Author's note: I beg your pardon for the hiatus.

Four figures crouched in the shadows, perching precariously across the brothel's rickety back stairs. Despite the distant noises, shouts and thuds, they remained dead silent. Each thug uglier than the next, they seemed to shift as one, even breathe as one. The biggest brute of the pack slowly flexed his arm, clenching and unclenching his fist as he waited in the shadows.

Through the dense silence, footfalls echoed from around the corner of the stairway. Prowling noiselessly, the brutish one crouched just on the wall's edge, ready to spring unsuspectingly. Even the muscles of his thick neck rippled with taught strength. The clacking stopped just short of the corner, and a chilling, high-pitched laugh pierced the silence. "Do you forget, Aubert, that I taught you such stealth and subtlety?"

The brute straightened at the sound of his master's voice, rounding the wall's end without fear. Only to find the hall empty. "Tournot?" he grumbled, his voice like rocks ground into sand, but his crackling voice petered off into the emptiness. Aubert slid his foot sluggishly behind him, retreating back to the darkness of the corner and within sight of his mates.

Suddenly, a leg tripped him from behind. An arm flung him in a whirling fall to the ground. And a knife blade pressed tenderly against the throbbing, racing jugular in his thick neck. The steady hand held the metal against his cheek, and Tournot's cold breath fell closer as he crouched low beside his man. "Just so you don't forget who you work for, Aubert." The knife hissed as he drew it swiftly across the fleshy cheek beneath it, the flesh parting quickly and cleanly.

Aubert staggered quickly to his feet, wounded and groaning like an animal too long punished. His crimson fingers clutched his cheek as he stared down his leader.

Jacques Tournot stood—cold, composed, blasé even—as he stared at the dripping blade in his left hand. His grin broadened with each red drop of blood that ran down its ivory handle. "You know, it's a shame, really we must leave such a fine establishment such as this, gentlemen."

" 'S your own fault, Monsieur," Aubert snapped brusquely, wiping his gash with the grimy cuff of his coat. His beefy smile widened as he felt the others gather behind him. A smile that grew confident in his master's face, despite the smears of blood and dirt across the paunch of his cheek.

Tournot turned his crystalline dark eyes to meet those blurry, useless stares opposite him. The grin fell from his gaunt face, and his lip twitched stiffly. Just once. And his pale hand lowered the still dirty blade to his side. "Do you care to explain yourself, Monsieur Aubert?" His voice trembled, rising even higher in pitch, dropping in volume to a ghastly whisper.

"You like this place too much, so the coppers know just where to come and find you. We could be trapped like rats, all because the great Tournot can't stop fucking whores at Madame Rosette's."

Before Aubert could draw another breath, Tournot's arm swiped just once, arcing in front of the gang's wide eyes. Only one sound that issued from the brute's mouth. A damp, suffocated gurgle. His head slid backwards unnaturally far, his eyes rolled upwards to stare at his mates behind him as his throat gave way. Slit from ear to ear. A crimson gashing smile as his ponderous body thundered in a heap before their feet.

Collectively, the others glanced to Tournot, whose grin was wider than before, his perfectly bleached handkerchief becoming redder with each cleansing wipe of his knife. "Anyone else wish to offer blame for our current predicament, messieurs? Or is one Judas enough for the evening?"

"No, sir," ventured the thinnest of the remaining three men, his deep voice barely unable to betray his fear in his two swallowed syllables.

"Good," Tournot giggled slowly, sliding his knife back somewhere into the lining of his tailed jacket. "One death makes for a splendid night. More than one is just in poor taste." He stepped over Aubert's corpse, careful not to let the still-running blood touch is shoes. "And since you've spoken first, my dear Patpan, you receive the humblest honors of dragging poor ol' Aubert's body to the alleyway." Shooing the thin one off in the direction of the paneled door in the wall near by.

But before Patpan whined his objections, the door creaked open quickly. With a huff and a mumbled curse or two, a woman pushed her way through the men before her. She clutched her sullied red shawl about her shoulders, though not tighly enough so as to hide the perfect pale swell of her neckline. Anxiously, she bit her tinted lip. "Always late for my shifts," she muttered with another choice word. "That's what I get for changing pimps."

"Well now," Tournot seemed to purr as he caught the hurrying whore in his arms. "What a perfect way to continue the evening's festivities, wouldn't you know it."

The prostitute giggled at the sudden prospect, her blonde hair flicking as he spun her about and her deep dark blue eyes shining with mutual mischief. "Barely in the building and you wish to put me to work, Monsieur? I just happen to be unoccupied. How convenient."

"You have no idea, Mam'selle," his purr rasping dryly, unnervingly as he stopped his twirling.

Patpan cleared his throat with strangled apprehension. "But, sir, we need to be off, sir. We need to get outta here, sir..." The chilling, smoldering look Tournot shot him silenced every word remotely relevant he would ever dare to say.

With another stretched string of giggles, Tournot shoved the girl towards the stairs, letting her get some distance before his berating whisper scratched at his crony's ear. "Don't be such a moralist, Patpan. After all, you know just can't pass up a good fuck, especially not with the sort of hard-on I get once I kill..." His eyes narrowed their pitch-black fury. "And you wouldn't want to give me reason to kill again, now would you?"

Swallowing audibly, Patpan shook his stringy locks and shuffled away from his master's grip. "Meet you along the Pont-du-Change, then as usual? In one hour?"

"Mmm," Tournot cast a furtive glance up the stairs where he could barely catch sight of the girl's skirt. "Better make it two. This one's pretty enough for some effort."