception of the vampires whom her priests would decry as monstrosities.

“Alrighty then!” Mandy jotted down Valen’s order and turned to Johan. “The usual for you, Jo?”

“Yes, but I’ll have a vanilla milkshake too,” said Johan. “Hold the whipped cream though.”

“Gotcha.” Mandy took back the menus on the table. “I’ll be back with you gents in a bit, okay?”

“Alright, thank you miss,” said Valen.

Mandy disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Valen alone with Johan in the nearly empty restaurant.

Johan stretched in his seat. “Be honest, when was the last time you’ve had solid food?”

“I’ve been eating solid food pretty regularly, actually,” said Valen. “Just about every day since I’ve moved in with Enid.”

Vampires didn’t technically need solid food. They could live on blood alone provided they have a steady source but for those who relied on much less effective blood substitute, consuming normal foods helps keep the hunger at bay. And of course, they could still eat for recreational purposes. You didn’t need a reason to enjoy a nice cup of tea or a tasty biscuit every now and then.

“She’s that red haired girl, right?” Johan asked. “The one with the giant…you know?”

Valen cleared his throat. “Yes. I know. And yes, that’s Enid.”

“Does she cook for you?”

A short chortle escaped Valen’s throat before he realised it.

“Oh, gods no!” he said. “That woman needs to be kept as far away from the kitchen as possible. No, I cook for us.”

“You? Cook?” Johan raised an eyebrow. “The kid who considered a dead rat and a juice box to be ‘breakfast’?”

“It took a while to learn,” Valen admitted. “But I learned. It was the least I could do for Enid while living with her. If I didn’t then she’d be eating instant noodles and frozen pizza for every meal. It was a pain in the arse to get her to eat her veggies, let me tell you.”

“What are you, her dad?”

“Hey, I’m allowed to be concerned for my friends’ health.”

Valen thought back to his rough first nights learning how to cook while Enid was asleep. Never in a million years would he have thought his martial arts training in knife fighting would help him in doing something like cooking, but it came in handy whenever he needed to chop vegetables or slice meat.

“You really care about her, don’t you?” Johan asked.

“Of course,” said Valen. “She’s my very best friend.”

“Right. Best friend.” Johan let out a small sigh. “That poor, poor girl…”

This time, it was Valen’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, nothing,” said Johan with a dismissive wave. “Just thinking about their involvement in this Primordial Church mess is all.”

A pang of guilt shot through Valen’s heart and he fell silent. He never should’ve brought Enid or Louise into this Primordial Church rubbish, and now his two best friends were suffering the consequences of his actions. How he’ll ever make it up to him he’ll never know.

Mandy walked up to the table with their orders, oblivious to the grim mood that had fallen upon them.

“Here you go!” She placed their orders on the table, the food piping hot and the drinks ice cold, then turned to Valen with a smile. “I added some extra chips for your order, free of charge. You look like you had a rough night.”

“Oh!” Valen snapped out of his funk. “Thank you, miss! It’s appreciated.”

“No problem!” said Mandy. “Just let me know if you need anything else, yeah?”

Mandy left them to their meal.

Johan rolled his eyes.

“Ladykiller,” he muttered under his breath before taking a giant sloppy bite of his double bacon cheeseburger, his little legs wagging under him in unconcealed joy.

Valen picked at his chips while waiting for the burger to cool down enough to hold.

“There was something you wanted to tell me?” he asked in between chips. “You said you could help me with the Primordial Church.”

“Yeah.” Johan wiped the grease from his mouth. “You see, I’m part of an organisation of sorts. One that has been keeping an eye on the Primordial Church for a while. We can help you.”

“Organisation?” Valen asked. “Like a guild?”

“Of sorts.”

Guilds had been prevalent during the Age of Gods. Most of them have since either dissolved or evolved into corporations, and the most famous type of guild was without a doubt the Adventurer’s Guild.

The megacities that now filled the world were almost all part of a kingdom at one point. Kingdoms that would have trouble policing its lands outside of major cities, which gave birth to the rise of Adventurer’s Guilds.

In all honesty, they were little more than mercenary companies. Paramilitary organisations made up of freelance warriors who could be hired for anything from hunting down wanted criminals to killing a dragon terrorising the countryside. But to people born in the modern world forged from cold metal and hard concrete, Adventurer’s Guilds symbolised a simpler time they can’t help but yearn for on some level.

A time when the gods still loved their creation and the world was full of wonder despite its dangers. Now every corner of the globe has been explored, every mystery of magic unravelled into a precise science, and every magical beast reduced to mere animals that can be exploited for a profit or hunted to extinction.

Valen narrowed his eyes on Johan, who seemed more focused on demolishing his burger than anything else.

“What kind of guild is it then?” Valen asked. “And how can it help me deal with the Primordial Church?”

“I’m sorry, but for now that information is classified,” said Johan, licking the grease off his fingers. “But my organisation’s the reason why I was able to help you out of police custody in less than a day, and that’s not even scratching the surface of their influence.”

“Why are you telling me all this then?”

Johan’s face grew serious and he put down his burger to look Valen in the eye.

“I’m offering a chance for you to join my organisation,” he said.

“What would that entail?” Valen asked.

“You’ll be working with us to deal with the Primordial Church,” said Johan. “After that’s settled then you can go live your life as normal. Maybe attend a few meetings every now and then.”

“That’s it?” Valen asked. “What’s the catch?”

“Most of the members are pompous pricks,” said Johan plainly. “A lot of them are old money. I only managed to get in because the guy who owned the antique store before me was a member.”

“What makes you think they’ll accept me then?”

“I’ll make them.” A quiet determination burned in Johan’s eyes, only somewhat undercut by the piece of soggy lettuce stuck to the corner of his lips. “We’ve had suspicions that the Primordial Church was responsible for strange happenings around the city but haven’t had any concrete proof. I don’t know what you’ve been through, but your testimony should help my superiors get off their arses and do something about it.”

“Assuming they believe me,” said Valen. “You’d probably think I was mad if I told you what I’ve been through lately.”

“Trust me, whatever it is, I’ve seen weirder things.” Johan took a long drag from his vanilla milkshake and his serious expression immediately mellowed out. “Well, just give it some thought. If you decide to join, come to my shop tomorrow at midnight so we can begin initiation.”

As Johan continued to dig into his meal, Valen weighed the pros and cons in his mind, trying to balance newfound hopefulness with cautious suspicion.

So far he’d been able to use Enid’s wealth as a crutch for most problems, but wealth could only get him so far. Having connections with people who knew their shit was going to be worth more than gold considering how many questions he still had after all he’s seen. Besides, he couldn’t count on Enid to keep bailing him out when doing so could put her in danger.

A low, monstrous growl interrupted Valen’s thoughts. It took him a whole second to realise that it was his own stomach.

He picked up the creamy garlic burger on his plate with a slightly reddened face.

As important as fighting a mad god from the dawn of time was, he could worry about it later. Right now he needed to defeat the growling beast inside his stomach.

Valen took a big bite out of his burger and for a moment, life was good again.

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