Pariah #1: New Arrival: Perils of Azure City Read Online Free PDF

force him to do anything - and he believed that she would do if he refused her.
    'Ugh. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, right?' He watched her carefully for signs of sympathy or wiggle room to negotiate, but saw only iron resolve staring impassively back at him.
    He gave an over the top sigh, 'Fuck it. Why not? What do you want from me, ...er, what do I call you?'
    She span on her heels and started leading him out of the dark alley and back into the half-light of the street.
    'Same as everyone else, you can call me Pariah.'

Part Three: Underhaven
     
    Turning to a man like Markus Crowley was a thorny road indeed, and Pariah considered it a necessary, if still treacherous, path to tread in order to understand the parts of Azure that only eyes like his had seen. Much of the criminal underworld of Azure existed well out of the light of the city at large and was largely invisible to those who existed outside their very particular world.
    So she made a point of looking for someone who had seen it from within and had a thorough understanding of that world - earned from living in it. They would need knowledge, they would need to be reliable, and they would need to be low profile. Beyond that, it would be good if they had the means to be an on-going informant.
    Crowley had been her choice. His rap sheet was as long as her legs and his employment history made for colourful reading. He was a low-life who largely flew beneath the notice of both the law and the higher end crooks he had worked with. In his own way, he was a success; he had taken the poor hand life had dealt him and had managed to carve out a decent living. He had formed connections and he had found his way to having a finger in many pies over the years.
    A final, crucial, factor played into his selection. There were the embers of a good man somewhere under all that he had done in the name of 'getting by'. He had come close to being somebody once, working his way towards the inner circle of the shadowy group known as Underhaven. He had abandoned it, though. Word on the street was that he thought he could take what they taught him and try to make a go of it on his own, dealing narcotics without being beholden to them. Pariah didn't think that was true. He had always been practical in the past, and he would have known that sticking with Underhaven was by far the more lucrative path. No, she was pretty sure that he walked away because he couldn't stomach the increasingly horrific things that Underhaven did. If that were true then he still had some integrity stored away somewhere.
    He would have been Kamura's choice.
    They had snuck their way back to the garage lot where Crowley based his activities - his workshop. It was a ramshackle room filled with all sorts of detritus, the air filled with the stale scent of metallic chemicals. From the looks of it, it had been recently roughed up - most likely by the snakes that they had left bloodied back in the alley.
    Crowley had been unfazed by the state of his base and had quickly gotten to work packing it up, lugging out large leather cases and haphazardly dumping armfuls of gear into them. Pariah stood at the entrance watching him pack. It didn't escape her notice that most of his gear was illegal.
    He gave her a coy look as he packed away a large case of 9mm bullets, 'So, umm, how is this going to work?'
    'The main thing that I want from you is information, Crow. If this works out well, perhaps I might ask you to actively gather specific information, but let’s see how we get on.' She spotted his worried look and raised her hands in a placating gesture, 'No one will know that you are informing me. You're invisible, Crow, any info that you give me could just as easily come from hundreds of others. I certainly won't be telling anyone.'
    Crowley nodded slowly. He turned his situation around in his mind, still absently packing away the garage. 'I don't suppose I have much choice...'
    His statement hung in the air,