The Phantom Groom System

Chapter 6: Danny Reyes, Master of Martial Arts

Squint shook with fear, unsure if these two were friend or foe, and couldn't force out an answer.

Gimpy's eyesight was a little better, and the second he spotted the blades tucked at the stranger's waist, he froze solid.

Razor Society.

Ask anyone in Ashford County who the county sheriff was, and half of them would draw a blank. But ask them who ran the Razor Society, and every single person could give you a name.

Cutter had clawed his way up from nothing, running these streets since he was a kid. Pure ruthlessness had built the empire he now controlled. Every brothel, every restaurant, every fruit cart peddling vegetables in Ashford, none of it moved without the Razor Society getting a cut.

Vince might've been somebody in Blackwood Alley. Compared to the Razor Society, he was a joke.

What were these two doing looking for Vince?

Gimpy's eyes darted back and forth, scrambling for a plan. Tell the truth? Lie and try to send them off somewhere else?

Luckily, before he had to decide, a shout rang out from across the street, snapping both Razor Society men's attention away.

"Jimmy Kane!?"

Two men in linen shirts strode over quickly.

"What's Razor Society doing skulking around here?"

Jimmy hiccuped drunkenly, glanced at the grease-stained paper bags in the newcomers' hands, and smirked. "Well if it isn't the Shaw brothers, running errands for Kessler. What, tired of the fish-stink down at the docks? Come ashore to beg for scraps?"

Derek Shaw's face soured, though privately he was relieved, thank god they'd taken the food to go instead of eating at the restaurant. Another five minutes and these Razor Society bastards would've stumbled right onto Vince.

Steward Tate had made it very clear: Vince stays alive, no matter what.

Derek took a breath and kept his voice level. "Jimmy, I've got no time to rehash old grudges tonight. Whatever this is, we'll settle it another day."

Better to play it safe than pick a fight. He tried to keep things civil.

Jimmy wasn't having it. He sneered, took a long pull from his bottle, then smashed it against the ground.

Crack.

The instant the glass shattered, Jimmy and his partner already had knives drawn.

The Shaw brothers squared up too, faces going hard.

"Jimmy. You really want to settle this with blood tonight?"

"The hell you talking about?" Jimmy spat. "This is South Side. Razor Society turf. And you Kessler pricks go and poach a recruit right out of Blackwood Alley, bragging about it all over the county? You think we're gonna just let that slide?"

"Your turf?"

Derek saw where this was headed and dropped the polite act.

"Then how come your Boss Twelve got beaten half to death by our Steward Tate a few days back? Lost a good three streets over it, didn't he?"

Jimmy's eyes went bloodshot. "You're begging to die."

The street went dead silent, nothing but the sound of both sides breathing hard.

Just as they were about to clash, Jimmy's eyes flicked to Squint and Gimpy, frozen stiff in the middle of it all, and he barked, impatient, "The hell are you two waiting for? Can't you see what's about to happen here?"

"Get out of the way. Don't screw up my kill."

Squint and Gimpy dropped the body they were carrying and bolted to scramble clear.

"Hey, assholes, take the damn corpse with you!"

Jimmy glanced down at the mangled body left behind and asked, almost bored, "Who is this, anyway? Somebody really had it out for this guy."

Squint, scared out of his wits, blurted without thinking: "Vince."

The street went dead quiet.

"Who?"

Derek's eyes went wide with disbelief. He stepped closer, staring down hard, and finally confirmed it. This barely-recognizable pile of flesh really was Vince, the man they were supposed to be protecting.

What the hell, how did he end up like this?

"Who did this?!" Derek's voice cracked. "Who the hell did this?!"

Jimmy watched Derek unravel and burst out laughing.

"Ha! This is too damn good."

"We haven't even lifted a finger and the guy's already dead!"

"Kessler can't even keep their own new recruit alive! Ha ha ha!"

"Man, that's satisfying. Let's go."

Jimmy laughed himself out and turned to leave, his crew trailing behind. Watching this unfold was more entertaining than actually killing a Kessler man himself.

It was a long while before Derek finally snapped out of it, Jimmy and his men long gone from the street.

His brother Marcus, though, had already put it together.

The job Steward Tate gave them, they'd botched it completely.

They'd been told Vince mattered to something big Kessler had planned. If it went sideways, the two of them wouldn't be spared either.

And now the man was dead.

Marcus's eyes burned red, rage boiling over. He turned on Squint and Gimpy and stalked toward them, murder written across his face.

"I'll kill you both myself!"

A series of sharp cracks rippled through his body as the power of eighth-stage Body Tempering surged through him. He raised his fist, ready to end one of them on the spot.

Then a low whistle cut through the air behind him.

"Who's there?"

Marcus spun on instinct and swung.

The figure closing in fast didn't dodge, just threw a punch of his own.

Their fists met, and without so much as a flicker of hesitation, Marcus's arm bent wrong, twisting at an angle no joint should allow. A sickening crunch followed, and the bones, tempered through eight full cycles, shattered on contact.

"AAAHH!!"

Marcus screamed and staggered backward. When he finally caught his balance and looked down, his right arm hung useless, bone fragments jutting stark white through torn skin.

Across from him, Danny lowered his fist calmly.

Marcus had trained in the Iron Bone Method too, but whatever edge he had in reflexes or raw power, Danny simply outclassed him. That single punch could have dropped an ox. Against someone standing at full Body Tempering completion, it wasn't nearly enough.

"Marcus!"

Derek finally reacted. Seeing his brother mangled like that, he roared and charged, throwing a punch that split the air.

Danny's brow furrowed slightly. This time he didn't meet it head-on, he slipped to the side instead. Derek's strength was a notch below his own, but not by much. Ninth-stage Body Tempering, by the look of it, one small breakthrough away from full completion.

Two fighters this close to full completion, standing guard over Vince's place in the dead of night?

That kind of attention made sense, in hindsight. Once Danny had figured out what Kessler actually wanted Vince for, it had struck him as odd that no guards had shown up at all, not before he killed Vince, not during, not after.

He'd assumed Kessler avoided posting anyone, worried it might tip off the Razor Society.

Turned out they had sent guards after all. And a pair of serious fighters, at that.

If this had happened before tonight, even with the knife equipped, Danny wouldn't have stood a chance against these two.

But now

Danny slipped Derek's punch, dropped low, and drove a fist straight into his exposed side.

The blow landed square on his liver. A stabbing pain tore through Derek's body, his eyes bulging as his legs buckled under him.

Then Danny's knee filled his vision.

Crack.

A full-force knee strike caught him square in the head, sending his body flying backward, skull cracked at an angle no neck should bend.

Red and gray spilled across the ground.

One down. Danny moved like he had eyes in the back of his head, sidestepping the sneak-attack blade Marcus swung at him with his good arm.

He used the momentum to loop his arm around Marcus's neck.

One breath. Both hands clenched.

Snap.

Marcus's neck twisted clean around.

The Shaw brothers, Kessler's brightest hopes for breaking into the External Force realm, died that night at the hands of a man who'd learned the Iron Bone Method less than an hour earlier.

Across the whole of Ashford County, Danny Reyes had more than earned the title of master.