"No, I don't think I need any shoe polish."
Jenkins shook his head again, then asked, "I'm sorry, I haven't asked your name."
Bang! ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel•fire.net
The gunshot cracked through the air the moment the salesman finished speaking. Briny stared, horrified, at the smoking pistol in Jenkins's hand. If Hathaway hadn't been there to steady her, she would have collapsed.
"An interesting choice for a fake name."
The moment they left the shop, the owner had slammed the door shut and boarded up the window, so Jenkins had no fear of being seen.
"It's not a fake name! Wait—what are you doing, sir?"
The salesman groaned in agony, struggling on the flagstones. Jenkins's bullet had torn through his right leg, and now he could only claw at the cracks in the stone, desperately trying to drag himself away.
"Stephana Klee? That's definitely not your real name."
As he spoke, Jenkins fired again, another bullet striking the man's right leg. He couldn't kill him yet. Not until he understood the old key keeper's secret to leaving his body. For that, he needed to keep the soul tethered to its vessel.
"It's all right, it's all right."
Hathaway turned, gripping Briny's shoulders and steering her gaze away. She couldn't let her see the bloody aftermath.
"That fugitive he caught... the serial killer... he broke out of prison today. Look how good his disguise is. I didn't even recognize him."
Hathaway whispered her explanation as she pulled Briny away, retreating in the opposite direction. It was the most helpful thing she could do for Jenkins.
"I don't know what you're talking about! That is my real name!"
The salesman kept arguing, but Jenkins's divine insight was never wrong. It was a lie.
In hindsight, the old key keeper's plan was brilliant. He'd sent the gun wandering in the distance as a diversion, used that faceless undead creature as a second smokescreen, and then appeared right in front of Jenkins himself.
A perfect plan, really.
"Now, shut your mouth!"
Jenkins warned, pistol raised. The only thing he didn't understand was who held the gun circling in the distance. But the gun wasn't the priority. The priority was...
A gunshot cracked the silence again, but Jenkins hadn't pulled the trigger. He instinctively shielded the cat on his shoulder, but felt no impact.
He whipped his head around in alarm, his eyes searching for Hathaway and Briny in the distance, but the girls were safe.
It took Jenkins only a moment to understand. He spun back around to see a fresh bullet hole in the salesman's forehead. Dark, viscous blood oozed out, spreading slowly under the light of the twin red and blue moons and staining the flagstones black.
The world fell utterly silent. Once the wind died down, all Jenkins could hear was the rhythmic vibration of the steam pipes running along the walls. Unstable pressure, he noted absently. The pipes on this street needed maintenance.
The key keeper's soul floated out from the salesman's corpse, his spectral face frozen in an expression of shock. It seemed he hadn't expected to die this way either.
Jenkins lunged forward, raising his Spirit Striking Cane high.
He roared as the Spirit Striking Cane sliced through the air like a sword. It cut cleanly through the center of the old man's soul before striking the corpse below.
Fortunately, his body blocked the girls' line of sight; otherwise, it would have looked as though he were desecrating a corpse.
But the cane was useless. The soul he struck merely recoiled with a pained expression; it didn't dissolve like a snowflake.
The spirit shot away from him, and Jenkins vaulted onto the roof of a nearby shop, pursuing it with feline agility.
He hadn't even made it to the end of the street when the black aura of the Cursed Item—the gun—stopped its circling and shot straight toward them.
Jenkins didn't know what the deal was with that gun, but he knew he couldn't let the spirit reach it. He launched himself into the air, the twin moons casting a red and blue glow across his back. But brighter still were the two silver bands of light swirling around his right hand.
He plummeted downward, crashing right into the key keeper's soul. A torrent of maddening knowledge and strange whispers, already prepared, shot from Jenkins's hand and poured directly into the spirit's mind.
When Jenkins pushed himself to his feet, the spirit was frozen in place.
"I knew it. This is always the best way to deal with spirits."
A soul without a body's protection is incredibly vulnerable to supernatural influence. It's why there are so many types of malevolent spirits, each with their own bizarre powers.
He soothed his cat, which was frantic from the fast descent, and turned to deliver the final blow—to send the soul back to the dust whence it came. But just then, something changed.
Bathed in the eerie moonlight, the old spirit's face was still frozen in a mask of shock and pain. It hovered motionless in the middle of the street, but then the corners of its mouth began to slowly, horribly, curl into a chilling smile.
The spirit's eyes widened as if it had just grasped some fundamental truth of the universe. It threw its hands toward the sky as multicolored spots erupted across its gray form like a foul rash. It began to tremble, its spiritual body thinning into a mist, as if about to dissipate.
But its form solidified. Hundreds of eyes blinked open all over its surface as the spirit's essence turned pitch-black. Its limbs twisted and hunched like those of a diseased dwarf, and where its indistinct feet had been, eight spider-like legs now sprouted.
Transparent, cicada-like wings unfurled from its back, yet they seemed to be woven from disgusting gossamer. And in the center of those wings, a terrifying, distorted human face roared at Jenkins.
Jenkins took an instinctive step back before catching himself; he couldn't let this thing intimidate him. A wild theory began to form in his mind. This transformation, nine times out of ten, was a mutation caused by the blasphemous knowledge he'd inflicted upon it. The spirit was already unusual—it could possess bodies at will and withstand his Spirit Striking Cane. There had to be a reason for its resilience.
"Did I just bring this on myself?"
Jenkins felt an urge to bury his face in his hands, but that would have been suicidal. He raised his cane, ready to face the monster head-on, but to his surprise, it beat its wings and took to the air.