Chapter Text
One of the men who helped break five of Edourd’s ribs showed up at their doorstep at 9 pm, wringing his hands and chewing his lip. Richter remembered what he’d looked like, even if the police hadn’t been able to do anything with the description. There had been no police sketch artists, no picking suspects out of line ups. They’d just disinterestedly taken their report, filed it, and then washed their hands of the whole mess. Annette and Maria had spent the hour since they’d come back from the hospital raging about the injustice of the corrupt justice system, just like they had every night for the past week. Even if Richter hadn’t recognized him, the man had a yellowing bruise at his temple, where Edouard had clipped him before getting shoved to the ground. The week that had passed since the assault made it look old and nasty. It was him.
“I’m here to-”
Richter slammed the door in his face. There was a beat of stunned silence, and then the man began pounding insistently on the door. Tera stuck her head out of the kitchen from where she’d been making tea. Tera’s primary coping mechanism for stress was making various foodstuffs and beverages and force feeding them to whoever happened to be in her vicinity.
“Richter, what’s-?”
“We have to go!” Annette and Maria had appeared at some point, and were watching him pull on his shoes from the doorway. “One of those thugs is here, if we hurry out the back we can-”
“No.” Her face dangerously impassive, Annette took a step forward. “I’ll answer it.”
“Annette-”
“Don’t you do MMA? What are you so worried about?”
“He came to our house! He could– I-I don't know, burn it down, or something!”
Behind her, Maria threw her hands in the air. “Why would he burn it down?”
“Look, I’ve never been involved in crime before, we can’t be too careful–”
“You make it sound like we’re the ones doing the crime–”
While he and Maria were bickering like children, Annette stepped past him, undid the deadbolt, and very calmly opened the door. The man was still there, looking anxious in a way that didn’t suit his huge, bulky build. If Richter was a more optimistic man, he might say he looked guilty.
“Good, I’m here to-”
Annette punched him in the face. The man had half a foot and at least a hundred pounds on her, but he went stumbling back anyways, tripping over the short set of townhouse steps and landing on the sidewalk in a heap. As Maria cheered and the man held up a hand to protect his face, Annette surged down the stairs after him. She didn’t even bother to roll up the sleeves of her baggy yellow sweatshirt. She reeled back to clock him again, and Richter had gone to enough of her boxing matches to know how hard Annette could punch. He was willing to bet she would’ve broken his nose if Tera hadn’t sprinted out the doorway and grabbed her by the back of her sweatshirt. It happened so suddenly that Annette’s feet went out from under her, and she probably would’ve fallen down the stairs too if Tera hadn’t been holding her up. Maybe she’d have crashed into the man and broken his nose anyways. Or maybe something more severe, like his collarbone. A nice fracture in his jaw. Richter certainly wouldn’t cry about it.
“Annette,” Tera said in a low voice, “Now he has grounds for assault. I made you tea, it’s on the table. Go have some.” She gave her one firm shake and released her. Annette stood there gasping for breath, staring down the man. Oh, Richter couldn’t see her face, but he knew exactly the glare she had on. Annette only had one glare, and it could corrode steel. Her balled fists shook by her sides, and for a minute he thought she was about to ignore Terra and kick the man in the gut. He still hadn’t gotten up, arranged pitifully on the ground. He had this placid look on his face that made Richter think it was on purpose. He was staying on the ground to make them think he wasn’t a threat. It made him want to follow Annette down the steps and break his jaw for her.
After a moment, Annette sagged and exhaled in exhaustion. She turned and mutely trudged back up the stairs. Richter stepped out on the porch right before she slammed the door behind her. He didn’t want Tera out alone with this creep.
“Thank you,” The man said, dusting himself off and getting to his feet. He held his hands up to show he wasn’t a threat. Apparently he wasn’t entirely stupid. “I just wanted to-”
“Where do you get off, thinking you can come around menacing my family?” Tera snapped. “Are you here to beat up another college student? Get out of here before I call the police.”
“Wait!” The man took a step forward. Tera took a step back. Richter moved so he was at her shoulder, close enough to both pull her back and hit the man if he had to. “Like I’ve been trying to say! I’m just here to apologize. It wasn’t…” The man trailed off uncertainly, looking at the ground. He sighed and gestured in vague defeat. “It wasn’t supposed to get this big.”
“You came to the wrong place to apologize,” Richter snarled, unable to help himself. Tera gave him a sharp look that he ignored. “Now, she’ll call the police, but I’ll finish what my girlfriend started and put you in the hospital right next to Edouard. Get out of here.”
“Then let me help! You don’t have any evidence, and the police won’t help you. That’s why you haven’t been able to do anything, right? I can testify.”
Richter opened his mouth to protest. Before he could, Tera put a hand on his shoulder, her brows knit together in uncertainty. She squeezed his shoulder once.
“...Call Alucard.”
They let the man in.
Alucard, technically, was not his cousin. Richter vaguely thought of him as an uncle the way he thought of Trevor as one, but Alucard and Trevor had no actual legal connection. Trevor had married Sypha, and Alucard had just. Always lived with them. Richter remembered asking about it once, when he was very young. Trevor had gleefully said the three of them were living in sin, and Sypha had elbowed him in the side and said that Alucard was just a friend. A very good friend, she’d said, waggling her eyebrows. Richter wasn’t sure how he hadn’t figured out all three of them were dating until he was thirteen. Maybe he was a little dense. Right now, though, he wasn’t thinking about the dynamics of his cousin’s messy interpersonal relationships. He was mostly grateful Sypha and Trevor had picked a lawyer with an Ivy League degree to be their third.
“Who gave you your orders?” He interrogated through the phone. They were all gathered around the tiny kitchen table, with Alucard on speakerphone. They didn’t have enough chairs for everyone, and only Richter and the man –Mizrak– were sitting. Richter had sat down to call, Mizrak had sat down because he’d been presented with a chair, and everyone else had elected to hover threateningly around him.
Richter didn’t really like the way Alucard talked. He had a soft voice, which might have been pleasant enough if he didn’t always talk to everyone like they were children. Being in his general proximity for longer than five minutes made Richter want to rip his hair out. He even talked to his partners like that. Richter wasn’t entirely sure how Trevor and Sypha hadn't dumped him yet. Watching Mizrak squirm at the way Alucard talked to him, he’d never been more grateful.
“I don’t,” Mizrak said. “I got a call, and he didn’t give his name. That’s all.”
Alucard’s silence was incredibly judgemental.
“So, to recap,” He said after a beat, “You received a phone call from an anonymous man, who told you to go beat up one of the college students protesting the gentrification of the neighborhood, and you gladly met up with a band of men you claim never to have met to go merrily brutalize him.”
“Yes?” Mizrak said, uncertainly.
You could lead an elephant through the holes in Mizrak’s story. Richter glared at him– had been glaring at him, had started once he’d shown up and never stopped. Everyone else, crowded around behind him and breathing down his neck, glared even harder. None of it magically made Mizrak open up.
“Mizrak,” Alucard sighed, sounding profoundly disappointed, “If you really want to help, you need to be as honest with us as possible. Right now, all we have is the testimony of one thug of no particular importance.” Mizrak bristled at that, but Alucard bulldozed on. It was probably because he couldn’t actually see Mizrak, but Richter thought he was rude enough that he would’ve done it if he was here in person too. “You’d be tried for assault and battery, you would presumably plead guilty, and you would go to prison. And whoever paid you will continue to send thugs after peaceful student protestors. Look at the children you’re sitting with now. They’re involved in this too. They could be next. Do you want that on your conscience?”
Mizrak actually did look around at them, and then immediately went back to looking at the table. Richter focused on the half-cold cup of tea Tera had forced him to take, so he’d stop focusing on how badly he wanted to punch Mizrak in the face.
“...He’s a good man,” Mizrak said after a beat. “I know he can redeem himself.”
“You plan to repent by turning yourself in. Can he not do the same?”
Mizrak hunched in on himself, picking at the cuff of his sweatshirt. Tera had very pointedly not served him tea, so he didn’t have anything else to fidget with.
“...He’s doing it for the right reasons,” He protested weakly. “It’d clean up the neighborhood. Get the crime rate down–”
“And drive out every small business here,” Maria sniped over whatever Alucard had been able to say. She was glorious in her fury, in a very specific way that remind Richter of a chihuahua yapping at you from a rich woman’s purse. “Raise the cost of living. Displace everyone here– I know we won’t be able to afford the rent. But as long as you get your pretty, clean, white neighborhood–”
“It isn’t like that!” Mizrak protested loudly, half-rising from his chair. Everyone in the kitchen tensed. Tera shoved Maria to the back of the gaggle, behind her and Annette. Richter shot to his feet, glowering. Mizrak looked furious and righteous for a moment, looking around defiantly, before his gaze landed on Maria. She looked furious. She looked so tiny, glowering around Annette's shoulder. Richter was familiar with this. Maria was the loudest, and she was also the smallest. She was the weakest link, and Richter was ready for Mizrak to swing on her. He was so fucking ready to lay Mizrak out on the floor and let Tera call the police. He leaned forward in preparation, going up on the balls of his feet. Mizrak was still staring at Maria, and Richter couldn’t see his face, but he could see Maria giving him a look that could strip paint.
Abruptly, Mizrak sagged, all the fight gone out of him.
“We help people– we used to help people.” He scrubbed a hand down his face and collapsed back into his chair. “I used to volunteer at the soup kitchen every week. Clothing drives. We used to visit hospices and nursing homes. I don’t know–” He choked on a ragged breath that was a hair away from being a sob. Richter shifted uncomfortably.
“But then we couldn’t pay to keep the building open, and it was all jeopardized–”
“And all you had to do,” Alucard continued, tinny over the phone speaker, “Was do the dirty work for a mysterious benefactor.”
“Yes,” Mizrak admitted brokenly. He was wearing a pendant, Richter realized suddenly. A little round medallion, dainty and almost feminine around his thick neck. He couldn’t make out the engraving, but Tera wore one just like it, and so he knew what it depicted. Saint Christopher, lifting a child high on his shoulder to ferry across the river. Soup kitchens, and clothing drives, and alms for the dying–
“Did we get rolled by a church?” He blurted.
“Richter,” Tera snapped, “I won’t have that kind of talk–”
“No,” Alucard mused. “It was definitely a church.”
Mizrak was, tellingly, silent.
“That’s ridiculous!” Tera spluttered.
“Is it?” Richter looked at their popcorn ceiling so he didn’t have to look at Tera. There was a huge brown stain smack in the middle, spread out wide and reaching like a mud puddle. He didn’t know what had caused it. It hadn’t been there when he’d first come to live with Tera and Maria, but it’d be there for so long, he wasn’t sure when it’d first seeped through either.
“The only church in this area is–”
“Tera, I know you think the world of the guy. But hasn’t he always seemed a little…”
“Elitist?” Annette supplied.
“Pompous.” Maria said.
Richter shrugged. “I was just going to call him an ass.”
Tera looked away. “Emmanuel wouldn’t–”
Mizrak flinched, and that was all the confirmation any of them needed.
“...It wasn’t his idea,” Mizrak said, lamely. “And it was all to keep the church open. We couldn’t help anyone if it closed.” He looked around at them all, first Maria, and then Richter, and then Tera, and then finally Annette, who had hit him so hard that her knuckles were already beginning to bruise. Her fists were still clenched at her sides, trembling. Richter wanted to put his arm around her and rub the tension out of his shoulders and tell her it was going to be okay. Tera sniffled wetly, and he wanted to comfort her too, wanted to squeeze her in a hug the way she used to do when he was little,
“...But I guess we aren’t doing that anyways.” Mizrak sounded absolutely miserable. It didn’t balm Richter’s anger the way he thought it would.
“The church must be a front for something else.” Alucard sounded the way he always did, aloof and unbothered by petty human affairs. Richter could picture him stroking his chin in thought. “Employing a group of church volunteers to play thug is nonsensical. Maybe a money laundering scheme… But if they’re willing to resort to such odd measures, they must desperately need to protect their reputation. Mizrak, do you really not know who’s supplying your Abbot with funds?”
“...I’ve heard a name. I didn’t recognize it. Drolta, maybe?”
Alucard’s side of the line went gravely silent. When Richter glanced over at his family, all huddled together miserably, Tera was looking away, her lip quivering. Maria was squeezing her wrist, but she’d never known what to say to people to comfort them.
“You know who she is,” he said. Talking to Alucard was a lot easier than having to watch that. “So that means you can bury her, right?”
“...How badly do you all want to stop this?” Alucard said after another beat. He no longer sounded condescending and above it all. Richter had known Alucard nearly all his life, but he’d never heard him sound so serious. This must be what he sounded like when he took on a case. His knees nearly went weak with relief. Alucard was going to help them. Alucard had an idea.
“...I want whoever thought they could hurt Edouard behind bars,” Annette’s voice was starting to shake. Apparently, they were all going to break down in this kitchen. “He’s always helped people who needed it. And I always knew it was dangerous, but I never thought…” She blinked once, hard. “...More than anything. I want my town back and I want Edouard safe more than anything.”
“I can’t let this go on,” Mizrak said next. “If I had a hand in it, it’s only right that I should help stop it. It won’t make up for anything, but…”
“I just want my town to be left alone.” Richter realized, belatedly, that he was still standing, and awkwardly sat back down. He turned to look at Tera. Mizrak and Annette were looking at her too, and Maria, usually the first to speak up about any kind of injustice, was quiet, still squeezing Tera’s hand and looking at her worriedly.
“You’re right, Richter,” Alucard said. “I do know who that is. Drolta Tzuentes is the vice president of a very powerful tech company.”
Richter shrugged. “So what’s that got to do with gentrifying the neighborhood? Why are they going around employing church volunteers?”
“It’s a cycle, of sorts. Tech companies like BlackSun employ people who are very skilled, and very used to a certain quality of life. It drives the price of amenities and rent, and lets them… how’d you put it, Mizrak? Fix up the neighborhood? Tech companies don’t deign to associate with the commonfolk, so gentrification seems the easy answer.”
“But why Machecoul? We’re just a residential suburb. There’s plenty of better options. We don’t have anything to offer.”
“It’s trendy. More attractive to new hires. Removed from the stress of the city, less pollution. The employees they’re going to attract will think it’s going to be cheaper. And the shift to remote work also means they don’t all need to be located in big cities, so they can comfortably establish themselves in a less urban location to achieve that.” Alucard sighed, and it was probably the most human noise Richter had ever heard him make. “But all my rambling has a point. BlackSun has a legion of lawyers. Actually good ones, like me. And as an established corporation, they have more power, more reach, and more connections than I could ever hope to have. If we charge in at them blindly, even with Mizrak’s testament, they’ll make us into laughingstock.”
“So, what– you’re going to tell us to give up? Roll over and let all this happen?” Tera’s voice sounded wet and raw. She wasn’t crying, but her face was red, and she was shaking with the effort of holding back tears.
“Quite the opposite,” Alucard said. “I have an idea. And it may even work. But it’s very… unconventional. And if it goes badly, there could be consequences. So I need to know that you’re all on board. Maria, considering the last time I saw you, you ranted for ten minutes about the situation in your neighborhood, I assume you still want this taken care of?”
“Yes,” Maria said, without hesitation.
“Well, that’s four. Tera?”
Tera was staring at the kitchen floor. Richter wished she’d look at Maria, at him, at anyone. He wished she’d cry. He wished she’d scream. He wished she’d do anything but stand there in tense, painful silence.
“Yes,” Tera hissed, and her voice finally broke on a sob. She put her head in her hands, and as Mizrak jumped out of his chair to offer it to her and Maria helped her to it, Alucard spoke again, once again sounding completely untouched by the strife of the world.
“Good. Meet me at the bus stop on the corner of third. You won’t all fit in the car.”
It was a cold night. They all stood huddled together at the bus stop, waiting for Alucard, their breath fogging in the air. Annette huddled under Richter’s arm, who had Maria burrowed into his other side, who had both arms wrapped around Tera, leeching body heat. Mizrak stood a couple paces away, hunched into his coat and shivering.
“...So,” He breached awkwardly, “This plan your lawyer friend has is definitely illegal.”
“Just think of it as activism,” Maria said, a little haughtily. Annette chuckled, but Richter just shifted uncomfortably. Mizrak must have been desperate for conversation, because he caught it out of the corner of his eye, and instead of letting it go and leaving Richter with his dignity, he said, “You don’t like that.”
“I’m not accepting criticism from a criminal thug,” Richter snapped. Annette rubbed his shoulder comfortingly.
“We’re all about to be criminals,” She said softly. “It’s not the same, Richter.”
“We’re probably just… breaking and entering, or something. To steal evidence.” Maria sounded a little too excited about that prospect. “We won’t be hurting anybody– well, we will, but it’ll be people who deserve it.”
“I’ve never broken in somewhere,” Mizrak mused.
“Just brutalize twenty-year-olds, then?” Annette snapped. Mizrak sighed in defeat.
“Children, please.” Tera sounded tired, so Richter shut up. He didn’t really know Abbot Emmanuel personally, but he had young, hazy memories of him hanging around the house sometimes, when he and Maria were very young. He supposed if he found out Maria was going around scheming people out of their livelihoods, or something, he’d be upset too. He did feel upset, for unrelated reasons, and it made him feel guilty.
The silence hung heavy around them. Someone’s teeth were chattering. Richter glanced up idly at the sky. It looked like rain.
“I just… don’t want to be a criminal,” He said abruptly, aware of how simple and childish it sounded. He understood, intellectually, that crime was, like all things, nuanced. Not everyone who committed a crime set out with evil in their hearts. They weren’t going to kill anyone, or hurt anyone. He trusted Alucard not to make them do that. It wasn’t the same. But he still felt the guilt like a vice around his heart, and if he’d been asked to picture ‘a criminal’, he would’ve pictured a slick, suave man in a nice suit, ingratiating himself into his mother’s good graces, and saying all the right things, and slipping away like smoke with all his family’s savings.
Maria punched him in the shoulder. It was meant to comfort him. It would’ve comforted him, under other circumstances. But they were standing on a street corner and half past ten, with a violent thug, waiting for his insane sort-of-cousin to show up and give them illegal marching orders.
“We won’t get caught,” She assured him.
“Yeah,” Annette chimed in, her chuckle only a little forced. “We’re all too fast for them to catch us all.”
“And if you get caught,” Maria added eagerly, “We’ll break you out of jail!”
“No one’s going to jail,” Alucard said from behind them, and they all jumped. Richter knocked his head against Annette’s. Mizrak was standing a little too close to the curb and almost fell and ate shit against the street. He heard Tera sigh in resignation, and they all turned around as one.
Alucard looked pale and elegant in the flickering streetlight. He had always been washed out and unhealthily pale –Richter vaguely remembered Sypha saying something about him being anemic, or something, once– but against the urban dark, he was striking. He surveyed them and sighed out through his nose.
“You’re right that it is illegal,” He admitted, which did nothing to alleviate Richter’s nerves. “But we’re not breaking and entering. And we’re not going to get caught. We’re going to do this right.”
“Are you an expert?” Richter genuinely wasn’t sure if Mizrak was being sarcastic or not. He was leaning towards earnestness. He supposed if you were about to go make a series of horrible life decisions, you’d want to be led along by a skilled hand.
Alucard chuckled. “Not me. I have a colleague who specializes in… well, something like this.”
Maria raised an eyebrow. “They specialize in exposing corporate schemes and preventing gentrification?”
“Think of it as…” Alucard trailed off, looking for a word that wouldn’t completely compromise their faith in his plan. “...Corporate espionage.”
“If this is dangerous, I don’t want the kids involved,” Tera cut in harshly. “And if your friend is so well-versed in this, I don’t see what you need us for.”
“Well, you can explain it to him better than I can. And we may need use of your skills, Tera.”
“I’m a computer scientist,” Tera said flatly. “Not a cat burglar.”
“Exactly.” Alucard leaned out past them, his blonde hair nearly white under the lamplight. “Oh, look. The bus is here.”
They trundled onto the bus awkwardly– well, most of them felt awkward. Alucard was acting as if this was entirely mundane, and not something that could ruin a lot of lives if it went badly– wake up, run out to the grocery store, commit corporate espionage. The bus was nearly empty, except for an old man slumped over in a heavy coat up front and a teenager with her headphones on in the back. They stayed clumped together anyways, descending on the seats in the middle. Richter ended up in the seat next to Mizrak, somehow. It was almost comforting. Mizrak was just as nervous as he was, all twitchy and anxious and absently rubbing the new bruise blooming across his jawline. Granted, it probably wasn’t actually nerves. Just guilt.
“It will all be very simple,” Alucard said primly, turning in his seat to face the rest of them. “His presence in Machecoul at all implies he was thinking about doing something about BlackSun anyways. Mizrak might be able to give him more information to work with, and your testimony gives us an opening. We just let him do his job, and he’ll manipulate things so that I’ll be able to take legal action and actually stand a chance.”
Something in there triggered something in Richter’s brain. “What do you mean, he’s already thinking about doing something? What are you getting us into?”
Alucard sighed like Richter was being the difficult one here, and turned back around in his seat. “Just trust me, Richter. And don’t discuss criminal activity on the bus. It’s foolish.”
The rest of the bus ride passed in silence. Maria and Annette were whispering about something to each other in low voices Richter couldn’t make out. Probably how eager they were to commit vigilante justice. Alucard insisted they were going to be minimally involved, but Richter doubted Maria’s ability to stand back and not charge headlong into action against a corporation like BlackSun– and what was that name, anyways? Who came up with that? What committee of people signed off on that? Did no one realize how juvenile and edgy it sounded?
Richter shifted in his seat. He couldn’t even look out the window– Mizrak had the window seat, and he was too big for Richter to look around. He had his head bowed, muttering under his breath. He was praying, Richter realized after a minute. Probably for forgiveness for this whole mess. Good. He hoped the guilt ate him alive.
He looked over his shoulder to start a conversation up with Tera, but she was scrolling through her phone, staring blankly at the screen. The bus hit a pothole, and they all jolted in their seats. The sky was making good on its threat, and it was drizzling, tap-tap-tapping against the roof.
Richter put his head down and tried to think legal thoughts.
They rode for nearly twenty minutes. They were going to the very edge of Machecoul, to the nice end of the neighborhood. The weather had only worsened during the journey, and they stepped off the bus into a disgustingly nice neighborhood in the pouring rain. None of them had dressed for rain. Alucard pulled his coat up over his head to keep the rain off him and set off down the road at a rushed little half-run, the rest of them scurrying after him. Nice neighborhoods like this always made Richter feel melancholy. He didn’t resent the state he lived in with Maria and Tera. It was perfectly fine, better than fine. He’d never missed the bigger house from his childhood, the huge yard, the exciting novelty of spending summer or the holidays at an entirely different house far away, just because you could.
He never missed it except when he was surrounded by vestiges of that life, all the rich, happy people slumbering in their dark houses around them. He was almost never presented with that opportunity, which was probably why it always stung so bad.
They turned off the main road, onto a dead end residential road. The road slanted uphill, and between the burning in his calves and the way his hair was plastered to his forehead, Richter felt thoroughly miserable.
“I thought you said he wasn’t local!” Annette shouted over the rain. “Shouldn’t he be in a hotel somewhere?”
“Oh, he has nice houses everywhere. It’s part of the job, I suppose.”
When they finally stopped, the rain was coming down so hard, they could barely see the house in front of them. They hurried under the eaves, knocking into each other and stepping on each other’s feet. The house wasn’t as ostentatious as some of the ones they’d passed, but it was undeniably nice, and much larger than the cramped townhouse Richter lived in now. The lights were on inside, but the curtains were drawn. Was Alucard’s mystery friend expecting them, or was Alucard just springing this on him and hoping he’d be too confused to say no?
“Um.” Mizrak was looking at the door funny, sweat beading on his forehead. “Are you sure this is the right place–?”
“Quite,” Alucard said dismissively, wringing out his hair. He stepped forward to knock on the door, and they arranged themselves behind him. Richter ended up with Mizrak again, pushed to the back. Mizrak looked like he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him.
“I’ll think you’ll like him, Maria,” Alucard said absently, knocking on the door. “He doesn’t bring them when he travels, but Olrox breeds snakes. Ball pythons, I think? I’m sure he has pictures. Do you still have that corn snake?”
The bottom of Richter’s stomach dropped out.
“Olrox?” He asked in a hollow voice, sounding very far off to his own ears.
“Olrox,” Mizrak repeated, sounding strangled.
The door opened, and a rectangle of light fell out over them. The man who answered the door had his long hair pushed back over his ears, and was wearing a flamboyantly purple shirt.
“So these are your strays,” He said to Alucard, leaning against the doorframe. He looked a little different– Richter had only ever seen him in professional attire; stiffly-pressed suits, in the traditional greys and blues. He certainly hadn’t been wearing such gaudy earrings. Had his hair been shorter, or had he just worn it tied back?
But his voice sounded the same. Exactly the same, smooth and slick and oh-so-trustworthy. It lilted pleasantly, and it made Richter feel sick to his stomach. The snake turned his gaze out over all of them, and it landed on the back, on Richter, or Mizrak, or both.
“Oh,” He said, sounding a little surprised, “I was given to understand this was business, not pleasure–”
Richter lunged forward, shoved Alucard out of the way, and punched him in the face.