The man’s eyes came to Fazal’s. They were brown, lustrous and wet with anger. Or was it fear. His forehead glistened with sweat and he drew a handkerchief from his overpriced suit while mumbling incoherent thoughts. Every now and then Fazal noticed how his gaze dropped to the gun tucked into his side. The Dominion’s hand itched to grab it if only to silence the murmurs. “So it wasn’t you on a ten million worth yacht with models, blaring music and getting high?” His voice started off like silk, soft enough to pull answers out, but eventually adopted an edge strong enough to wrap around a victim’s throat and choke. He clicked his tongue and waited for a reply with a condescending stare. When he spoke next, he sounded theatrically disappointed. “The ten million you owe me.”
“I can explain!” The man exclaimed, the lines of his face twitching. Can’t they all.
The Dominion tilted his head, eager to hear more but showed him no smile. He reached out to grab the back of a chair and twirl it around in place to sit on. Chest against the chair’s back, he folded his arms over it, words drawled, eyes on the prey, “Go on, Neel. I’m listening. You know I always do.”
The screech of metal against concrete turned Neel’s blood cold. Incomplete sentences stumbled from his lips then, all while being unable to back away – much like a deer caught in the headlights. The man could practically feel the corners of Fazal’s mouth curl. It was one inch for every lie that managed to slip from between his so-called explanations as to why the money he meant to return today was, in fact, gone. Foolishly so. And the deeper he dug his own grave, the greater the urge became to flee. It was only him and Fazal, after all. In an abandoned warehouse, in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps the odds were in his favor.
He ran. Like a prey, he twisted his body and ran.
For a moment, the room was filled with nothing but desperate footfalls. The wolf sitting did not move, except for allowing his tongue to visibly drag over his upper side-teeth. “I’m not satisfied, Neel,” his voice reverberated from behind, as hoarse as it was loud. A warning, followed by a gunshot and a bullet rammed into the back of Neel’s knee. The man, sent tumbling downwards, cried aloud in agony.
Among his whines came another set of footsteps, a different kind, Fazal’s kind. Slow. Heavy. Ones that made the room feel smaller, the closer and louder they got. “You said there’s more to the story, so let me hear it all,” he continued with arched brows, moving the gun like an extension of his hand for gestures. Impassive. Insidious. “I have time.”
Despite the pool of blood underneath, Neel decided he would rather make use of the gap between them and crawl. The smell of blood filled his nostrils as a reminder woven from what he was told prior to stepping into this deal: Actions have consequences. Whatever you do, do not upset Fazal Khan.
“Please…,” he begged with the tiniest bit of pathetic courage he had left. But the footstops never seized. There was no hurry in them either.
Another gunshot rang. Second leg shot and suddenly, all the crawling became a difficult, if not an impossible, feat.
“Now that you can’t run from me,” Fazal called with a tone as smooth as ice shifting prior to starting an avalanche, his body ever so lazily eating the distance. Eventually, he caught up with Neel, who turned out to be too weak to continue to drag his limp lower-body forward, and crouched down in such a way that the man could get a perfect, good look at his executioner. The gun glistened in his relaxed grip.
Fazal readjusted the collar of his shirt and walked gingerly down the stairs leading to the heat of the Pest Nightclub. The buzz generated from loud music vibrated against his skin as he curled the cuffs of his sleeves, humming as he went. The low sound carried like a separate melody through the empty hall. Alone and dressed in monochrome, he appeared less like a guest and more like a dark prince, pristine and elegant with a Richard Mille watch and a white-gold necklace.
He used to pride himself on being the respected observer, watching honey drip from the silver tongues of self-proclaimed gods who sat at the long table across as they deliberated. But last week he had to strip off the sheep’s clothing. Last week, when Pestilence embraced the seemingly strategic loss of a billion and later mourned a security breach and a data leak. He embraced becoming one of the self-proclaimed gods, now on his way to coax both their richest and cockiest clients as part of a painstaking yet satisfying affair as COO before puppeteering the much paler, transparent drug-dealers.
His mind had always been drawn to solutions that bypassed caution and favored the immediate, the violent, the ugly, but he had been impeded by the legal and the morally right. He had made it a habit of running ideas through Ricardo, offering him a piece of his mind in exchange for his advice or, more often, his righteous disapproval. But now, the next decisions were simple. Elegant… just as elegant as he looked tonight when he paused long enough to rake fingers through his gelled-back hair in the mirror. Then he met his own eyes and their chilling calm, which often took possession prior to him inflicting pain, and his reflection smiled back dangerously. But Fazal didn’t mind the smile or how it had grown slightly foreign the past half a month as it bordered on arrogant. No, he liked it. It looked like something the self-proclaimed gods would wear, only more unsettling.
The man’s aged features creased in anger at the sight of a familiar Dominion standing on the other side of the empty warehouse. With a gun in hand, Fazal tapped its barrel against the side of his thigh and tilted his head in anticipation. “Don’t be shy, Francisco. You know why you’re here,” the wolf called out, allowing the echo of his voice to bounce off the walls and fill the void between them.
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The man obeyed and walked closer with two guards following him like panthers. He was shorter with hair just as dark and a sunk-in gaze that belonged to a traitor. His thin lips pulled up in a snarl at the sight of the gun. “Pull the trigger, you fucking idiot,” he roared at once whilst meeting Fazal’s glare. Each word was poisonous as the mere presence of the other filled him with loathing. “You need me,” he reassured all too obsessively, his eyes so wide they looked like they were about to pop out of his skull. Fazal’s features steeled as he aimed the gun at the man’s temple the more the distance between them shrunk.
“SHOOT ME,” the man shrilled, somehow controlling the tremor in his voice. “YOU CAN’T KILL ME.” He was so certain that his summoning was nothing but a bluff, that Michaela wanted to scare him with her scarecrow of a toy. But he wasn’t going to let Fazal get under his skin, not this time. He had brought two armed, large men with him while Fazal stood there alone, so who was the scary one- His thoughts were cut off by the movement of the gun as it was angled to his knee, trigger pulled. The bullet cut flesh as if it posed no resistance. The man tumbled down with a dreadful scream tearing from his lungs and his hands latching onto his knee. Red spilled from the wound like thick paint, the ebb and flow in time with a terrified heart. The agony burned him, ate him alive in a way that it shattered his brain - or at least that was what he felt. Tears threatened to fall down his cheeks when he noticed he could no longer feel his leg.
The men on his side didn’t flinch.
He yelled for their help, yelled for them to do something, to kill the bastard that was Fazal Khan, but they stood watching as if they could not hear him. As if he was a silent theater production of no importance. When they did move, it was to stand behind said target. To think a traitor himself, someone so damn confident in his art, had been outsmarted and made a fool - that alone gave Fazal pleasure beyond that of seeing Francisco dead. But, oh, that annoying voice… “SON OF A BITCH, YOU AND YOUR FUCKING RATS-”
Fazal’s deep laugh filled the room, mocking and terrorizing while it interrupted the futile screams. “You’re wrong, you know,” he deviated from the other’s vicious complaint. “It’s not that I can’t kill you, it’s a matter of I don’t want to.”
Fear glazed the man’s eyes, the current agony suddenly the least of his problems upon hearing those words. He heard of the rumors about a Dominion notorious underground for his ways of torture. What he gave others was as close as anyone could ever get to delivering Hell, with no remorse left and all the more sadism to satisfy. Whoever managed to piss Michaela off received a ticket to such treatment without a warning because God knew that the very Dominion was as loyal as he was cruel.
The wolf walked closer, each step forcing a shiver down the other’s body. “I’m glad to see the understanding in your eyes,” he said slowly, disturbingly calmly, upon recognizing the fear. And just then, the man was no longer able to look in the face of his punisher.
“You’re a monster,” he hissed under his breath once Fazal’s shadow fell upon his convulsing body.
A smile kicked up the corner of the Dominion’s mouth. “No, I’m Pestilence.”
