Bring The Pain_An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure

by Michael Anderle

James and Shay halted at the door and reloaded.

  “Shay, let me go first in case they have some sort of fireball or rocket launcher or weredragon or some shit,” the bounty hunter rumbled.

  The tomb raider nodded. “Give me a countdown.”

  “One... two...three.” James’ jump-kick sent the metal door flying inward and it crashed into a concrete wall with a dull thud that echoed throughout the stairwell.

  James rushed into the stairwell, his gun aimed upward. A shower of bullets rained from men on the second-floor landing and he emptied his .45 into them until the eight enforcers lay dead on the ground or splayed out on the stairs. The assault left a few new cuts on him, but nothing serious.

  You need to bring out the big guns if you want to have a fucking chance, assholes.

  Shay followed James in once his quick kills ended the lead storm. “Shit. This is gonna take a while if we’re going floor by floor. We got ten floors of this crap. I wish these fuckers would stand and fight in a big group.”

  “Pest control is always obnoxious. Always have to look under that one dark crevice for the last roach.”

  Shay snickered.

  When they rushed to the second floor no one else shot at them. James stopped before opening the door, hard way or otherwise.

  “We go in guns blazing?” Shay asked. She tapped a silver bracelet on her wrist. “That should take care of the cameras on this floor.”

  James shook his head. “Nope. We got lucky on the first floor. They’ll probably be artifact bastards soon. If we don’t play it smart it’ll slow things down.”

  Shay scoffed. “We’ve got your amulet. I think we’ve got the advantage.”

  Even though that was true, James was still worried about the risk. Shay was tough and good with a weapon, but she couldn’t take a point-blank shot from a gun like he could. That meant he needed to make sure he was taking the brunt of any high-powered assaults, and that he needed to use all the tools available to him.

  “It’s time to show you what that urn was about.” James glanced at Shay to confirm she was wearing the quartz necklace. “Whatever you do, keep that necklace on.” He reached underneath his previously merely shabby but now hole-filled gray coat and pulled out a small golden rod about six inches in length. Swirls of platinum ran up the length.

  “Is this another ‘You’ll see’ thing?”

  James grunted, lifted the rod, and snapped it with both hands. “Yeah, you’ll see real fucking soon.”

  Shay’s eyes widened, and the bounty hunter could almost see the calculations in her head.

  “What the fuck, Brownstone? You breaking the Professor’s shit?”

  “Nah, he said this and the urn were kind of a one-use deal.”

  Chilling screams sounded from the first floor.

  James shrugged. “Guess we missed some.”

  Shay glanced at the opening to the first floor, uncertainty on her face. “What did that thing do?”

  Is this evil? Fuck if I know.

  More screams sounded, and James remained in place. He needed what the artifact had summoned before he busted down any more doors.

  A skeletal ghost-warrior faded through the wall and entered the stairwell, followed by another, and then more. Soon seven of the specters marched together.

  Shay raised her gun, her eyes wide. “What the fuck are those?”

  “The Professor didn’t give me the history, just told me to set the urn at the lowest point and break the rod when I’m ready. Those things will kill people using magic. Guess we missed a few artifact users on the first floor. Once they get to the highest point they’ll destroy the only remaining sources of magic: themselves.”

  “Brownstone, I hate to break this to you, but those things are coming right toward us. We both have potions on us, and I’m not sure if your alien amulet there counts as magic or not.”

  “The other amulet I’m wearing and the one I gave you will shield us from them.”

  The skeletal warriors marched up the stairs in eerie silence.

  James stared at the conjured beings and his stomach tightened. The Professor had promised him that the seven warriors weren’t true skeletons and that he wasn’t practicing necromancy or toying with souls, but the death-dealing ghost skeletons walking up the stairs didn’t leave his mind at ease.

  Spooked, he shook the thoughts out of his head and kicked in the door without warning Shay. A loud buzz preceded a bolt of red energy blasting into his chest and sending him sailing backward, and a burning sensation covered the spot where it had hit. He slammed against the stairwell wall and fell to the floor.

  “Brownstone!” Shay yelled.

  James pushed himself off the ground, wincing at the burn. “I’m still alive, but, yeah, that hurt a little.”

  I think that shit would have blasted right through me without the amulet.

  The skeletons walked past James into the room, some through the doorway, some through the wall. Gunfire and more red blasts flashed and screams echoed down the hallway

  James rushed back up the stairs past a concerned Shay.

  “Don’t you fucking scare me like that again, dickwad,” she hissed.

  When they entered the room they found two men lying on the ground with their throats ripped out, their blood staining the benches filling the room. Two dozen more were firing at the skeletons. Their bullets weren’t passing through the apparitions, but they also didn’t seem to be doing much damage.

  The skeletons were ignoring the attackers and forming a circle around the two dead men, one of whom had a wand lying next to him.

  James and Shay took advantage of the Harriken’s confusion to start putting bullets into their heads, but after the first few casualties the rest returned fire. But the surprise was too lopsided, and soon all the men lay dead or dying on the floor.

  One of the skeletons reached down to pick up the oaken-shafted, ruby-tipped wand. It stuck the wand into its mouth and gobbled it down an inch at a time.

  “Huh. Did not expect that.”

  “That’s not something you see every day,” Shay remarked.

  “Let’s go,” the bounty hunter muttered. “We’ve got a whole building full of people to kill.”

  After an orgy of bloodletting as they proceeded from floor to floor, the bounty hunter and the tomb raider stood on the tenth floor in front of carved double doors leading to what James assumed were the private chambers of the leader of the Harriken. Dead bodies lay all around them and little of the floor or walls remained free of blood.

  James had lost count of how many Harriken had died after two hundred. The amulet’s whispers weren’t loud, but they’d been steady and pervasive for most of the running battle.

  Burns and cuts covered James’ body, along with a deep gash from some sort of enchanted clockwork attack cat. Shay had been grazed by a few bullets on the previous floor.

  The skeletons, still silent as ever, turned on each other, clawing, biting, and ripping. They spilled no blood, but each blow took a piece until only a pile of slowly fading ghostly bones remained.

  Shay stared down at the remains of the skeletons and gestured toward the door. “Guess the Head Asshole must have some sort of shielding artifact or something, or the Bone Squad would have gone after him.” She nodded. “Or maybe a nullification spell or something around the office to protect him from spying. Guess we’ll have to finish him ourselves.”

  “Good. I fucking need to end this myself rather than relying on shit like that.” James gritted his teeth. “I hated to use those things,” he grumped, “but otherwise there was no fucking way we would have survived with all the magic shit the Harriken were pulling out of their asses.”

  Shay winced as she leaned against the wall. “Hey, I’m not complaining.”

  “I fucking hate using magic.” James tapped his chest where the amulet was fused with him. “I don’t know if this is magic or weird alien tech shit or whatever, but I hate this too.”

  “Sometimes you have to fight mag
ic with magic.” Shay shrugged. “That’s the world we live in now.”

  “Yeah, but it isn’t simple.”

  “Life isn’t simple, Brownstone. Get over it.”

  James grunted, then pulled out a healing potion and downed the contents. Shay followed his lead.

  “I guess it’s time for Badass Maximus,” he rumbled. “I wonder what kind of bullshit he’s got in store.”

  Shay sighed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The bigger they are, the more they bore you to tears with speeches.” Shay gestured to the door. “It’s your big enemy, not mine, so you do the honors.”

  James smiled, feeling a little better thanks to the healing potion and the demise—or at least departure—of the strange ghost warriors. “You’re right.” He kicked open the door and stepped inside.

  The leader of the Harriken stood behind a small table that was low to the ground. He was clad in an elaborately patterned kimono and held a tachi.

  “I am Grandfather. I lead the Harriken, and I will be the man to take your life, James Brownstone.”

  James didn’t think the guy looked that old, all things considered, but he wasn’t about to waste time bickering over ceremonial titles with some asshole he was about to kill.

  The bounty hunter grunted. “That a Masamune?”

  “Of course, Brownstone,” Grandfather replied with a smirk. “I applaud you for making it this far, but we both know you will fall before this sword.”

  “Maybe.” James shrugged. “It didn’t have to be this way. You fuckers had plenty of chances to leave me alone.”

  “The Harriken do not cower before anyone, let alone a single man.”

  James snorted. “I carved through all of your men like they were bitches who had never held a gun or a sword before.”

  Grandfather sneered. “Such arrogance. You think you are powerful because you killed some men today? You’re nothing. I took the Harriken from a mere shadow to one of the most powerful groups in the global underworld.” He pointed with the sword. “And I’m not some Oriceran oni.”

  “Because I’m tough you’re calling me a bitch? That’s bullshit. I’m not the pussy who hid behind an army of thugs.”

  “You’re nothing but a mistake. You should have stayed on your own world, you Oriceran freak.”

  James grunted. “I’m not fucking Oriceran, and none of this changes how all your bad boys got their asses kicked by me in the end.”

  “I killed my first man when I was twelve, Brownstone. Do you know why?”

  “He was fucking your mom after your dad left?”

  Grandfather narrowed his eyes. “Because he disrespected me. All who have disrespected me have died, just as you will. I’ve killed so many over the years that I don’t even remember most of them.”

  “I’ve killed so many guys today that I can’t remember the faces of the guys I took out on the first floor.”

  The older man raised his sword. “Come at me, then. Show me the might of Brownstone before I cut you down.”

  A gunshot rang out. Grandfather’s eyes widened as blood poured from a new hole in his head and slumped over the table. The tachi fell, embedding itself in the wood.

  Several seconds passed before James registered that the man was dead. He looked at Shay, who holstered her 9mm.

  The tomb raider shrugged. “It was either that or get a ruler out and offer to measure your dicks.” She snorted. “Fuck, Brownstone, were you going to talk him to death?”

  James stared down at the dead Harriken leader, surprised that he didn’t feel that different despite everything being over. He shrugged.

  Well, I guess there aren’t many Harriken left to come after me now.

  Shay hurried over to a computer on a small desk in the corner and plugged a thumb drive into a USB port, then grabbed her phone.

  “Who you calling?”

  “Peyton. I figured he could mess around and copy shit before you blow up the place.” Shay adjusted her phone in her hand. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m in. Get what you can as quickly as you can. This building’s not gonna exist much longer. Yeah. Okay. Right.” She hung up the phone. “Let’s grab some shit and get out of here.”

  “Everyone shut the fuck up!” Tyler yelled.

  Everyone in the Black Sun complied and turned their hostile glares on the bartender.

  Maria took a sip of her beer and wondered what the slimeball was up to now.

  “I’ve just been made aware of an impending important announcement.” Tyler pulled out his phone and tapped in a few commands. The TV on the wall turned black.

  “What the fuck, Tyler?” yelled a man.

  A scraping sound came from the TV and the black gave way to the image of a ten-story building that had obviously suffered some damage.

  Maria narrowed her eyes. She recognized the building from her background briefings—it was the Harriken’s headquarters in the Azabu neighborhood of Tokyo.

  “What you see here is the Harriken headquarters,” came Brownstone’s familiar grinding voice from the TV.

  “Son of a bitch,” Maria muttered. She was having trouble sorting through her feelings. She’d bet that he would survive, but, on some level she’d hoped he wouldn’t.

  A loud roar came from the TV and the image shook for several seconds. Parts of the tall building fell, which triggered a cascade of floors collapsing until the building had imploded, leaving only a pile of rubble and a huge cloud of dust.

  “Well, it was the Harriken headquarters. Somebody seems to have blown it up.”

  A chorus of “damn!” rose from everyone in the bar; everyone except Maria.

  Wish you would have pulled that stunt here. Then I could have cuffed you and stuffed you. I’m not even gonna bother to call the Japanese police and tell them to get a voice-print match. You probably have them sucking your cock already. But this shit isn’t over, Brownstone. Once you’re back in America, your ass will be mine eventually.

  The next day, Maria sat in her office looking through an email response to a request for information on a suspect, in this case the unidentified female they’d tagged in the drone feed from LAX.

  They had nothing on the woman. Absolutely fucking nothing.

  Maria found that hard to believe. Even people who never left their apartments had some sort of profile, but this woman was like a ghost—and that smelled too clean. Even with the glasses, the algorithms should have been able to turn up some matches.

  “Somebody’s been scrubbing her presence. Doesn’t matter. Something will come up eventually, chickadee, and if you are running with Brownstone you can’t be clean.”

  Maria clicked a few times to move the file to her “To-do” folder.

  “I’ll get back to this shit when I have time.”

  25

  James took a deep breath and slowly let it out before sliding open the confessional door and stepping inside.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  “How many, James?” Father McCartney asked, his voice weary. “I’m assuming this is about that incident in Tokyo?”

  The bounty hunter winced. If his confessor was starting off with his first name, he’d gone straight from annoyed to deeply concerned about the state of the bounty hunter’s soul.

  “Yeah. How many? Don’t know. Every last one who was there. I decided to go old-school to send the message. Burned their building to the ground and poured salt on the top so nothing will grow for generations.”

  “Did you have any other choice?”

  James sighed. “I don’t know. I tried to send them a message the first time, but that didn’t stop them. Instead, they sent all those hitmen after me. So I tried to send them a message a second time here.”

  “And what happened? I didn’t see anything on the news after the earlier incident in town.”

  “They hired assassins, Father. Top-grade. One came here, and I decided to take the fight to the other four. I can’t leave this sh...stuff alone anymore. Not with Alison. I
can’t take a risk that someone might hurt her.”

  The priest let out a weary sigh. “The deeper into violence you go, the more this sort of thing will happen. You have to know that.”

  James let out a laugh. “Guess you won’t accept ‘They started it’ any better now that I’m a man than you did when I was a kid?”

  Father McCartney chuckled. “I fear for your soul, but I don’t weep for wicked men who have been made to pay for their life of preying upon others. What we sow, we reap.”

  Should you even be praying for me? If Shay’s right, I’m not even human. Did our Savior sacrifice himself for humans or for everyone?

  James took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m pretty sure it’s over this time, at least.”

  “I hope so, James, for your sake. Spend some time in prayer for the next few days, reflecting on what our Lord wants from us all. Take a week away from your job and try to remember the humanity you’re protecting rather than being crushed by the darkness of the evil you’re used to dealing with.”

  “I will, Father. Thank you, Father.”

  “Go with God, child.”

  James slid open the door.

  “James,” Father McCartney called, causing the bounty hunter to stop. “Again, I wanted to thank you for the stock. I can’t express how much good it has done for both the church and the orphanage. Whatever you feel about what just happened, remember the good you’ve done that doesn’t involve violence.”

  James smiled. “Just making sure there are plenty of future barbeque lovers in the world, Father.”

  James pushed into the Leanan Sídhe, his palms sweaty and his heart pumping. He glanced around the crowd, looking for people gathered around individuals.

  No one’s singing or saying shit. Good, didn’t step into some Bard of Filth night.

  The bounty hunter let out a sigh of relief as he made his way to the Professor’s favorite booth in the back. Shay sat across from the older man.

  James slipped into the booth next to her and set a briefcase in front of the Professor. “That’s all your shit back, except for that urn and rod, but you said those were no big deal.”