“You shouldn’t be able to…” He snarled. “This doesn’t make any sense!”
Victor’s first blast was telegraphed too far in advance for it to make contact. Father Auggie leaped into the air, dodging up and over it. He knocked up the snow around him as he landed and let out a scream.
“I will destroy you!” His face contorted even further, and his already oversized body began to shift and reshape itself. Muscles slithered under his skin, and bones bent into new shapes. In less than a second, Father Auggie was transformed.
In front of Victor stood a twelve-foot tall demon, humanoid with reddish tinted skin. Father Auggie’s mouth extended downward several inches further than it should have, horrifically out of proportion with the rest of his body.
“Die!” The pastor extended one of his hands, now with webbing between the finger and an extra thumb, and began to glow bright red.
He’s binding an aura! How is that possible?
Victor responded by binding his scarlet aura in defense with only a split second to spare. His blast flew out to meet Father Auggie’s, though the point where the two attacks met was closer to Victor.
The blasts pushed against each other, each one as thick as the trunk of a decently sized tree. All of the nearby snow melted, revealing dead grass underneath and sending up billows of steam.
Victor put every ounce of energy that he had into the attack. It was a battle of wills, and he was losing. Father Augustus shouted out as he pressed the fire forward, and Victor felt the heat slowly closing in on him.
“No!” He gritted his teeth and pushed harder, though it only managed to slow the rate at which his opponent’s blast moved toward him.
If I die, Damien’s death will have been in vain.
A surge of emotion went through him, and Victor forced more of his will into the attack. He began to scream, and managed to hold Father Auggie’s blast from approaching any further.
The fire was hot enough to send waves of heat through the nearby air, though Victor could barely see anything through the intensity of the glowing flames. He took a deep breath of burnt tasting air and pushed harder.
It happened in an instant, without any fanfare or dramatic tension. Father Augustus’s blast flickered out of existence, and Victor’s pushed the rest of the way forward and beyond. It tore through the giant demon’s body, neatly charring a perfectly round hole through the center of Father Augustus’s chest.
He opened his mouth as though to let out a few final words, but no noise came forth. Father Augustus collapsed forward into a patch of flame scorched earth. He didn’t move.
All of Victor’s pain and exhaustion came back to him in a dizzying wave. He let out a small, pointless laugh, and then remembered his friends.
“Kiara? Kronenberg? Are the two of you…?”
He turned to start back down the hill and saw Kiara walking toward him, along with Kronenberg, who was now in his normal, quadcopter drone form. Victor sat down in the snow and let out a sigh of relief.
“I had to finish off Shaggy,” said Kiara. “He went into some kind of berserker rage.”
She eyed Father Augustus and then frowned.
“I don’t understand why they didn’t just give up,” she said. “I… don’t like having to kill. Ever.”
“You’ve done it before?” asked Victor.
Kiara hesitated, and then nodded slowly.
“Yeah.” She met Victor’s gaze. “I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I,” he said.
CHAPTER 28
The walk back through the woods was when Victor’s exhaustion, along with the reality of the situation, really set in. There was no parade waiting to cheer on his victory, no undulating mass of people ready to absolve him of his sins.
REPENT.
His scars burned badly enough to make his eyes hover on the edge of tears. He closed them after a while, flaring his onyx aura over his surroundings to hear, rather than see, where he was going.
“Kiara told me a little about what happened.” Kronenberg’s voice echoed in his head. His hovering drone body was still back at the cabin, organizing a cleanup, but he could still project his voice through Victor’s nanites.
“Yep,” said Victor. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You don’t have to say a word,” said Kronenberg. “Shit’s pretty fucked up. I just want you to know that I’ve got your back. And your front.”
“Thanks.” Victor went silent, and Kronenberg took the hint.
He walked alongside Kiara as they exited the park and made it to the sidewalk. Victor’s hand was a broken, throbbing mess, and the pain was enough to distract him from where he was going a couple of times.
“Lucy is waiting for us back at the apartment,” said Kiara. “Are you okay?”
I hate that question.
“I’m fine,” said Victor. “I’m… just peachy.”
“I know that Damien was your friend, and the way things played out…” Kiara paused, glancing away from him. “You can be honest with me. After all we’ve been through, I hope that you’ve realized that.”
“Sure.” He forced a smile onto his face. “But really. I’m all good.”
Kiara chewed her lip for a moment. She slowed her walking speed, and Victor shortened his steps to match her pace.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” he said.
“Victor…” Kiara took a deep breath and looked over at him, the morning light doing interesting things to her short blonde hair. “I have to tell you something.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Lay it on me.”
Kiara stared at him for a moment, her beautiful blue eyes glittering with mist and pain.
“What happened in that disgusting basement… between us… it was just to escape.”
Victor nodded.
“Of course.”
“I have feelings for someone,” she said. “Someone who isn’t you. It’s complicated, and he’s not in town very often, but I just thought you should know.”
Victor frowned. It stung, to hear it out loud. Something in Kiara’s behavior had already given it away, but to hear her say it was painful. And after the past few days, Victor had an intuitive understanding of pain. He did his best to smile anyway.
“Thanks for telling me.” He started walking faster, breaking out of the bubble of conversation and into his own space. Kiara didn’t stop him.
Lucy was waiting for them both at the door when they arrived at the apartment. She waved them inside, gave Kiara a tight, sisterly hug, and then listened to a recap of everything that had happened.
“Interesting…” She pressed a single finger to her lips and tapped it a couple of times. “He used the scarlet aura when you fought him, Victor? You’re sure of it?”
Victor nodded. He leaned forward on the couch, gently massaging the fingers on his injured hand.
“Unless there is something else that can give a person those abilities. Some type of bioenhancement, or-”
Victor froze in midsentence, the injection Father Auggie forced onto him coming back to the forefront of his memory. He’d left that part out when relating his half of the tale to Lucy.
Should I tell her? It doesn’t seem to have done anything…
“Are you okay?” asked Lucy. Victor nodded.
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “I’m fine.”
He chewed his lip and decided to keep it to himself. The last thing he wanted was to end up as the subject of a Monteiro research project, and revealing that he’d been given a syringe full of unpredictable genetic edits would do just that.
“This was too close of a call,” said Lucy. “It’s clear that technology is being leaked out of Monteiro on a larger scale than we thought. We have to be careful moving forward.”
Kiara nodded and walked across the living room.
“I need to get some sleep,” she said. “Do you mind?”
Lucy shook her head, and Victor said nothing. Kiara shut the door to her room, and Victor fe
lt a bit of tension that he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying melt off his shoulders.
“Did something happen between the two of you?” asked Lucy. Victor hesitated before answering, and Lucy took the opportunity to get up and grab the medical kit out of the closet.
“I guess you could say that,” said Victor. “But whatever it was, it’s already over.”
“It’s probably for the best.” Lucy was wearing a pair of tight sweatpants and a white t-shirt with a loose gray sweater. She knelt down in front of where Victor sat on the couch and pulled his hand out to take a look at it.
“Why do you say that?” Victor winced as Lucy began moving the fingers on his broken hand.
“I don’t think you and her would work well together,” she said. “You’re too much like your father, too stubborn for what she’d put you through.”
Lucy smiled at him, and Victor felt a strange intimacy between them as he met her gaze. It only lasted for a split second, but that was more than long enough to spark his excitement and curiousity. Lucy looked back down at his hand and frowned.
“You said that one of the biosplices broke your hand?” asked Lucy.
“That’s what happened,” he said. “I still can’t really move it that… well.”
Victor raised an eyebrow as he rotated his hand in a slow circle. It was painful, but not nearly to the extent it had been. The hand felt heavily bruised and still fractured in a few places, but during the fight he was sure that Shaggy had all but liquefied it.
That makes no sense. Did I just overestimate the injury?
“Well, it doesn’t seem that bad now,” said Lucy. “Looks like you got lucky.”
She smiled at him and then reached her hands toward the bottom hem of his sweatshirt. Victor’s heart skipped a beat, until he realized what she was doing.
He lifted his arms up and let her slowly pull the garment off of him, wincing as it scraped against the burns on his chest. She did the same with his t-shirt and then slipped in closer to him, close enough for Victor to feel her breath on his skin.
“It’s the same with the burns.” Lucy shook her head slowly. “They look like they’ve had at least a week or so to heal already.”
“Huh.” Victor watched Lucy as she examined his injuries. The letters that Father Auggie branded him with were still visible, and the word almost looked like a very primitive, tattoo. Lucy slowly turned her gaze up to him after a moment, letting her eyes meet his.
“Do you feel like you have to repent, Victor?” she asked. Her words were soft and gentle, but there was a hint of challenge in them, and it made Victor feel some interesting emotions. Lucy leaned in a little closer to him, and he let one of his hands run up the side of her body.
“Maybe,” he said. “We all have things to repent for.”
The tension in the air was like a loaded gun, and Victor wanted nothing more than to fire it. It lasted for an eternal second, and then Lucy cleared her throat and turned back to the medical kit.
“I should put some ointment on them to keep them from feeling too hot,” she said. “There’s only so much I can do to prevent it, though.”
“That’s fine,” said Victor. “I’ll work with what you can give me.”
Lucy continued dressing his wounds in silence. Victor closed his eyes for a bit and thought about how good sleep would feel. When she finished, Victor thanked her, pulled his shirt and sweatshirt back on, and headed for the door.
“Victor,” said Lucy. He paused with his hand on the doorknob to look back at her.
“Yeah?”
“I think you’re ready,” she said. “To start working with the team directly, instead of just being Kiara’s tagalong.”
Victor shrugged.
“If you think so,” he said.
“You aren’t excited?”
Victor turned to face Lucy, but looked up at the ceiling instead of at her.
“I know too much about the job now to be excited,” he said.
The walk to Damien’s mom’s house went by in what felt like seconds. Every step of it took an effort of will, and Victor stood on the sidewalk looking at the front door for at least as long as he’d spent walking. He opened the gate slowly, and then on reflex, bound his onyx aura to his senses.
Damien’s mom was inside, and she was sobbing inconsolably. Victor gritted his teeth. It was exactly what he’d been expecting, but that didn’t make it any easier to walk into. He made his way up to the door, fighting back tears of his own.
It took several minutes and a half dozen or so triplet knocks for the door to finally open. Damien’s mom didn’t say anything. She just stood there, sobbing, despite her best efforts to hold it in.
“I’m sorry,” said Victor. “He died because he was investigating me.”
Damien’s mom nodded and said something that was too grief-stricken to be intelligible.
“I just wanted to say that I stopped the people who were responsible,” said Victor. “All but one. And I’m going to make sure he repents for what he’s done eventually. I’m going to punish him in every way that I can.”
Tears streamed down Victor’s cheeks. He smiled and let out a small, sad laugh. Damien’s mom reached out, took his hand into hers, and squeezed it.
“Thank you.”
Victor stayed with her for a minute more. The burns on his chest ached.
BOOK THREE
THE TEMPTRESS
CHAPTER 1
Victor slid across his shoulder into a wild, rather painful roll. It wasn’t glamorous or fun, but it carried him far enough out of the way to be safe from the blast’s heat. He scrambled to get his feet underneath him, brushing a hand through his overgrown curly hair and focusing on his opponent.
The man was at least as tall as he was, and that was saying something. Black suit with a black tie and black sunglasses, he fit every stereotype of an FBI agent that he’d heard of, except for the fact that he was glowing bright red and in the process of binding a nano aura.
Victor focused his will and bound his own scarlet aura, the aura of flames and emotions, in a fiery forward facing shield. The flames from the man in the suit crashed into Victor’s hastily constructed defense and were mostly absorbed by it.
Like absorbs like. I figured that out about the auras early on.
Victor raced forward toward the man, binding his onyx aura to his senses and gaining an edge when it came to seeing, hearing, and more importantly, predicting what his opponent was going to do. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough.
The man in the suit fainted as though he was about to throw a spinning kick. Victor had already started to duck under it when he saw the man’s aura shift to blue, or azure. Icy energy pooled in the man’s hand and blasted out toward him. And this time, he didn’t roll fast enough.
Victor winced as a blast of frozen air struck his feet. Rather than being painful, as the flames would have been, all sensation instantly ceased. Ice crystals coalesced on and throughout his sneakers and feet. He tried to get his legs underneath him and wobbled precariously, his feet behaving more like broken stilts.
His opponent took full advantage of the opportunity, moving toward him with deliberate, unyielding steps. The man bound his scarlet aura and launched blast after blast of fire. Victor blocked each one, but he could only keep it up for so long.
No choice. I have to switch up my tactics.
In the pause between deflecting fireballs, Victor gritted his teeth and bound his onyx aura again, this time focusing on his opponent’s head instead of his own. It was a desperate act, the last trick up his sleeve, and the one that was the most likely to backfire out of all of them.
The onyx aura, when used on another person, had effects that spanned the gamut from immoral to downright malicious. If he so wanted, Victor could bind his onyx aura to read a person’s mind, put an idea of his own into their psyche, or even take complete control of their actions.
The tradeoff, outside of being an action that fell well within gray territory to
begin with, was that the onyx aura had a few unwanted, unavoidable side effects. The act of entering another person’s mind would leave scars on Victor’s own psyche. A bit of who they were would intermingle with his own persona, and vice versa.
In this particular case, the side effects were moot. The man in the suit bound his own onyx aura to his mind, effectively blocking Victor’s psychic attack. Victor tried to use a carefully controlled burst of scarlet aura to thaw his feet and, embarrassingly, managed to light one of his pant legs on fire.
He spent a half second with his guard down as he patted out the blaze, and that was all it took. A fireball the size of a small car left the man in the suit’s hand, and Victor didn’t have a chance to make even a futile attempt at blocking it. It slammed into him head on.
The images around Victor faded, and he sat down slowly, staring at the antiseptic white walls of one of Monteiro Tower’s simulation rooms. It took him a second to realize that he wasn’t alone.
“Not bad,” said Kiara. “You should have focused more on getting behind him. The last thing with the onyx aura was also pretty desperate.”
“You were watching me?” Victor glowered at her.
Kiara flicked a strand of her short blonde hair out of her face and met his eye. She was dressed as though she’d come to train, just as he had, and wore a white top with thin enough shoulder straps to reveal pink bra fabric underneath, along with tight gray yoga pants.
“Hey, you left the door unlocked.” An amused smile spread across Kiara’s face. “Also, you did a number to your pant leg and shoe.”
Victor frowned and looked down at himself. When he’d made an attempt at unfreezing his foot, he’d bound his scarlet aura to himself without really thinking. As a result, the bottom of one leg of his jeans was badly singed, along with the shoelaces and tongue of his sneaker below it.
The simulation room worked by creating three-dimensional images, holograms, that anyone could see with a pair of specially outfitted VR glasses. For aura binders like Victor and Kiara, the experience of the simulations went deeper, affecting all of their senses. The nanites running through their bloodstream and interfacing with their brains allowed them to practically step into another world, limited only by the spatial dimensions of the simulation room and their own imaginations.
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