As Evil Does
Page 7
That meant he moved to do that, first. She ignored him, even if he wasn’t standing far away.
They had teams to divvy up and a Kevin to make more powerful. Instead of making him into a true superman, Finias and Darla decided that the best plan would be for him to have a third form. One as hard to transform into as the other two were. That meant he could move into and out of a different shape about twice per day. Maybe three times, if the young man really had to.
So, if he were attacked and shifted to gain powers, it would leave him stuck that way for about twelve hours. In his other forms, he could be killed with a quick blow or shot to the head, which left him vulnerable enough, really. It meant Karen could be powerful, without being a threat to the rest of the world. Not one that couldn’t be beaten. A smart Human with a gun, or even a club, might well be able to take him or her out, in two of her forms. It would require killing her totally, before she could change, but no one in the room would be too hard pressed if they needed to do it. The one that would have the hardest time that way would probably be Ravi.
He simply wasn’t a killer.
Keeley started to map the work out, but Darla stepped in and chuckled. Then, touching Kevin on the arm gently, stopped.
“Oh, you’ll want to get naked first. I’m going large with this one, I think.”
As soon as the man scrambled out of his clothing, ending up nude in a room filled with strangers, half of whom probably wanted to fuck him, Darla, moved in, her delicate cheerleader’s hand touching his naked stomach. Then he grew. Upward, with thick armor plates of what seemed like metal forming all over his body. If he had genitals or any way to expel waste, it didn’t show at all.
For all he glimmered, it wasn’t like a suit of armor at all. More like a bug’s carapace. His face was made of flat silver, and there was no way for him to breath. No way to speak, either. When the work was finished, he stood about eight feet tall, and was nearly four feet across the shoulder. Given everything he had to weigh in at about two thousand pounds. Still, the boy, the man, spun in place easily, even if he was leaving marks on the stone floor. No one said anything about it.
So she did.
“Easy there, Karen. We can’t just buff the floor here out. What can she do?” Not that the form had a gender. Not a visible one.
Darla, her blue eyes gleaming, shrugged.
“Zero to a hundred and twenty in ten seconds on a flat? The body is solid metal. Living metal, though you’ll need to change shape to heal if you take any damage. Strength. Top end. More than you can actually ever use in a three-dimensional space. There’s no need to breath, but you won’t get tired from physical activity. In all, you’re decently tough now. That didn’t come with instructions on how to fight, of course.” She patted the large metal form on the hip. “You also can’t talk, have sex or do anything particularly fun. That’s to give you a reason to live in your more vulnerable forms, most of the time. Also, if you abuse this privilege, it can and will be taken away from you. Is that understood?” She went stern then. Meaning her words.
The silver giant nodded. It was all that could be done to signal assent.
Keeley could see it all as being a good enough plan. At least if they were taking Kevin or Karen with them at all. The girl was Karen though, to her. In the main she identified with that form more than anything else, so it would work for the big metal shape. It was that or call her Metallo, which Keeley was pretty certain would be trade mark infringement.
Tyler made a point of patting the metal person as well. On the behind. He was a perv that way.
“You’re also on part time at the Sparks Embassy. As a door guard. You’ll get paid for it. Not much. Keep your day job.”
Edom smiled at the whole thing, as did Bey. The tiny Vampire man spoke then.
“Ah. This is, I think, a good thing? Karen the shop keeper has become a being of wonders, in truth. There is, with great power, a certain level of duty that others, perhaps, do not need to concern themselves with.” He tried to make that into something meaningful, staring at the large being closely.
Ann laughed then, getting everyone to turn and look at her.
“Yep. That’s the order of the day, isn’t it? With great power, comes great responsibility. For all of us. Now, we should celebrate that by killing some people.” She clapped a few times, her voice sounding reasonable, even if the statement wasn’t.
After all, asking ex-Greater Demons to be responsible for things was a big ask. No one mentioned it, of course. Then, they wouldn’t. They’d just do what they wanted anyway, wondering how the new rules were going to be enforced, if they were, at all.
Tilting her head, being cute about it, Keeley agreed.
“That does sound about right. We need team assignments. Karen, you and Darrel are with Bey and myself. Gregor, why don’t you assign the insertion teams and Marissa, will you run our command center from here?” Keeley waited, since they could probably take her in with them, if she wanted to go.
Instead of make a scene, the rather ancient Vampire nodded.
“I will do that, Miss Thomson. I’m not the best at combat, perhaps.” She demurred nicely, as if it weren’t the truth. The fact was that she did all right that way, for a Vampire.
She had to, or she’d have died a long time before. The trick, a thing that rippled off of her, was that she’d hidden that ability for so long that most had forgotten that she’d once been a warrior. A god of her people, in fact. One that Ann should have recognized, but if that had taken place, the woman ignored it now.
Which was fine. They didn’t need another set of hands to spank a few hundred Vampires. Even if they were of transcendent power levels, which they wouldn’t be. As things were finishing up, with the line walkers getting ready to lead their charges to various nodes for delivery to the battle locations, The Mimic walked back over to her.
He looked at her for a second. The face he wore not being ancient, but looking like a very thin man who was pushing fifty. Finally, he spoke.
“I understand that our people have changed. We are to be called Wise Ones now. The old rules are no more. I even trust what I have been told.” He stopped then and shook his head. “I’ll still try to kill you if you let me go free. I can see that it isn’t needed, but I’m too afraid of you for that to work. I don’t know how to fix that. I should be able to, given time. If it were me, in your shoes, I wouldn’t give that to me. If you give me the time and freedom to come to grips with all of this, I can also use one of several loopholes to escape your grasp and then come for you.” She’d ordered him once to be completely honest with her. Also, not to struggle against her hold on him.
He was still doing that last part. The line she held twisted and turned in the air, bucking and struggling to free itself of her grasp. That meant he might also be lying to her, in part or whole, about what he’d just said.
For half a moment, she was torn. The smart move would be to order him to kill himself, then and there. At least from a certain perspective. If she let him go, he might just win a fight against her, ending in her death. He wasn’t the oldest of them, but he had a few thousand years of tricks under his belt.
On the other hand, Keeley wasn’t a Greater Demon any longer. She hadn’t even killed the Human terrorists the night before. Sure, she’d tortured them a bit, but they hadn’t deserved that kind of care or concern. Not from one of her people. At least not under the old rules.
“We could vote on it, but this really only has to do with me and my own safety. How about this… Work on accepting that I don’t want to kill you, or keep you as a slave? If you can come to me and honestly tell me that you don’t want me dead and won’t try to kill me, for at least, oh, a hundred years, and really mean it, I’ll set you free. I can’t risk it, otherwise.” She grinned then. “I get that you could just wait a hundred years and a day, but I’m hoping that, with the new rules and all that, you’ll see that I’m only an ordinary threat to you. Less than any Greater Demon ever was, because trust
me, under those rules we’d never have had this conversation.”
The Greater Demon, which he still was, not having decided not to be one of those yet, stared at her for a long time.
“I can’t actually find an immediate loophole in that. I probably will after a bit of reflection. Do you want me to go and help save these Humans? I can endorse that action, if the old rules are truly over. That seems likely, from the information I just collected here.”
She shrugged.
“Do you want to go in? I won’t risk you, if you don’t.”
That got a smile, at least.
“See, buttering me up already. It could work, I guess. Let me… Go in with that nice Dragon woman? I always wanted one of those, as a pet.” He sounded sinister for a moment, then shook his head. “I could settle for having one as a friend, I suppose.”
On that pleasantry, everyone left, heading to their assigned positions.
Chapter five
There were, all told, a little over two hundred and thirty Vampires in on the plot to kill Bey Transmorguire. By the time Keeley, Bey, Darrel and metal form Karen stepped into the spot where the Killer of the Council was supposed to meet his fate, there were twelve left. At least that was what Keeley noticed being in the room with them. There weren’t any outside the cave complex either. Not within three to five miles.
The man in charge was dressed in a silk robe, with a long beard and hair to match it. All of it was well kept and even decorative. The gold of the robe actually scintillated a bit in the light of the candle flames that had been placed around the whole space. There was nothing as tacky as a sacrificial altar in the underground space. Just a bunch of Vampires, holding knives. They were all dressed up for the occasion. Most of them in suits that were very western in style and fit. White, the color of death for the region, was the most popular color for that.
Bey bowed. He didn't go low at all. Only the man in the robe did it back. The other man spoke first, in Mandarin. Keeley was ready for that, having several native speakers in her library that spoke all of the major Chinese dialects. Before walking into the space, carrying Karen first, then Bey, she’d downloaded all of them, so she wouldn’t be caught out that way.
The man, the bad guys’ leader most likely, nodded his head back to Bey. It was actually a sign of rudeness. In short, he thought that his side had truly won. That the Killer had simply come to them, to die, in order to save innocent Human beings. Reading his mind, Keeley was quietly impressed with the plan the man held inside of himself.
It wasn’t about a petty grudge, or anything that mundane. Simply the desire of the locals to get ahead. On the good side, if Bey gave himself over that day, the plan truly had been to leave the innocent people alive. Honoring the agreement, even in death.
“Lord. You stand defeated, by myself and my minions. Come forth and meet the final death.” He didn’t seem gleeful. Not externally. That part of him was decently polite seeming.
Most of his men and women in the room were angrier seeming than that. Ready to fight and kill, regardless of what Chiang had told them.
Keeley held her ground, since the show belonged to Bey, in the moment. The tiny man nodded somberly, then smiled. His Chinese was even better than his English. Given that he was nearly flawless in that language, it was impressive.
“Ah… I fear that is not why myself and these others have come, my child. You threatened the lives of thousands this day and that is not to be allowed. Your followers, save those in this room, are dead. All of them. The Wise Ones of old have assembled and ordered that their champion is to mete out your personal punishment, for seeking to harm those of Human flesh.” Now, turning, Bey turned to Karen. Her giant metal form being much like a silvered mirror. “This is your doom, Chiang. The protector and champion of all Humans. I cannot help you in this.”
The other man seemed skeptical, instead of surprised or upset.
“Wise Ones? I’m unfamiliar with that collection. Also, while impressive, I doubt that mere armor can defeat myself and my people. All here have the speed of your line, father. These have been selected for being among the quickest as well. Even if the lesser of our numbers have fallen, we will not.” He gestured at Darrel, then Karen. Ignoring Keeley for some reason. “Kill them!”
She spoke, in English.
“Time to fight, Karen. Your target is the one in gold. Don’t hesitate. He’ll be faster than you. Don’t hesitate now.”
Bey, not smiling now, nodded.
“Indeed child. Remove this fiend, as is your duty.” He seemed slightly sad about it.
The fight started when the man in gold lunged, at Bey. He really was quick. Enough so that Keeley wouldn’t have been able to track what was happening if she hadn’t pushed herself into hyper-time herself. Using magic and distortion of space itself, she had to add a bit of time manipulation to match the two men in front of her. Bey simply flowed into that level of speed, grabbing the hand of the other Vampire as it headed for his bald head. Plucking it from the air, almost gently. Both of them moving so fast that a normal Human wouldn’t be able to see it taking place at all.
The other hand, the one with a blade in it, swung around from the left, stopping not when Bey grabbed it, but when Karen got there, moving much more slowly. Like she was sunk in syrup that had been frozen near to solid. The blade didn’t break when it hit her, it melted and flew away in a shower of molten metal.
Keeley had to dodge a bit, to keep it from connecting with her. Darrel simply smiled, the metal falling in front of him, with no visible movement or sense of action on his part. Then, he was known as the Smith. That things as minor as burning metal wouldn’t touch him was probably just to be expected.
Then, since the others were finally moving, all heading toward Bey and their leader, Keeley moved in herself, placing a delicate hand through the heads of several of them. Simply moving faster than they were. In silence. Darrel simply held up his right hand, seeming a bit slower than she was, causing the remaining eight to turn into columns of smoke. They didn't light into fire first, either. They simply evaporated. It was a good trick, she had to admit. Her trick had left headless bodies. His had taken care of the mess already.
Bey, for his portion of things stepped back. His hands folded in front of him. Allowing Karen, the Champion of the hostages, to punish the Vampire. It was…
Keeley had to use magic, to stop herself from laughing about it. The yogurt person slapped awkwardly at the rather proficient Vampire fighter. It was like something a confused little girl would have tried to do, going up against a martial arts master. The only difference, even as the metal person flew through the air several times, landing with a ringing tone that was unlike anything she’d ever heard before, was that Karen had grabbed the powerful Vamp by the right shoulder and was refusing to let go. She was also managing to slap at the man, regularly.
On the fiftieth blow, the silver hand moving slowly, compared to the being she was fighting, half of the being’s head caved in. That stunned the dead man enough for her to do it several more times. Finally pushing him out of the time dilation that granted him his superior quickness. Knocking him to his knees, with his head most of the way off. It was a bit messy.
He was still moving. Meaning he was decently tough, for a Vampire.
Darrel waved at the scene.
“Bey, this is your child. We can leave him alive, if you wish? We can have Keeley here take him as a slave, if you want? I’ll call Nancy so we have our quorum.” The man, turned to Keels and shrugged. “The Soulless. A great woman. She doesn’t have any problem with harsh punishments, I assure you. We can stack the deck that way.” That was said to her, but for the others. Bey and Karen.
Keeley could tell it was for both, since it was in English.
The giant metal figure waved at the downed man. He wasn’t getting up, but hadn’t gone all the way to the floor, either. The meaning was clear, however.
No one spoke for a moment, until Bey, seeming sad, nodded at her.
Keeley got the idea, so she moved in, killing the Vampire as gently and quickly as she could. It involved removing his head. She dropped it on the floor, instead of vaporizing it, so if it was the wrong move, they could bring him back. Really, all of the dead were inside the time window for things like that. She, at least, wasn’t going back in time further than a day just for some Vampires. Not ones she didn't even know. It would take too much energy for her to bother with.
Bey simply bowed his head. That lasted for a minute, then he stood and turned to the others in his group.
“What do I owe you for your services here today?”
She was about to say nothing, when Darrel moved in and hugged the Vampire.
“This was dark work, Bey. A hard thing to order done. We’re in a new time, if early to it, however. Let there be no debts between us for such things, from this point forward? Not when doing what is right and good.” He turned to Keeley smiled then. “I still feel odd, saying things like that. You agree, though?”
There was no hinting that she’d be in trouble if she didn’t want to do it his way. It seemed like a regular question.
“I do agree with you, Darrel. There will need to be a reward for Karen here. I’ll cover that?” She was thinking that a bit of money might be a good idea. Not that the person didn’t already have a day job to keep things together.
Bey swallowed and nodded.
“Thank you. Give my thanks to all the others, as well? I fear that I must go into seclusion for a time. In mourning for my lost son. My dead grandchildren, as well. It is most harrowing when such things take place.” There was a wave at the headless mess in the middle of the stone floor. A bit of black blood, tinged strongly with red, trickled from the neck hole that was now a shredded disaster.
She moved in after Darrel let the small man go, and patted him on the shoulder, gently. He stiffened up, not trusting her still. It would take a long while to win the being over, of course. Probably hundreds of years, or longer. It could well be that they’d never be true friends, really.