by Al K. Line
I walked the warehouse, moving faster and faster as Ivan did an awesome job of killing every Hound we encountered. He would dash off around a corner and I was vaguely aware of muffled screams or the death cry of a man encountering an angry vampire and then he would return.
Within ten minutes we'd cleared a good proportion of the few hundred genuine artifacts. Far from satisfied, I raced around like a headless chicken, searching for more whilst ensuring the ones I freed wouldn't trip the wards and make everything go boom.
I paused for a moment to gather my strength, aware that the warehouse was rammed with wizards drawn to the center of the action now the Hounds were almost gone and the goodies were finally being freed by someone who had a clue.
All eyes were upon me as people milled about and waited for direction. They understood there was something else going on, but they didn't know what.
"Look at the crates, look at the wards. Take your time and focus. They're connected, all of them, and if we don't remove them, spread them apart, away from this place, then they'll blow a hole that'll kill thousands, us included. We have to get them out, we have to work together, and we have to be bloody quick. Search for it, feel it, the connection. Pick carefully, only do it if you're sure, but make damn sure you do it. Take what you can, shoot them into the bloody sky, drive off with them, whatever you have to do. Break the connection, but," I repeated, "only if you're sure it won't trip them and destroy everything. Carmichael's history, but the Hounds don't know, and Cerberus still want us dead anyway, so be quick. We've got minutes left, if that."
I nodded at familiar faces and strangers alike. They murmured, then began arguing amongst themselves as is our wont, and the word spread. Within minutes, more men and women appeared and boxes flew overhead in all directions, everyone doing their best to only remove safe crates.
Soon the air was alive with bobbing boxes, some level, others crashing to the ground as magic users did their best. It's a hard thing to accomplish, moving objects like this. There are so many variables, so many subtle things that go into doing it. You need to control not only the object, and get a feel for its weight, but the air currents, the molecules, the very atoms that comprise it, and make them all believe that the object is just another collection of atoms, no different to the air. Each imperceptible movement takes a reconfiguration of the spell until it becomes so complex it would drive you mad if you actually thought about it.
But good wizards don't think about it. They trust their training, the fact they know the spell and how to make the world vibrate in certain patterns that allow them to do almost anything.
Most of us are crap at levitation, so a lot of boxes crashed down, wards intact but crates broken, making everything that bit more unstable.
Others grabbed what they could and took them away, but it was slow and we wouldn't make it in time.
"I need to get to higher ground to make this easier," I told Ivan who came dashing back to my side after dealing with what were apparently the last remaining Hounds in the warehouse. I was beginning to suspect they knew exactly what was about to happen and were doing a runner, leaving us to it.
"Let's go," said Ivan, hardly breathing hard. "My people are arriving. They can help down here."
And with that, about a bazillion vampires began dropping down from the roof.
It Just Might Work
"You know what to do," Ivan said, stern-faced, to one of his main guys. He nodded, then barked orders like they were going out of fashion.
The vampires got to work.
They sped around the warehouse, grabbing crates and taking them up faster than any magic could, the warehouse emptying at an astonishing rate now. Wizards and assorted oddballs doubled down and increased their efforts, but it became uncoordinated and the vamps couldn't see the tenuous threads holding this all together. It would go one of two ways. Either we'd get enough crates out before the connections broke and everything would be fine, or the random removal of so many would trigger the end and boom, we'd all go up in smoke.
"You're taking a huge risk doing this," I noted.
"I know. But we're in this together, and what choice did I have?"
"You could have done a runner."
"I still can."
"Fair enough. I'm going topside." Ivan nodded and I left him to it.
With a little help from a ladder, I climbed out of a hole and took stock of the battlefield. All was silent, all was still, all was very worrying.
The Hounds had gone, most of them anyway. A few random guys were taking potshots as they retreated, and soon even that stopped. Ivan's vampires were here en masse, moving like lightning as they ran off with crates, trying to disperse them and halt the catastrophe. Wizards and witches were driving away with their ill-gotten gains, some of them probably even had actual artifacts. But most crates were floating about, the magic losing steam, the threads still there connecting them to those beneath ground.
This wasn't enough; this would fail. Most remained linked, so would signal the final warning no matter how far apart they were.
And then there was Tasius and his men. I'd neglected the addicts in the rush to save everything, but they were getting their act together, and just as I clambered out of the hole he barked orders and sent men off to check the warehouse.
Damn, talk about bad timing.
With a sigh, knowing there wasn't a hope of us succeeding if they got Ivan and interrupted the work, I grabbed a machine gun from a fallen Hound as I ran across the open ground with little to no cover. As I crouched low I began firing.
Ash addicts fell like trampled weeds under the onslaught, and as the gun vibrated like a jackhammer in my hands, I finally understood the attraction of high-end military grade weaponry. It was easy, too easy, to take someone out. There was a disconnect, so hands-off it hardly seemed real. It made killing easy, like a game, and as the bodies were thrown this way and that as they were raked with rapid gunfire I felt nothing, nothing at all.
Guns are bad. Very bad. You have to feel the reality of what you do, the visceral rawness of it. Magic gave you that, there was no avoiding it. There was a connection, almost like you were doing it with your own hands, squeezing the life out of someone, and that's how it should be. Taking a life should never be an easy thing, even if the bastards deserve it.
I still used it though, because, obviously, they had to die.
Ash addicts scattered, some for cover, others down into the warehouse to try to stop us. Cries came from below, and with that all hell broke loose.
With muffled shouts telling of Ivan's presence, addicts all made for the craters, but no sooner had they disappeared than they reappeared, a tangled mess of bodies as vampire fought vampire and then wizards got involved as the witches, always more sensible when it came to killing, scattered and left, leaving us to it. Who could blame them?
Soon vampires were tearing each other apart, wizards were blasting, the crates forgotten as violence took over, clouding everyone's judgment, adrenaline kicking in and forcing them to expunge their energy in anger rather than trying for peace. So much for community spirit.
More and more vampires burst from the ruined ground until I doubted any remained beneath. The crates stopped coming up, magically or otherwise. Ivan appeared, surrounded by fifty or so men and women all intent on protecting him.
Tasius, standing with his own guard, saw Ivan, and then they were off, both sides willing to do anything to destroy the other. The addicts after the ash, Ivan's people doing what it took to protect the boss.
He really had caused one hell of a mess. And the ash was still here. It hadn't been destroyed, it couldn't be now. How would we get out of this? How could we save everyone and stop vampire world domination in the future? The addicts were wild and unstable, and they tore into the ranks of the others with a ferocious abandon frightening to witness. More bloody fanatics, willing to do anything, including laying down their lives, to get what they wanted. To set in motion a chain of events they felt was every
one's destiny.
It sickened me. Not just the violence, but the sheer bloodymindedness of it all.
Why couldn't everyone just get along?
"In for a penny," I muttered to myself as I cast aside the spent weapon and ran headlong into the fray.
What else could I do, apart from run away and let the world burn?
Deaf and Dumbstruck
As I held Wand aloft and charged full steam toward the madness, I knew it was a lost cause. This was over before it really began, wasn't it? How could we get the crates out and away now? There wasn't time.
But maybe we could still pull this off. If we banded together, got the addicts to help, then they could all go back to fighting. We could do this!
Yes, that's what I'd do. I'd get there and tell them all to get a grip, that we'd all die unless we did this first. Then they could rip each other apart at their leisure.
I was halfway there, jumping over bodies, dodging wayward assaults from clueless vampires, and even a few blasts from wizards keen to get in on the action, when the world erupted with noise and blinding white light that stole my sight. Startled, I tripped over something, a body by the feel of it, and stumbled forward, losing my balance. I did that idiotic thing when you trip up and turn it into a skip so anyone watching will be utterly convinced you did it on purpose. I thought I had it under control. But I kept on moving too fast, my momentum making it impossible to stay upright, and then I was going down. Arms out, now a fully-fledged member of the Ministry of Silly Walks, I hopped, skipped, tripped, then jumped forward and straight into a bloody deep hole.
I landed on top of the corpse of a poor woman in her mid thirties maybe. Long brown hair covered one side of her face. Half her head was gone. Light blinded me again and I lost sight of her, thank God. The roar of what sounded like a hundred helicopters drowned out my shouts. To get rid of the after-effects of being singled out by the searchlights, I blinked repeatedly, and just as vision returned, red flared too bright to cope with so I shut my eyes and lay flat on the ground, dragged the corpse over me as intense heat scoured across the land, incinerating anything in its path.
"Goddamn Cerberus," I moaned, knowing nobody could hear me, as I wondered if I'd make it through the next several seconds or be burned to a crisp. Barbecue Hat. Ugh, not nice at all. I'm too gristly and full of chewy bits for that to happen to me.
Then the real fire came, and I couldn't even scream for fear of my insides being burned out.
I pulled the woman over me more tightly for better protection, apologized to her, and gritted my teeth as what felt like a napalm bomb seared the world clean.
Change of Plan
Thunder rolled across the world repeatedly like God had finally had enough. The ground shook, earth caved in on top of me, no bad thing, and I expected this to be my final resting place—already buried for your convenience to mourn over the life of The Hat.
My nostrils filled with the acrid stench of burning flesh, the taste on my tongue gritty and sour. Unable to move because of the weight of the woman—she was no slender waif—and not wanting to, I nonetheless struggled until I could put my hands over the back of my head then laced the fingers together. I had to protect Grace, no matter if it meant my extremities being crispy.
The earth fizzed, close to burning so hot had it become, and more of it fell on top of me, steaming and hissing. Small pellets of flaming matter dropped from above. As explosions rocked my world, large clumps of turf and gross bits of blackened meat thudded down like macabre rain. I closed my eyes, thinking it best not to risk my eyeballs being boiled out of my skull.
There was no end to the assault. Cerberus had clearly got its act together and was ensuring nobody messed with the impending eruption. Don't know why they bothered. If they could do this with a few helicopters, why go to the trouble of getting the whole place to blow? To make sure, to be absolutely certain they got as many of us as possible.
I had to hand it to Carmichael, he'd played us perfectly right from the start. Everything led back here repeatedly, and he'd planned it that way. I was surprised he hadn't got the shifters involved, the other main players in the magical community, but I guess you can't have everything. This was enough though. Shifters were too disparate, too uninvolved in petty politics, and too few, to be a real concern for Cerberus.
But Carmichael had failed too. He didn't get to retrieve the ashes. I wondered if he'd really ever cared about that or if it was just an excuse, a ploy to get us to fight amongst ourselves and do exactly what he wanted all along.
It didn't matter now.
The missiles stopped falling, but there were several more passes with what I could only assume were heavy duty flame throwers of some sort. Undoubtedly functioning with a large dollop of magical assistance. Each time I thought about moving, fire would engulf me then sweep past, burning away more of the woman's clothes, then her flesh, singeing my exposed limbs.
The smell built until I could stand it no longer.
It was revolting, the worst smell in the world. Another human being burned, their meat cooking. It was foul because it smelled so nice. Who doesn't love barbecue? Saliva forms despite your best efforts, making you feel sick to your stomach because you know what you're drooling over is utterly taboo. It plays havoc with your senses, forces you to question what kind of person you are even though you know it's an unconscious reaction to smells and tastes associated with good times, happy times.
This was no jolly time though, this was close to genocide. Cerberus had finally stepped over the line into all out war. If they wanted a fight, I'd give them one, as this was unforgivable.
But that was all just bravado to keep my mind occupied as I performed a gruesome task. I couldn't concentrate on other things, I had to focus on the now, so I gritted my teeth, opened my eyes, and heaved.
Damn but she was heavy. Nonetheless, I pushed the blackened remains of the woman aside and took stock of myself. My jeans were burning, so I put them out with hands raw and already blistering, but it wasn't as bad as I'd expected. A few burns, a few delicate spots, no permanent damage. With a little magical aid, I was already on the mend, but I dreaded moving for I knew whatever I encountered wouldn't be pretty.
The taste of roasted meat still on my tongue, and with smoke filling my nostrils, I tried to waft away the noxious fumes but the smog was too thick and heavy. My eyes stung so much they watered like I mourned the dead; maybe I was crying. Crying for this, for all I'd done, for all I would do in the future given half the chance. I was a lost cause. Even now, in this predicament, I knew nothing would stop me, that I'd continue with my madness in whatever fashion I could find, right until the very end. And maybe even after death if such antics were permitted.
Ah well, what's a poor wizard to do? We are who we are, and I was quite content with who I was. I'd lived, I'd experienced life to the max, and would always do so. Still, it gave me pause, as I crouched in a hole next to a crispy woman with my eyes watering, my skin steaming, and the world about to be blown to smithereens.
Addicts to the End
As the helicopters retreated, undoubtedly to a safe distance now they knew the end was nigh, I clambered up the steep banks of the crater, slipping repeatedly until I managed to dig my fingers into firmer soil and haul myself up. Once freed from the charnel pit, I heaved up a stomach full of bile then collapsed onto the ground.
Standing, even though I didn't want to, I searched for signs of life. Thick smoke drifted and eddied on a strong breeze as the first signs of dawn offered an eerie glimpse of the aftermath, overlaid with a pallid glow that suffused the landscape. Red light from below created bizarre rays of light like a perverse show, highlighting the smoke as it rushed by. A weak sun rose over distant hills, casting a sickly orange glow over the whole scene. A tableaux right out of Bosch's nightmares.
Blackened corpses littered the field, some little more than brittle bones, the flesh seared clean off. Others were still whole, but with charred skin and burned lungs, hair inc
inerated, eyes popped after boiling. And as I walked carefully through the carnage, I discovered bodies with nary a mark, just a bullet wound that had ended their life fast and relatively painlessly.
There were countless wounded. People staggered about randomly, disorientated and scared, searching for a way to escape. Moans and cries greeted me with every step, but there was little I could do, not for so many, and they wandered away searching for help that would never come.
The wind blew in earnest, huge gusts that came and went just as quickly, and the smoke blew away down to the woods where it lingered amongst the trees as if happy to escape.
I took in the scene in all its macabre glory, and shall never forget what I saw.
Hundreds of men and women, wizards and witches, most saved because of their magic. Injured, yes. Dead, no. Most had already left, run off the moment the helicopters attacked. But what I mostly saw were vampires. Hundreds of vampires in various states of undress, many fully naked after their clothes were burned away, covered in healing wounds, blistered, bodies raw and pink as fresh skin grew, hair in tufts on their heads.
It was easy to discern who were local and who were the addicts. Ivan's people stood in groups, staring in utter horror as the ash addicts crouched, lay, stooped, or knelt beside bodies and picked charred flesh from the corpses and consumed it.
The addicts were lost to a madness I pray I never understand. They feasted on the ash of the murdered. Greedy hands scooped it up from the ground, peeled badly burned flesh from corpses and slurped the tangy ash. Others licked the ground, some grabbed handfuls where bodies had been utterly consumed by fire, and as I walked so the numbers increased until I joined Ivan and his people at the epicenter of a spreading circle of madness. We said nothing, merely stood there and watched the illicit consummation of the deceased. Blood mixed with ash to create a slurry of human misery.