Children Of A Lesser God

"RUN!"

Without even looking back, Jimmy took off towards the back. Seeing their leader take off, the rest of the guys couldn"t process what had happened right away and lost a valuable few seconds. Laz, seeing Jimmy take off, didn"t hesitate to start running towards the frozen group who stood there like lambs waiting to be slaughtered. He also stopped hiding his abilities. With his lava like blood over flowing, the black flames rushed out from Laz"s entire body, charring the concrete floor where his feet hit the ground. As soon as he reached the group, he started swinging.

One punch hit the guy closest too him, sending him flying with a caved in chest. The black flames engulfed him seconds later, not even leaving a corpse.

An open back handed slap sent another flying with his head twisting around, the flames soon engulfing him too.

Another was caught from behind by Laz while running and just flung to the side without injury at first. The screams he made as his body was light ablaze from the black flames that couldn"t be put out seemed to act like jet fuel, causing the others to speed up.

A few of the smarter ones figured out that Laz was running in the direction that Jimmy had headed and turned quickly, heading towards different exits.

The slaughter continued in the rain of blood, fire and screams as Laz chased Jimmy while thinning out the herd in his way. By the time there was no one else in front of him, fifteen more puddles of human goo littered the floor as Laz caught sight of Jimmy and picked up the pace.

"f.u.c.k THIS STUPID DOOR..." Jimmy screamed while trying to bash it open with his body.

The door that Jimmy was trying to leave from just so happened to be the same one that Fred had escaped out earlier. It was also the one door that no one was guarding from the outside due to how far away it was and how remote it was. In terms of escape, Laz and Ruby had thought it was the least likely to be used, so they had opted to have Ruby guard the main escape path while Leona took the other side one. Besides which, the door appeared on the prints to look more like a small latch than a full blown door. It had only been converted as an escape root when Jimmy and his boys moved in. Laz had been responsible for making sure people didn"t circle around him and head out the front door, which was why he had burned up the first three attackers. People normally subconsciously avoided stepping in piles of questionable substances that were the actual remains of their friends.

The reason the door was currently jammed was thanks to Fred. Fred had always been a rather paranoid person. Due to this, once he felt like he had escaped, he didn"t want anyone following him. So after he exited the door, he spent just enough time to jam the lock closed before taking off. It was this that gave Laz enough time to catch up with Jimmy.

Hearing Laz"s foot steps behind him, Jimmy turned around just in time to see the masked Laz appear in the hallway. Although there was no place for him to run, Jimmy put his back against the door and pulled out a hand gun that he had kept on himself while aiming at Laz. Laz wasn"t the least bit worried. Jimmy"s hand was shaking so much it was impossible to think he would even be able to aim, much less pull the trigger. Laz knew that Jimmy"s will had already been mostly broken.

"Just... just... forgive me... please. I know a lot of people. I can get you whatever you want. Money, drugs, women, any age you could ask for... just please..." Jimmy started begging even while aiming at Laz. Laz couldn"t help but smile under his mask.

"Far, far too late for something like that. You could have let it go, but you didn"t. You tried to kill me. That a can forgive. But you failed and that was your own mistake. But you also tried to hurt those around me... those I care about. That was the final nail in your coffin." Laz remarked coldly with his gleaming blood red eyes.

"You"re one of them, aren"t you?"

"Good guess."

"They are going to come for you. For all of you. The feds are going to lock you all up into the deepest, darkest hole they can find. You will rot away or be used in labs for the rest of your G.o.d d.a.m.ned life you freak. But I can help. My people, the ones who"ve been backing us... they can help you..."

"Heh heh heh heh," Laz laughed at this. Anyone willing to help someone like Jimmy would sell him out the first chance they got, much less stick their own necks out the help someone who was infected. Laz couldn"t help but wonder if Jimmy had something wrong with his head to think a bribe like this would work.

Coming up on Jimmy, Laz didn"t even bother to remove the gun from his hand. He just stood barely one foot in front of him and smiled. Jimmy immediately dropped the gun while trying to shrink himself as much as possible.

"What... are you going to do...?" Jimmy asked through his shaking teeth.

"I want to know where that other b.a.s.t.a.r.d went?" Laz asked, thinking about the escaped Fred.

"That other b.a.s.t.a.r.d? Fred?" Jimmy asked.

"That his name? Then yeah. Him." Laz responded.

"I, uh..." Jimmy was wracking his brain for what he knew, but he also knew that if he answered truthfully, his usefulness would run out and he would be dead. Therefore he was trying to come up with a lie. Laz saw right through this in a heartbeat. It was a typical villain type of behavior.

"Alright. Well, let"s make this simple. First, let me explain something. When a fire is hot enough and it burns you, it will scorch your nerve endings first, making it so that you don"t feel a thing. You see, when your guys were screaming earlier, it wasn"t because they were in pain, it was because they watched their bodies become liquefied and weren"t able to stop it. Second thing you should know, since your entire head is encased in bone, your brain will actually be decently protected so that even when your eyeb.a.l.l.s melt and you can"t see, you will still be fully aware of what is happening."

Each word Laz said was like nails on a chalk board inside Jimmy"s brain, yet he didn"t miss a single syllable of it. He was far too scared to do anything but focus on the horror that the young man in front of him just described.

"Now then, shall we begin melting parts of you to see if you can answer my question a bit quicker?" Laz asked while bringing up his flaming hand and moving it towards Jimmy"s arm.

"WAIT, WAIT... just.... just wait. OK..." Jimmy did his best to move away, but there was nowhere to move. He could only try his best to delay Laz.

Laz stopped moving but only for a minute.

"Ok, he has a place, his own place, over in Englewood. If he ran from here, he should be there..." Jimmy finally muttered. Englewood was a small town not far from where the club was located. Although Laz didn"t know where it was, it would be simple enough to find it using technology.

"And his address?"

"I... don"t know... I just know he has a place there."

"Shame. Is there any other place he might be?" Laz asked again.

"He"s, he doesn"t have family. He might have a girlfriend"s place. Imma... I"m not sure." Jimmy stuttered.

Laz felt like Jimmy was telling the truth, or at least not actually lying to him. Even so, there was no way Laz was going to let him get away, even if he needed to use Ruby"s help again. Therefore, there was no reason to keep Jimmy alive.

Laz nodded his head after hearing the information and turned around, walking away down the hallway. Jimmy, who had just survived the horror, collapsed on the ground while panting. Seeing Laz walk away without doing anything to him, Jimmy almost risked a smile. He felt like he was being kept alive in case he was lying. Although he wasn"t, he really didn"t know much about Fred, despite having looked into him before. But knowing that this masked killer was going after him, Jimmy couldn"t help but debate whether he should sell Laz out later rather than sooner.

It would sadly be his last though. He had failed to notice that Laz had left a small spark of the black flame on Jimmy"s shirt. Just as Jimmy was thinking up the things he would do once he got his hands on this b.a.s.t.a.r.d and his women, the spark flamed to like, quickly spreading as it started to engulf him.

Looking down, Jimmy noticed that his shirt was on fire and screamed while trying to take it off. Unfortunately, he wasn"t fast enough and actually ended up setting his chest and hands on fire. It was only now that he had a brief moment of enlightenment. He now knew what Laz had told him had been the truth. He really didn"t feel anything. Even though he felt no pain, he still couldn"t help but scream as he watched his hand liquefy while an ever growing hole expanded out from his chest. In a moment of insanity, Jimmy had ran into a wall and knocked himself unconscious. It was probably the only comfort he found as his body was soon nothing more than a random puddle in the back hall of an old warehouse. Laz hadn"t turned back once as he continued on.

He knew at this point that he wasn"t going to find this Fred and that Fred had already escaped. Although this disturbed Laz, it wasn"t as bad as it would have been had someone like Jimmy escaped. At least Fred wasn"t about to go shooting his mouth off about what Laz is. Doing so would only get him in trouble as well, something a coward like Fred wasn"t going to take a chance on. The only concern on his mind was what was happening outside since he wasn"t able to figure out who escaped to where during the fight earlier. He wasn"t worried about Ruby as he knew she could handle herself. His primary concern was how was Leona doing?

...

On Ruby"s side of the warehouse, just outside the door, four bodies were on the floor with looks of pain on their lifeless faces. Four of the escaping thugs had the misfortune of heading in her direction. She didn"t even need to use any abilities to reap their lowly lives. She just used her training in a.s.sa.s.sin style martial arts to quickly incapacitate them before going through and delivering a quick heel strike to each one, destroying their airway and rendering them incapable to screaming or breathing until they died. Although she had thought about sparing one of them to ask about the situation inside, she quickly gave up on that idea. The first reason was because she trusted Laz despite the lack of time she had known him. She just felt that he was the kind of guy to do exactly what he said he would do. And the other reason was because she saw the sheer terror in their eyes as they had escaped. That feeling wasn"t something a dead man could instill in them. For now, she just looked at the building and waited to see if any more fish tried to escape the net until a strange sense tickled her head and she looked over in a certain direction. She couldn"t help but smile as she took off running.

...

While Ruby had quickly eliminated her opponents, Leona was still fighting with her two. The exit she was watching and that they had tried to escape out of was a narrow alley way between the warehouse the gang resided in and the next warehouse over. Luckily all the doors were locked on this warehouse so they had no where to run except for past the s.e.xy, sparkling silver dressed girl with a hockey mask on her face. Yep, that was the mask that she had been handed from Ruby as she had gotten out of her car. She had originally thought Ruby would use a hood style mask like a ski mask, but she instead had been handed a Jason style serial killer mask instead. When she asked Ruby why she would have this, Ruby simply said,

"A full hood style mask messed up her hair so she never carried them around. Besides, something like this proved much more scary," with a grin, allowing Leona to know that this wasn"t the first time Ruby had done something that required masks.

None of that mattered right now as Leona back flipped away from the guy she was currently fighting and sent out a spin kick to knock back the other one that was trying to escape, sending him flying into the side of the building.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it," she whispered to herself. Leona was trying her best to knock these two out, but they wouldn"t stay down. Even though they both had broken a couple of bones, they wouldn"t stop trying to run as though a demon from h.e.l.l was chasing them.

Despite what she had been told, she hadn"t yet made the resolve the kill them. It wasn"t her fault, she just felt that knocking them out and leaving it to Ruby or Laz would be better. But despite her being much stronger that even a strong normal person, she just couldn"t be vicious enough.

Just as she was about to jump back towards the thug she had just jumped away from, she suddenly felt an extreme form of pressure on her, one that almost made her drop to her knees. She felt her blood heat up in response and looked over, only to see two people walking towards her with slow measured steps.

She couldn"t help but gasp for a moment while trying to believe her eyes. In the next moment, her hesitation had vanished while her normally expressionless demeanor exploded out in a rage.