Death's Mantle 3

by Harmon Cooper

  “I came to the South Wind,” he told her, “with hundreds of replicants and Grimzilla. I was able to create them in a matter of minutes.”

  “And your brother?” Danira asked, immediately jumping to the next logical conclusion.

  Lucian shook his head. “Not yet. It’s not working. But I have an idea for that,” he said, nodding frantically now. “I know a way to make this work. At least, I think it will work. I also…”

  He exhaled audibly, not sure of how Danira was going to take this next part.

  “You what?”

  “I did something similar to what my predecessor did, only I took it to the next level. In two days, they are going to execute Gaspard because he tried to bring attention to the Congress of Death, explaining to them that he believed that the upper echelon of both of our Progenies were working together to keep the lower tiers at war. I told Hashul and another angel about this meeting in two days, not about what Gaspard had done, but about the meeting taking place. It was bait. They will come.”

  Danira nodded. “They will, especially after what you just did to the South Wind. You have once again violated the sanctity of that place,” she said, a sly grin taking shape on her face.

  “I did what I had to do. And anyway, that’s my plan,” he told her. “I’m going to force a scenario in which both sides are trying to destroy one another in an effort to get the maximum number of witnesses possible.”

  “And then?”

  A grim smile formed on Lucian’s face. “I don’t know if this will work, but here’s what I’d like to do…”

  Once Lucian finished explaining his plan to Danira, a pizza appeared in the air. Chairs took shape as well, a table sprouting out of the ground between them.

  “Food,” she said as she sat in front of him, the angel still not telling him what she thought of his plan.

  “I figured you would be hungry. I sure as hell am. I still need to figure out how to conjure up a soda, but those recipes are secret…” Lucian meant this to be a joke, but it didn’t seem to reach the angel, Danira already eating her first slice.

  “It’s still so good,” she said, quickly covering her hand with her mouth, a piece of cheese dripping from her chin. She swallowed and quickly wiped her chin. “Sorry.”

  “No, dig in. That’s what it’s for,” Lucian told her.

  The two ate most of the pie before Danira spoke again.

  “I agree,” she finally told him. “I agree with what you are planning to do. And I understand why…”

  She lowered her head some, guilt washing over her.

  “It’s fine,” Lucian said, not quite knowing why her demeanor had changed.

  “I understand now why Leliel did what she did,” Danira told him as she caught Lucian’s gaze. “And I am going to do the same. It makes sense now.”

  “You are becoming a fallen angel?”

  “My kind already wants me dead. Similar to what you told me about Gaspard, there would be a ‘trial,’ but the outcome is already predetermined. If a member of the Progeny of Light is taken to the South Wind and imprisoned, there is no recourse.”

  “So what would they do to you?”

  “Like I said, the same thing that they will do to Gaspard.”

  “And then the power you’ve collected, all of your energy, just goes back into this spiritual plane that we exist in, right?” Lucian asked, waving his hand around in the air.

  She nodded.

  “I didn’t know what they would do, to be honest, but I had a feeling it would get nasty. That’s why I would like to put this plan in motion, and while there are some pieces that will need to fall into place perfectly for it to work, I think it’s truly viable. It’s one of those, ‘it’s just so crazy it could work’ ideas.”

  “It is,” she told him.

  “Yeah,” said Lucian. “And once all this is over…”

  “I wanted to ask you about that. You alluded to me before that you hoped to use your role for good.”

  “I did. And I still do,” he said seriously.

  “Yet in that time you have become a hunter of other Deaths and have done more than any member of the Progeny of Darkness has ever done to cause an all-out war.”

  “With a caveat,” Lucian reminded her. “I told you my plan.”

  “How do you intend to rectify this in the end?”

  As Lucian looked the angel over, an idea came to him, one that made sense somehow. For one, he could blow off a little steam, even if he was starting to feel tired. It would also allow them more time to bond.

  “Why don’t you go hunting with me?” Lucian asked.

  “Right now?”

  He nodded. “Just consider it a hint of what I intend to do after this. Once this is all settled, and I have saved my brother, and the war is either over or changing its dynamics, I will use my power to help people. And I want to show you what that looks like.”

  “It doesn’t change anything yet,” she told him as she stood. “There will still be lots of rebuilding to do.”

  “Maybe that’s true, but that doesn’t necessarily have to concern us. This place, my world here, could be a sanctuary for us. It is a sanctuary for us.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I can see that.”

  “I had…” Lucian decided to go ahead and spill his guts, realizing he had nothing to lose any longer. “There may be more like us that need space in the future, I don’t know. And I want you to be able to use it however you’d like. Modify it, tell me what you want me to do and I will do it. I want you to be happy. I know that you are going through a big change right now, one that I could never understand. You have thousands of years with the Progeny of Light and for…” Lucian shook his head. “For them to just cast you away based on a rumor.”

  “But the rumor was true,” she said. “We were and still are seeing each other.”

  “Then that’s what I intend to change in all of this, hopefully. It may take some time, but I’d like to think that there is a version of you and me in the future that don’t have to go through what we are about to have to go through, or what my predecessor and Leliel went through.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, extending her hand to Lucian.

  “Right, let’s go somewhere. You ready to kick some ass?”

  The angel smirked. “Not particularly, but I do like the idea of taking out a few of my frustrations. I wasn’t expecting to be blindsided like I was by the Progeny of Light, a few angels in particular.”

  “I would offer to kill Hashul for you next time I saw him, but that’s not going to become my MO either.”

  “Glad to hear it,” she said as they touched hands.

  “Ready?”

  Danira nodded and the two appeared over the Las Vegas strip.

  The sun had already set, the sky a multifarious swath of deep blues and heavy pinks. Even though Lucian couldn’t feel his environment, he could tell that it was dry, that no amount of dazzling lights and glitzy hotels could erase the fact that the city had been built in the middle of the desert.

  He’d never been to Vegas before, but it was exactly how he envisioned it, a long strip with world-class hotels on either side, suburbia stretching out beyond it, the land flat, something surreal about the place considering he’d seen it in so many movies, and that he had experienced it so many times through various mediums yet had never visited the famed location.

  “Are we going to go gambling, or are we going to a show?” Danira asked, the angel’s wings flaring up in size for a moment before retracting a little, flapping once as she grew more stable in the air.

  Lucian’s replicants began to form behind him, the angel turning to look at them.

  All of them focused their purple eyes on her at once, their weapon arms slowly lowering.

  “Yeah, they don’t have to come,” Lucian said, waving them away.

  “But they can come,” Danira said, conjuring her two golden crows, which spiraled around her body and fanned out.

  Lucian summoned his spherical c
reations as well, Hugin and Munin joining Danira’s crows as they lowered to the sidewalk.

  “So this is what you do?” Danira asked. “Just fly around looking for targets?”

  “I haven’t come hunting here before,” Lucian told her, “but I figured there would be plenty of parasites for us to tackle in Vegas. More than enough to go around. We could dip into a casino, or just make our way through the streets. It’s really up to you.”

  “Let’s avoid the casinos,” she said.

  “Not the gambling type?” Lucian asked as his cape swooped up and then re-settled on his shoulders.

  “I’ve done enough gambling over the last few days to tide me over.”

  He nodded, aware of the sacrifices that she had made to join him.

  Lucian still didn’t quite know what this meant or what it would entail, but he was feeling more positive about it by the minute, and there was a greater chance that it would work out this time than there had been last time they’d been close.

  Now floating over a sidewalk in front of a hotel shaped like a pyramid, Lucian began checking the crowd for parasites.

  He ignored their death dates; Lucian was no longer interested in being responsible for a person’s death and even if he was, killing one of these leech parasites didn’t give him enough Soul Points to make it worth his while. They would die when they died, and he would not help them unless it was clear they were suffering.

  Lucian spotted what he was looking for, a group of casino goers with black, shriveled parasites bubbling out of the collars of their shirts, the bodies of the demon bugs rimmed in electricity.

  “Found them,” he said, summoning his spiked whip this time.

  He cracked his whip at the first parasite, the creature screeching and hissing as it fell to the ground, quickly growing in size as it continued to shriek.

  The parasites nearby noticed what was happening and quickly joined in, bubbling off their hosts’ necks and merging together, the conglomerated demon bugs lunging for Lucian and Danira as soon as it was able to do so.

  Danira swung her sword at it; Lucian pressed back as she did so, giving himself just a little bit of space to use his whip again.

  But he never had to.

  Anger boiling over her, Danira struck the parasite again and again, a halo of energy forming around her and eventually lifting into the air and frying the demon bug, killing it, the beast quickly fizzling into nothing.

  “Sorry,” she said, breathing through clenched teeth.

  “I’m not out here to get points,” he told her. “Only to blow off some steam.”

  “You’re right. I do have some anger to get out. Much more than I would have originally anticipated.”

  “We all do,” Lucian told her as he watched an older woman pass by them, their periphery blurring back into focus. There was a leech parasite affixed to the woman’s neck, a rather large one, her death date appearing above her.

  Name: Marissa Chapman

  Date of Birth: 07/05/1963

  Date of Death: 09/19/2017

  Lucian glanced past her date to another target, quickly finding one on a man stepping out of a sleek, SUV-styled limousine.

  The man was broad-shouldered, in a shiny suit with pinstripes, his skin with a fake tan orange glow to it, his hair slicked back, beard and eyebrows perfectly trimmed.

  Lucian had first dealt with this kind of parasite in New York, and later in Boston, the small, brain-like parasite able to turn itself into a humanoid form once provoked.

  “These ones are a little tougher,” Lucian said, going for his MX-11.

  “I’m always up for a challenge,” said Danira.

  To kick things off, he fired on the parasite, which caused it to spill off the man’s body, the creature immediately taking its humanoid form.

  Danira came forward with her sword, letting out a grunt as she cut its arm off. She swung her blade at it again, this time taking off its head.

  Part of the creature started to grow back together, but then her crows, followed by Lucian’s spherical creations, tore into it, their combined forces ripping tendrils off the parasite’s body.

  The humanoid demon bug continued to lash at them as they came around again for another swipe, the creature frantic as eyeballs began to lift off its back, more sinewy tendrils whipping at the air, jagged teeth forming where its mouth should be.

  “Let me finish it,” said Danira as she equipped the enormous energy weapon she carried, a halo radiating around the muzzle of the gun.

  She fired upon the parasite, the light from her weapon decimating any shadows in the area before quickly dying down, the parasite instantly dead.

  Satisfied, she lowered her weapon, turning to Lucian just as a little wind blew past her, her hair flailing a bit behind her head.

  “We’ve got company.”

  Lucian had already noticed that their actions had sparked the curiosity of more parasites, dozens of varying sizes and shapes, their hosts nonexistent as they swarmed toward then.

  There were purple parasites with black-bristled hairs, ones with yellow spots, more of the greed parasites rimmed in electricity, a few of the leech parasites, the mental health parasites, clear with red filling and vertical eyes, stingers, muscled arms, tendrils with spikes jutting off their forms.

  They all blurred together as Lucian zipped forward, his armor instantly forming and hardening over his skin.

  Lucian felt an instant boost of power just as a muscled tendril wrapped around his leg, tugging him to the asphalt.

  Lucian shot at the parasite only to be tossed backward into a lamppost, which collapsed, smashing into a car. A blast from Danira’s weapon caused a marquee to fall, another blast cutting down a palm tree.

  Lucian bolted back into the air, where he caught his crows whipping through an awning, tentacles chasing after them.

  He shot through these tentacles, turning his attention back to Danira, who had her sword in one hand and her energy weapon in the other, spinning, cutting, and firing all at the same time.

  Lucian shouldn’t have taken a moment to grin at her, but he did, and for his troubles he was rewarded with a fist to the back of the head, Lucian’s armor mostly absorbing it as he was tossed forward.

  He swiveled around just as the parasite reached him, one of the humanoid ones, Lucian cracking it in the skull with his energy weapon. It sunk another fist into his side, Lucian responding with an elbow as the two hit the ground.

  He scrambled on top of it, using his knees for support as he fired two shots directly into its face, exploding its head. He barely noticed the energy swirling into him as a conjoined demon bug came to meet him, a blob of arms and stingers.

  Lucian went with his sword, cutting through its tentacles while simultaneously conjuring a couple injurecrows, which shot forward, adding a fiery explosion to the fight that sent globs of viscera into the air.

  It was madness, the chaotic kind of fight that he was used to having in psychiatric hospitals, in enclosed spaces. Even though they were fighting on the strip, it still felt confined in a way, with so many parasites, debris, and other things to cause pandemonium, such as a sign which was just crashing to the street, sending up an electric spark in a plume of smoke, a car being thrown at him by conglomerated demon bugs, Danira managing to blast it out of the air before it reached him, the ground cracking as one of the parasites shot its tendril into the asphalt, hoping to come up behind Lucian.

  His injurecrows, now led by Hugin, took care of this one, exploding parasitic bits into the air, more light pouring into Lucian.

  Feeling like he was just warming up, Lucian flew toward Danira, his cape lifting off his shoulders and colliding with a peach-colored parasite.

  His cape quickly wrapped around the parasite’s form and slammed it repeatedly into the asphalt as Lucian grew his claws, catching up to a demon bug with spiked tendrils that was attempting to grab Danira’s legs.

  He ripped the demon bug apart.

  Swooping up and then di
ving back to the ground, Danira cut through several more, a golden energy radiating all around her.

  More parasites flocking toward them, Lucian equipped his grenade launcher, its modified cylindrical magazine whirring as he fired shots.

  Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  A car exploded, quickly engulfed in flames as a humanoid parasite ran through the inferno. More of the trees along the strip fell, one of them squishing a conjoined parasite, liquid exploding out of either side as the air filled with smoke and misted blood.

  Ka-chunk, ka-chunk.

  Boom. Boom.

  Lucian continued to lay down the heavy artillery, once again seeing his cape drag a parasite through a wall of fire and lifting, slamming it into another demon bug. Another car exploded, sending shards of glass into a clear parasite with red running through it, the demon bug shrieking as it fell to the side, as Danira flew through the pandemonium yet again, firing down on the creatures.

  Lucian summoned some of his ice power, freezing several of the parasites that were coming at them. Danira responded by firing blast after blast from her incredibly large weapon, the angel still managing to fend off another parasite with her sword, her wings at their full expanse now, something celestial about her, beautiful, unlike anything Lucian had ever seen before as they fought together.

  It was glorious.

  It was never-ending as more parasites came onto the scene.

  One of the largest parasites he had ever seen stumbled through the discord, Lucian figuring he might as well summon his gargantuan creation.

  Flying back, he stretched his hands in front of him, Grimzilla starting to take shape, the rockets on its heels firing, guns emerging from compartments along its body, more injurecrows filling the air from the giant mecha’s shoulder-mounted turrets.

  The giant robot met the towering parasite with its bladed arm, Grimzilla cutting right through it.

  Smaller parasites tried to crawl onto his creation’s shoulder even as he took another lumbering step forward, Lucian zipping over to them and lighting them up with fire, and then swiping them away with the wind.