The one armed man appeared out of thin air, knife in hand, he offered it to Chris’s step father, ‘Take this.’
His step father took the knife, ‘time to be judged kid.’
Chris found that he could almost fly, willing himself, he jumped almost as high as the surrounding buildings, turning in the air, he flew straight back down towards his Step father. ’ I do the Judging and you have been found guilty’ He yelled.
The other two dissolved as Chris drove straight into his Step Fathers who exploded into red hot ash right before his eyes.
A beautiful woman appeared, floating in the air before him, her eyes were strangely covered in a white film, she reached out a strong slender hand to gently stroke his face,’ You’re safe kid. Wake up.’ Then she slapped him so hard he thought his teeth would shake loose.
The woman’s face remained in front of his eyes. He tried hard to focus and slowly she swam into clarity. The first thing he noticed was her eyes again. He realised he’d been dreaming, but it was the same woman standing over him. Where was he? Turning his head to the side, he saw he was lying on a well worn leather settee that smelled musty, in a large run down living room with faded drawn curtains. The fireplace was one of those old blackened iron grid types surrounded by tiles. He noticed that it was burning logs and not pretend gas fired ones either. Another large brown patterned settee was against the far wall. Three people sat upon it. All wore leather outfits. What the hell was this? Was he mixed up with freaky Goths? The overhead light was on and he blinked as he glanced at the naked bulb. The room smelled old but it had a sort of comfortable feel to it. Beat the hell out of sleeping in a damp cardboard box. He looked at the three seated on the far settee.
The first was the one armed man; he was picked his teeth with one of his knives and the knife looked razor sharp. His chest was still festooned with blades of different sizes and shapes.
Next to him and squashed in the middle, was a female teenager who Chris reckoned was about eighteen years old. She had purple shoulder length hair but it was the eye patch worn over her left eye that caught his attention. It was a pretty face, shame about the eye patch. Maybe it was just an infection?
She was dressed in a Japanese ninja style thin leather outfit. His eyes travelled down her shapely long legs, wrapped in strips of tight leather, to a wicked pair of boots with sharpened metal pointed toe caps.
But it was the person seated on the end next to her, that made his eyes go wide in amazement. A bloody priest! A grossly huge Priest! Well the elderly hugely overweigh grey haired male was wearing a dog collar worn over a dirty black cotton shirt under a black studded jacket and trousers. He must weight all of thirty stone. What the hell was this?
Groaning, his chin and neck hurting like hell. Chris attempted to sit up and gave up as pain shot through his head and neck. He lay there for a second, willing the pain to go away. It was his little secret. He felt the skin on his face and neck become hot for a moment, then just like his hand, the pain vanished.
He heard a sharp female voice saying, “You see that, those bruises just vanished!”
And someone seated on the settee replied, “Shush I’m thinking.”
Chris opened his eyes again and forced himself to sit upright. The room contained others dressed in black studded leather outfits. The female with the strange white eyes and flowing white hair that seemed too move slightly as if in a gentle breeze gently , stood hand on hips in front of him. She was pale skinned about five foot nine tall and slim. Studs extenuating the shape of her firm shapely breasts, in a w pattern underneath the bulge of her tight fitting leather one piece cat suit and high heeled boots. She carried a large hunting bow across her back together with a quiver full of black tipped arrows. But even though she looked like she had blind eyes, he knew she could see him more clearly than anyone else.
Slightly behind her and to her left, stood another male, Chris recognised him as being the one who had hit him. Now he got a better look at him. He was at least Six foot tall extremely slender to the point of being bulimic. He had a clean shaven effeminate face and Chris swore he was wearing eye liner. He had short blond hair and dark brown eyes. The expression on his face made him look very angry. He wore one piece thin leather workman style overalls with knee length Goth style boots with thick soles. But Chris’s eyes grew even wider as he noticed his unusually long thin fingers, the nails of which looked like Eagles talons that he constantly flexed. He had a pair of fingerless leather gloves tucked into a wide leather belt worn tight around a non existent waist.
Another male figure walked into view crossing from left to right. Once again Chris was surprised. A leather clad gunfighter! He was about thirty with swept back black hair going grey at his temples. He had an old style short goatee plus a thin moustache, but it was the twin Wild West pearl handled Colt six shooters, in twin studded worn leather holsters on a belt that caught his attention. Chris noticed the guy actually had metal spurs on his knee length boots! He wore a leather waist coat over a black cotton collarless shirt.
Chris pulled himself to his feet, turned and nearly jumped out of his worn trainers! Standing or crouching behind him was a gigantic hunchbacked man, with wild black greasy hair and beard. He had the biggest arms Chris had even seem and even with his deformity, his head was almost touching the ceiling, whilst massive fists almost dragging the floor. Chris saw he was wearing an iron head band padded with fur. The giant wore leather and steel disc re-enforced wrist and elbow protectors, together with a black metal shoulder protector, with a wicked spike protruding from the top, worn like some ancient roman gladiator on his left shoulder, attached by a series of leather straps across his massive chest. He wore breaches and leather studded fingerless gauntlets, crisscrossed leather knee length strapping, held his thick leather soled sandals in place. Apart from that he was bare chested and surprisingly bare footed. The hunchback started to growl softly which really disturbed him.
“Don’t to that Rage, you’re scaring him.”
This came from the last person in the room, he’d been seated next to Chris, now he stood and moved away to face him. He was a muscular middle aged male, with v shaped, black cropped hair. He stood over six foot two tall, with a broad chest and well muscled arms. He was wearing leather as well but also a fire scorched short leather apron, held in place with a thick belt with a huge iron buckle. His well worn leather trousers were tucked into short heavy combat boots. Hanging from his right hand was a large double headed anvil hammer. The shaft had silver rune type symbols etched into the blacked iron wood.
The hunchback called Rage, surprisingly looked embarrassed as he caught himself in mid growl, “Sorry Anvil, got to stop doing that.” He looked towards Chris, “Sorry kiddo.”
Chris noted that when the hunchback spoke, he did so with a slight foreign accent that he would have sworn sounded Danish or Finnish. Chris was having trouble taking in all this detail. He guessed for some reason the one called Anvil was in charge.
“There are laws against kidnapping.” Chris tried to bluster his way out of this.
The one called Anvil held out his right hand in a sign of friendship to Chris, who surprisingly took the offered handshake.
“Names Anvil as you most likely will have guessed. Not your run of the mill name, we all got new ones after our re-birth and you’re not a prisoner. “
Chris understood. They were some religious sect, “Born again Christians eh?”
Anvil smiled, “Not exactly kid but close enough. Now that ugly hump is Rage. He’s pure muscle and used to be a great Norse warrior, one of the cursed Berserkers. ”
Rage thumped his chest, “I dare you to believe I’m anything but!”
Anvil continued, “The bearded man you spoke to in the rain is called Slash, our knife man. We go way back. Used to be a foreign mercenary for Egypt when the pyramids where still being built. Those knives have been carefully gathered over thousands of years and each one is as deadly as the next.”
Slash flicke
d the knife he was holding up into the air and caught it point first on the tip of an upraised finger. He held the knife there for a second before flicking it up again and was about to catch it by the handle.
Patch snatched it out of the air faster than Chris could follow, “Stop showing off.”
She handed the knife back hilt first. Slash grinned once before returning it to its sheath, “Anyone else but you touches my weapons and I’d have cut them bad.”
Anvil continued, “The lad who unfortunately hit you is Speed. He moves faster than anything alive. He was a track runner in his day. Competed in the first games at Olympia, he was famous way back when. Ran from Marathon to Athens to give news of a victory over the Persian army in 450BC, but he got the message wrong, nearly gave the Emperor a heart attack on the spot. The second runner arrived half a day later with the correct news so poor old Speed had his throat cut. I guess he founded the expression ‘don’t kill the messenger. ‘, Speeds a fast mover but a slow thinker.”
Chris used all his will power to keep his mouth shut for now, ‘Okay is he trying to tell me they’re what? That they’re bloody immortal or something.’
“Hey that’s not fair!” Speed exclaimed.
Anvil didn’t even look at him,” Should have asked you to come with him. I guess you would have come under your own steam because you would want to know more about the Shade that killed your friend. Speaking of which Priest wants more detail how you destroyed the Shades hand.”
Chris glanced over towards the one with the dog collar, “He a real Priest?”
Anvil rocked a hand back and forth, “Sort of, he’s changed slightly now, like the rest of us, should have been called Juggernaut or tank. But Priest was his given name. He’s a clever man and I listen to his advice and his prophecy’s.”
The one called Priest snorted, “Not so clever as to know how he could destroy part of a Shade with a touch. Not unless he’s….” He exchanged a quick glance with the one called Anvil.
Anvil ignored the partially asked question, “The girl wedged in the middle of that group is Patch. She’s our martial arts expert. Does things even I don’t believe when I see it.”
Then Chris noticed another man standing off to the side. Apart from the usual leather get up and a bald scared head, he had what appeared to be a metal shaped segmented right hand and a bloody big crab like claw instead of a left hand. He chuckled, “I’d like to see her do some things.” He spoke with a cockney accent.
He ran his tongue subjectively over his top lip. “Girl like that would make a fine…”
Anvil glanced disapprovingly towards him, “That thug is called Heartless. He has no conscience at all as well as no hands. He does and says things that get him in trouble from time to time. How he was chosen is besides me but he was.”
The girl called Patch smiled a wicked sweet smile, “He keeps that up Anvil and it won’t be just his hands he looses.”
Chris noticed for the first time that she had a set of wicked looking razor thin daggers tucked sideways under her narrow twisted leather sash around her slim waist, as well as a pair of rice flails strapped to her right thigh.
Heartless pretended to protect his privates and chuckled nastily before holding up his mechanical hands, “The one of the left can snip through quarter inch steel. The one on the right looks like a normal hand but like doctor No it can crush a golf ball to dust.”
He chuckled, “But luckily for my own balls sake, I can also pick up a raw egg without cracking it.”
Chris couldn’t help himself, “A metal sea shell.”
Heartless stopped flexing his hand, “What?”
Chris grinned, “Doctor No crushed a metal sea shell. Odd Job crushed the golf ball.”
Patch laughed, “That’s Heartless alright. A real odd job if I ever saw one.”
The others joined in laughing at his misfortune. Heartless glared back at Chris but said nothing.
‘Made no friends there then.’ He thought.
Anvil stopped smiling to nod towards the other female who was now perched on the arm rest of his settee. Chris was looking at her wicked looking black hunting bow. It was nearly six feet long and reminded him of the old hunting bows used way back when. Robin Hood sprang to mind, but this was mat black instead of Yew. “The lady with the bow is called Huntress. Don’t let her white eyes fool you. She can out see a hawk and can hit anything she can see. Huntress is our tracker as well as our long distance silent markswoman.”
Chris gaped at her blank white eyes up close but then did a double take. Her long white hair was really actually moving on its own! There was no wind blowing in here yet it moved around as if she was under water.
Huntress smiled and offered Chris a nod of acknowledgement, “I can put an arrow through a one inch hoop at three hundred feet. This is a very special compound bow, based on the English Long Bow. It’s the most powerful bow in the world and only I can pull it.”
Anvil pointed out the cowboy, “Another one just as deadly at long range, the gunfighter’s called Bulls eye.”
The man pulled a gun free with lightning speed, spinning it this way and that, both horizontally and vertically, “Knew John Wesley Hardin, nearly as fast as me. Billy the Kid was nothing but a back shooter as was the James boys. Old Doc Holliday, he was fast but died sort of early, mad as a coot, loved killing. Me? I kept myself to myself, people don’t know your name they can’t come a lookin for you. After two or three try and prove they’re faster than you, you either end up loving the kill or hate it. I hated it. I ended up in a Wild West show run by Bill Cody. Then one day a kid came back stage, he said he knew who I really was and pulled a cheap rusty old Remington on me. Said I’d killed his pa. I could have shot him dead a dozen times by the time he’d cocked the thing but I guess I was fed up with killing so….The next thing I knew was Anvil was helping me out of an undertakers coffin and here I am. These are the same guns but I’ve had rifled barrels fitted. Oh and I’m still fast, real fast. I can send a bullet through that there hoop Huntress mentioned with my eyes shut. The bullets are called hydro bullets. The tips are filled with holy water blessed by Priest. They can kill things that ordinary bullets won’t kill.” He finished by spinning the gun back into its holster.
Chris noticed the man still had a slight North American accent and wondered what the hell ordinary bullets couldn’t kill but didn’t ask just yet. He was still listening to the one called Anvil
Anvil nodded to the last leather clad male, “Last but not least is Hot Cross, as you can see he has a very special…..talent. He used to be an assistant with the Edison Electric company when it was first formed. They didn’t go in for Health and Safety then, died when they electrocuted an elephant in 1903. The elephant was uncontrollable and extremely dangerous. Instead of shooting it they decided to use Edison’s electricity to execute it. Guess they already were thinking of the electric chair.”
Speed laughed, “Hot Cross died through stupidly! He was holding onto the iron chain around its leg, when they juiced the poor thing. “
Hot Cross was in his late twenties and had a thin hawk like face with spiked short blond hair. He wore a tight fitting shiny leather coat buttoned up to his neck. He grinned and allowed arcs of electricity to flash from hand to hand, “I didn’t hold onto the damn chain; I fell over the bloody thing!!”
He showed Chris a fantastic display of arcing electricity between his fingers, “I used to work for the electricity board, now I am the electricity board!”
Chris was staring wide eyed at the electrical display when Patch forced herself out from between the others on her settee and walked over to Chris,” Ignore his jokes. They only get worse.”
Hot Cross looked pained,” Hey Patch not fair! You know I’m just sparkling good fun to be around.” He let a flash of electricity explode into the air.
Anvil frowned at him, “You set fire to another house and I’ll have to let Rage punish you.”
Hot Cross suddenly stopped arcing electricity as Rage
grinned.
Patch looked intently at Chris’s face, “Speed really walloped him. You saw his bruised and swollen jaw. Now look at him, good as new. What do you think he is Anvil?”
Chris noticed she showed a great deal of excitement in her question. The others moved closer to stand alongside Anvil and stare down at Chris. He felt suddenly very claustrophobic.
Eventually Anvil answered, “Been waiting over seven thousand years, always full of hope.”
Priest took a step closer to Chris, who swore the floor shook as he moved, “He can’t be a normal mortal, but you were never called.” He said this to Anvil
“You were never called and he never died. “ Huntress added.
Anvil agreed but added, “But he has the power, he hurt the damn thing, turned its rotten hand to ash. No human has that sort of power.”
Priest nodded, “I know and that confuses me. But look at the facts. He can see Shades. His touch burnt one. He saw Speed and Slash in the In Between, which is impossible for a human. He heals fast, faster than us. He could be….. Judgement.”
Judgement (The Twelve) Page 2