Slightly rejuvenated, Lucian also saw that his second replicant was now circling Wyatt, the Death Hunter oblivious to its presence as he began firing at Danira.
Getting as close as he could, Lucian’s Grim Mecha aimed the toothy nozzle of Lucian’s newest contraption at Wyatt, releasing the parasite inside, the same type of demon bug that had plagued Katy, purple with bristled hairs running along its body.
The parasite latched onto Wyatt almost immediately, and for a moment Lucian thought his plan wasn’t going to work, that it wasn’t going to create the same psychological attack it had done to him twice when he’d tried to remove it from Katy, the one that had also brought Danira down as well.
But no.
It was only a moment later that Wyatt was swinging his arms, Lucian’s ax still chomping on his shoulder as the infamous Death Hunter tried to free himself from the electrified tripwire, which continued to spark, the purple parasite ballooning all around him.
Danira landed, her wings flapping as the halo around the end of her weapon rotated. She fired a blistering shot at Wyatt, which also affected the parasite, the demon bug growing larger, completely engulfing him.
By this point Lucian’s body had started to reattach, yet he was still missing a large portion of his chest.
Luckily, his other Grim Mecha landed on the roof and scooped him up, Lucian managing to hold his plasma blowtorch in one hand with the help of his replicant.
Hovering over the Death Hunter, Lucian pulled back on the handle of the blowtorch, the weapon charging for a moment before quickly unleashing a concentrated beam of power at both Wyatt and the parasite that was affecting him.
Lucian kept the pressure on, ignoring the heat from the weapon, Danira standing by.
Wyatt’s form started to shake, the parasite pulsing, disintegrating.
A light exploded into the air and poured into Lucian, followed by another one.
It was powerful enough that it nearly brought the Grim Mecha helping Lucian stand to its knees.
But as the smoke cleared, it became clear that it was done; they had done the impossible.
Wyatt was dead.
And now they needed to clean up the mess he’d left behind.
Lucian’s Soul Points flashed in front of him.
He briefly noticed that he had moved up by nearly eight-thousand points, but rather than pump his fist in the air, Lucian’s focus returned to the battle in the center of the trailers, which still raged on, tendrils and muscled parasites and the terrifying screeches of injuresouls only adding to the anarchy.
Lucian could hear Old Death letting loose a string of antiquated explicit quips, Leliel laughing along as she savagely tore through injuresouls. Danira already stood on top of the trailers and fired down into the crowd of injuresouls and parasites he’d captured and released.
He would have jumped into the fight too, but his body still wasn’t fully reformed, and to make matters worse, it was currently being supported by one of his mechas and his cape.
Ignoring the battle for a moment, Lucian closed his eyes, feeling his muscles start to stitch together, his bones regrowing, his torso forming and the stability that came once his feet lightly touched down on the soil.
He lifted his hand into the air; the grip of his ax struck Lucian’s open palm as if he were Thor. He tossed it up and over the trailer in front of them, sending the maniacal weapon straight into the battle.
He had killed Wyatt.
At least he had accomplished that task.
But there was no indication as to where Gaspard and Mastima were, and before they started searching for them, they would need to deal with what the Death Hunter had left behind.
Lucian lifted into the air, his semi-autonomous energy weapon forming on his shoulder.
With a grunt, he sent forth a wave of injurecrows at one of the humanoid parasites, Lucian now using his carbine to fire indiscriminately at injuresouls.
He finished his magazine and popped another one in, one of the black parasites coming to him just as Danira charged forward with her sword, cutting it in half, the demon bug squealing.
Lucian knew that they weren’t going to be able to kill them all, not the injuresouls, anyway.
At least, he had never been able to in the past, and he wasn’t about to try to do it now.
Leliel seemed to be able to take out the creatures, Lucian noticing a drop in the number of injuresouls since he’d last had a chance to observe the main brawl, the brunette valiantly cutting through them.
But still, there were too many, and Lucian knew it would be better for him to find Gaspard and Mastima than it would be to join the fight.
His crows whipped over his shoulders and Lucian’s cape followed them as they sank into the battle.
Lucian turned his focus to the blackened parasite that was already starting to reform, emptying his magazine into the creature and sprinting forward, going for its throat with his clawed fingers just to get it out of the way so he could move on and search for the other Deaths.
Lucian’s body was swept aside by a team of demonic injuresouls, their jaws dislocating as they tried to overwhelm him.
They slammed him into one of the trailers, Lucian breaking through to the inner chamber, more of the damned streaming out.
For a moment, all Lucian could see was black, a sound roaring in his ears as they streamed over him. His crows came to him, explosions sounding off around Lucian’s head as his injurecrows did the same, ripping out more of the trailer’s outer wall, its windows, any of the side paneling and its awning.
He caught a glimpse of whiteness within the trailer, Lucian’s vision once again muddied by the horde of injuresouls coming out of the hole in the wall, some to join the battle, others to try to pull at him, to screech in his face.
His shoulder-mounted weapon firing, Lucian managed to push himself up. He summoned his lava sword and began cutting away at the demons as he pushed deeper into the trailer, toward the sliver of white he’d just seen.
His eyes went wide; he shot forward as best he could and exploded out of the other side of the trailer, Mastima’s frail body now in his arms.
Her body was limp and she was nude, the woman looking a hundred years older than she’d looked the previous day, her skin shriveled, her black eyes lifeless, her mouth agape.
“Are you…?” Lucian lifted her higher into the air. He began tapping her cheek, oblivious to what was happening beneath. “Mastima!” he said, panic in his voice.
“L-Lucian?”
She gasped, her eyelids fluttering open. The female Death strained to keep her head erect, her hair matted and filthy, her body covered in lesions.
“Kill me…”
“No,” said Lucian, immediately conjuring the potion that Yoshimi had made him. He lowered to the desert beyond the trailers, resting Mastima’s head on his knee. “You have to drink this,” he said, lifting it to her lips.
And before she could say anything else, he poured some of the liquid down her throat.
Her back arched, her chest lifting as energy returned to her, her nostrils flaring open, the wrinkles on her skin starting to smooth over.
Power seemed to swell into her and she started to sit up on her own, Lucian noticing that he had only used half of the potion.
“Thank you…” she said, licking her lips. “What did you give me?”
“From Yoshimi. An elixir.”
She wasn’t fully healed, but she appeared to be back from the brink of death, which was better than she was just moments ago.
The female Death took another deep breath in, her fist clenching and unclenching at her sides. “Lucian…”
“I have to go back for…”
A glint in the sky caught Lucian’s attention; he looked up to see Danira lowering, Gaspard’s nude and nearly lifeless body in her arms.
Lucian would have thought he was a corpse had it not been for the way the man’s leg twitched, Gaspard in a much worse condition than Mastima had been.
“Get the others,” Lucian told Danira. “Let’s get out of here.”
The angel nodded, and was airborne a second later.
Chapter Sixteen: Reluctant Bedfellows
Gaspard’s disheveled hair fell into his face, the man scowling at Lucian and those who had joined him.
They were on the beach again, back in Portland, Maine, the tide at its lowest point, seagulls lifting shells and dropping them on the rocks with the hopes of getting to the tasty morsels inside. A wind lapped the sea, lifting some of the drier sand on the shoreline and creating a glazed mist that sat low to the earth.
“That’s no way to greet your saviors,” said Old Death, a bit of a growl to his voice. “You should be thanking your lucky stars that we decided to come for you.”
“And why is that?” Gaspard asked. He wore his robes now, but he was seated, still paler than normal, a glazed look in his eyes. “And what happened to you? Your skin… your face…”
“I’ve been upgraded, you sniveling little—”
“Let me speak to him,” interrupted Mastima, limping forward.
Lucian and his predecessor exchanged glances, Old Death finally shrugging and throwing his hands into the air with disgust. “I believe that Leliel and I have better things to do than wait for an adequate response from this malmsey-nosed whooperung. Come, my darling, let us return to our most humblest of abodes and enjoy our retirement, leaving these worldly affairs to those who assume they can handle them.”
He bowed a little as he dramatically lifted his head forward, Leliel taking his hand.
They were gone before Old Death could hurtle more dated slander at Gaspard.
Standing about twenty feet away from them now, Lucian turned to Danira. “Thank you,” he said, his bone armor melting away.
“For what?”
“You know what,” he said, not able to stop a grin from parting his lips. “You saved me back there. We were close, and had you not been there…”
“I suppose I did save you, but that is par for the course by this point. How many times has it been?”
“I thought we were even now.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever been even when it comes to saving one another.”
“You sure are something fierce with that gun of yours,” he told her, “even if you did somewhat copy my design.”
“Copy your design? Are you sure that I copied your design?” she asked, referring to his MX-11, and the halo-like upgraded he’d made on it around the muzzle of the weapon.
“Pretty sure.”
She offered him one of her rare, but beautiful smiles. “Did you get enough points? That’s what you call them, right?”
“Yeah,” said Lucian. “Close to eight-thousand, to be not so exact. I don’t know if it will be enough, but it’s better than before.”
“Perhaps we can go there now,” she said, looking out to the sea, the sun a thin line on the horizon, darkness starting to fall upon the land. “To your brother’s. I’m still itching for a fight. I don’t know about you.”
“I’m always game. Yeah, let’s do that,” said Lucian, nodding at her. “After we figure out what we can do about our other situation.”
“Ah, yes, our other situation.”
The two of them turned back to Gaspard and Mastima, the female Death crouched before her counterpart and speaking in hushed tones.
Gaspard finally pressed himself to his feet, dusting off his robes as he glanced at Lucian, an arrogant look still on his face as Lucian and Danira approached.
“So what’s the plan?” Lucian asked.
Gaspard cleared his throat, his hair lifting on its own and tying into a tight topknot at the back of his skull. “I understand that you believed that saving me would help your cause, that I would suddenly be a champion for ending the impending war between our kind and her kind,” he said, his eyes locking onto Danira. “And you are partially right. I do want to prevent the war, but I don’t believe I owe either of you any favors. I want to be very clear about that now. I didn’t need you to save me, and I don’t owe you anything.”
“Didn’t need us? Is this the same guy whose naked ass I just saw rescued from a trailer? Look, I’ll cut the shit. Are you going to help us or not?” asked Lucian. “Because if not, we can put an end to this right here.”
Lucian’s MX-11 formed in his hands, the halo around the muzzle of the futuristic energy weapon oscillating.
“You dare threaten me?” Gaspard asked, glaring at Lucian
“Look, asshole, I just saved your life. You do owe me, and if you aren’t here to help, then you are an obstacle that I intend to remove. I could always use more points.”
Gaspard sneered at Lucian. “You would be wise to watch your words around me, boy. I may not be at full power at the moment, but next time I am, I will end your whiny suffering before you can accomplish your pathetic goal of saving your bloodline.”
And that was all it took.
Lucian was on Gaspard in an instant, pressing the muzzle of his weapon beneath his chin, Gaspard trying to fight back but unable to summon the strength.
“You want to say something again?” Lucian asked. “Because I’m all ears. Go on, say something about my bloodline.”
“Enough,” said Mastima, looping her arm in Lucian’s and pulling him away.
With an incredulous look on his face, Gaspard slowly got to his feet, the man sucking in a deep breath, radiating displeasure. “And here I was…”
“Both of you, stop,” said Danira.
Gaspard started to say something to her but she cut him off.
“You can settle your differences later, but I should warn you now,” she told the disgruntled Death, “I will take any harm you inflict on him as an act of war. I have killed more of your kind than you have judged in your pathetic political role. You do not want me as an enemy. Mark my words.”
“You already are my enemy,” Gaspard spat, “but I will get down to it, to the point I was trying to make earlier before Lucian decided to flash his fancy toy in my face. I am willing to help. But it’s going to take me a little time. First, Mastima and I will have to come up with a story as to how he was rescued. From that point, I will see what I can find out about those trying to push our sides to war. From what I have learned in the time I’ve had my role, while there are followers, there is usually a single person or two really beating the war drum. I will find out who this person is, and what their motives are, and bring my findings to the Congress of Death. We…” He glared at Lucian. “We will then try to stop the war, as long as there aren’t any more complications. Do you think you can handle that?”
Lucian knew better than to look at Mastima as Gaspard spoke. She knew the truth; she knew that he had killed some members of the Progeny of Light.
“Until that time, keep a low profile. You’ve managed to shake a lot of trees in a very short amount of time. Here’s an idea: why don’t you lay low for a few days? Let those with a little more finesse, those with expertise, handle the situation.” He turned from them, waving his hand over his shoulder. “I’m leaving now; you should do the same.”
And with that, Gaspard vanished.
Once Mastima bid them farewell, Lucian was left standing on the beach with Danira, their crows playing in the ocean, the light left from the setting sun reflecting off their shiny, metal forms, the sound of the waves adding a hint of serenity to the scene.
“Well?” Danira asked, turning to Lucian.
She moved her hair out of her face, and as she did her armor melted away, the angel back in the short dress and light armor that he’d seen her wear on several occasions now.
Lucian felt his heart pulse in his throat for a moment as he took her in, as he yet again realized his fondness for her, and how it continued to grow.
>
“I can’t stand that guy,” Lucian finally said.
“He’s a real asshole, like you said.”
“Wait a minute, did I just hear an angel curse? Because if I did…”
“That wasn’t me…”
“Yeah? Maybe it wasn’t. Anyway, let’s go check on my brother.” Lucian placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
Hugin and Munin returned, and after hearing a clank behind him, Lucian found his two Grim Mechas ready to travel as well, good soldiers as always.
Upon pressing his thumb and pinky finger together, Lucian appeared in his brother’s backyard, the glow from a neighbor’s porchlight extending to the space, adding a spotlight as Danira slowly lowered.
Lucian hesitated.
“I can go in first,” Danira said. “If you’d like…”
Lucian experienced a moment of deja vu as he looked to the Progeny of Light, recalling that he’d first met her here, how she’d tried to kill him.
Because of course she tried to kill him.
He smirked.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“No reason,” Lucian said, floating toward the backdoor.
He pressed through, his crows fanning out, Danira’s cherub counterparts doing the same once they both made it into the living room.
His Grim Mechas remained outside, Lucian’s muscle always on guard.
The grin that had just been on his face just moments ago slowly washed away as he took in the home, Lucian first noticing that there were stacks of papers on the table, that food was left out, that a blanket that was supposed to be on the couch was now on the floor, an overturned chair in the corner, clothing scattered about.
“He’s downstairs,” Hugin told Lucian, his spherical creation hovering before him. “But he’s making his way up here.”
Lucian bit his lip as his brother stumbled out of the basement, his phone on speaker, their mother on the other line.
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