I slumped to the floor, exhausted, all the anger suddenly gone. I stared blankly at Kurt's headless corpse. The silence was deafening. I took several deep breaths, and expelled them in a rush. I closed my eyes, and thought about what I wouldn't give to be in the Gull drinking myself into oblivion. If I needed a reason to hate the cult, keeping me from my brown liquors was enough.

I knew I had to move. I had to get to Lenz's. I knew the cultists were probably already moving. I seethed again, this time with fear, and my heart rate and breath quickened even more. I thought about Maggie, Ana, Nina, and Hilde, and the way they always tackled me to the ground in the foyer when I came by, the way they called me Uncle Ric, the way Wolf chuckled warmly, and the way Rikki tut-tutted in disapproval. I didn't love Lenz, but I loved his family.

I tried to move, but I was too tired and in too much pain. I was even too tired to be angry. No matter the grisly scenes of blood and fire and bereft parents flashing through my mind, it seemed that all my joints had frozen from pain, fatigue and magical healing, and I could hardly twitch, let alone stand. After a few wincing, painful tries, I managed to reach out and grasp Arielle by her barrel. I rubbed the Striker hard, even my knuckles protesting painfully. It pulsed slightly, and I felt its power seeping into me, slowly, awakening the rage I knew I would need to make it through the rest of the night. It was a reassuring feeling, but my eyelids were still too heavy to keep open.

I don't know if or how long I slept, but it felt like my eyes had been closed for only a second when they snapped open, reacting to a bright, new light source in the room. I stared at Kurt, whose corpse had caught on bright blue fire. In an instant, my fatigue fell away, and my heart began to thump in my chest. "Shit! Fucking fires! No more godsdamned fires!" It wasn't an idle concern. This safehouse was a condemned tenement in the poor quarter, and it leaned drunkenly against one of its neighbors, and its attic was connected by a ladder to its other neighbor. A fire here could easily consume the rest of the poor quarter. Unfortunately, I had no good way to put it out. Blankets wouldn't do.

I was scrambling to my feet when the situation, somehow, got worse. A voice sounded from outside, shouting "Duquesne! Get the fuck out here! We need to talk!" It was von Kalbach. I absolutely did not have time to talk to him, and I welcomed the rage that flooded into me from his interference. Idly, I resented the need to get a new safehouse.

"Am I under arrest?" I shouted to him, affecting sarcasm, as I collected a few choice items from the room, including a punch dagger and a few cylinders of heavy lead. As the fire spread, I realized that it could be a good distraction for me to escape by. I decided to stall a little more.

"Not right now. But there are a lot of very angry people who'd like a word with you," he said, undoubtedly referring to the parents and attorneys of the hunters my little sideshow had proven to be corrupt. I grinned, despite the anger, my countless throbbing pains and the increasingly choking smoke of the fire.

"Glad to hear that you're keeping busy in my absence! But shouldn't they be answering your questions?" I tried not to snarl, lest he catch on too early.

"I look forward to hearing you tell them that," he called. "Enough stalling. Get out here, or we're coming in."

I was climbing up the internal ladder that was the only way to traverse the tenement's three floors. I stepped out, and knelt by a second-floor window that crookedly overlooked the back of the house and the Mauerstraße. I could see two hunters out there, and there was probably a third holding the horse I kept in a small makeshift stable back there. About three feet below the window, was the awning of the stable. It was going to be my way out. I walked/crawled to the other side of the house, to another window. I peered out, and saw Kalbach tapping his foot on the ground impatiently. I retreated to the center of the house, "You'll probably want to come in anyway. There's a fire!"

"Now," he shouted back, "you are under arrest!" I then heard him address the other hunters, "No more damned fires! Get your asses in there and put it out! And get me that piece of shit!"

Upon hearing this order, the two hunters I could see in the back pelted into the house through the back door. I opened the shutters on the window overlooking the awning, and dropped lightly onto its timbers. I heard the horse snort, and a voice said, "What was that?"

Idiot, I thought. I leapt down from the awning, and found myself facing a young hunter. He opened his mouth to shout, but I was already in motion. I had put one of the heavy metal cylinders into my right hand, and clocked him a powerful blow across the chin, and he spun a little before falling unconscious. I had to consciously restrain myself from beating him to death right there. Instead, I untied the horse. I considered saddling him, but didn't have time. I leapt onto his back, and he bolted off down Wall Street, which followed the inside of the outer wall and the outside of the inner wall. The clattering of his hooves on the cobbles must have alerted Kalbach, for I heard him scream my name in frustration.

I looked over my shoulder, but didn't see any immediate pursuers. I grinned again, "That's right, asshole. Say my name."

I rode hard for the inner wall, but slowed to a canter when I approached the Miller's Gate. It wasn't the most convenient gate, which would have been the Mud Gate, the most westerly gate of the generally east-west inner wall. The Mud Gate, being the traditional entry point for the hoi polloi into the inner wall, was heavily guarded. The Miller's Gate was much less so, and had the most easily bribed guards.

I slowed to a walk, attempting to appear unhurried as the guardhouse came into sight. The gate, of course, was closed. The Miller's Gate generally closed around dusk, but citizens who lived or had business inside were generally able to gain access at any time. "Ho!" someone shouted from the gate. "Who goes there?"

"A witch hunter, hoping for a warm cot in the Grand Chapterhouse after a long day!" I shouted, again swallowing my anger and trying to sound nonchalant.

"An 'unter, eh?" the voice said. "Meet me 'neath tha gate!"

I trotted up, and dismounted. A small, secondary gate opened, disgorging one of my favorite gatekeepers, a fat old guard named Klaus. "Klaus!" I said, trying not to appear too happy to see him. "Mind opening the gate for an old friend?"

"We ain't friends, Master 'Unter."

"Since when?" I said, as anxiety built in my gut, warring with the rage burning at the back of my skull.

"Since I read the order what got posted today."

"You can't read," I said, forcing a chuckle and inviting him to do the same. He didn't.

"Order says you ain't allowed ta pass."

"Who? Erich Duquesne?"

"'Im 'specially, sir."

"Well, how do we know for sure that I'm this Duquesne character?" I said, almost failing to hide my anger and fear.

"You sure look lots like 'im, sir," he said, clearly playing dumb.

"Could you be persuaded to decide that I wasn't Erich Duquesne?"

"Might could. What kinda 'centive you gots in mind?"

Normally, I'd bribe the man with a schilling. I doubted that would be enough tonight. I was running out of time, so I tossed him a thaler. Four marks, or eight schillings, should be more than enough. But Klaus just stared at me. I dug out another thaler, and gave it to him. "Excellent, sir," he said, opening a slightly larger inner gate that would admit me and my horse. "'Ave a pleasant evenin.'"

I simply stared daggers at him, and rode through. I upped the pace to a canter, and considered going to a full gallop, but didn't want to raise any additional alarm, or alert any attackers on their way to Lenz's house that I was coming. In my anger, I swore that, if I survived this, I'd be back to take those thalers out of Klaus's flesh.

I dismounted about a block from Lenz's house. I crept along the walls of the upper-class town estates that filled his street. They were fairly standard affairs, third-acre plots encircled by an eight-foot stone wall, punctured by one ornate wrought iron gate, a small guardhouse inside the gate. Inside, the properties were dominated by a courtyard with a fountain, and, behind the fountain, a double stone staircase leading up to a columned portico and the front door, and usually some kind of deck encircling the building, overlooking a small strip of lawn that also encircled the house. The houses themselves were tall and narrow, between three and five stories. Their facades were timber-framed, and the plaster between the framing wood was generally brightly colored. Lenz's house was painted a bright green, which I had always hated, reminded me too much of my family's crest, the same color.

As I approached Lenz's house, number six on the Oldenhauerstrasse, I noticed that its gate was slightly ajar. "Fuck!" I swore, almost silently, and felt my hands begin to shake uncontrollably, the fear nearly paralyzing me. I forced it down, and slipped through the gate, the fog curling around me as I did so. I darted to the guardhouse, and found the corpse of Lenz's longtime gatekeeper, Eugen. I swore again. He had been garroted. I padded up to the front door, and it too was slightly ajar. I stepped inside, silently. I drew Arielle in my right hand, and took the punch dagger in my left, its blade poking menacingly out from between my fore and middle fingers. I checked the first few rooms downstairs, but there was no one. I stepped back out into the main hallway that ran the length of the house. At the end, it turned into a staircase that branched off in either direction, permitting access to the second floor and a terrace overlooking the large sitting room arranged around the staircase. I stomped on the ground, not loudly enough to wake anyone who wasn't already up, but enough to startle someone not expecting it. Sure enough, I saw a swirl of black fabric in that sitting room. I leveled Arielle, and fired. The noise, in the silence of the high town, sounded like the end of the world. I quickly dropped the punch dagger into an empty bullet loop on my belt, ejected the spent shell casing, picked another from my belt, slammed it home.

I sprinted down the hallway. My victim was still squirming when I got there, and drove my knee into his chest, eliciting an expulsion of breath. I punched him so savagely in bridge of the nose with the dagger, that his skull collapsed in on itself, killing him. I pelted up the stairs, and now heard a growing commotion. Coming down the stairs from the third floor was another man in black fabric. He raised a small pistol crossbow and fired at me. I dove into a hallway, discharging Arielle in his direction as I did so. I hit the ground rolling, and dropped into a shooter's kneel just inside the hallway. I saw the man's leg come into view, and I pulled Arielle's trigger. The bullet slammed into the man's foot, and he fell screaming. A punch to his forehead with the dagger ended that. I left the dagger protruding from his head for a moment while I reloaded.

I stood, ripped the dagger from the man's skull, and began running upstairs, to the sleeping quarters, shouting, "Markus! Rikki! Wolf! Maggie! Ana! Nina! Hilde! Everyone alive?" After a few instants of shuffling, I began hearing the voices of Lenz's family as they confirmed their continued existence. Thirty seconds later, I had heard from all but Anneliese. I pushed down another wave of panic, and sprinted to her room. I burst through the door to her room and found the little girl being held off the ground by another man in black fabric. He had one of those pistol crossbows pointed at her neck. My heart leapt into my throat, and I tried to ignore it.

My voice shaking in what I desperately hoped was an imperceptible manner, I said, "I need you to drop that."

"'Fraid I can't do that, Master 'Unter. See, I'm very fond of me own life. So I fink I'll just leave 'ere, nice and friendly like, and once I'm well on me merry way, you can have this widdle poppet back. And since you done killed all me mates, I'll only be needing the one 'ostage. That's a favor I'm doing ya there, Master."

I looked at Ana's face. I would have grinned, if I hadn't been enraged and terrified and exhausted. The man had chosen poorly. Anneliese was the least fearful of Lenz's daughters, and even if she looked a little confused, she looked much, much angrier. I succeeded in winking at her, and she took that as a signal to drive her heel into the man's kneecap. Smartly, she also tucked her head. When the man staggered, groaning, and depressed the trigger on his pistol bow, the bolt sunk harmlessly into the beams above. I raised Arielle and shot the man in the face, splattering the contents of his skull across the whimsically decorated wall of Ana's room. Ana, landing lightly on her feet, sprinted over to me. I dropped Arielle, and gathered her in my arms. I backed out of the room and slammed the door with my foot.

Outside, Ana's anger had vanished, replaced by sheer terror. She began to sob uncontrollably. "Shh, shh, Ana," I tried poorly to soothe her, a huge confusion of emotions threatening to render me a sobbing wreck along with the little girl. "It's okay now. I'm very proud of you, you know."

"R-r-r-really?" she sobbed.

"Of course, sweetie. You saved yourself. Bastards like that aren't any match for my favorite niece. Don't tell anyone I said that."

She let out a tear-filled giggle into my shoulder, and hugged me tighter. An instant later, Lenz and his whole family charged around the corner, almost trampling me. They were all shouting. "Shut up!" I roared, and pushed Ana into her mother's arms.

Ulrica Lenz, or Rikki as I liked to call her because it annoyed her, was quite petite, and had probably been stunningly beautiful when she married Lenz, 20 years ago. She had aged well, and had become handsome and dignified, even in her dressing gown, with blazing blue eyes and disheveled dark blonde hair. She was Lenz's most important business partner, and they remained deeply in love. She cared for her children with an intensity that was sometimes frightening. She also hated me, and I could not dispute the justice of it. And she was capable of extreme volumes, which she employed now. "HERR DUQUESNE! YOU WILL TELL ME THE MEANI-!"

I flinched a bit, but managed to interrupt her, "Not now, Rikki! Really not now. Lenz, Wolf, you're with me. We've got to move these bodies. Rikki, get the girls outside now," I said with an emphatic sweeping motion of my left arm.

Lenz, who looked decidedly less dignified than his wife in his dressing down, spluttered, "Why?"

"If I'm right, they're going to catch on fire in a few minutes. Better they do that outside." I said. "Wolf, help me with this one here," I said, jerking my thumb over my shoulder towards the door to Ana's room. "Lenz, get the one in the gallery down the stairs." They continued to stare at me, dumbfounded. "Move, damn it!"

Wolfgang Lenz, the oldest child and only son, looked a lot like his father. They both had black hair and blue eyes, and were both two or three inches taller than me. Wolf, in his youth, was slender and wirily muscular. His father, older and comfortable, was noticeably pudgy, but still stronger than your average man, a relic of his days serving as a captain of greatswords in Emperor Luitpold's invasion of Albion, before he married.

A few minutes of struggling later, and much shushing from me to the Lenz family, the three bodies were stacked in the drainage ditch at the back of the compound. We then buried these under soil drawn from a pile in the gardener's nook, lest the flame and smoke draw the attention of the neighbors or the watch.

I was thus out of reasons to put off explaining things to the family. After checking the grounds one more time and re-locking the gate, I drew them together in the big sitting room inside, and explained everything.

"I am very sorry to have put you all in so much danger, but I'm going to make sure that nothing like this happens again. I have a contract with a friend in the city who will provide your home with bodyguards at all hours of the day."

Ulrica was, unsurprisingly, fuming. The girls looked confused, and most of them were still sniffling. Wolf looked concerned. Lenz looked confused and angry.

"What is wrong with you?!" Ulrica exclaimed, and I recoiled slightly. "It's not enough that you're tearing Herr Lenz away from his family, home, and business every other week for brushes with mutation and death, and now you bring the threats of a daemon on my family?! Get out, and do not come back! We are leaving the city, and your promises of protection can go hang!"

I bore her criticism with equanimity, because she was right, and I said as much. "But you absolutely cannot leave the city," I continued. "You will certainly be ambushed along the way, whether by river or land, and I cannot offer you any protection whatsoever outside the city."

"He's right, dear," Lenz was saying, though even he was glaring at me. "We'll be safer here. And Wolf can supervise the guards."

This was a good suggestion, and I seconded it to Ulrica. Wolf intended to follow his father into law, but he was not ignorant of swords and guns, and he was powerfully built, besides. I had no doubt that he had the force of will and strength of body to corral some mercenaries should the need arise.

Ulrica was still furious, but she had no answer for this circumstance. "Very well, sir. If we must tolerate this burden, then we must. But I will not have you around this house, sir, whatsoever. If I see you again, I swear to my namesake that I will beat you to death with my bare hands."

I nodded gravely, not doubting that she was serious. "As you wish, madam. Before I leave, I need to re-emphasize the importance of secrecy in this investigation. You absolutely cannot tell anyone that the cult attacked you in your home. I have no doubt that the watch is on its way now, and I will wait outside until they arrive. We must tell them that this was a simple, botched robbery, and that the robbers escaped, killing poor Eugen. Do you understand?"

They nodded their heads with varying degrees of certainty. "Lenz, do you care to join me outside the gate?"

He glared at me again, but ultimately said, "Yes. After I put the girls back to bed."

I spun on my heel, and departed the courtyard. In the street, I dropped heavily onto an old bench outside the gate, and dropped my head into my hands. Whether it was exhaustion or failure, I still don't know.

A moment later, a bottle touched my wrist. It was held in a hand, attached to an arm belonging to Lenz. I snatched the bottle and swigged. Cheap apple schnapps, but I downed it as though it were Naizon from the King's own stores.

I expelled a huge breath after swallowing, and said, "Thank the gods. First drop in days."

"I figured," he said, a little icily.

"I fucked it up, didn't I?" I said, looking up at him through my fingers

"A little more than usual, yes."

"Do I usually fuck it up?"

"Seems to happen more often when you're trying to prove a point."

"I'm always trying to prove a point."

"But you aren't always on a case."

"That's not making me feel better."

"You shouldn't feel better. You put my family in the path of a daemon. Going to be a long time before you work that one off. Speaking of, we're officially even."

"Fair enough."

"How did it go so wrong?"

"There sure as hell wasn't supposed to be a daemon, at least not yet. And when I went down that basement, I expected, maybe, to find a clue or a lead. I didn't expect to find an entire cultist rathole, much less one still in use. And of course it had to burn down and destroy all the evidence. Given that the one I captured also caught on fire after I had to kill him, it seems like most of my evidence is literally going to go up in smoke. And it seems like the mission I sent young Yolk on went worse than I was expecting, judging by how many hunters showed up outside my safehouse before I came here. Normally I'd grind a case like this for a couple weeks, and since Kalbach's usually looking for reasons to make my life hell, I usually need something to keep him diverted if I want to get anything done. Things have gone way too fast, both with the investigation and the diversion. And I still have thousands of names to investigate."

"Sounds like you need help."

"You just said we were even."

"But now my family's in danger, and I'm not standing for it. I'm coming with you."

"Actually, I need a little more than your sword arm, to be perfectly frank."

"So I take it you would be in my debt?"

"Yes."

The corner of Lenz's mouth quirked and he said, "I'm listening."

"I've arranged for Hans to put his horde of questionable associates on this case. He wants to be paid, and more than I've got."

"How much?"

"A Hammer."

Lenz, to his credit, didn't flinch. "Probably have to move some things around, but I can do it."

The relief that flooded me was palpable, and my face fell into my hands again. The bottle, mostly empty, dropped and clattered on the paving, "Thank you."

"I'm not doing it for you. I'm not doing anything for you, ever again. Speaking of, where the devil is the watch?"

"I haven't the slightest," I said, looking up. But, as I looked, I noticed a lone individual, in a long coat and a wide-brimmed, pointed hat. "Shit," I said, hanging my head again. I was too tired to keep running, and there was no longer any point.

"Friend of yours?" Lenz asked.

"Albie."

"Ah. Is he going to kill us?"

"Why would he kill us?"

"He's a witch hunter, for one. And for another, who really knows what all you've done to earn the ire of your fellows?"

"Ouch," I said with mock outrage. I continued, "And we've seen him, so no. If he wanted you dead, he'd do it with a long rifle from a rooftop."

"Comforting," Lenz said, sounding less than comfortable.

The hunter sat down on my left side, and nonchalantly snatched the bottle from the street, and drained it. "Ric," he said to me, "Mark," to Lenz. I twitched my right arm, and felt my holdout pistol slide into my hand. I pointed it discreetly at the newcomer.

"Albie," we replied. Senior Templar, First Class Albert Hellinger was not a friend, exactly. I respected him and he me, and we were usually friendly enough. Though intelligent and quick-thinking, he was as dogmatic and almost as inflexible as von Kalbach. He was also devious and sneaky, which I respected but mainly feared.

He was the Chief of Ecclesiastical Inquisition for Carroburg and its environs, and thus was responsible for purging heresy in the temples, which meant he spent a lot of his time torturing and executing holy men. It didn't sit well with me, and I am one of the more secular souls you're likely to encounter in the Empire, which isn't to say I doubted the necessity. It sat even less well with the deeply religious Middenlanders amongst whom he plied his trade, who didn't want to think about their local temples as potentially harboring heretics and traitors, though it was depressingly common. His work sat only slightly better with the rulers of Carroburg, who did not appreciate the reputational damage his work wrought, and resented the attention of nosy Imperial servants on their younger sons and nephews, who composed most of the urban clergy.

The only people who seemed not to mind Hellinger's work were the reformers in the universities, who believed all clergymen (excepting themselves, of course) were either corrupt and decadent, or uneducated and useless. They were right, of course, but they refused to understand how the clergy kept the whole damn Empire from falling to pieces.

Hellinger also had an irritating fondness for informality and familiarity, hence the use of nicknames. He did it to unnerve his targets, and it usually worked. In short, he's a creepy fucker.

"You alone?" Albie asked me.

"Lenz is here," I said, deciding to be a little annoying. Lenz dutifully nodded his head and favored Hellinger with an ironic smile.

"Other than Mark."

"I am alone. Are you?"

"I am. Which is why I need you to stop pointing that gun at my liver."

"How do I know you won't attack me?"

"Because I am alone, which means you would kill me before I could subdue you."

"Well, I'm flattered," I said. And although I wasn't entirely sure I trusted Hellinger's assessment of his own skills, I pushed the gun back up my sleeve regardless. "But I'm not in any shape to fight right now."

"Does that mean you're going to stop running, too?"

"I doubt I can actually stand up from this bench." It was true. Hardly noticing it as it happened, I had actually managed to relax a little, and the adrenaline drained from my body, leadening my limbs and causing a thousand aches, pains, bleeds, and incomplete magical heals to roar back with a vengeance, intending to repay the pain deferred with interest. I actually gasped from the rising tide of pain, and clamped down on it with a grimace.

"I can see that," Hellinger said, visibly noticing my small convulsion. He turned to Lenz and asked, "So what happened here?"

"Before we get to that," Lenz said, "where the hell is the watch?"

"They were stood down. We figured Ric would be here, so we decided it'd be better to avoid any jurisdictional fracas. So what happened?"

"Attempted robbery. Duquesne saw them off. They killed poor Eugen, my gatekeeper."

"Mm-hmm. So what really happened?" he asked me.

"Attempted robbery. Eugen died. I saw them off. I'm a hero." I said, probably failing to sound cheerful. I grimaced and panted slightly, as a particularly serious pain shot up my back.

Hellinger gave a fake, if convincing, chuckle, and said genially, "Fuck off. What really happened?"

"Can't tell you what happened. I can't prove it, so it didn't happen," I said, my speech becoming shorter as I felt unconsciousness beckon.

"Sigmar, drop your obsession with evidence. You're a witch hunter. You know what happened. Tell me."

"Can't. Kalbach's orders. Just me and Yolk on the case."

"I want to know what's happening in my city, Ric."

"It's not your city, Herr Hellinger," I said, throwing his informality back in his face. "And you don't command me."

"I outrank you."

I wasn't normally one to pull rank in my own turn, but I gritted my teeth hard and said, "But I, like you, am a bureau chief. I take my orders from the Paladin, and you go hang."

"In that case, so will you. Don't expect me or my men to come to your rescue this time." I thought about protesting that he hadn't really saved me last time. After all, I could easily have wriggled free of those restraints before those dumb fuck amateurs were done with their shitty little half-a-ritual and killed them all. Even if I hadn't, the daemon they would have pissed off by fucking up his summoning would have devoured them all anyway. But nope, Hellinger had to show up with twenty hunters and start gloating. I thought about saying all these things, but when I drew a breath to begin, the inflation of my lungs sent a sharp pain through my chest, and I thought better of it.

Hellinger put the bottle to his lips one more time and got out the last few drops. He tossed it into the street, where it shattered. He looked at me, and then abruptly stood, putting a hand around my upper arm, saying, "And speaking of the Paladin's order, you're coming with me, Ric-"

I don't know whether he continued speaking or stopped when he noticed me, because at that moment I pitched forward onto the cobbles (judging by the pain in my face, later), enveloped in a warm, velvety blackness.