by Sawyer Black
It felt like a giant spider in his mouth. Henry spit it out with revulsion, and it hit the cat woman’s face. The bloody goober covered her horror and muffled her scream. Henry kicked her aside and dropped his knee on her stud’s throat. He thrust his hands through the stud’s ribs, and snatched it back, full of beating heart. His balls scraped across the guy’s mask, and he threw his head back and laughed.
Bonus points for the unintended teabag!
Tears sprang into his eyes, and he lifted the dripping heart over his face, the blood pattering against his lips and into his mouth. So sweet. The energy of the stud’s passing spreading through him, and despite the euphoria exploding from every pore, Henry felt a nagging in the back of his mind.
Nadia screamed from across the room. Henry turned, and one of the robed thugs sprang forward with a shotgun held to his shoulder. His face had changed into one of glinting horror. Fangs and spiked eyebrows. Eyes like night. The thug fired before his feet hit the ground, and the slug caught Henry over his right hip.
It spun him to the floor, and in the middle of the ecstasy, Henry felt no pain. He continued his spin from the floor, swinging his left arm wide, and his claws removed the thug’s feet, twirling him in a cartwheel, black blood spraying out in a spiral. Henry rose to stand, heaving, his own blood coursing down his leg. He stared at the wound in his side and watched it close. Searing heat shot through his torso, and clarity descended.
What the fuck am I forgetting?
Nadia’s scream, and a spear point pushed through his back. The jagged tip burst through his middle, trailing glistening bits, showering his feet with blood. The force rocked him forward, and Henry twisted his head around to see his attacker. Another robed asshole. Gritting his teeth with his slanted eyes wide like a Jack-O-Lantern.
He dropped straight to his ass, and the spear handle jerked from Jack’s hands. He scraped in a small circle, raising his hand with a grimace of pain, trying to get the guy to come closer. Jack’s smile widened, and he came at Henry in a crouch. He nearly shook his head in disbelief.
What a fucking dumbass.
Jack leaned in with his mouth hanging open, tongue wagging and dripping as he reached for the spear. Henry slammed his fist into the thug’s gaping maw, breaking teeth and cutting his knuckles. He drove his fist down like swinging a hammer, and Jack’s jaw tore off, trailing a slick smear of greasy blood down the front of his robe.
Jack reeled back, shaking his head like a dog trying to dry itself after walkies in the rain. Blood showered in every direction. Henry grabbed the spear front and back, snapping it in two. He felt it dig through his guts as he pulled the halves apart. He dropped the handle and spun with the smart end, rising up on one knee. Jack charged, his gaping grin a crater of black blood and shredded flesh.
Henry jabbed the spear into Jack’s groin, pushing it until the spearhead exploded above Jack’s ass crack. The thug folded over it with an eye-popping screech, grabbing the shaft and standing straight as he tried to retreat with sliding steps. The spear jutted out like a splintered wooden erection.
Henry grunted to his feet, his own blood splashing at his feet. He grabbed the spear in one hand and the thug’s throat with the other. Then he heaved Jack over his head, kicking and screaming, his blood splashing onto the top of Henry’s head.
A deep breath, and Henry roared. Something inside him tore as he pivoted to finish the arc. Jack’s head split open on the floor, his body breaking into a jumbled pile of robed goll.
The pressure in his middle intruded into his thought as a mounting pain. Energy bled out with every beat of his heart. Weight crashed into him, and he turned with claws raised until seeing a gasping Nadia standing with blood pulsing from a gruesome wound in her chest. Muscle and bone. Gristle shining. Slashes and cuts. Blood and flesh splattering her arms from black claws to broken elbow.
She indicated the room behind him with a toss of her scaled head, and Henry turned with dread. Exhaustion slowed his movements, and his breath sent shivers of pain up into the hollow of his throat. Purpose flooded into his mind, and when he saw the carnage he and Nadia had wrought, the acid of his vomit rolled across the iron of his blood, and he spit it out in disgust.
Twisted bodies in bloody piles. Screams and groans. Dripping blood. Limbs. Heads. Trails of guts and bone. The massacre’s rich scent seeping into his mind, sharpening his senses with the pain and despair he tasted with every breath. The wound over his hip knitted with a flash of fire that unhinged his knee. Nadia caught him before he fell to the floor, and he finally raised his eyes to look at what she had wanted him to see.
The children — still glassy-eyed and numb — stood huddled along the wall. The child from the table swaddled in their midst, held in their cowering embrace. Henry’s heart ached with a pain and fear that rolled from the children in waves.
Ariana and Meyor backed into the dark corner, their eyes wide and staring. Henry stepped toward them, but Nadia held him back. He twisted in her grasp. “The fuck? We need to stop them. They may know where the … horn … is …”
Nadia’s eyes were focused elsewhere. Her jaw set. Her lips in a grim line. The wound in her shoulder closed, and she hissed, exposing her wicked teeth in a sneer. Henry sighed.
Fuck.
He turned to follow her gaze, and his shoulders sagged. A gang of angry survivors rallied at the wall. Humans digging through piled clothing, coming up with weapons. A few pistols. Knives. Another fucking spear, and the shotgun in the hands of another robed thug. Henry couldn’t find the fourth in the crowd, but it didn’t matter. What he did see tightened the skin over his balls, and set him back on his heels.
A trio of demons crouched on the edges of the crowd. Two of them were twisted trolls with spikes and points and glaring hatred in their glowing eyes.
The third demon was a red dragon with a forked tail and swinging breasts. The bunny mask from her human form dangled from a horn, swinging in front of her eyes as she rocked back and forth. She growled, and the rumble of her voice traveled through the stone floor and up into his knees.
Henry felt the damage in his bowels heal with a wrenching spike of heat, and he gasped, standing up straight with a full breath. He dropped a growl of his own, and was surprised at its depth and force. The fractals still at the edge of his vision vibrated, and the blood lust crept back in to color his thoughts with confidence. His concern fell away, and he smiled.
He dropped his hand and reached out to find Nadia seeking with her own hand. He closed his clawed fingers around hers, and he was calm and sure. This had been the right thing. He couldn’t remember why he had done it, but he was positive. It didn’t matter why, because he knew it was good.
Righteous.
He suddenly didn’t feel monstrous and ugly, or old and useless, because the face of an angelic child spread across his mind. Her upturned face smiling as she reached up to stroke his cheek. The love and forgiveness in her touch brought tears to Henry’s eyes.
This beautiful little girl. The ghost of his daughter. Telling him it was okay.
His power came from pain. Fear. The darkness in all things. He pulled it out of the air. Out of the stone. The energy in the blood of the sick fucks who had died under his rage.
It filled him, vibrating in his chest, expanding until he could no longer pull in enough air, his vision spotting with hypoxia, and still it filled him. He flared but held the power in check, building into a buzzing current around him. The heat of the unreleased energy boiled the water out of the air in a shimmering haze before him.
The sopping clothes of the victims at his feet sizzled and smoked. The reek of charring flesh made his mouth water even as it filled him with revulsion. He couldn’t keep the guilt out of his thoughts. He never could. And that’s where his comedy had come from.
Amélie’s face wavered in his mind. Fading into the depths of his pain. Despair replaced her. He knew where she had gone. Into the very darkness that controlled his life. His decisions. His self-hatred.
The dragon lowered her head, staring into the flickering glow, her mouth dropping open. Her tongue lolled out between the black razors of her teeth. The humans shielded their faces from the light and heat. The other demons smiled.
Ready to rumble.
Henry forced air in his lungs, raising his shoulder and squeezing Nadia’s hand one last time. He braced his feet and thrust his head forward in a roaring scream that drove the humans back in terror. Blasting through the curtain of heat, gaining amplitude in its echoes bouncing against the rock walls.
Nadia’s demon voice joined his. Defiance and rage. Henry bounced inside his cloud of unvented energy, and his swell of need hit its limit. A warm spot on his cheek where the caressing hand of the girl with the angel’s face had touched him. Drying his tears.
Before the last echo of his voice reached his ears, Henry released his flare, charging forward in its wake.
Nadia’s feet slapped the floor beside him, and they kept pace with each other as they met a wall of discharging weapons and swinging claws.
Henry was about to die, and he had never felt so alive.
CHAPTER 15
Bullets tore into his chest. A shotgun blast shredding the flesh of his shoulder and neck. The spear driving into his thigh. Fire licking across his back. A blow to his forehead splitting the skin, blood bursting across his vision. His flare washed into the line, scattering bodies like bowling pins.
Nadia’s claws a blur in the haze of blood and smoke, leaving trails through the air, frozen in the time between blinks. Swinging fists and claws, Henry charged into his enemies. Henry clung to the face of the angel retreating into the depths of his mind, and he forgot her name. Pain twisted his heart, and he flung a human in a giraffe mask into the growing fire.
His voice ragged with his own howls of rage and the heat of the fire, and he stepped into the swing of a knife that laid his chest open, splitting the skin and meat to expose his white ribs. No pain or pressure, just something that happened, as if watching somebody else in the twisted form of a monster rage through a crowd of sick fucks desperate for punishment.
His lungs pumped like a bellows as he looked up at the ceiling, on his back with a troll’s gnashing teeth at his throat. The demon’s Order From Chaos robes split around his sudden mass as he resumed his monstrous from. It trailed into ribbons around him.
Henry blocked the bite with his forearm, and the troll’s teeth sunk to the bone. The troll shook his head like a dog with a snake in its jaws. His hands went numb, ice spreading through his fingers. He dug into the troll’s eyes and drew his knees up. The troll pulled back to avoid the blinding claws, his wrinkled belly exposed through the tatters of his robe. But Henry drove his feet into the bulbous gut, puncturing the flesh with the claws on his toes.
He kicked, and the troll tumbled away, spilling guts and ichor over Henry’s legs. The troll’s closed teeth pulled a bite out of his arm and sent him flying back. Henry’s own blood and gobbets of his flesh glistened with demon saliva as it splashed onto his chest.
The floor trembled with an unseen force. Henry staggered to his feet, twisted arm dangling at his side. The floor heaved, and he almost lost his balance. The ceiling split open, and a light brighter than the noonday sun sent searing shafts through the hanging smoke and mist of blood.
Blisters bubbled and burst on his shoulder, then everywhere on the back of Henry’s head. He flung himself to the side, rolling to fetch up against the stone table as a beautiful song filled his ears. A deep voice of melody bloomed in his mind.
Submit and feel the release of the Almighty.
Two Trackers descended through the gash in the vaulted stone.
You will never know pain again.
Beautiful and radiant, their raiment flowing in the wind of their approach. A glowing net held between them shimmered with light like the morning sun running along the strands of a garden spider’s web, sparkling off the dew.
Lethargy settled across his shoulders. Pain swelled in his wounds and joints. The face of the little girl flew apart like vapor, and his mind was blank except for the desire to finally surrender. Step into the light and let the forgiveness burn his sins away. Henry Black would be no more, but his suffering would be over.
Screams of panic and pain.
Come into the light.
Be not afraid.
Henry rolled to his hands and knees, his mangled left arm collapsing, dropping him to his face, eyes rolling toward the Trackers promising him an end to his struggle. He tried to rise again, and his gaze fell on the auctioneers in the corner. Staring up into the descending light, Meyor stood frozen with one leg in his trousers, the other lifted to slide inside, hopping for balance. Ariana clung to his back, her slack face turned up to the light cascading from the ceiling.
His dropped his head and closed his eyes. Felt the light and its impossible heat. Heard the music of the Trackers’ voices. And with his eyes still closed, Henry saw the face of the little girl. In the haze of his pain, her name jumped to his lips. “Amélie.”
He looked at the faces of the children chained at the wall, their faces open with weeping joy. Light reflecting from the tears streaming down their cheeks.
Henry rose to his knees and looked out over the chaos caused by the Trackers’ arrival. Humans and demons rolling in the burning of the fire caused by his flare. Trying to avoid the burning of the golden light from the split in the ceiling. Trackers hovering on wings that cracked the air.
Nadia cowered in the corner, her eyes pressed closed, her scaled fists rammed against her ears. She sat half in the shadow cast by the stone bench.
The shadows!
Behind the stone table. At the corner where the wall met the floor. Behind the arches of the pillars holding up this twisted space. Cast by her demon form.
Henry rolled to the dark side of the table and wrapped himself in the energy untouched by light. It cooled his skin like a salve. Pain and despair hung thick in the room, rising above the demanding call of the Trackers. A glass of water beneath a blistering sun. Henry rose above the fog in his brain, gripped the image of his daughter in a mental hand, and spread himself into the shadows like quicksilver.
Rushing through the dark, just ahead of the holy light tracking his progress across the room, he flowed out of the shadow next to Nadia, and threw his body over her shoulders, clasping his hands behind her back. He lifted her from the floor and plunged backward as though he were falling into a pool.
He sank into the black just before the blistering light removed the shadow from the corner, and Henry was gone.
Carrying her big ass through the shadows tore at his muscles and joints. A shattering agony escaped his chest as a gargled scream. Nadia’s cry rose into his ears in agonized counterpoint, and Henry burst out of the shadows in front of Ariana and Meyor.
Henry looked over his shoulder, catching his breath. The dragon jumped through the fire to land with her clawed feet tangling in the nearest Tracker’s fluttering robe. His light dimmed, and he fell to the stone. The dragon screamed in triumph as the glittering net sagged.
Except for you!
The Tracker’s voice boomed from the walls and split Henry’s mind with its volume. Anger tinged with irritation. Indignant. Like Saint George, the Tracker pulled a sword from his back as the dragon thrust her head toward his throat.
Henry didn’t want to see what a pissed off Tracker could do to a demon pressing her luck. He stepped forward, blocking Meyor’s line of sight. Meyor dropped his pants and stepped back, shaking his head and blinking his eyes clear. Ariana’s face twisted with confu
sion. She looked into Henry’s face with her eyebrows raised in question.
Henry jumped forward, grabbing Meyor by the throat. Ariana jumped around and clutched Henry’s wrist. “Please,” she gasped, her face twisting with grief. “Don’t hurt him.”
Nadia limped over and wrapped Ariana in a hug, pulling her back so that Henry could work.
“Where’s the Purveyor?” Henry growled.
Meyor’s eyes flitted from the scene over Henry’s shoulders and back. The dragon’s scream of pain cut through the air, and Meyor ducked in a wince. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Henry bit into Meyor’s face. His teeth scraped against bone, and he pulled back, a glistening strand stretching from the auctioneer’s visage. Henry swallowed, and the strand snapped with a wet sounding POP! Meyor’s scream was drowned out by Ariana’s wail, but they were both beaten by the dragon, cracking the stone with her howl, dying in a burst of light and a release of energy that sifted dust from the ceiling into Henry’s eyes.
Meyor’s head slumped forward, his eyes rolling back in his head. “I don’t know where he is.”
“How do I find him?”
“I don’t know. He always calls me.”
“You got a phone from Antioch, too?”
“What?” Meyor shook his head in confusion. “No. On my iPhone.”
“Where is it?”
Meyor glanced down at the pants, pooled on the floor at his feet. “I don’t know.”
Henry looked at Nadia with a nod. She threw Ariana to the floor, and Meyor struggled to keep her in his sight. Ariana scrabbled back, the thin chains on her wrists jingling as she held her hands up, fending off Nadia’s approach. Nadia swung her hand, parting the thin chains with her claws.