The doorbell at 121A Cork Street rang once more.
Mrs. Vanrud opened the door, hesitated briefly at the sight of the smiling man before her, then asked softly,
"Lloyd?"
Joey nodded. She stepped aside to let him pass, watching his back as he climbed the stairs. After all these years, she couldn't help thinking, Lloyd had finally begun to widen his circle.
Yesterday's pursuit had stirred up a fair bit of chaos, but under the Purge Bureau's careful management of public opinion, it had been reframed as a manhunt for a fugitive.
The fiend had been forced by Lancelot into a steam well. Moments later, a pipe ruptured under Lancelot's blade, and scalding vapor roared through the shafts. Everyone concluded the creature must have perished in the searing heat. Yet during the Cleaners' follow-up sweep, no corpse was found. They searched deep within the steam well's core.
Nothing.
Another cloud of doubt. By the Reform Index, the fiend was certainly dead — but no one had laid eyes on the body.
Joey knocked, then let himself in without waiting. He had been reassigned as Lloyd's liaison with the Purge Bureau. The job had originally belonged to Shrike, but he was too busy mediating利益 disputes across the entire Lower District to babysit a trouble magnet like Lloyd.
The room carried the faint scent of tobacco. Lloyd was curled up on the sofa by the window, an unfinished cigarette still smoldering in the ashtray.
He didn't seem to notice Joey's arrival. He simply stared outside, where winter frost veiled the glass and blurred the world beyond.
"Mr. Holmes, this is the final report on the case. If you confirm everything looks right, we'll file and archive it."
Joey set the document on the low table before Lloyd and took a seat opposite him.
Though he'd known Lloyd less than a few days, Joey already felt oddly accustomed to him. The detective was unreasonable from start to finish — like a stray dog with no destination, sprinting into the wind with its tongue lolling out in wild delight. Yet at times, the beast would bare razor fangs, unshakable in its resolve to kill a fiend.
An uncontrollable man. Impossible to predict.
Still, Joey liked to try. Guessing what Lloyd might do next felt like buying a lottery ticket — and sometimes, miraculously, winning.
After a while, Lloyd seemed to wake from his daze. He glanced at Joey, then at the file. Joey expected a bit of small talk first, then a review of the report.
Lloyd, of course, did not follow expectations.
He pulled his blanket tighter around himself and reached beside the sofa for a bottle of liquor.
"Want a sip? Warms the bones."
"…"
"Hell of a thing — the heating pipes on Cork Street burst last night. Old age, they said. The repair crews worked through the night and still couldn't fix it. Whole street's without heat. Nearly froze to death."
He muttered as he took a long swig.
"And that damn old woman wouldn't let me sleep downstairs. Fireplace was blazing, too…"
Joey kept his smile in place and nodded. He had just come in from outside; the temperature shift hadn't struck him. But now that Lloyd mentioned it, the room did feel painfully cold.
"So, Mr. Lloyd, please review the follow-up report from yesterday. If everything checks out, we'll close the case."
Lloyd picked up the file. He hadn't flipped more than two pages before he asked curiously,
"Why ask me? I'm not part of the Bureau."
"But you're an experienced demon hunter. And you took part in the chase."
That much was true. The Purge Bureau's understanding of demon hunters was still shallow. Even after obtaining Ed's corpse for autopsy and analysis, all they'd done was widen the mystery.
Demon hunters were something else entirely. Empowered by secret blood, they possessed strength and senses far beyond ordinary humans — not to mention those mysterious authorities named after angels.
Lloyd said nothing more. Arthur's fascination with demon hunters had always been obvious. If the Bureau ever lost interest in him, that would be the real anomaly.
"So you've pinned all those murders on it? Fair enough."
He meant to ask something else, but the answer came to him before the words did.
The file detailed similar killings across Old Dunling prior to yesterday's massacre — brutal slaughters, messages of revenge scrawled in blood. They could all be attributed to the same fiend.
Yet something didn't sit right.
"This wasn't its first kill. The first was half a month ago — a gang member in a small district. The last was yesterday. Just a factory worker."
Lloyd's expression sharpened. He set the bottle aside and leaned over the report, eyes piecing scattered details into a slowly forming, shadowy story.
"What is it?" Joey asked, a flicker of excitement rising in his chest. As expected, this hunter could see things others missed.
"I think your Bureau noticed it too," Lloyd said quietly. "The fiend's choice of prey is… strange."
"Strange? But… aren't fiends like beasts? No pattern at all?"
To Joey, fiends were nothing but corrupted creatures — monsters from nowhere, assaulting humanity's hard-won order, killing any living thing on sight.
"No. Even beasts follow patterns."
Lloyd pulled an old map of Old Dunling from a cabinet and spread it out.
"This was its first appearance. The Lower District — chaotic, lawless. A perfect hunting ground. But it didn't stay. It kept moving inward, deeper into Old Dunling. The final kill was on the opposite fringe."
"A beast hunting for food or blood wouldn't leave the Lower District… It had a purpose. Revenge, written in blood."
Lloyd suddenly realized the gap between his knowledge and Joey's. He looked at the Bureau man — so heavily defined by labels — and asked gravely,
"Joey. Has the Purge Bureau ever encountered a rational fiend?"
"A rational… fiend?"
Joey froze. Fiends were mindless beasts. How could one be called rational?
He didn't answer. He didn't need to. Lloyd read the truth from the shock on his face.
"What do you mean… by that?"
Lloyd gathered his thoughts, sorting through what he knew, and explained in the simplest terms he could.
"A rational fiend is one that retains a degree of sanity after corruption… Or, to put it another way…"
He shook his head. Joey didn't know the stories of the Hunter Order. No need to go that deep.
"Think of it as unstable. Not fully consumed. No safeguards, no restraints. A sliver of reason steering a body driven mad with power."
He paused.
"Like a demon hunter."