The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

The first debt- wraith wore a child’ s face.

It stood across the street from Grand Meridian, barefoot in the ash and clutching a small black ledger to its chest. The Freehold roots sent everyone the same warning. Not as an order. As a shared pulse of cold fear.

Austin Veyron stepped out through the gate behind Elena, Seven, Rin, and Sarielle.

The wraith smiled.

”Who claims this block?” it asked.

”No one.” Austin Veyron replied.

The creature’ s smile widened. ”Incorrect answer.”

It cracked open the ledger. Names wriggled across the page. Some belonged to people inside the Freehold. Others belonged to demons Austin Veyron had never seen. At the bottom of the list, a few lines were blank, waiting for a hand to sign them.

”Lady Vharra records debts,” the wraith told them. ”Shelter is debt. Food is debt. Protection is debt. Which of you will pay first?”

Elena lifted her rifle.

The wraith regarded her. ”You. Medical training acquired under municipal debt. Ammunition received from stolen property. Survival of the siege gained through unauthorized protection.”

Black ink crawled toward Elena’ s name.

Austin Veyron snapped DEVOUR around the ledger.

”You cannot eat a debt,” the wraith laughed.

”I don’ t need to.”

Territorial Defiance flared.

Austin Veyron denied the claim. Not the words. The entitlement behind them— that giving someone aid gave that person the right to own the person aided.

The page of the ledger caught fire.

The wraith screamed. It threw the ledger into the street and stumbled back. Its child- face melted away, twisting into a hollow skull made of black smoke.

Rin reacted first. Her claws sliced through the wraith’ s body but snagged on the chain hanging in its throat. She yanked hard. Austin Veyron followed her motion, gripped the exposed link with his own hands, and snapped it apart.

The wraith evaporated into ash.

A torn ledger page glowed white- hot on the pavement.

Seven extracted it with metal tongs. Half the page burned away, but one entry remained readable.

Freehold designation: MAELIS OF THE EMBER LINE. Existing claim: Ninth Dominion. Status: escaped property.

They didn’ t speak through the lobby or elevator. Everyone knew exactly what happened when Elena read her name scrawled in black ink.

Maelis stared down at the page without blinking.

”I was born in Vharra’ s foundries,” she said after a moment. ”Every ember demon is accounted for there. I thought I escaped the line when I ran.”

Sarielle took another step forward. ”You did.”

”But not on their paper.”

Austin Veyron stared at the page. He looked at Maelis.

Then back at the ledger. Debt- wraiths hunger made the solution obvious: burn the claim and every ledger it appeared in, destroy the name wherever it was written.

But the first wraith told him the flaw in that plan. Lady Vharra’ s network was not confined to one book. It lived in every person who agreed that protection equalled ownership.

”We erase it where we find it,” Austin Veyron said. ”And then we hunt it down.”

Elena unrolled a map across the conference table. ”If Vharra can target us through debt lines, the collector will have anchors throughout the city.”

”Then we destroy them.” Rin replied.

”Ask before you break them.” Austin Veyron said.

Rin groaned. ”You are killing all my efficient plans.”

Austin Veyron wanted to smile. Instead he settled for proud. ”Only the lazy ones.”

The ledger page was the first warning.

Three hours later, old emergency lights flickered on at a hospital across Grand Meridian’ s eastern district. The Freehold roots did not extend that far from the hotel, but Elena knew the building well enough to map its corridors from memory. They passed the surgical wing and emptied clinic before detouring into the basement, where the city used to keep employee contracts in a fireproof records room.

”Vharra has something down there,” Maelis said, following Elena’ s fingers down the hall. ”Either a legal relic they can use against you, or a bound wraith. Something that will pin Elena’ s past to her like a chain.”

Elena refolded the ledger page carefully. ”Then we head out tonight.”

”No shortcuts,” Austin Veyron replied. ”The collector needs us in over our heads.”

”You told me we fight debt claims on our grounds.”

”I said we don’ t let it claim more ground than it already has.”

He called a Freehold meeting rather than give an order. It took twenty minutes. Some people argued. Old soldiers wanted to barricade the hotel. Some of the rescued prisoners wanted to leave before another sovereign took notice. Kaela wanted to ride directly for the hospital. Sarielle said no one would trade another person’ s freedom for their own safety.

In the end, twelve people volunteered to risk the hospital run. Three more volunteers elected to defend the families staying with them. The vote mattered to Austin Veyron more than the numbers did. He never forced anyone into either decision.

Rin hopped down from the rooftop behind them. ”So do we have a plan now?”

”We have everyone that agreed to one.” Austin Veyron replied.

”That sounds like the same thing but with more words.”

By nightfall, their team had contacted three additional buildings around the hotel. Not by invading them. Austin Veyron, Elena, and Sarielle knocked on doors with donated food, weapons, and a proposition. Share your family and defenses with the Freehold or leave the city with your supplies while the roads were still open.

Some declined. Austin Veyron accepted that decision. Good or bad, everyone had the right to delay a decision for thirty days.

Others agreed. To those families, Austin Veyron gave root- marked doorways that would alarm them if a wraith came near but could be destroyed if they wanted privacy.

Getting people to help was slow work.

At least it was honest work.

Someone nailed another ledger page to the hotel door before sunrise.

This time, the page had no name.

Only a message scrawled across it in black ink.

DAY ONE COMPLETE. THE COLLECTOR HAS IDENTIFIED YOUR FIRST UNPAID DEBT.

Below that words was a crude map of Grand Meridian.

A red line connected the Freehold marker to the eastern district of the city. There, an outline of an old municipal hospital sat dark against the page.

Elena went still.

” That was my first job.” She whispered.

The page flipped itself over.

Written in marker on the back was one word.

COLLATERAL.

Black ink pooled together beneath it. It spread until it formed the shape of the hospital. In one window on the third floor, a pale face appeared behind the glass. It wore another debt- wraith, masked by a doctor’ s coat and Elena’ s old staff badge.

”You have until dawn,” the voice hissed from between the pages. ”Bring the debtor, or we will collect on the building.”

Elena did not tear her gaze away from the wall. ”It just wants me to surrender.”

”It wants us to prove the Freehold can never be whole,” Austin Veyron said. ”Give it what it wants and everyone outside learns fear works. Walk into that building scared, and it steals a new debt from everyone who dies.”

Sarielle touched the old tracker scar on her wrist. ”Then we make them an offer they can’ t refuse.”

Rin flicked her ears at the ceiling. ”I only like those when they involve killing things.”

”Debt- wraiths are not physical beings,” Maelis warned. ”Kill the shell and the debt always finds its anchor. We need the hospital archives. We need every version of the original contract, and we need whoever is listed on Elena’ s debt to walk out of that building alive.”

Elena nodded once. Slow and careful. ”If we go down to the basement, the records room had a manual lock beneath the archives. If the city kept any of my files, that is where we will find them.”

Seven appeared behind them with a crate of ammunition and a bundle of root- marked climbing rope. ”Volunteer team assembled. Ready to depart in ten minutes.”

Austin Veyron stared across the city toward the hospital in the east. Lady Vharra had challenged the Freehold by targeting Elena. It had given them thirty days to treat one life as though it were a weakness they could trade away.

Instead, they had found a way to discover how its debt claims were enforced in the first place.

”Let’ s move before dawn then,” Austin Veyron said. ”Not to settle our debts. To find the ones we were sold.