“My daughter Maya died a few years ago. My wife fell into depression. One day, Tom came out of the bathroom wearing a long shirt like Maya used to wear to bed. From behind, he almost looked like her because of his long hair. My wife saw him, and well,” he made a “well, you know how things are” gesture. “The rest is history.”
“So you turned your son into your dead daughter?” I asked, barely able to comprehend that. I’d heard about fucked up shit, but this? This took the fucking cake. “Do you know how fucked up that is?”
“I did not turn him into anything,” he replied, shaking his head. “That was all Tom’s own doing. I did not tell him to assume his dead sister’s identity.” He let out a slow breath. “I only allowed it to continue because it made Martha happy. You wouldn’t understand.”
He was right. I didn’t understand, but that was fine. I didn’t have to understand. I was going to kick both of their asses either way. If Maya felt like explaining herself to me after, well she could do that, and if she didn’t want to tell me a damned thing, that was fine too. I didn’t judge.
That said, I’d learned one piece of valuable information from his diatribe. Maya’s mother was named Martha. I guess that made sense since all female mothers were inevitably named Martha, but still, I wasn’t sure I could handle any more information about her family at the moment. There had to be more to the story, but right now, I didn’t really care because my only concern was saving Maya from this fuckstick. If it turned out she had some extra bits down there, well, that was her business.
“Yeah, I don’t care,” I snarled, bringing my own fists up because it totally seemed like fist fighting this Bruce Lee wannabe on top of a billboard hundreds of feet in the air was a good idea. “Come on, Dragon. Let me tell you a story.”
Chapter 17
Bruce’s fist lashed out at me, smashing into the plastic cow beside my head and shattering it into fragments that cascaded down around us as I stepped in past his attack and returned fire with what I like to call my “Cursed haymaker of flaming doom.”
My right hand arced out, spitting flame and Hellfire like the tailpipe on a hotrod. He blocked, but it cost him. Flame licked up the arm of his yellow jumpsuit, turning it to ash in the space of a heartbeat and charbroiling the flesh beneath.
If it bothered him, he didn’t show it, opting instead to drive the back of his hand into my chest. Even from only a few inches away, the force was enough to drive the breath from my lungs. Air whooshed from my lips as I stumbled backward in agony.
He smirked at me, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he raised his right hand.
“Yata,” he mocked before opening his hand and gesturing for me to “bring it.”
“Oh, it’ll get brought, don’t you fucking worry,” I snarled, fixing him with my best glare while trying to recover. My ribs felt shattered, but I knew they were made of sterner stuff. No, I’d live. I just needed a second to catch my breath before engaging in further fisticuffs. Fortunately, I had a plan for that. It was time to go with the Mac Brennan special. Yeah, you heard me right. It was time to make like the University of Miami right before they lost the game and talk some mad shit.
“I await your attempt.” He grabbed his pants jerking them up a couple times as he continued to bounce. I wasn’t sure why he didn’t press his advantage, but that was fine. I’d take all the time he gave me.
“I’m just not used to this pansy fighting.” I replied, standing up and bringing my fists in front of me. “Usually when I do the whole bareknuckle boxing thing, we dip our hands in crushed glass first.”
Bruce smirked, and before I could do anything at all, came flying at me with a Liu Kang flying dragon kick. I ducked his attack with relative ease, which I think was what he intended because as his foot hit the billboard behind me, the entire structure rocked on its hinges, and I lost my balance.
Steel groaned as he kicked off the support post and came flying at me, one fist coming down in a wild haymaker. I was off balance and slower, so what did I do? I let him hit me.
Okay, yeah, it didn’t seem like one of my best plans, but then again, most plans weren’t. Still, I’ll admit that on the surface, this probably wasn’t even in my top ten best plans. Thirteen maybe. Eleven tops. So why did I let him hit me with a colossal haymaker? So I could ruin his goddamned day.
See, I remembered a story, I’d heard about ancient Japanese samurais. Sometimes they’d do this thing where they’d intentionally let an opponent wound them in order to deliver a killing blow. Half the time it was suicide because of swords, but it was fucking effective. You know, assuming you could capitalize on getting stabbed.
As Bruce’s fist collided with my right cheek, breaking my teeth free of my jaw in a spray of blood, I slammed my right palm into his chest and released everything left in me.
My tattoos lit up like a Fourth of July skyline as Hellfire surged from my hand and into the unsuspecting martial artist. The blast didn’t fling him backward so much as it burned a hole the size of a fucking basketball through his torso.
The smell of charred flesh filled my nostrils as he crashed into me wide-eyed and blinking. My vision went hazy as we crumbled to the ground in a heap. Agony exploded from my jaw as I tried to grit my teeth against it. Big fucking mistake, let me tell you.
Bruce’s mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air as he tried to move on top of me. I wasn’t sure how he was moving around, but I was going to go with demonic resilience. Truth be told, he should have been dead, but since he hadn’t been reduced to ash by whatever hex burned the corpses of the seven up when they died, I knew he wasn’t down for the fucking count.
Blood spurted from his lips as he crawled off of me, moving unsteadily toward Maya. I shook myself into action even though my vision was fading to black, and he looked more like a big yellow blob than anything else. Unfortunately, I could make out one thing very wrong with the picture. Scraps of flesh were starting to worm their way across the hole in his chest in a way that reminded me of when I’d blown the Princess of Mirrors in half and she’d put herself back together again. Oh, fuck no. He was not healing this one off.
“Hey, douchebag!” I called, reaching back and grabbing the pimp staff tied to my back. “You can’t have her.”
“He’s already mine,” Bruce snarled, turning to look at me as I popped the top on the cane. It came up twenty and blazed with pink light. His eyes narrowed on the object, and as I hurled it at him he sprinted toward Maya who was just starting to rise.
He grabbed ahold of Maya by one arm and hauled her to her feet. For a second, it looked like he was going to leap off the billboard with her under one arm. Maya must have thought so too because she took one long, hard look at me, wrapped her arms around her father, and threw them both forward as he tried to twist and knock my cane out of the air.
He stumbled forward, arms flying up in an attempt to regain his balance as my diamond-headed cane struck him in the side of the head. Lightning crackled through the cloudless sky overhead as the pimp staff lit up like a disco ball. He had half a moment to register what had happened, and as he did, his skull exploded in a spray of blood and brain. His body toppled sideways, one hand still locked in a death grip on Maya.
“Maya!” I screamed, sprinting toward them as they tumbled off the platform. I had half a second to decide what to do before I reached out with my right hand toward her and shouted “Necto!”
Scarlet spots danced across my vision as I collapsed onto my belly on the billboard’s platform from the strain of over using my magic. I didn’t care though because the crimson tendril shot outward, snagging Maya just between the shoulders just before she hit the ground.
She jerked roughly to a stop, her head snapping violently back and forth as her now flaming, headless father fell the last ten or so feet to the ground. The flames crawling across his corpse grew even brighter, so that by the time he hit the cement below, he was little more than a charred skeleton. What remained of him shattered upon impa
ct, releasing a cloud of mosquitos the likes of which could blot out the sky. They rose from the earth in a single blackened cloud and zeroed in on me. Fuck.
I ignored the bugs as they descended upon my exposed flesh and concentrated on getting Maya to safety. She was so below me, I wasn’t sure if I had the strength to pull her back up. She didn’t appear to be moving, but that didn’t mean anything because my vision was so spotty, I couldn’t see straight.
“Maya?” I called uncertainly as I began to haul her up. I’d thought of using magic to whip her up to me, but the growing sense of unease in my belly prevented me from doing so. Using my Necto spell was always kind of jarring, and I didn’t want to think of what it might do if I recalled her at Batman speed. My arms felt like Jell-O by the time I pulled her up onto the platform, and as I did, I realized there was a very real problem.
I sucked in a deep breath as I looked down at the horribly disjointed angle of her neck. I swallowed so hard it hurt, and as I did, a shadow fell over me.
“You killed my daughter,” Martha, Maya’s mother said. Her voice was like a hurricane ready to sweep up everything in her path and leave nothing in its wake.
Before I could say anything at all, she batted me against the billboard with enough force to crack the thick wooden backboard with my shoulder. My bones screeched in agony as I slumped forward onto the platform, unable to move.
As she cradled Maya’s lifeless body into her arms, she fixed me with a look that physically hurt. Fire danced across her irises and lava dripped down her cheeks as she looked down at Maya and back to me. Then, very slowly, she set Maya down, ran one hand across her face and smoothed her hair out of the way, and turned to regard me.
“I will kill you for this,” she croaked as she stalked over to me.
Before I could react, she grabbed me by the throat and hoisted me into the air like I weighed less than nothing. As she did, I couldn’t help but think I deserved it. I’d tried to save Maya, and all I’d done was get her killed. I knew what it felt like when those tendrils grabbed ahold of something, it damned near tore my arm free of its socket. So what had my dumbass done? Hit her between the shoulder blades, whereupon the corresponding whiplash snapped her neck.
“Sorry,” I said, and as the word left my lips, she flung me across the platform. The center of my back hit what remained of the plastic cow, and a bone-chilling crack filled my ears as I slumped forward onto the platform. A fresh bout of dizziness wracked my body as I tried to rise.
Still, that was nothing compared to the guilt I felt. If I’d just let Bruce take Maya to his evil lair, she’d still be alive. I could have regrouped, should have regrouped, instead of going off half-cocked and trying to fight my way into a helicopter in midair. Now, I was going to pay the piper in the form of an enraged mother.
Chapter 18
“Mac, snap the fuck out of it!” Ricky’s voice ripped across my brain like a radioactive buzz saw, and as I looked around for her in bewilderment, I realized her voice was coming from inside my skull. Well, that was new, and sorta freaky.
“Ricky?” I asked, confusion washing over me. “How are you talking to me? Are you okay?”
“Mac, I’m not sure what’s going on with you, but I just felt you give up the ghost. That is un-fucking acceptable because I’m sitting here with a fucking javelin in my stomach while fighting off a mutant fucking rhino with my bare hands.” Her voice washed over me like desert heat, searing the flesh from my bones and making me want to run for cover, only I couldn’t because Maya’s mother Martha was glaring at me so hard, my scrubs were starting to smolder. “So get the fuck up, man the fuck up, and kick some fucking ass. Got me?”
She was right. I did need to get my ass in the game. Getting my ass killed wouldn’t bring back Maya. I might not have been able to save her, but I’d damned sure avenge her. Yeah, eat your heart out Iron Man.
My hands curled into fists as I turned my gaze upon Martha. Murder gleamed in her eyes as she stomped toward me in a way that suggested she was seriously considering tearing my still-beating heart from my chest and showing it to me before I died.
If I didn’t do something soon, I was as good as dead. Sure, Maya might be dead because I was a fuck up, but if I gave up now, I’d be dead too, and that meant Ricky would probably die as well. I might not have been able to save Maya, but I was damned sure going to save Ricky. You best believe that.
“I’ve got you, Ricky,” I said, rising to my feet even though everything in me felt broken.
“Good because just remember that whatever the fuck is going on right now won’t even hold a fucking candle to what I’ll do to you if you get yourself killed.” I heard Ricky’s voice start to fade as something beyond the veil drew her attention away from me.
“All right.” A smirk crossed my lips as a door in my brain snapped shut, cutting her off from me. That was fine for two reasons. One, I knew she was alive and fighting. Two, well, she snapped the crybaby emo kid out of me.
“You think this is funny?” Martha cried as her face twisted into a scowl.
“A goddamned riot,” I replied, pointing my cursed hand at her and calling up my power. There wasn’t a lot left to be honest. We’re talking real circle the drain, running on fumes shit, but it’d have to do. Besides, what was the downside? Letting her kill me? Fuck that.
Martha leapt at me, hands outstretched like claws. As she came closer, rage flaring in her devilish eyes, I realized something. She was pissed. Okay, yeah, that was obvious, but what was less obvious was how pissed she was. She wanted to tear my skull from my neck with her bare hands and shit down my throat. That type of rage, well, it doesn’t make you think clearly, and when your whole “see the future bullshit” relied upon you doing that, well, you done fucked up.
I stepped past her attack with surprising ease and decked her in the fucking jaw. Her head snapped backward under the force of her own momentum as she collapsed to the ground at my feet. Her eyes were semi glazed as I dropped my full weight down on top of her, straddling her torso and pinning her arms beneath my knees. A gob of Hellfire danced in the palm of my right hand, and as I leaned in close to her, I let it dance millimeters from her face.
“I’m not quite sure what the fuck is wrong with you, or if what Bruce said is true about Maya,” I snarled as a wave of rage crashed down over me. “But this is your fucking fault. She was your kid, and you were supposed to protect her, to cherish her. Instead, you fucks kidnapped her to sell her to a demon.” Her eyes met mine, and as they did, a chill washed over me. Behind her anger was a nearly endless sea of guilt. Only here’s the thing. I didn’t care.
I might have technically killed Maya when I’d tried to save her, but there had been a lot of shit leading to this event and none of that was my fault. No, that was their fault, at least partly. Besides, Maya was my friend and someone had to pay for her death. That someone might as well have been the mother who was going to give her child to a demon.
“You don’t understand,” she said, and as she did, I smashed a fistful of Hellfire into her nose. A scream tore from her lips as she bucked and thrashed beneath me. It hadn’t been enough to kill her thanks to whatever demonic fortitude she had, but it certainly looked like it fucking hurt.
“I understand plenty,” I snapped, leaping to my feet and making my way toward Mammon’s pimp staff since I didn’t have enough gas in the tank to take her out with magic, and the cane certainly seemed to have a decidedly more permanent effect on the council fuckers thus far.
She was on her feet and staggering toward me as I bent to retrieve the staff. As I popped the top, eliciting a fireworks display from the diamond pommel, I turned toward her. Half of her face was burned and mottled so I could see bits of skull beneath her flesh, but it didn’t seem to slow her any.
“You don’t get to tell me what kind of mother I am,” she snarled as sparks leapt from her fingertips and filled the air with the smell of ozone. “I know what’s best for my daughter.”
“Yeah,
I’m sure you think that,” I said, brandishing the staff in front of myself like a samurai sword. “But all you had to do was love her, and I’m sorry, but handing her over to a demon is not loving her.”
Instead of replying, she spat at me. A gob of saliva hit me in the eye, and as it did, she lunged at me. I stepped aside, barely, but she twisted in midair and buried her foot in my torso. My back smacked painfully against the billboard, but as it did, I wrapped my left hand around her leg and jerked her into me. As she came flying forward, my right hand lashed out with the radioactive cane. She screamed, trying to pull away from the oncoming blow while clawing at me. Her nails gouged into my cheek, spilling hot blood down my face, but it didn’t matter, there was no way to disrupt the arc of pimptastic death heading for her skull.
Only I was wrong.
A glittering, disembodied hand the color of old egg yolks gripped Mammon’s pimp staff, stopping its flight millimeters from Martha’s head. The light inside the weapon died an instant before it was jerked roughly out of my hand and flung to the street below.
“What the actual fuck?” I cried, but before I could say more, that unnatural demonic language I remembered Beleth speaking filled my ears. My vision went spotty as I instinctively recoiled away from it.
“I forgot, your puny human brain can’t comprehend our sacred tongue.” The sound of the voice rumbled through me, making my gut twist in horror. “I said, I don’t think I’ll be allowing you to kill more of my minions today.” Dark, monstrous power crackled through the air, and the truth of his words hit me like a sledgehammer. Still, there was one problem with his plan. He’d have to be able to stop me, and I still had an ace up my sleeve. My cat wanted to eat him. I might as well give her the chance, eh?
“Lord Asmodai,” Martha said, but before she managed any other words, the hand seized her by the hair. She was torn from my grip and sent careening over the edge of the building. As her body flew through the air, she transformed back into the osprey in a flash of yellow light. Only, it hadn’t seemed like she’d transformed on purpose. No, it seemed like Asmodai, if that’s who this was, had transformed her. How the fuck was that possible? Never mind, the answer was obvious. Demon douchebaggery.
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