by Tim Marquitz
Scarlett’s eyes went wide, but Katon didn’t give her a chance to react. He ducked under Rahim’s arm and came at me. His sword was a blur of motion, but to my surprise, I could follow it with ease, as if I knew exactly what he intended. He’d never seemed so slow before. I sidestepped the downward slash with a laugh, his blade scraping sparks off the sidewalk. Scarlett wrapped her arms around Katon and pulled him away as I stood there, grinning at him.
Rahim moved into the middle, his hands clenched into fists. “Enough! Both of you.” There was fire in his voice for the first time since they’d shown up. It felt like a challenge.
“What have you done, Frank?” Scarlett asked over Katon’s shoulder. She clung tight to the enforcer, not letting him wiggle free. He snarled, wanting to come after me but not willing to hurt Scarlett to do it. Her senses probed my magic, and I didn’t bother to stop her. The sour look on her face told me she didn’t like what she’d found.
“Only what I had to.” The words were an eerie echo of the ones I’d said to Katon right before Longinus spirited Mihheer and me away from DRAC headquarters. Only what I had to.
And that was exactly it. DRAC hadn’t stepped up for me when I needed it; Scarlett had been too busy in Heaven; and Veronica and Baalth straight up stabbed me in the back. If it hadn’t been for Longinus doing what needed to be done I might never have rescued Karra.
That thought struck an ominous chord. I might never see her again because of what I was forced to do. A cold chill settled over me, skin prickling the stubby hair at the base of my neck. Had Rahim and Katon been there for me, had Scarlett, maybe things would have been different. I wouldn’t have killed Longinus. Karra—and my child—would be with me. A bitter emptiness roiled in my gut. They weren’t there when I needed them, and I definitely didn’t need them now.
“Just…go away. All of you. I don’t have time for this.”
“But you have time to go on a killing spree, is that it?” Katon asked. Even restrained by Scarlett, he was still looking for a scrap.
I took a step toward the enforcer, coming shoulder to chest with Rahim, who stepped in front of me and held his ground, staring down at me. His power welled up, stinging my senses. I shifted my eyes to his, and for the first time ever, I thought I saw fear there.
“Be careful, Frank,” Scarlett told me, pulling my attention away from the wizard. “Heaven is worried about you.”
“Wow! That’s a first. Heaven is worried about little old me.” I laughed at that. “Well, you can tell them fuck you very much.”
Scarlett’s eyes narrowed, her grip on Katon loosening. “There’s something wrong with you.”
“Is there?” I let my magic build, pushing its essence out against their senses. It wouldn’t hurt them, but it was the mystical equivalent of Godzilla whipping his dick out. “I’m not sure what you’re seeing, but I feel fabulous. Never better.”
Scarlett flinched at the wave, taking a step back. She yanked Katon along with her protectively. Even Rahim backed off a few paces. Though I suspected that was for different reasons entirely. He wanted room to maneuver if things got worse.
“You…you’re—”
I nodded to Scarlett. “Looks like Heaven left a tiny little detail out of the mission prep, huh, cousin?” A bitter smile broke across my face. “Of course, can’t blame them too much since I don’t reckon any of them knew save for the Almighty Himself, and I suspect even that’s a recent thing. Seems old Uncle Lou fudged a couple entries in the family tree along the way. Guess that explains why they’re worried, huh? The fiery throne has an heir, at last.”
Katon shrugged Scarlett off and squared up.
I gave him a wink. “Turns out you might have been right about me, Katon. I’m the Devil’s seed. You might also want to keep a close eye on Wings there. She’s been cavorting with the Anti-Christ her entire life. Never know when she might break bad.”
“Enough,” Katon shouted. The blade of his sword gleamed as he advanced.
“Enough indeed,” I answered. “Since none of you came here to help, how about you take a hike?”
“Frank, wait…there’s—”
I cut Scarlett off as she inched forward behind the enforcer. “Seriously, I’m not in the mood for an intervention. Take the hint and get to steppin’. You’re not welcome here.”
“You don’t get to decide that, Frank.” Rahim’s magic danced across my senses. It was a warning.
It was also the wrong thing to do.
“No, I have every right, Rahim.” My own power ramped up and knocked his aside, a leaf on a blustery day. “By the laws of succession, Baalth dead at my hands, I claim Old Town as mine.”
Symbols appeared in my head, a puzzle that sorted itself in the blink of an eye, the pieces sliding into place to reveal the whole. My fingers twitched under a spell I hadn’t even realized I cast until it boiled over.
“Begone!”
A mystical storm roared out of me, and they were just that: gone.
Rahim, Katon, and Scarlett disappeared without a sound.
Four
Standing stiff amidst the tumble of dead bodies, I only wished I could chase away the anger so easily. Maybe it was something Longinus had carried inside him, the burden of his power passed on to me when I blew his brains out, the prize in the bottom of the soul transfer cereal box. Whatever it was, I couldn’t catch my breath and my skull was fit to explode.
Fury clutched at my throat, and I could hear my voice spewing out ragged, feral gasps as my lungs struggled for air. The heat at my cheeks pushed out across my face, engulfing my nose and eyes and forehead like Poland beneath the blitzkrieg. There was no escaping it. My temples throbbed, drum beats rolling. I was so mad I couldn’t see straight.
All I knew was that I wasn’t tired anymore, the volcanic rage having washed away my weariness. Left in its place was a hunger that gnawed at my nerves, spurring me on in search of satisfaction. For what, I had no clue, but it was an insistent itch that demanded scratching. One of those where you draw blood ripping away the skin yet can never quite satisfy.
My gaze fell on Gimpy, the switchblade handle protruding from his ear. He’d stabbed himself in the head to keep from telling me who he worked for.
“Stupid shit.”
I kicked him over so I didn’t have to see his lolling tongue, but his million-mile stare got me thinking. Any guy who would kill himself rather than reveal his boss had to be scared shitless. That meant there was somebody at the top of the food chain with some power. While it didn’t feel right taking my frustrations out on DRAC or Scarlett, even with as much as they pissed me off, I had no problem contemplating an ass whoopin’ for the punk who’d moved into Old Town while I was on alien safari.
I forced out a slow, cleansing breath at the idea and shook my hands to chase away the tingles that hummed at my fingertips. Gimpy might not have given up his boss, but now that I thought about it, I didn’t really need a name. A quick glance over the bodies that littered the street told me I already had everything I needed. Rather than waste time hunting down some nameless phantom lurking behind the curtain, I had a better idea. Why not rip the castle down around him. A low chuckle spilled from my mouth as I imagined just that. If the mysterious invader wanted to hold onto his would-be kingdom, he’d have to fight for it. Better still, he’d have to come to me.
The streets barren near the strip club and adjoining businesses, thanks to the gunfire and brawl, I went off in search of more of the mercenaries. It wasn’t long before I came across another batch of them. This time, however, the blood and gooey mess of their companions smeared across my face and clothes, they weren’t so oblivious to my intentions.
Not that it mattered on teensy, eensy bit.
I charged into the thick of them without a word. Limbs snapped and orifices ruptured, but for all my anger, a steely purpose held firm. While I had every intention of killing as many of the militant grunts as I could, there was more to my rampage than accumulating a body count. Well, m
aybe only a little more. Rather than snap the neck of everyone I came across, I figured it was best to shut them down yet let a bunch live.
If everyone is dead, who was gonna pass my message on?
A manic smile stretched my cheeks as I slammed a guy onto his back, the sharp snap of his spine giving way. He might well be paralyzed from the ass down, but he didn’t need his rectum to get on the radio and call for backup.
“Send more cops!” I shouted as I tore into the mercenaries. They stared at me grim-faced while trying to blow my head off, ignoring my awesome movie reference. The bastards.
The ones with the AKs were a little less restrained than their pistol-wielding compatriots. The rat-a-tat-tat of automatic machine gun reports filled the air, roiling clouds of gunpowder following right after. The smell tickled my nose, but it was just an hors d' oeuvre in the butchery buffet, the coppery stink of blood winning out by a mile.
Not wanting to test my newfound resilience against the marvels of modern technology, I flung up a shield to reflect the majority of the bullets from hitting me. Reddish energy glistened all around me, my will shaping the defenses into sleek curves and sharp points, like I was wearing a spiky shell. I was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle on steroids.
“Cowabunga, motherfuckers.”
I put all the pokey little bits to work. Blood sluiced off my shields as the pitter-patter of gunfire sounded like hail on a hot tin roof. Quick slashes left men screaming in the streets, clutching to severed limbs and crying out for help. I smiled at their cooperation.
The first batch of mercenaries dropped without much fuss. Unable to hurt me, I pushed through them and left the pieces scattered on the roadway behind me. But still, they kept coming. Wave after wave funneled through the Old Town streets toward the chaos, adding their own to the mix. The few pedestrians out on the streets when I started had long since disappeared, the metal security shutters slamming down on most every business I could see, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I wasn’t out for collateral damage, but I wasn’t about to let a few gawkers or inconvenient shop placement slow me down.
There was only room in town for one asshole: and that was me. If I had to raze the place to get the bad guy to creep out of hiding, that was what I would do. Baalth would have stores of cash I could use to rebuild, not even counting what Lucifer had stashed in Hell. The people would move on and get over it. Baalth had nuked the place and that didn’t do much more than give the people indigestion for a few months before everything reverted. What I was doing was far less widespread in its impact. Shit, they should thank me for it. I was Old Town’s exterminator, ridding it of the roaches and vermin that had settled in while I was gone.
“And they shall call me Benevolent!”
My boots squished as I stomped through the pools of viscera that colored the road like a Dali painting on meth and laxatives. Bodies creaked under my weight. The first several waves of mercenaries had come and died, a swath of broken bodies spewed across the sidewalks, a Normandy Beach re-creation gone way too real. The hoary moans of their suffering crashed against my ears in undulating, pitiful waves. The men were loyal. I had to give them that. Not all of them would die tonight, but none of them would go home unscarred.
One of the sturdier mercenaries crawled ahead of me, a leg severed at the knee, his opposite arm yanked free at the shoulder. He wormed forward, shrieking into the radio he held clasped in a crimson hand, begging for someone at the other end to send help. I grinned, hoping his boss was listening in, and reached down, grabbing the stump of bone that protruded from his leg. He screamed as I yanked him to me, flipping him onto his back. The mercenary stared at me with eyes so wide I could see the back his skull through the gaping sockets.
One hand buried in his armpit and the other making use of the oozing stump of his shoulder, I picked him up so we were face to face. The sour scent of death rolled off him as he squirmed, agony distorting his features while my fingers dug for purchase.
“Is your boss coming?”
The only answer I received was a fecund grunt, warm bile spattering my cheeks and dripping serpentine down his chin. I exhaled hard against his nastiness and tossed him over my shoulders so I could find someone else more talkative.
It took a moment to realize I hadn’t heard him hit.
I turned as a shadow rolled over me, its deep, fetid darkness blocking out the pasty glow of the streetlights. A sound like stones being ground together reverberated off the nearby buildings, and the toe-curling stink of tar and brimstone assailed my nose. The shadow was growing. My eyes inched upward until I could see the vague edge of the darkness and apply some definition to the thing I was seeing. It was one of those moments I wish I could take back.
Two massive eyes, each easily twice the size of my chest, loomed nearly twenty feet above my head. Hunks of multi-faceted coal, they shimmered. It was if a thousand fireflies had taken up residence in each orb, dots of yellow-orange lights flickering to a rhythm too random to sort out. They glared at me with palpable disgust. In its distended maw were row upon row of serrated teeth, which splintered out in every direction. My gaze zeroed in on something squirming inside the mouth of razored saws. It was the mercenary I’d tossed aside. His terror was etched across his face.
As I watched him soundlessly plead for help, the creature bit down, and I heard the brittle crunch of bone as he disappeared behind the mass of yellowed fangs. Blood and gore and meaty little bits I couldn’t identify rained down over me, moist plops splattering across the asphalt. I closed my eyes until the worst of it had passed, then looked back up at the disgusting thing hovering above, chewing the mercenary into mushy little bits with slow, deliberate bites.
It was the unfortunate cross between a snail, a worm, and a rabid dinosaur. The night of its conception must have been one hell of a party. I wondered who swallowed that worm. A vague memory at the back of my mind made me think I’d seen something like this before, but damned if I knew where. Regardless, there was no pulling my eyes from it.
Bubbled black flesh covered what I assumed was its midsection. Tufts of fur sprouted beneath each and every bump; little Fu Manchus of green bristles that wiggled at its every sloth-like movement. Furry T-Rex arms sprouted from its side in legion. There were so many of them I didn’t bother to count, but they swung back and forth in mesmerizing unison as though forming a wave at a football game. Silver claws tipped each and every one.
The creature roared, feeling the sound more than hearing it, deep vibrations rattling my rib cage. Gory spittle colored the air, and that was right about the time I decided I should probably hit the thing before it chewed my head off.
My power welled up as the monstrosity loomed closer, and I let loose a blast of energy into its guts. It shrieked as the bolt hit, rearing up. There was a series of bubbling pops as dozens of the bumps exploded, the air filling with a stink so vile it could only be rancid, rotten alien flesh or the latest scent by Christian Dior.
The foulness stung my eyes, so I squeezed them shut while fighting the urge to spew. It tasted as if I’d licked the stink sack on a skunk. No time to be sensitive about my romantic proclivities, I forced myself to pay attention so I didn’t get smooshed. It was a good thing, too.
Hundreds of sideways eyes stared at me from the remaining bumps on the creature’s stomach. They blinked of their own accord, Morse code on speed, flickers of bluish-black opening and closing, over and over and over. A low-pitched hum emanated from their frantic motion, bees in the bottom of a trash can. My eyes focused in on the sound and noticed there were teeth—tiny, razor thin slivers of teeth—arrayed on the multitudes of eyelids.
Then they were on me.
Much like the little roach thing Rala had summoned back in Hell, I realized this creature’s torso eyes were on stalks. Black tendrils burst from its belly, worms erupting from a volcano, and lashed out at me. Eyeball-teeth gnashed at me before I could react, my body peppered by the baseball thumps of the eye-mouths slamming into me.
> I screamed and staggered back in a crimson mist of my own blood, thousands of paper cut bites covering me from head to toe. My skin burned like I was a piece of wood shoved up in a termite orgy, with a dash of habanero thrown in for good measure. I swallowed hard against the pain and jumped back to avoid the flailing mass of biting eyes.
That only put me in range of the thing’s face. Its jagged maw hurled down at me, and I barely managed to leap aside before it crashed into the asphalt. Great big chunks of street were ripped up behind me as I rolled and got back to my feet. I let off another blast of mystical energy and watched as it scorched the side of the beast, burning away a couple of the tiny arms and searing the skin black beneath.
It swung its massive head about, its main eyes coming to rest on me as it lurched forward. I fired again and again, striking it full in its face, but it kept coming, roaring as its spaghetti tendril eye-teeth snapped at me. One last bolt of energy to its guts, which only managed to singe a couple stalks, made it clear I was pretty much fucked.
I ducked aside as the monstrosity smashed downward, tearing apart the street where I’d just stood. Out of instinct more than anything else, I punched at one of the tendrils that whipped out at me. My hand sank into the bulbous eye as though I’d fisted a randy camel. Mucous and all sorts of fluids I wanted no part in identifying gushed over my wrist and spilled down my forearm in thick, cloying chunks. I yanked my hand free, flinging it out to the side, turning my head away to keep from splattering myself with any of it.
While most of Daddy’s wisdom was lost on me, there was one piece of advice that held true. ‘Don’t put it in your mouth if you’re not willing to swallow.’
I might be paraphrasing a bit, but the last damn thing I wanted was to taste any of that nasty gushiness. Fortunately, the creature reared back and put a couple feet of distance between us. It screamed and turned its wall of eyes my direction. The stalk that I’d damaged swung limp, tangled amongst the others. Brackish orange fluids poured from its ruined tip. I cast a furtive glance at the area I’d blasted with my magic only to realize how superficial the wound looked. While the eyes had retreated to the body, they were still visible beneath the blackened char. They blinked slowly but steadily.