Hex Boys In Disguise

by A and E Kirk

  Tristan clenched his jaw. Body trembling, he shot daggers toward Eros. “If you’ve hurt him. If this is some trick, I swear, you will be sorry. So. Very. Sorry.”

  “No trick. No harm to your father.” Eros shook his head. “When will you trust me? I have protected you all so many times. Just today I saved Aurora from a Sicarius bullet.”

  Ayden choked, almost losing his hold on Tristan. “Wait, what?!”

  “I’m fine,” Aurora said quickly. “I’ll explain later.”

  The wave of guilt over missing the Sicarius team only fueled Tristan’s wrath. After a final glare at Eros, he turned back to the demons holding his dad. “I said let him go.”

  The demons didn’t.

  Instead, one of them stepped forward. “Son, we’re going to take your father where he’ll be safe while we talk to you in private.”

  “I don’t think so.” Tristan stalked toward them and called up his power.

  When Matthias grabbed his arm, Tristan twisted away and got in his face. “My dad. My problem. Would you let them take your family?” Both he and Matthias knew the answer to that. The demons would already be dead. Their heads popped off from one of his offensive hunter shadow whips.

  “That isn’t the point,” Matthias said, his tone reasonable.

  “That’s exactly the point,” Tristan fired back. “I’ve got this.”

  He wrenched out of Matthias’ grip and stalked forward again. Matthias said something. Tristan felt the Boys gathering behind him, planning to back him up, but Tristan didn’t need it. If the hellions wouldn’t let his father go, he and he alone would make them.

  As the two demons dragged his dad away, other guards stepped up and raised their weapons, pointing them at Tristan. People around the pool squealed and ran for cover.

  Mr. Grant struggled and yelled, “I’ll go with you! Just don’t shoot my son!”

  More guards with guns headed their way. Tristan ignored them, his only focus zeroing in on the buzzing, writhing minds of the hellions.

  “Release him!” Tristan said. “Now!”

  “Tristan,” his dad pleaded. “It’s okay! I’m fine! Don’t do anything to get yourself hurt.”

  The nurse jabbed his dad with a needle. His dad let out a short yelp, then went silent and slumped in the demons’ arms.

  “No!” Tristan screamed.

  He flung his arms up toward the sky as he reached for his power. Rage and desperation uncovered a level of his ability deeper than Tristan had ever before accessed.

  Novo and his dad faded from view as he launched into the demons’ heads. Instead of the beautiful resort of Novo, Tristan saw the structures the demons had built in their minds. Buildings, cities, entire civilizations. Some detailed. Some dull. Some beautiful. Some grotesque. However, each and every one stood strong and powerful.

  And without a second’s hesitation, Tristan crashed through them all.

  His power lashed out in a violent purple rush of destruction. He exploded brick and mortar, demolished rooms, shattered glass, toppled buildings, leveled entire landscapes to an apocalyptic wasteland. He heard screams of dying memories. Watched thoughts splinter and disappear. Tristan continued to trudge through, obliterating everything in his path.

  Until there was nothing left to destroy.

  More screams broke through his consciousness. Real people. Horrified. Frantic.

  Tristan blinked. He saw the lawns and buildings of Novo. Felt the desert heat. Smelled the stench of raw meat. Fat chunks of broken flesh slimed on everything, even Tristan, and bobbed in the pool, inking black swirls in the aquamarine water.

  Then his gaze latched onto the bodies. Headless. Necks a pulpy, bloody mess.

  Tristan swallowed down bile.

  “Dad?” Tristan whispered. He ran forward and fell to his knees, cradling his dad’s head in his lap as he spoke softly. “Please, please be okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Please, please, please.”

  Guards shouted. The Hex Boys surrounded Tristan as he held his unconscious father. Logan had six arrows drawn. Blake twirled battle axes. Jayden flashed ice knives hovering at the ready. Ayden fired up his hands. Matthias’ shadow whips coiled, ready to strike.

  Logan said to Matthias, “Remember when you said he wasn’t an offensive hunter.”

  “Yeah,” Matthias said grimly. “Might’ve been wrong about that.”

  “Stand down!” one of the guards told the Boys.

  “Listen up, mates,” Matthias said in a conciliatory tone. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  The guard eyed the carnage. “Looks like you killed five of my people.”

  People? Tristan thought. Had they really been human? Oh, God. No.

  “Tristan,” Matthias said. “Could you show them what we really killed? And do it slowly.”

  Tristan hesitated, suddenly terrified that Aurora had gotten it wrong and he was in fact a murderer. But he finally gathered the courage and removed the wristband of the closest headless body. He held his breath.

  The decapitated human transformed into a hideous haptogian mol, then swirled into the black death and disappeared into the ground.

  The surrounding tension dropped. Matthias talked to the guards who all removed their wristbands and stayed human. When Tristan removed the wristband from the other nurse, it showed its demonic form and vortexed.

  As a wave of complex emotions overwhelmed Tristan, he gagged, staggered to his feet, and stumbled away. His stomach lurched, and he threw up on the grass.

  OPERATION:

  Fire Hunter’s Fairytale. A-K-A, Lies!

  LOCATION:

  Novo Poolside Lawn

  The Boys relaxed somewhat when the remaining guards took off their wristbands and stayed human, but the head guard still remained wary. He ordered his men to keep their weapons trained on the Boys, then said, “You gentlemen need to stand down and surrender. You’re coming with us.”

  “Surrender?” Matthias said. “Are you saying you’re taking us into custody? We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Technically, that has yet to be determined. I’m not sure how this happened.” The guard studied the carnage of the three remaining decapitated and seemingly human bodies. “We haven’t confirmed that these individuals are actually demons.”

  “So take off their wristbands,” Ayden said hotly.

  “Not until I can record it and maybe even get our director and other officials down here to witness the transformation.” He raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture, not happy with the Boys’ offensive stance. “So just come peacefully. We need to interrogate you individually to clear this up.”

  The Boys all looked at each other. They hadn’t yet discussed a cohesive story. If they got separated, things could go bad.

  The fire on Ayden’s hands raced up to cover his arms and shoulders as his anger flashed, feeding on so many things. Tristan, Mr. Grant, not to mention Aurora, a Sicarius bullet, teleporting with Eros, and the fact there had been nothing he could do to help her.

  But there was something he could do here.

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” Ayden said. “You guys screwed up. When our friend Tristan was out with his dad last night, he thought he saw five demons who then put on wristbands and transformed into these guys.” He gestured to the corpses. “He figured he had to be crazy, right? So he followed one of them via some patient the guy was taking care of, tracked him to a recreation room, which is where they drugged and kidnapped him right under your noses.”

  The guard waved a hand. “It’s better if we discuss this later when—”

  “And,” Ayden cut him off, “because he was beaten and drugged so badly, that’s the last thing he remembers until we rescued him. Right, Tristan?”

  Tristan smoothed back his dad’s hair and nodded. “Uh, yes. Right.”

  “Then my brother and I interrogated the nurse, a-k-a the demon, because my colleagues uncovered some security footage which s
howed Tristan getting jabbed with a needle and taken away. Right, guys?”

  Matthias glanced at Logan and Blake. “Yeah. We’re really good at that sort of computer stuff.”

  “I’d really rather you not talk about this right now,” the guard said.

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” Ayden said in a mocking tone. “Because we did your job for you. We followed the nurse, took on a horde of demons, rescued Tristan, and came up here to tell you, only to find the same creeps who kidnapped and drugged Tristan trying to kidnap and drug his dad.” Ayden furrowed his brow, eyes blazing with fiery steel. “And we weren’t about to let that happen.”

  “So we took them out,” Logan said, a warning in his voice as he kept his arrows poised on the guards.

  “How did you do that,” the guard asked, gesturing to the headless bodies.

  “Not sure,” Ayden said. At least that was the truth. “It was Tristan, but he doesn’t remember how. Do you Tristan?”

  Tristan shook his head. “No.”

  Ayden shrugged. “Jayden thinks the demons might have given him a weird cocktail of drugs that warped his powers. Tell them, Jayden. In your own words, of course.”

  Jayden looked confused. “Cocktail?”

  “A mixture,” Matthias said, realizing what Ayden was doing and hoping Jayden would get with the program despite his lack of improvisation skills. “That could make Tristan’s powers work differently than ever before. How would you explain that? In your own words.”

  “Ah, yes.” Jayden’s expression cleared. “I see. Well, I would expound that an amalgamation of illicit pharmacological concoctions could very well engender a physiological dissonance which disrupted the neurosensory chemistry biologically correlated to the efficacy of Tristan’s preternatural allied powers propagating a previously inconceivable and unprecedented outcome.”

  The guard blinked. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means,” Ayden said with contempt, “that you can now add letting demons do potentially brain damaging experiments on a hunter to your long list of mistakes. And it also means that you aren’t separating us.”

  “It’s protocol.”

  “Screw protocol,” Blake snapped.

  Ayden almost smiled at the big guy’s vehemence.

  “Yeah, screw protocol,” Ayden said. “We still don’t know who to trust, so we stay together. Besides, I don’t think you want the Grants to know that you put their son and grandson in any more danger than you already have with your ineptitude, because the Grants aren’t the most forgiving sort.”

  “The Grants?” the guard said. Then paled. “The Grants, The Grants?”

  “No, dude, it’s just the The Grants. Who has a last name of Grants-the-Grants?”

  Matthias bit his tongue to squelch a grin. “Yeah, that’s Tristan Grant you just let get kidnapped by demons, so I suggest you let us all stay together so we don’t have to report to The Grants that you put him or their son in any more danger.”

  Finally, the head guard looked around at the crowd, which, now that no more heads seemed to be exploding, had started to gather. “Okay.” He nodded. “But you need to go with my men and wait for the interrogation team.”

  “Since we haven’t done anything wrong, let’s call it a debriefing, shall we?” Matthias said.

  The guard didn’t answer, just motioned for his men to move forward toward the Boys.

  Matthias nodded to Ayden.

  The fire on Ayden’s arms died out. He slapped Blake on the shoulder. “Come on.”

  Blake’s battle axes disappeared. He walked over and gently picked up the still unconscious Mr. Grant in his arms. Ayden clasped Tristan’s hand and helped him to his feet.

  Then Ayden pulled him into a one-armed hug and whispered in Tristan’s ear. “Just keep telling them you know nothing.”

  OPERATION:

  We Are Not the Hemorrhoids You Seek

  LOCATION:

  Novo Prison Suite

  Matthias strode into the collection of rooms which resembled the presidential suite in some upscale luxury hotel. Floor-to-ceiling doors of tinted glass led to a large deck which had a private pool and hot tub. From several stories up, the view overlooked Novo’s lush grounds and the vast desert beyond the walls.

  Logan easily balanced as he walked on top of the narrow railing that lined the perimeter of the deck. He periodically squatted and glanced down with studied intent. Blake stood in the patio’s corner, dripping wet, shirtless but wearing jeans.

  “Come on, please,” Blake whined. “I think I could beat Ayden’s splash radius challenge by getting more height if I could take off unencumbered.”

  “No!” Logan said. “For the last time, no skinny dipping! Keep your pants on!”

  “You’re such a prune,” Blake grumbled, then ran across the patio singing at the top of his lungs, “You need a hero! And it’s me!” He leapt into the air, tucked his knees and splashed an impressive cannonball into the pool.

  In the gourmet kitchen, Jayden cut up bars of Tristan’s favorite cookies, freshly baked from scratch. “Blake is exceedingly excited about being considered a hero by the Mandatum collective.”

  “Let’s hope that opinion lasts,” Matthias said, inhaling the delicious aroma.

  Jayden looked up from his work. “Is there an adversarial development? During the debriefing, I was under the impression they believed our narrative.”

  Matthias leaned against the kitchen counter. “After you guys left, some Novo doctors came in and I got the feeling that they were a little too interested in what Tristan did. As for staying heroes, I think we’re good. Just don’t want anyone getting suspicious and start looking into the level of our powers.”

  “We have been diligent in that endeavor of knowledge suppression.” Jayden nodded at the circular staircase in the back of the living room. “Tristan is resting upstairs in Ayden’s company. We have been keeping a close vigil. His ordeal has taken an emotional and physical toll.”

  “No kidding. Did you know he could do that?”

  “Detonate a demon’s cranium?”

  “Five demons,” Matthias corrected. “All at once.”

  “No, I was not aware that he possessed that capability. None of us were.” Jayden paused mid-slice into the bars. “I am not sure even Tristan knew, but while I am endlessly curious, he will not speak of it. He definitively insists he has no recollection of the event.”

  “True or not, let’s have him stick with that story.” Matthias reached for a warm cookie. Jayden rapped his hand with the flat side of the knife. “Hey!” Matthias jerked back and gave Jayden a wounded look. “What the heck, mate?”

  “They are to provide comfort for Tristan,” Jayden said. “Therefore, it is only fitting that he receive the first one.”

  “Yeah, Matthias. Back off.” Tristan smiled as he descended the circular staircase wearing a fresh T-shirt and jeans, his blond hair damp and uncharacteristically slicked back. “Thanks, Jayden.”

  “You are welcome,” Jayden said. As Tristan approached, he handed him a well-stocked plate of fresh treats. “But while I did indeed bake them, I must allocate credit for the idea to Ayden. Speaking of whom, now that you are here, Matthias, he and the rest of us will be much relieved to contrive a plan to retrieve Aurora and keep her safe. After what Tristan told us of Cacciatori and Horus’s arrival, she is in the gravest of danger.”

  Matthias said, “I’ve got it covered.”

  Blake walked into the room dripping wet and grinned at Tristan. “Hey, it’s the mind-blowing dude of the hour,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

  Tristan smiled tight. “Fine.”

  Logan somersaulted off the railing and jogged in from the patio. “I’ve calculated several escape routes.”

  “No,” Matthias said. “We aren’t escaping.”

  “But we’ve got to get to Aurora,” Tristan said. “I’m the one who missed the Sicarius team, and now they’ve tried
to kill her. Twice. That we know of. Could be more by now.”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  “Matthias,” Jayden said. “I know you do not care for her, but she is the Divinicus Nex. We are sworn to protect her despite your personal feelings of negativity.”

  “I know that,” Matthias said tiredly. “But if, or rather when they were to find us gone, assuming we even make it out, they’d track us down and we’d be locked up or at least detained. We wouldn’t be there to protect the idiot, and while they put us under a microscope, they’ll look at her too, which puts her in even greater danger.”

  Tristan shook his head. “Maybe. But that’s assuming she’s not dead from the Sicarius hit squad.”

  “She won’t be,” Matthias said with confidence.

  Tristan gave him an incredulous look. “You cannot know that.”

  “Yes, I can.” Matthias saw the rest of the Boys giving him hostile glares and rolled his eyes. “Why do you think I insisted they send the recon teams to Gossamer Falls?”

  “You sent the Mandatum right to her?” Tristan shrilled.

  “They couldn’t care less about her. As far as they’re concerned, she’s just one of many Gossamer Falls’ clueless civilians,” Matthias said. “The first of the teams are probably already there by now, with more on the way. With that kind of Mandatum presence, even the Sicarius team won’t try to kill her. So for now we sit tight, ride this out, and then we can get home that much faster. She’s fine for now.”

  Matthias plopped down on the couch, kicked his feet up on the table, and picked up a game controller, smirking at the Boys as they played his reasoning in their heads.

  Jayden tucked his hair behind his ears. “Honestly, even I did not make that coherent conclusion regarding your insistence on the reconnaissance teams being dispatched to our homes.”

  “Well, I got it dude,” Blake said. He shook his head like a dog, flinging water over the room. “Totally knew you were looking out for her.”