Chapter 10

After Caiden had told Alasdair where to go, and where they were going, he'd gone to give Amya and Ryker a hand and so left the brothers alone. They took a taxi to the pub, the journey took over half an hour and when they got out, they found that they were in the middle of nowhere, in the stereotypical countryside. Caiden paid the driver and they strolled up to the entrance.

Despite it being completely out the way, the pub was packed. It looked like an average pub, and would have been if it wasn't for its name. It was called The Bloody Corpse. They could hear the sound of people inside laughing as they drunk and played cards or pool.

"Who calls their pub The Bloody Corpse?" Emerson wondered.

"I guess we're about to find out." Caiden replied. "I assume you have your phone with you?"

"Uhuh."

They walked in and as soon as they entered, all the noise stopped. As they looked around, they saw that everyone in the room had their eyes fixed on them.

"Not particularly inviting is it?" Emerson muttered.

"Hello?" Caiden tried but no-one replied. "We're looking for someone." He continued. "You might know of him. We're looking for a man named Angelo Scraper."

At that, people started whispering and muttering to each other.

"Anyone seen him around?" Caiden asked but there was still no reply, however Caiden noticed a small group of aggressive looking thugs who were making their way towards the brothers. There were four of them, two reasonably chunky skinheads, an average sized guys and a huge giant of a man.

"Look, we don't want any trouble." Caiden tried.

"Oh, well that's unlucky, because we do." Said the smaller guy, probably the leader, since Caiden doubted the others knew words longer than three letters.

The crowd had realised what was happening now and were starting to get excited about the prospect of a fight. They didn't have a clue who these newcomers were but they knew the four who were opposing them, they were quite notorious within the bar.

"You mess with Scraper, you mess with us." The leader said threateningly.

"That's fine by me." Emerson replied and his confident response put a frown on the thug's face, he wasn't used to people fighting him and his gang willingly. Quickly the frown disappeared. "Which one of you wasn't to fight Hugo?" he asked, as the giant stepped forward and bellowed his name.

"Shotgun not." Emerson said.

"Wow, you're so immature." Caiden replied. He looked up at the giant, "Nothing personal but I'm going to hit you in the face with the pool table." The giant frowned; apparently he didn't like being hit in the face with the pool table, Caiden reasoned it had probably happened enough in his lifetime.

"Hugo." Said the leader and the giant looked down. "Crush him." Hugo charged forward bellowing his name and Caiden muttered something about always having to fight the big guys and charged forward too, setting his arms alight instinctively. This bar had obviously seen magic before because no-one seemed to notice.

"So, shall we settle this with a pool game?" as Emerson said this, Hugo picked up the pool table and swung it towards Caiden who slid underneath it and it smashed into the wall splintering into pieces.

"Ok, so maybe not pool, how about a game of cards?" Emerson asked hopefully.

The leader brought out a large nasty looking knife and started twirling it. One of the skinheads brought out a crowbar and the other brought out a sawn off shotgun. "Oh crap." Emerson muttered and the skinheads grinned.

"I'm going have Dan here shoot you in the knee caps so you can't run off and then I'm going to slowly skin you alive, once I'm done there, I'll grind your bones to dust and send them to your parents" said the leader menacingly.

"I assume a game of cards is off the table then." Emerson said sadly. "Pity, I was rather looking forward to watching you cry, I guess I'll have to do it manually instead."

The leader growled and gestured for the skinheads to attack, they did. The first one ran forwards, with his crowbar above his head ready to strike. Emerson didn't want to kill any of them, so instead of blasting him full in the chest with energy, he sidestepped at the perfect moment, grabbed the skinhead's arm and yanked it behind his back. The skinhead yelped, and then screamed when Emerson roughly dislocated his shoulder and shoved him forward violently to the ground so that he face planted with quite some force, his nose exploding in blood. He didn't get up; he just stayed curled up in a ball whimpering.

When the second skinhead fired, the bullets were stopped by Emerson's energy shield that he had put up. The skinhead frowned, pumped his shotgun and fired again, the same thing happened. This time, he had to reload, so Emerson charged forward and barged into him, knocking him backwards into a wall.

The crowd around them were watching in awe as Emerson dealt with one and then simply barged past another. Emerson continued towards the leader who wasn't looking quite as smug as he had been. The second skinhead had recovered and got back up by the time Emerson had reached the leader. The leader started some sweeping movements with his knife to keep Emerson back, and then when he realised there was no attack coming, he jabbed forward, Emerson didn't need his shield to block it, he just sidestepped and rapidly disarmed his opponent.

In a few movements Emerson had the knife and the leader was backed up against the crowd who were astounded by the newcomer's skill and were not going to let the losing side go without a punishment. As the skinhead ran forward, having changed tactic because he realised shooting wasn't going to achieve anything so he had decided to hit Emerson with his shotgun instead.

As the skinhead got close enough, he began to prepare for a swing with the shotgun. Emerson just swivelled his body a little and swept his foot up and round in an arc behind him so that his foot caught the skinhead in the temple and he collapsed to the ground unconscious dropping his shotgun.

The crowd were all whispering excitedly at the drama. Emerson glanced over to see how his brother was fairing. The giant Hugo may have been strong, but like all people his size, he was extremely slow and clumsy, so he couldn't land a hit on Caiden. Caiden had fulfilled his promise and was battering Hugo with large chunks of what remained of the pool table, all seemed to be in order.

"Ok… I'm going to ask you a question and I'm going to ask you it once. If you don't answer correctly, I'll shoot your kneecaps with the shotgun so that you can't run off, and then I'll slowly skin you alive, once I've done that, I'll grind your bones to dust and send them to your parents, so listen up. Where is Angelo Scraper?" Emerson asked with an edge to his voice that told the thug that he wasn't lying. The crowd had gone silent, something had happened.

"Here I am." Said the Tex from behind Emerson, he turned to see Angelo Scraper with his revolver pressed against Caiden's temple, his finger on the trigger.

"Ah, there you are. We've been looking for you." Emerson stated and his hand drifted slowly to his pocket.

"Ah ah aaah, I wouldn't if I were you, if I see a glimpse of you reaching for your phone then out come your brother's brains; and I'd hate to ruin that lovely man's suit." Angelo warned him indicating the man standing to the side of the commotion, the man slowly edged sideways out of the firing line.

"How about you give me your phone…" Angelo suggested. "That way, we'd be able to avoid any horrible mishaps. Of course, if I even see the screen light up, bang."

"Of course." Emerson said and reached for his phone, he brought it out of his pocket and put it on the ground at his feet. He slid it across the floor towards the Texan, who slammed his foot down on it, his heel smashing the screen.

"But that was a good phone." Emerson said mournfully.

"Oh, well I'm so sorry," Angelo said, sounding genuinely apologetic, "but we wouldn't want someone to stupidly try and send a message to your friends would we, because then we'd have your poor dead brother to worry about."

"Very true." Emerson agreed.

Emerson could see Archie Bellows standing guard at the entrance, but he didn't know where the others were. As if reading his thoughts Angelo said,

"The others are around." As if on cue, Angela strolled out of the ladies with her maniacal grin on her face.

"Hey sis, look who I found." Angelo said as if he had just come across some old friends. "Isn't it so amazing how just as I decided to go down to the pub, these guys decided to go too, it's such a small world."

"We might want to leave soon, I killed someone in there." Angela said in her shrill, high pitched voice.

"Angelaaaaaa. We've talked about this." He turned to Emerson and said again rolling his eyes, "We have talked about this. You see my sister has this obsession with torturing and murdering random strangers, I've tried everything. I even took her to a psychiatrist; it obviously didn't work because she ended up murdering him."

"Typical woman." Emerson said knowingly.

"I know right. One minute they're begging to get a puppy, the next they're ripping out the shopkeeper's finger nails." Emerson didn't have an answer to that.

"Anyway, let's get down to business, you wanted to see me, here I am, I'm here with my gang, you're here with your brother, I have a gun pointed at your brother's head,"

"Yes, ok, I get the picture." Emerson interrupted. "You're in a good position; I'm in a slightly compromising one."

"Exactly."

"What is it that you want Scraper?" Caiden demanded after staying quiet for such a long time.

"Oh, hi Tate Senior, I kind of forgot about you." Angelo said. "What is it I want? What is it I want? I'll tell you what I want! I WANT REVENGE!"

Angelo's voice reverberated around the pub, the silent crowd flinching at those words. Archie stayed motionless at the door, Sickening popped his misshapen head through the doorway and sauntered in grinning, Angela's smile stayed exactly how it was, Emerson flinched but Caiden didn't let it faze him.

"I want revenge on the Guilds, I want revenge on Nevada, and I want revenge on YOU!" Angelo shouted in Caiden's ear. "You see, us, the Bloody Murderers, we are going to bring the entire magical community to its knees!"

"What do you want with us?" Emerson asked.

"Oh, you're fine, we don't want you. You're free to go back to your buddies and do your very best to try and stop us, but your older brother here, he's coming with us. You see the boss wants him, and the boss gets what he wants." Angelo assured them. "Anyway, now Sickening's back, we might as well leave. He snapped some handcuffs onto Caiden's wrists and Caiden felt his magic bound, Angelo gestured for Archie to take him and he led the way to the door.

"Bye Tate Junior, see you around." Angelo said and walked out.

Caiden took a last look at his younger brother and then was shoved forward by Archie, Sickening and Angela followed behind. Even the crowd began to disperse to leave Emerson standing in the Bloody Corpse all by himself.

"Well we're screwed." He muttered.

A/N: Well as Emerson put so beautifully, they are well and truly screwed, told you it would be fun. The character Hugo was actually named after one of my friends, who is in fact called Hugo. However, he is neither huge, nor violent, well he can be quite violent, but whatever, I just thought Hugo was a cool name to use. I'm amazed you've read this far and will forever be grateful. Please review and I'll send you another invisible dead tortoise, except this time, it'll be called Brian (Yeah, bet that made you excited). I should update reasonably soon, it takes a while, but you know… Thanks so much.

Mangobean.