Chapter 71: Blood #71

"So basically... a gunslinging demon from hell came to Gotham and tried to recruit you as an agent for his masters?" Selina asked, her tone half-amused, half bewildered as she looked at Tommy, and he nodded.

"You refused. The demon tried to kill you, so you killed it first...?" Selina went on, still baffled as she narrowed her eyes and got another nod for her effort.

"Days later, the demon returned, stronger than before, and tried to kill you and your friend here, but you couldn't defeat it this time," she remarked, gesturing to the side with her eyes alternating between Natt and Tommy, and they both nodded at the same time.

"And you saw images of me and something about a burglary inside the demon's head?" Selina concluded, her tone and expression turning neutral, and much to no one's surprise, the duo nodded again.

"We didn't have any other clues, so we contacted you..." Tommy said, scratching his head as he realized how nonsensical his story sounded after hearing it from Catwoman.

"I suppose stranger things have happened," Catwoman said with a chuckle, shaking her head at Tommy's awkward expression.

"So... do you know anything about the demon...?" Natt asked from the side, frowning as he tried to get to the point. Natt was a retired soldier and was currently a hitman.

Dealing with demons and such wasn't within his area of expertise, so he was understandably impatient and eager to get this demonic mess over and done with as soon as possible.

"Afraid not, but someone anonymously hired me to steal an antique rifle from Gotham's museum of antiquities recently," Catwoman replied, shaking her head with a frown.

"The client called it the Ace of Winchesters, but I have no idea what a demon would do with it," Selina concluded with a shrug.

"I know someone who can help us with that," Tommy said, nodding as he got the ledge wall he was leaning on, ready to leave. "Thank you for your help," he concluded with a nod as he turned to leave, only to stop walking as Catwoman got in his way.

"Not so fast, I'm a bit curious, and you know what they say about cats and curiosity."

...

East End

"Hey, Mark," I greeted as I approached the listless-looking security guard, holding back a frown at his haggard appearance as he stared into his phone's screen in a daze.

Mark was always cheerful, alert to his surroundings, and quick to notice anyone approaching him, often being the one to greet others first. But that slowly changed over the days.

He slowly began looking less cheerful and alert, and I'd often find him staring intently into his cell phone while ignoring everything else until I greeted him first.

Even then, he'd raise his head, smile, and return the greeting with some enthusiasm, but I've never seen him so listless and exhausted.

"Oh, Gray... It's been a while. Didn't think I'd see you so soon after you moved," Mark greeted back as he slowly raised his head from the cell phone and regarded me with a clearly forced, tired smile that made me frown.

"I was around and thought I'd come by and see how you're doing," I replied, putting on a pleasant smile and forgoing my frown as I gestured to the side with my right.

"You look like you have something weighing you down. Are you okay?" I asked after a second when I saw him nod without mustering a verbal reply.

"You know how it is, just hit a rough patch..." Mark replied with a bitter smile, shaking his head, and his tone made it clear that he didn't want to talk about it.

I hesitated for a second before heaving a mental sigh and activating empathy, and I immediately got a mixture of helplessness, exhaustion, despair, and depression emanating from the security guard.

'That can't be good...' I mused, keeping my expression neutral as I activated my augmented reality vision and personal computer power to see if I could figure something out.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" I asked, maintaining my neutral expression as I leaned on the gate and began browsing whatever information I could find about Mark.

"It's nothing you should worry yourself with, just your everyday stuff, but thanks for asking, bud," Mark replied with a shake of his head, his smile turning a bit genuine and less forced.

'Well, shit...' I internally cursed as I figured out what was troubling the security guard. Like any other regular person, Mark's trouble was the financial kind.

His daughter was sick with heart disease (which their insurance didn't cover), and the medical bills were eating away at their finances, leaving them behind on their mortgage payments.

I didn't hesitate before calculating how much Mark needed before anonymously depositing 75k into his bank account, which was a bit more than that.

75k might sound like a lot, but I can make that much in less than a month by simply sitting on my ass and doing nothing because of the passive income from the flappy bird rip-off, not to mention other software I'd published and the money I keep blundering from Black Mask.

In other words, it was an insignificant amount of money for the current me, but it will change Mark's life for the better, an obvious choice if you ask me.

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Though I didn't plan on going around spending all of my money to make random strangers happy, improving the lives of people I knew wasn't something I could easily see myself doing, especially if it was always this easy.

I wanted to console Mark and tell him it would be okay, but my phone started ringing, causing me to swallow my words as I retrieved my cell phone to see who was calling.

"Just a minute," I said, smiling at Mark as I raised my index finger after seeing the caller's ID, to which he nodded, and I walked a bit further to answer the phone.

"What do you need, Selina?" I asked as I answered the call to get her straight to the point. My relationship with the brunette wasn't bad, but it wasn't good enough for her to call me for anything other than business.

The cat signal I saw earlier in the sky (as stupid as it sounded and looked) only made me more convinced Selina was calling to ask for something.

"No, you don't strike me as the type to call just to say hi," I said with a snort of derision as I heard Selina's reply, shaking my head.

"What kind of job?" I asked after a second, raising an eyebrow. "You're serious?" I asked with another snort after listening to Selina's ridiculous explanation about the so-called job.

"Why would I want to involve myself in that kind of shit?" I questioned, after pausing for several more seconds as Selina's explanation turned more and more outrageous with every word she spoke.

"I guess I could hear you out... sure," I said, sighing as I shrugged my shoulders. "Noonan's bar? Sure, I'll be there," I concluded as I ended the call and walked back to Mark.

"I have some urgent business I need to attend to, Mark. But I'm sure you'll pull through whatever it is you're going through," I remarked, smiling as I nodded at the security guard and earned a weak smile for my effort.

"Take care now," I concluded as I turned to leave, waving Mark goodbye, and he merely nodded and turned back to his cellphone.

...

Gotham City airport

Jason Blood was not having a good time.

As one of the world-leading experts on demonology, being an immortal who walked the earth since the sixth century with the power to call on a literal demon prince from hell, one would think he had it all.

But one would be sorely mistaken.

The demon prince Jason could call upon, Etrigan, was the son of hell's archduke Belial and the half-brother of the most famous wizard known to humankind, Merlin, who was a half-human, half-demon hybrid.

And it was that same Merlin who casually broke into Jason's cruck house centuries ago and bound his half-brother, Etrigan, to Jason's soul, bounding them together as unwilling body mates/jailer and jailed for eternity.

From there, it was a constant struggle between Jason and his soul's unwanted guest, Etrigan, as the two continuously schemed against one another, vying for control over Jason's body.

But millennia and a half with the rhyming demon prince was a long time, and he reluctantly and slowly accepted his fate as Etrigan's jailer for the remainder of eternity.

Etrigan's presence in Jason's soul was old news, and it hardly bothered him at this point, even if he would gladly do anything to rid himself of the demon should the chance present itself.

It was the recent turns of events that troubled him instead. He had temporarily lost his magic powers because of a magical experiment gone awry several days ago.

And to add insult to injury, he received word that a demon from hell, the Mawzir, had manifested itself into Gotham, where he lived. And Etrigan was conveniently unavailable in the meantime, leaving Jason unable to defend himself.

And to make things even worse, a person to whom Jason owed a whooping sum of two million dollars he reneged on long ago, called, asking for a favor.

So the immortal demonologist gathered his belongings and made for the airport, intending to leave Gotham and wait for his magic to return and the heat to die out before coming back.

However, things took another turn for the worst as he exited the taxi, only to be kidnapped by two men, one of which was the same man who contacted Jason earlier.

 

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