The Exorcist Doctor

Chapter 107 - Two Years // In the Making

Gael whistled low—the kind of whistle that sounded like a punctured lung letting out its last complaint—and waved Evelyn over. The clinic’s messenger immediately fluttered over from the far end of the hall with a mouthful of noodles bulging her cheeks, dust streaking her face.

“Dig,” he said, making a circular motion around the vault with his cane. “You’ve got claws. I’ve got style. You do the dirty work.”

Evelyn rolled her eyes but crouched anyway, starting to peel rubble off the square vault that’d toppled with them into the foyer. Gael turned back around—just in time to see five shadows lunging for his throat.

The Five Fingers.

They didn’t even hesitate. Spider claws raised, masks leering like clasped hands in grotesque prayer, they were already aiming for his face, so he threw his cane up just in time to catch the first two claws on steel.

“Really?” Gael clicked his tongue, throwing the two back before blocking the other three with his cane and gauntlet. “What the hell are you harassing me for? Don’t you lot have your own boss to deal with?”

Gloam, the blind man, sneered through his mask. “Old Banks is our patron too. You hurt him—”

“—you pay,” Flay, the skinless man, finished.

“Oh, Saintess preserve me.” Gael shoved all of them back, boots squealing on the cracked foyer tiles. “You think I came here to kill the sponsor of your little knitting club? He tried to crush me with furniture, in case your eyes weren’t working.”

Their answer was to collectively boot him in the ribs. He staggered, spat dust, then got punted again. And again. Till he was rolling head over heels straight out of the foyer, vaulted through a doorway like a ball someone had gotten bored of, and collided—of course—with Maeve back in the banquet hall.

The impact was dramatic. Umbrella locked with Fergal’s claws, Maeve was holding the line admirably when Gael’s back smacked her shoulder like an inconveniently large cabbage. Both of them spun sideways, clattering into the corner of the banquet hall.

She recovered first, straightening with her hair full of plaster dust, glare already cocked like a pistol. “Stop getting in my way.”

“Excuse me?” He staggered upright with one arm over his ribs. “You’re in my way. This was supposed to be a perfectly civilized duel with an old baron, and you—”

“You picked a fight with him.” She pointed her umbrella like an indictment. “So handle him.”

“I’d love to, but he’s apparently taken up the noble hobby of throwing furniture at my head—”

Before he could finish, Fergal himself barreled across the hall with all six arms wide. His Five Fingers came slashing in behind him, claws a silver storm.

Gael and Maeve forced themselves back-to-back.

“Give me blood!” she snapped.

He did, pushing blood through the ankle chain and into her veins. The chainlinks pulsed at once, like a vein coming to life, and Maeve tightened her grip around her umbrella as she swung it around—releasing a toxic-green surge of blood at the same time, striking Fergal and his Five Fingers dead-on to knock them all the way back to the far wall.

Her new Art, ‘Purging Umbrablood’, made it so she could control who her blood was toxic to. Gone were the days where she couldn’t just fire her blood indiscriminately out of fear of burning someone innocent, but that only meant she’d become a lot more liberal with her usage of her Art… and that meant he’d only been getting drained of his blood more than he liked.

But… at least the high-pressure blood cannons never fail.

As Maeve lowered her umbrella, panting, Gael swayed where he stood and grinned faintly. “I do admire a woman who knows what to do with my bodily fluids.”

“Shut up.”

Then the two of them collapsed in parallel stages of fatigue, knees bending, lungs burning. Yesterday’s Myrmur hunt had already sapped most of their strength, and neither of them really had the reserves to fight six gangsters, one baron, and half a mansion in the same evening.

Even still, Gael crawled forward, cane dragging behind him like a sulking pet snake. Evelyn had cleared the vault debris by now, so he forced himself to make the last few strides on hands and knees.

With a fumbling hand, he shoved the key into the lock and twisted.

Maeve, meanwhile, forced herself towards the toppled aisles of pots and plants on the other side of the foyer. She called for Liorin, voice sharp through fatigue, and the boy scrambled to her side. Together they clawed at the wreckage as well, dirt and shards flying, until—in the corner of his eye—her hands closed around cold silver. She yanked something out of the debris and cradled it against her chest with relief.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

On his end, the vault door gave way at last with a heavy groan. His grin split wide and wolfish as he yanked out the prize within.

Evelyn, peering over his shoulder, wrinkled her nose.

“…That’s it?” she said.

“That’s it.”

“It doesn’t even look important.”

“It is important. Shush now.”

Bleeding from scalp to boots, he staggered towards Maeve. Across the ruined foyer, she rose as well, clutching her flower pot, staggering step for step until they met in the middle.

The crowd around them had fallen silent. No more chatter, no more laughter. Dozens of guests ringed the devastation, lanternlight flickering on their wide-eyed faces.

Gael and Maeve stared at each other, wordless—and then they both dropped onto one knee.

“Marry me,” Gael said, holding out his prize.

“Marry me,” Maeve said, lifting her silver pot.

… The crowd blinked.

The two of them blinked.

Then they squinted like duelists who had, by mutual mistake, shown up with marriage proposals instead of pistols.

“… What?” Maeve breathed first?

Gael cleared his throat and held out the very pristinely bound book like a sacrament. “This is the newest, latest, unreleased volume of ‘Death of the Undeath’,” he said, and even his drunkenness couldn’t keep the note of triumph out of his voice. “It’s the first horror chronicle I told you to buy when we met, so… you know. This is volume seven. It’s not even out in Vharnveil yet, so I got it through certain back channels I’ll absolutely not describe to any law-adjacent person.”

Her eyes flicked at the cover of the book.

At the same time, a groan crawled across the floor from the left. Old Banks, stubborn as old wealth, was dragging himself towards them. “That book,” he rasped. “That book… is for my daughter. She loved the series… so on her birthday, I must offer it to her grave—”

“No offense, man,” Gael mumbled, not taking his eyes off Maeve, “but your daughter won’t be doing any reading. Let me give it to Maeve first, and then she can decide whether to lend it to your dead.”

Old Banks made a noise like a grandfather clock giving up the hour and sagged into unconsciousness.

Sleeping toxin on my blade.

Very humane.

Then he whipped his head down, staring at the silver flower pot in Maeve’s hands.

And everything in him—from drunk synapse to sober bone—recognized that pale, four-petal flower that drank moonlight like sacrament and spilled it back out in a calmer, older glow.

“No way.”

Maeve smiled with her eyes. “It’s called… a moonflower?” she breathed, sounding unsure. “It’s the flower that only blooms in pure moonlight, which Bharncair doesn’t get very often because of the Vile. This one was cultivated outside of the city and brought in. I think there are only… two moonflowers in Bharncair and Vharnveil combined?”

“No way,” he repeated.

“Did you know there’s a rumor around the moonflower?” she said, teasing now. “If you give a moonflower to someone, they’ll be bound to you, heart and soul, and they’ll never be able to leave your side.” Then her cheeks flushed. “Even if they die, they’ll be watching over you from the moon.”

He smiled. “Bit grim, isn’t it? You trying to get me killed for the symbolism?”

“Of course not,” she snapped.. “I just thought… you know… it’d be a nice gesture. And I had to wrestle six assholes to get it.”

From the right, a voice like a boulder with opinions groaned, “Shit.” Fergal hissed. He and his Five Fingers were lying on their stomachs, but Fergal was still trying to crawl towards her, lifting one scraped hand at her moonflower. “That thing… belongs to me. I need it. If I have it—”

“Cara doesn’t love flowers,” Gael interrupted. “Not like I do. You just wasted your time.”

Silence from Fergal.

Then a muffled, injured, “No way.”

Gael looked left and right, then he leaned in and kept his voice low. “She only pretends to love flowers in front of patients. You know, for brand consistency. The clinic’s got the flower cord bracelets, the wreaths, the pressed blooms on discharge papers—it’s a whole thing. Secretly, she doesn’t like the dirt. Even if you handed her the moon itself in a pot, she wouldn’t court you over it.”

Fergal’s shoulders collapsed. His Five Fingers, bruised and faithful, patted him as if he were a portable tragedy.

Gael couldn’t help it. He gave the gang boss a bright, medicinal smile. “Also, she wouldn’t like you anyway. You are, I must remind you, a professional gangster.”

Fergal surged half a meter forward in furious dignity before his legs got seized by five different pairs of loyal hands. “Another time, boss,” Aether the noseless wheezed. “We’ll help you get with the flower-lady later.”

Gael mimed ‘No luck for you’ as the Five Fingers dragged Fergal back. A few guests laughed, and then instantly pretended they hadn’t when Fergal glared back at them.

Now, it was just the two of them again.

Awkwardly, they exchanged their gifts with each other. Maeve’s eyes softened the instant she took the pristinely bound book in her hands.

“... Thank you,” she said earnestly.

Heat climbed up his neck in betrayal. He looked down at the Moonflower to avoid his face. “This really is the real deal,” he muttered. “The veins, the scent—gods, the scent.” He breathed in its faint, clean coolness, something like snow taught to be a perfume. “I can use this for my next bioarcanic equipment.”

But that wasn’t the proper answer to her question. He simply didn’t think Maeve would go however far she did to get him this flower that he’d been searching for ages, so…

He looked at her.

And she looked at him.

The same word was about to bubble out of their mouths when the mansion’s front doors detonated inwards.

Every muscle in the room did a synchronized flinch. Even the hellhounds outside whined three throats apiece as Cara stood framed in rain and lamp-smoke, hair pinned and physician’s apron scabbed with old blood stains.

Her gaze scanned the hall, cataloguing: furling petals of shattered chandeliers, a sleeping baron drooling on his carpet, six gangsters evacuating pride through their ears, and Gael offering her a bare, guilty smile in the middle of the carnage.

She didn’t smile back.

“... What the fuck happened here?”