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Saint Brigid's always felt just right in the morning.

The building was beautiful, in that gothic monstrosity sort of way. With lovingly crafted limestone arches and high windows adorned with the stained glass portraits of saints who looked perpetually disappointed in the members of this particular parish. But it was the people that gave the place life. Old women discussing everyone's business except their own and young families trying to keep children quiet through Mass. It was the people, carrying burdens too heavy for one person and pretending otherwise, that made Saint Brigid’s special.

Plus the fact that it shared a name with his late mother also helped.

Bret spent most mornings listening. It was amazing what people told you when they thought you genuinely cared. Which, unfortunately for him, he did. Which meant that sometimes, even when he didn’t intend for it, he often found himself pulled into circumstances that he really had no business being in.

And really, Bret wouldn’t have it any other way.

[color=C8E39A]"Morning, Father Riordan."[/color]

The [url=https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/12/29/multimedia/29dexter-slater-twvg/29dexter-slater-twvg-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale]priest[/url] looked up from his papers. [color=8FDEFF]"Bret."[/color] A pause. [color=8FDEFF]"You look like shit."
[/color] Father Riordan was not some kind of hellfire and brimstone preacher, but he also wasn’t one to mince words. Bret appreciated this. Too many people he had met in both the intelligence community and also in life, spent most of their time dancing around the true meaning of the words. He admired bluntness and the endeavour to be forthright. When Riordan reached out to Bret six months prior, asking him to leave his life in England behind and join him in Calder City, it was done with all the subtlety of a hammer.

[color=C8E39A]"Thank you."[/color] Bret grimaced slightly as he dropped into the front pew of the church. He glanced up at the altar where Father Riordan had spread out all of his papers. The man had no time for an office or maybe he just liked the smell of the place. [color=C8E39A]”You say the sweetest things to me.”[/color]

[color=8FDEFF]"You should probably go back tk bed for a few hours. You’ll scare off all the regulars."[/color]

[color=C8E39A]"And you should probably retire, you old fuck."[/color]

Father Riordan snorted. [color=8FDEFF]"Fair."[/color]

Once the cobwebs had temporarily cleared again, Bret got up from his seat and made his way over the altar with the Father. He glanced down at one of the sheets, a breakdown of the day ahead. Father Riordan was a stickler for time. Bret put that down to the old man being ex army, a fact that not many beyond himself knew. The food bank opened at nine and the shelter intake started at ten. His schedule for the day was already full and he hadn’t even had his second cup of tea yet.

Naturally, the universe decided that this was the moment to complicate things.

[color=E2BDE9]"Excuse me?"[/color]

The voice that came from behind the two men was hesitant, barely carrying if not for the echo of Saint Brigid’s old walls.

Bret turned to see [url=https://i.pinimg.com/236x/21/74/61/2174619c8cecbfbe04492d8fe748ce79.jpg]a woman[/url] standing near the doorway. Her arms were folded against her chest, a clear sign of distress and anxiety. You didn’t need secret training to figure that out. You just had to be human. She was early twenties, gorgeous but she had tired eyes. And she was nervous. The kind of nervous that came from being watched.

[color=E2BDE9]"I've got a problem."[/color] She held her breath for a moment before continuing. [color=E2BDE9]”I was told there might be someone here that can help. No police.”[/color]

Bret didn’t hesitate when he gestured toward a chair. [color=C8E39A]”Please. Take a seat.”[/color] The minute someone said “No police.” Alarm bells started going off in his head. Normally, it meant they themselves were in a deep kind of trouble. It wasn’t remotely alien for people to turn to the church for the sanctity and secrecy of the Seal of Confession. They thought it gave them some form of anonymity. [color=C8E39A]”What’s your name?”[/color]

[color=E2BDE9]“So Mi.”[/color] She sat, her hands trembling slightly on her lap as Father Riordan left to go make some tea. He knew better than to get involved in whatever Bret was about to do. It was an unspoken truth between the two of them. [color=E2BDE9]"My little brother, Tae."[/color] There it was. It was almost always family. [color=E2BDE9]"He owes… something, I’m not entirely sure what."[/color] Bret remained quiet. People filled the silence eventually. [color=E2BDE9]"He says he doesn't."[/color] Another pause. [color=E2BDE9]"But they're always coming around, asking for him and getting really annoyed when I say he isn’t there."[/color]

[color=C8E39A]"Do you have any idea who they could be?"[/color]

She looked away. That answered the question immediately. It wasn’t police or debt collectors. The look that she tried to hide showed one thing. Fear; real fear. [color=E2BDE9]"People working for El Jefe."[/color] That name meant something; not in wider Calder but in the borough of Wicklow. 
It was not enough to make headlines but it was big enough not to ignore. 
El Jefe; a  local crime lord, no name to put to a face and no face to put to a name. He wore a lucha libre mask and as far as the streets knew, nobody living knew his name or what he looked like beneath the mask. Drugs. Protection rackets. Illegal gambling. Rumours of much worse. That’s who El Jefe was to the people of Wicklow.

[color=C8E39A]"And when they come round, are they just asking for Tae or are they asking for other things?”[/color]

So Mi swallowed hard. [color=E2BDE9]"They keep asking where he gets it."[/color]

Bret frowned. [color=C8E39A]"Gets what?"[/color]

[color=E2BDE9]"He won't tell me."[/color] She lowered her voice. [color=E2BDE9]"But he keeps coming home different."[/color] Different. That word lingered. [color=E2BDE9]"He doesn't sleep. He barely eats and the other night, he punched through a kitchen door. And his eyes...they glowed."[/color]

That got his attention. Not dramatically. Just enough. The Pilgrim stirred somewhere deep inside him. A road branching. A warning. Not danger. Not yet. But significance. [color=C8E39A]"Do you know where your brother is now?"[/color]

So Mi shook her head. [color=E2BDE9]“But I know where his boyfriend lives. Does that help?”[/color]

By noon, Bret had set off on the path. By two o'clock he had spoken to the boyfriend and gotten a photograph and by four, he had a trail. As the clock struck five, he was standing on the roof of a derelict apartment block watching a terrified teenager sprint through an industrial district. The boy, Tae, wasn't running from the police. He was running from three men carrying guns.

[color=C8E39A]"Wonderful."[/color]

Tae vaulted a fence and Bret followed from the rooftop. The Pilgrim unfolded around him. The very city herself became movement. In his eyes, it was not streets, nor buildings, it was paths. Stretching out before him, there were hundreds of them. Some were dead ends, others littered with danger.

With momentum on his side, Tae dropped into an alley. One gunman followed whilst the other two went around to cut the boy off. That was a wrong choice. The Pilgrim whispered in Bret’s ear. Loose brickwork and a weak railing lay ahead. He adjusted course instinctively. With a leap and a hand on rusted metal, he flew down beanth the roof gap as if he was weightless. Sometimes, it felt like the city seemed to rearrange itself beneath his movements. 

Bret landed atop a shipping container and kept moving. Never slowing. Never stopping. The gunman looked up too late as he struck him from above. He tackled him to the floor, it was messy. Not like the movies made it look. Bret managed to fight his way to a mounted position and cracked the man with several swift left fists to the face. 

Tae had gained some distance. The remaining pursuers split. Another mistake. The Pilgrim loved mistakes. Bret climbed up a fire escape and back  onto the rooftops. His body moved before conscious thought could catch up. Every jump felt inevitable and every landing certain. The city wasn't an obstacle. It was a map. And Bret knew how to read it. There was the whisper again, this one sounded like a racing heartbeat, Bret stopped and looked down as one assailant slowed, obviously not in the shape to be doing this sort of exercise. A loose roof slate thrown accurately and he was out. Two down, one to go.

The chase ended at a warehouse overlooking the river. Why were they always by the river? Tae stumbled inside. Desperate and panicked. Bret slipped through a side entrance moments later. The building was empty. There was no sign of Tae or his pursuer and usually Bret had a pretty good sense of where people were. 

There was not a single trace, like they had just vanished into thin air. 
As he searched, trying to ignore the raging pain coming felt the sounds he sustained the night before, he noticed that he was surrounded. Not by attackers but by crates. Crates filled with small glass vials. Hundreds of them. As Bret examined them, he noticed they contained a luminous orange liquid. When he decided to pick one up, the hairs on his neck rose immediately. The Pilgrim screamed danger like a comically loud klaxon. 

This was not an immediate physical threat. Instead it felt like something far worse. The path ahead darkened. He turned the vial over. There were no labels or markings or manufacturer that he could discern. Just a symbol stamped into the glass. A black crown. Simple. Distinct and intentional. 

Footsteps echoed somewhere above. Bret dove into the shadows and listened intently. Then the voices started. Two men. 
"...Jefe wants this next shipment moved tonight."
Bret froze.

"The coke or the King’s Blood?" This was followed by a hearty laugh.

"Don't call it that."

More footsteps as they descended towards the mountain of vials.

"Too late, that’s what they’re calling it on the streets."

Bret stared at the vial in his palm. The glowing liquid inside shifted like captured lightning. King’s Blood. He had heard about it only in the hushed breaths of people who didn’t think anyone was listening. It was a drug that gave its user temporary powers. They only lasted a few hours but that was usually enough to create addicts. It was a simple methodology, supply and demand. People would do anything to feel special and gaining the abilities usually reserved for the Grays and doing so at little cost? It was genius really.

As Bret prepared to leave, he heard one last thing. He didn’t hear it all that clearly but he could definitely make out one thing; The Velvet Room. The path inside his head had just shifted again. The same instinct that led him here now pointed somewhere deeper. Much deeper. Whatever this operation was, Bret and the Pilgrim had only just taking the first step.

[color=C8E39A]”Bollocks.”[/color]