Scarlet Dusk (30 page)

AFTER ALL THE THAT HE’D BEEN THROUGH, THE explosion from Zane’s homemade shrapnel bombs was like a 4
th
of July celebration; every bit as beautiful and awe-inspiring as—

“GET DOWN!” Raith cried out, yanking Nikki to the rooftop as the screws, nails, and jagged bits of spray-paint cans peppered out from the busted window.

Zane let his mind slip into overdrive for a moment, watching as the flying bits of shrapnel froze in the air and letting him appreciate the view. Maledictus, who’d practically been standing on top of the propane tanks when they’d went off, was caught in midair, his face twisted in shock and pain and most of his body already plastered in bits of scalding-hot metal and paint. Knowing better than to waste all of his energy in overdrive
just
to watch, Zane dropped to his belly and, in the process, back into normal time.

He couldn’t stop laughing.

“Oh god! Raith! It was so
B-E-A-FUCKING-UTIFUL
! The motherfucker was all”—he twisted his face in a mock-imitation of Maledictus’ agony.

Nikki couldn’t help but giggle, “I take it you took a moment to admire it?”

“How could I not?” Zane smirked.

“God dammit, Zane!” Isaac growled, yanking several woodscrews from his shoulder, “You realize how many innocent people you just hit with all these?”

Zane looked back and chuckled, “Three things, Isaac: one—Zoey’s gonna fuck the shit outta you when she sees how badass you look; two—Nobody’s innocent;
nobody
; and three—while I’m sure all that clipped a few people—yourself included—I doubt it’ll do much more than hurt like hell and give them an excuse to take the day off from work. Not like they were sitting at ground-zero—trust me,
that
is the sort of thing most people wouldn’t survive—and, to be fair, a few nails to the noggin is a kiss from the angels compared to what Maledictus is going to bring down on the world if we
don’t
take care of business. So let’s take care of business!”

Nikki was still chuckling as they stood, shaking her head. “I gotta hand it to you; you sure do know how to make an entrance.”

“So I’ve heard,” Zane drew one of the two katanas at his back, spinning the sword in his palm to get a feel for the balance.
Three grams heavy on the handle,
he noted to himself, wishing he’d been smart enough to test the pair before he’d left. Taking a deep breath and trying to breathe out both his growing anxieties and the swelling irritation from the sun-poisoning he’d slowly been absorbing all morning, he took a few steps back and nodded to the others. “Don’t wait up.”

Raith nodded, the signs of his transformation already starting to show on his shoulders and arms. “Don’t kill ‘em all before we get there.”

Zane shook his head, “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, buddy.”

Summoning the nerves to do what he had to, he took the first step, instantly throwing himself into overdrive, and sprinted towards the edge of the building, leaping in a suicidal hail-Mary for the gaping, jagged window frame. As his body soared through the air, the sounds of the city below him—humans trying to regain themselves after the chaos of the explosion that had just taken place above them—came into focus, and, from his bird’s-eye view, he spotted a few of the onlookers pointing up at him.

The Council is
not
going to like this,
he sighed to himself.

Prepping for impact, he gauged his trajectory and—

“Shit!” his eyes widened as he saw himself careening towards the window
neighboring
the one he’d been aiming for.
Dammit, Zane! Throw a pair of fucking bombs with pinpoint fucking accuracy, but the moment you’re making the jump yourself you go and…
he didn’t let himself finish his inward critiques as tucked his head and lead with his shoulder, willing the powers of the universe to grant him safe passage through the—

His world lit up with the deafening crash and waves of pain as his body broke through the glass, passed through half of the room, slammed him into the carpeted floor, and rolled him into the far wall.

Groaning and plucking a piece of the shattered glass out of his free hand, Zane shook the daze from his spinning head and forced himself to stand.

“Nice, Zane,” he brushed some of the broken glass out of his hair. “Real nice. I bet the others are laughing their asses off back—”

The wall to his left—separating him from the room that the bombs had gone off in—burst outward and blinded him in dust and debris.

“You incessant fucking nut-mite,” Maledictus’ voice rattled through the haze. “Don’t you know when to count your blessings and fucking quit?”

“You
really
didn’t think I
wouldn’t
be coming back for your scaly ass,” Zane rebutted with a laugh. Keeping the katana brandished ahead of him, he yanked one of his Glocks free from the holster and flipped off the safety. Then, as a second thought, he switched the pistol from semi-automatic to fully-automatic. “I mean, just
look
at you: ugly as sin, annoying as fuck, and sort of a begging for an execution with all this ‘change the world’ death-wizard babble. I get that you’re in the head of a stupid animal, but you
must
have seen this coming!”

“A stupid animal…” Maledictus grumbled, a hissing chuckle growing from the depths of the wavering dust-fog. “Well ain’t
that
just the pot calling the kettle
BLACK
!”

Maledictus struck then, diving through the haze and lunging for Zane, who jumped back before the monster’s outstretched claws could reach him and kicked out. Seeing the boot coming for his face, Maledictus moved his head to one side—letting the attack pass over his left shoulder—and moved to lunge at Zane. Recalculating the attack, Zane used his opponent’s shoulder to push his airborne body back in a summersault that connected his left foot with Maledictus’ lower jaw.

Maledictus stumbled back from the force—his jawbone, dislocated, hanging lamely at his throat—as Zane landed on his feet and charged forward, leading with his leveled pistol and squeezing the trigger.

The room went alive with the roar of automatic gunfire, and the already bloodied, shrapnel-adorned torso of Maledictus took the force of seventeen rounds in less than five seconds.

Though few of the bullets actually had a chance to pierce his scaly hide, the distraction had been enough to let Zane get close. The first pass of the katana—a straight-down swipe that would’ve cleaved Maledictus’ skull down the middle—was sidestepped at the last minute, leaving an opening to the monster’s windpipe for a pistol-whipping from Zane’s now-empty Glock.

Zane gladly took the opening.

As the butt of the pistol slammed into Maledictus’ throat, the monster heaved—its mouth gaping open—as it struggled to inhale. Remembering the horrors of what had emerged from that mouth in the past, Zane brought the Glock upwards; pinning Maledictus’ jaw against his knuckles and resting the barrel along the length of Maledictus’ jaw. Grinning, Zane ejected the spent clip and—sheathing his katana for the moment—retrieved one of the elongated 32-round ammo clip from the holster at his hip. Slamming in the clip and pulling the slide, he drove his freed hand into Maledictus’ face, dazing him further.

“Let me sing you the song of my people, asshole!” Zane growled in his face as he squeezed and held the trigger, letting the stream of automatic gunfire roar directly in his enemy’s ear as the heating barrel seared into his face.

Maledictus’ eyes widened as he cried out, lashing forward in a desperate attempt to free himself from the torture and, after knocking Zane back a few paces, clutching his head and teetering on dazed legs.

“M-Mother… fucker!” Maledictus growled, his eyes spinning in his head as he tried to glare at Zane. “I’m going to make you—”

“Shut the fuck up already,” Zane retrieved a second gun and, with a flip of a switch, leveled both automatic pistols at the staggering monster. “Just, for once in your miserable life, shut the fuck up!”

He let the bullets fly.

The task of getting the two therions across the gap and through the open window—well, the
first
open window; Zane had obviously felt that diving through an
open
window in the side of the building was too simple—wasn’t too difficult for Nikki. After Raith and Isaac had transformed, a process that Nikki wasn’t nervous to eavesdrop on at all the right moments—what was it about their kind that the gods saw fit to bestow such fantastic assets to? Not that she was complaining, of course—Raith had scooped her up in his bestial arms and awaited her orders. Though Isaac’s fear of heights wasn’t a secret by that point, he didn’t let it slow them down when she gave the order and the two had leapt from the building’s edge.

Halfway across the distance the three had begun to feel the tug of gravity, and
that’s
when Nikki played her part. Calling upon her magic, she’d forced a swell of energy to push out from behind them. The force of the spell had lifted and pushed them through the first of the broken windows, landing them inside a room that looked like a submission from a struggling art student.

Littered in bits and pieces of this-and-that and caked in a rainbow array of the still-dripping spray-paint that, along with the
thousands
of screws and nails and metal shards, adorned every surface. Near the center of the room, just as much a pin-cushioned kaleidoscope as everything else, was a vacant length of chain and a makeshift throne that, as far as Nikki could tell, had been constructed out of human bones—the bottom-left corner of which were badly splintered; probably from a particularly concentrated burst of shrapnel—that had been fitted together to take the proper shape and then bound in, of all things, duct tape.

“What is it with men and duct tape?” Nikki had asked before remembering that neither of the “men” in her company could speak in their bestial forms.

To their left, the wall—or lack thereof—that had divided the room they occupied to the one that Zane had crashed through allowed them to see that both rooms were, in fact, empty, though the myriad of bullet holes and spent shell casings on the floor of the neighboring room offered enough hints that Zane had started his own fun.

So where was he?

Nikki drew her sais and nodded to Raith to set her down. “Alright, boys, time to divide and conquer, I guess.”

Raith whimpered and looked at her with worried eyes.

“Don’t worry, baby,” she reassured him, petting his muzzle before planting a kiss on it, “I can handle myself. ‘Sides, if I get into too much trouble I’ll just whistle for you,” she said with a wink.

Raith rolled his eyes, obviously not appreciating her brand of lap-dog humor, and started for the door.

“Huh,” Nikki mused, looking around, “I wonder where that Celine-bitch wandered off to.”