by D L Greeley
“Awww, you don’t want my body anymore?” I turned to Shelly and spoke to her in an effeminate voice. “Typical man, they always lose interest after the magic is gone.” He actually smiled at me.
Shelly spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “What are you doing? We are still trapped in here, you idiot!” I suddenly felt so tired, so very tired, my concussion was catching up with me. “I’m sorry, Shelly. I did my best. Here…” I handed her one of my Berettas, after I chambered the first round. “After I’m dead the shield should drop. If he comes at you, shoot for his face and run.” She stared at the gun. “What?” I pushed it at her not meeting her gaze. “You heard me, take it.” She started to tear up. “Oh Mack, You can’t give up. You have to fight. That’s what you do, you fight.” I shook my head and gently pushed her away from me. “It’s over, Shelly. The tank’s empty, no fight left in me, kid. Run for it as soon as you can. He’ll be more interested in trying to resurrect me before brain death. You’ll have maybe five minutes.”
She spun me around to face her and slapped me, hard! Those little bony fingers of hers felt like a fist full of silverware. “Shelly I—” Slap! “Hey wait a minute—” Slap! Slap! “NOW HOLD ON JUST A BLOODY SECOND! WHAT THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU PLAYING AT?”
“You angry?” She demanded in a challenging tone. Slap!
“You damn straight I am.” Slap!
“You want me to stop hitting you?” Slap!
“YES I DO!” I was actually mad enough to slap her back. “Then get in there, kick his ass and get us out of here. I have no intention of letting him have MY body, do YOU?” She swung at me again and I caught her wrist. My reflexes were back. Hello! I turned to face Seth with murder in my eyes. He was getting to his feet and still grinning. Channeling all my anger into the armor, it expanded to encompass me from head to toe. Every move I made would have to be Power assisted. I issued a roar of challenge and charged. Seth roared and charged to match me. We collided like speeding freight trains. Ducking under his arms, I drove my shoulder into his waist, flipping once in midair. He landed flat on his back. Not giving him an opportunity to recover, I used the Repulsor field like the ropes in a wrestling ring.
It propelled me back into the center of the circle like an arrow from a bow. I landed a combination punch and knee into Seth’s abdomen. He let out a whoosh of air and a groan as he reached up to grab me around the throat, in his iron grip. Standing up, he had that vile grin on his ugly face again. “I am going to choke the life out of you before I take your body. After that Claire will be especially satisfying.”
“Claire! He knows about Claire!” I struggled to get my thumbs into his eyes but his arms were too long. I just dangled like a freshly wrung chicken. “Mack! No matter what happens, you’ll always be in my heart!” Shelly called to me.
“There’s that phrase again.”
“The virgin’s devotion to you is so touching,” Seth sneered. “She should see you die. It’ll be an object lesson for her.” He turned me to face Shelly. “You’ll always be in my heart, Mack!” She gestured to her chest. My eyes almost popped out of my skull. Come to think of it, that may have been from the choking. She was still wearing the sunlight amulet. I concentrated as hard as I could. I was going to lose consciousness at any moment. “Archie get behind Shelly. Kolann! Take cover!” Projecting a quick image of what was about to happen, I saw a blur of motion as Archie got into position. Kolann and his crew disappeared. I grunted something intentionally unintelligible. “tang heywa fu wida gis.”
“Last words, Mr. MacFade? Please speak up, we should all here this.” He let up the pressure on my throat. My head was pounding. “I said.” I croaked. “Thank heaven for little girls.” Shelly thrust the amulet at us and screamed “HOUSHUTSU!” Eight days of pure sunlight burst out of it all at once. Seth howled in agony, dropping me in the process. Hitting the floor, I rolled to my hands and knees desperately trying to regain my sight. The shield dropped but was recovering quickly and Archie was flat on his back. The sunlight must have affected him harder than I anticipated. I had to get Shelly out before the shield hole closed.
I tried to get up but my legs wouldn’t support me. Raising my left hand, I prepared to use the last of my life-force, for a gust of wind, to blow Shelly out of the circle. Out of nowhere, a blur of motion whipped past us from behind. The blur and Shelly disappeared through the hole just before it sealed. On the other side, stood Shelly and Svetlana Rayner. Svetlana was a little singed around the edges, but gave me a small bow. “The little minx is trying to make amends.” I smiled weakly and motioned for them to get away. Kolann walked up and gently tried to take Shelly by the arm.
“No, no, get off me!”
“Ms. Thompson, please, it is his final wish that you not see this,” Kolann said gently. The shock of exactly what was he was telling her only lasted a moment. “No! No! How can you just give up on him! You’re talking like he’s already dead!” She threw herself against the dome, pounding at it with tiny little fists. “Mack! Mack! You have to fight!” She cried through choking sobs. “You have to fight. Get up! Get up! I love you, Mack! Do it for me. Do it for Claire. Don’t leave us alone. Please! You have to get up!”
Claire… Shelly… all my friends would be completely defenseless, I had to try. “Mai what about the healing amulet? We could convert the energy to life force?”
“Not possible anymore Alex, it takes energy to convert energy, it would just disperse into the siphon. We could pull from Seth if it weren’t for the feedback loop the incantation is causing.”
“What did you say?”
We could pull from Seth if it weren’t for the feedback loop.”
That was it, a feedback loop! “You’re a genius, Mai!”
“OK..?”
I got up and extended my arm. Nothing happened. Seth started laughing. “Looking for that are we?” He pointed over my shoulder. Kolann was holding my sword. I must have dropped it when I fell. That was embarrassing. Kolann looked distraught as he stared at the vitally necessary weapon. “Bloody fucking Hell!” I growled.
Seth climbed to his feet. “I think I have had enough of you, cub.” He reached to draw his own sword. Well, he would have, if it had been there. “Yoo hoo! Over here, sweetie, missing something?” Svetlana was holding Seth’s sword up over her head. Now THAT was impressive! “Well where does this leave US, god boy?” I laughed. “A level playing field?”
“Right back where we started,” he snarled as he lunged forward. I didn’t have the strength to dodge. He wrapped his burned and smoking arms around my chest and hoisted me into the air. “I’ll crush the light from your eyes!” I pushed against him and gasped in as much air as I could. “One thing Bastet forgot to tell you, Seth”
“And what would that be, MACK?”
“This kitty has claws!” Morphing the gauntlets into Tekko-Kagis, I plunged both of them into his chest. He held on and actually laughed at me. “Foolish mortal, did you really think you could kill me with your little toys? I have no heart to stop.”
“Maybe not, but this is going to hurt like a bitch!” The tips of the claws erupted through his back and split into three pronged grappling hooks. They weren’t coming out any time soon. Seth looked confused. “And THIS is going to kill you. SEISHIN KASAI!” The Armor started pulling energy directly from Seth’s core. I willed it to draw faster and faster as the fire blazed hotter. Seth panicked once he realized what was going on and started raining blows on me as I held on like a snapping turtle. I was going to unmake this son-of-a-bitch if it was the last thing I ever did. Seth drew energy from the Veves, which in turn fed the fire. It was a vicious circle and we were right in the middle of it, poetic really. I could feel the oxygen being used up in the dome but he was still struggling and screaming, fire erupting from his mouth and eyes.
Seth finally lost strength, falling to the floor, flat on his back, taking me with him. His skin began to burn as the fire licked up around my hands and legs. The armor had morphed to encompass all o
f my exposed skin, leaving a thin membrane over my eyes, mouth and nose. It was absorbing the heat and converting it to life force energy, but the flames had engulfed us completely and it was getting difficult to breathe. The armor was able to cool the air coming in but it couldn’t add oxygen to it. “Alex! Let go! You have to escape! You’re running out of air. You’re killing us!”
“He’s got to go down! I have to protect Claire and Shelly!”
I could hear everyone beating on the shield outside. “Mack! Let go! Let go! He’s dead! Let go!” I could see Shelly through the flames. She was flailing at the shield with bruised and bloody fists. I slowly shook my head to let her know I knew what I was doing and that I was at peace with it. She panicked. I could see the fear in her eyes. “We’ve got to get him out of there. He’s going Kamikaze!” she pleaded with Kolann. He was desperately trying to drive my sword through the shield. White phosphorus rounds hammered against the dome as Reggie tried to drill his way through in semi-automatic.
“It’s OK my friends, this is how is has to be. Kolann tell Claire I love her and I did this to keep you all safe. Look after Shelly for me.”
“GET HIM OUT OF THERE!” Kolann hollered to his men. Dent and his fellow guards picked up a fallen beam and started to use it as a battering ram at the base of the circle of power, trying to disturb the lines, breaking the pattern. The shield gave, but wouldn’t break, pushing them back with equal force. It would have been like swinging a baseball bat against a giant super ball. It was hopeless. “Sir,” Dent called Kolann. “It’s no good, the pattern is etched into the floor.”
“THEN RIP IT OUT OF THE GROUND!” Kolann was wild eyed in his desperation. “I’ll not have the Rayner Clan responsible for this noble creature’s death!”
Through the haze of my oxygen deprivation, I could barely hear them.
“Mack, there’s got to be another way!” Kolann mentally keened as he hammered at the shield with my sword. Shelly dropped to her knees in utter despair. “Please Mack! Don’t leave me. I need you!”
“This is the way it has to be, Shelly. My life has always been leading up to this moment. I am YAKUZA! This is the destiny I was born to fulfill. I’m sorry, I won’t be there to see you grow up. It was an honor and a privilege to know you, little sister. You replaced a missing piece of me and shed light on an infinite darkness. I’ll always love you for that, but now you have to go.”
“No Mack, you can’t do this!” She wailed, as Kolann grasped her thin shoulders, barely intelligible through her heart wrenching sobs. It was then that everything faded to black.
“C4!” Dent called out, as I died
Chapter 33
Being dead wasn’t so bad. I walked down a long tunnel, drawn towards a bright light. A very small but beautiful pure bred Nimravus Sapien female appeared and took me into her embrace. She had eyes like mine, the softest most beautiful red gold fur I had ever seen (that explained MY skin tone) and she smelled like lavender. “It’s not your time, my love, you need to go back.” I pulled away from her to look into her eyes. “Mother?” She smiled back at me, her Nim eyes shining and licked my cheek. “Yes, my love. I am. It’s not your time A le Han. You must go back.”
“A le Han?”
“Your father felt it would be better to call you Alexander so that your name wouldn’t stand out,” she replied with a whimsical smile. I smiled back, “Right, because with the name, Alexander, I blend right in.” She laughed musically. It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. “Oh, A le Han, you have your father’s sense of humor.” I looked past her into the light. “Is he here?”
“No, only one visitation to a customer, my love. Good bye, A le Han. You have made us so proud.” She pushed me backward as I started to fall…
________________________________________________________________________
“Mack! You’ve got to wake up! Wake up, Mack! Please!”
“Could you please stop shouting? My ear WAS the only part of me that didn’t hurt,” I croaked. My throat felt like I had been gargling battery acid and I tasted grape lip gloss. Weird... I tried to sit up on my own, no good. Kolann knelt next to me and hauled me forward, EVERYTHING hurt. “Ow,” I protested weakly as I sat upright. “You gave us quite a scare there, Mack.” He looked tired but relieved, pushing a water bottle into my battered right hand. The water was warm and burned all the way down, but it was exactly what I needed. I turned to look at Shelly who was sniffling and tear-stained, but looked uninjured aside from her bandaged hands and a purple bump on her forehead. “You alright, Shelly Bean?” I asked. Apparently it was the wrong question.
“Don’t you Shelly Bean me! Don’t you ever do anything like that again! Do you hear me, you big, stubborn jerk!” She emphasized each word with a closed fisted blow to assorted areas of my body. “Stupid, macho, Yakuza self-sacrifice shit!” She growled as I raised my arms to fend her off. “She’s fine,” said Kolann with a hint of a smile. “You sure? I’m not convinced. Get me on my feet before she beats me to death.” Shelly’s eyes narrowed as she shook a finger in my face. “Oh and that’s another thing. You were dead. Do you hear me, Mack? Dead! D-E-A-D, dead! We had to bring you back. We almost couldn’t until that guy showed up.”
“What’s she going on about?” I asked Kolann. He raised his eyebrows and nodded. “It was touch and go there for a while, my friend. Shelly was breathing for you but with her lungs being so much smaller than yours, the tiny thing nearly passed out from her efforts. We tried to do chest compressions to get your heart started again, but we couldn’t get that infernal armor off of you and it’s hard as a rock now.” He emphasized his point by tapping the handle of one of his throwing axes against my chest, impenetrable and unyielding at the moment. I wasn’t getting something. “How was CPR possible like this, Kol?”
“That’s the curious part, Shelly was hysterical. She was literally trying to rip it off of you. When she suddenly stopped and became very still. She then reached over and placed one hand on that amulet at your belt and one hand over your heart and said—what did you say little one?”
“Risutoa,” Shelly replied glowering at me.
“What did I do?”
“She’s upset, Alex. She feels responsible for your death. You need to reassure her.”
“Well, technically, if you think about it…”
“ALEX!”
“alright, alright!”
Kolann stood me up and I leaned over to him. “We need a moment here, Kol.” I turned back to Shelly. She was looking at the ground and digging the toe of a grubby athletic shoe into the rubble. She had tears in her eyes again. “Shelly?”
“What?” She replied, not looking up.
“I’m OK. Alright? No permanent damage. Alright?”
“You almost died to save me.” Technically I DID die, but it didn’t seem appropriate to correct her. That, and I was really fond of the idea that she had stopped hitting me. “So?” She looked up at me with tears flowing freely. “So?” She was angry again. There was no saying the right thing. “How can you be so casual about this? Don’t you get it? You DIED, for ME. The good of the many over the good of the few, that’s what you’re always telling me. I’m not worth it.” She finished so quietly a human wouldn’t have heard it. She looked back down at the ground. Now it was my time to be angry. “What did you say?” I seized her arm but didn’t apply any pressure. I wanted her to feel my warmth and my flesh to reinforce I was, in fact alive. I was controlling my anger, but only just. “Look at me!” I commanded her. She wouldn’t make eye contact. “You help people. You save lives. I’m just a dumb girl that keeps getting herself into bad situations. I’m not worth it.” Bloody hell, she said it again! It was breaking my heart. I thought I had succeeded in bolstering her self-image.
I dropped to one knee to be eye to eye with the tiny girl. She thought I had lost my strength again and put her arms out to steady me. I clamped down on her to force her to look me in the eye. “Don’t you EVER say anything like that again!
Do you think I waste my time on losers?” I shook her a little. “Do you!?”
“No,” she said quietly. “But—”
“I’m not done talking. Shelly, I love you like the little sister, I never had. Scratch that, you ARE my little sister, which makes you a MACFADE! A member of a very proud and very powerful clan. With that, comes immense respect and importance. I expect you to return that, to yourself.”
“I know—”
“No, I don’t think you do. I expect you to respect me enough to hold yourself in the same regard, I do. Otherwise, every time I tell someone about what an incredible young lady you’re growing into, you make a liar out of me. Do think I’m a liar?” She started to smile. I was getting through to her, finally! “Well…” she said. I stopped talking. “Well, what?” My eyes narrowed. She reached over, untied the bandana around my neck, wiping her eyes and blow her nose into it, charming… I held my arms out. “Come here.” Shelly buried her face in my chest. I held her for a moment, then she gently pushed away.
“It’s obvious, now, that your real name isn’t Walker. These people and THINGS kept calling you MacFade and you never corrected them once. In fact you just called me a MacFade. Is Dalton even your real first name?”
“You know I had been meaning to ask you about that, too. And who is this Mai person? You’ve spoken to her several times tonight.” Kolann asked from just behind me. “Bloody bionic vamp hearing!” I muttered as I sank to the other knee and then sat on my heels. I let my shoulders slump. “Is this shitty fucking night ever going to end?” I needed to change the subject.
“Shelly you mentioned a man earlier,” I looked around “which one?”
“Him.” Shelly pointed to a young man in a gray suit. Why did he look so familiar?
“It’s Azrael.”
“Oh you have got to be shitting me.”
“What?”