Six of them.

Liam stood in the middle of the alley and counted them without moving his head. Chain on the left. Bat and wire on the right.

Three with sticks fanned out at the back.

And the one in front of him with the revolver who had been lying on wet pavement.

They had formed a loose circle around him at some point while he was doing his counting. Nobody had given an instruction.

They had just moved the way people moved when they had done this before and knew where to go without being told.

One of the stick guys leaned toward the one with the chain, his eyes still on Liam, and said from the side of his mouth, "Told you this would work."

Chain guy glanced at him sideways without turning his head. "Yeah alright. You were right."

"Said it from the start." Stick guy shifted his grip on the wood, adjusting and settling it.

"I said you were right." Chain guy swung the loose end of the chain once, slow, letting it arc.

"Just want to make sure we’re clear."

"We’re clear."

Liam listened to this with his hands loosely at his sides and his weight balanced across both feet and said nothing.

Revolver guy looked at him and raised the gun slightly, centering it. "Empty your pockets. Everything you’ve got. Phone, wallet, whatever’s on you. Put it on the ground and step back."

Liam looked at the gun.

Then he looked at the man holding it and smiled.

"No," he said.

A beat of silence moved through the alley.

"What." Revolver guy’s eyes narrowed.

"No." Same tone, same smile, like the word was just a fact he was reporting.

He glanced around the circle once and then angled himself toward the alley entrance like leaving was a thing he had already decided and was now doing.

Bat guy moved.

He came from the right fast, both hands on the grip, swinging from the shoulder, the barbed wire end of the bat cutting through the dark in a low horizontal arc aimed directly at the side of Liam’s head.

It connected with nothing.

Not a dodge. Not a duck.

One moment Liam was there and the next moment the space he had occupied was empty and bat guy’s follow through carried the weapon through air and threw his own weight forward with nothing to stop it.

Then the punch landed.

It came from a direction bat guy’s eyes hadn’t tracked and it landed on his jaw with the particular quality of impact that didn’t feel like a fist so much as a sudden renegotiation of the terms of the evening.

His feet left the ground.

Not dramatically, just that brief terrible weightlessness that arrived when something hit you hard enough that your body briefly forgot which direction was down.

Then the ground reminded him.

He hit the alley floor flat on his back and the bat skittered away across the wet pavement and the sound of it sliding was the only sound in the alley for a long moment after.

Silence.

Nobody moved.

They all looked at bat guy on the ground.

Then at Liam standing in the same general area he had been standing in, hands loose at his sides and he wasn’t particularly out of breath, looking back at them with the expression of someone waiting patiently for the room to catch up to what just happened.

"What did he just—" one of the stick guys said, his stick dropping slightly in his grip without him noticing.

"How did he—" another one, turning his head toward the first one and then back to Liam.

"Did you see where he moved—"

"I was looking right at him and I still didn’t—"

Revolver guy said nothing.

He stood with his gun still raised and his jaw tight and his eyes doing the specific work of someone who had just witnessed something that didn’t fit any category they had available and was searching for one anyway.

Liam looked at all of them and smiled. "I didn’t do anything."

The stick guy closest to the alley entrance, the one who had been right about the plan, had gone very still.

He was standing with his stick held at his side and his eyes on Liam and his mind running back through the last several minutes at speed.

’Who is this man,’ he thought, his eyes moving over Liam standing there calm and smiling in the middle of the alley. ’Who the hell is this man.’

He looked at bat guy still flat on the ground, one hand moving slowly to his jaw.

’What have we done tonight. Who are we trying to rob right now. What is actually wrong with us.’

He looked down at his legs.

They were shaking. Not trembling, it was shaking visibly and independently, like they had received information before the rest of him and were already responding to it.

’I cannot stand up straight,’ he thought, staring at his own knees. ’My legs are shaking so bad I cannot stand up straight. This has never happened in my life.’

"Can I go now."

He snapped his head up.

Liam was looking directly at him, his weight easy on both feet, his head tilted very slightly like the question was a genuine one and he was waiting for a genuine answer.

Before the shaking legs guy could form any kind of response the guy beside him straightened up and said loudly, his grip tightening on his stick, "You’re not going anywhere, you bastard." His voice had the brittle quality of someone performing confidence they no longer felt and hoping the performance was convincing. "Get him."

And they moved.

All of them, close enough to simultaneously that the distinction didn’t matter, converging inward with their weapons and their numbers and whatever remained of their conviction after watching bat guy introduce himself to the pavement.

Chain guy came first from the left, swinging wide, the loose end of the chain meant to wrap and control. It wrapped around nothing.

Liam stepped inside the arc and his elbow dropped into chain guy’s ribs at a downward angle and the sound chain guy made was short and involuntary and he sat down on the alley floor with the chain still in his fist and his arms folding over his middle and no immediate plans visible on his face.

One of the stick guys drove in from the left, his stick already moving. It connected with the brick wall beside him.

Because Liam had stepped inside the swing and was standing behind him now and when stick guy turned to find him he found a flat palm against his sternum instead that walked him backward into the dumpster with enough behind it that the dumpster shifted on the wet ground.

He stayed leaning against it with his eyes wide and his breath gone and his stick hanging from one hand pointing at the floor.

Another stick guy came straight ahead, no technique, just committed forward movement and the stick raised.

Liam stepped to the side and the momentum carried the man past him and Liam’s foot found his ankle and the guy went down full length on the pavement the way a tree went down when the base was removed, long and without interruption, and lay there on the wet ground reconsidering the choices that had led him to this specific location on this specific evening.

Revolver guy circled but didn’t rush in. He kept the gun up and moved around the edge of the situation and watched and kept watching and didn’t pull the trigger, which told Liam something about him.

That left the one who had suggested standing up straight was optional.

He came in with his stick raised and his teeth set and his legs still shaking, which was not a combination that produced ideal results.

He swung.

Liam let it go past, stepped to the outside, took the stick away from his hand without breaking it or the hand holding it, and set it on the ground.

They stood facing each other.

The guy looked at his empty hand. Then at the stick on the ground. Then at Liam. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Liam looked at him. "Sit down," he said, his tone almost helpful about it.

The guy sat down.

Not because he was told to exactly.

More because his legs had been voting for this outcome since approximately the moment Liam had punched bat guy into a different time zone and he was finally listening to them.

That left revolver guy.

He was still standing at the edge of the alley with the gun up and his eyes moving between Liam and the collection of his associates in their various positions across the alley floor. His breathing had changed.

His arm was still steady but the steadiness had a different quality to it now, the quality of something being held rather than something natural.

Liam walked toward him.

Not rushing. Not performing anything. Just walking across the alley the way you walked toward something you had already made a decision about and were now closing the distance on.

Revolver guy watched him come. His arm stayed up. "I’ll shoot," he said, his jaw tight, his eyes on Liam’s chest.

Liam stopped in front of him.

Close enough that the barrel was pointed at him from half a meter. He looked at it for a moment and then looked up at the face behind it. "You’ve been watching this alley for the last two minutes," he said. "You’re smart enough to know what happens after that."

The gun stayed up.

Liam waited.

The gun came down.

Slowly. Lowered deliberately, with the specific care of someone keeping the dignity of the action even as the action itself was a concession.

Revolver guy’s arm dropped to his side and he stood there holding the weapon loose and looked at Liam with something in his face that had changed from what it had been at the start of this.

Liam looked around the alley.

At chain guy sitting with his arms wrapped around his ribs, rocking slightly.

At bat guy still on the ground, one hand on his jaw, staring at the sky. At the others in their various positions, none of them showing any particular interest in continuing.

His eyes came back to revolver guy.

"Ambulance is already coming," Liam said, glancing briefly at bat guy on the ground. "Your guys will be fine." He looked at bat guy one more time. "Probably."

Revolver guy stood with the gun at his side and looked at him for a moment. Something moved through his face, something that wasn’t hostility anymore and wasn’t what it had been when this started, something he looked faintly surprised to find himself feeling.

"Thank you," he said quietly, like the words arrived before he had fully decided to say them.

Liam looked at him. "Don’t worry about it," he said, and meant it. "Least I could do."

He turned and walked toward the entrance of the alley.

Behind him the alley was quiet except for the sounds of six people in various states of recovery and the distant growing wail of a siren somewhere in the direction of the main road getting closer.

He stepped back out onto the street and kept walking and the night took him in and the alley entrance sat empty behind him in the dark.

Inside it revolver guy stood and looked at the entrance for a long moment after the footsteps had gone and there was nothing left to look at.

Then he looked at his people on the ground around him and then back at the empty street.

The guy with the shaking legs was still sitting on the pavement.

He had his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands and he was sitting very still in the specific way of someone whose brain was doing a lot of work and needing the body to stay out of the way while it did it.

He lifted his head slowly and looked at the alley entrance.

"That man," he said, his voice coming out low and completely sincere, to no one in particular, to the wet pavement and the dumpsters and the brick walls and the chain lying on the ground and his associates scattered across the floor around him, "is the actual devil."

In the alley nobody disagreed.

In the distance the siren got louder.