Rei"s whole body quivered. I didn"t so much see her move as see where she wasn"t. There was just enough time for me to gasp before she closed the distance and flicked a slight little blade straight into his carotid. Spinning around his enormous body, Rei wrapped onto his back, thrusting the small blade again and again through the tuft of his neck. I watched blood shoot ten feet into the air. A red mist rained down as the tall man stumbled backwards issuing gurgled curses.
"Stars above..." I whispered.
The thug in blue didn"t delay. He rushed into the fray instantly, and considering his size, his speed was impressive. I wasn"t the only one surprised. Before Rei could react, the big man closed and delivered a sickening blow to her temple. I had no idea a human being could strike with such power. The punch knocked Rei off the red thug"s back. She landed on the blood-drenched concrete with a heavy thwap. Free of her, the red thug dropped to his knees and struggled to stem the flow of blood from his neck. A series of red bubbles issued from his mouth.
I forced down the rising vomit.
Not finished, the blue thug lumbered after Rei, who-incredibly-was struggling to stand back up. I couldn"t understand how she was still conscious. I had heard the crunch of her skull from where I stood. The punch had caved her cheekbone. The entire right side of her face was nothing less than tenderized meat. Yet she stood firm, eyes blazing. I looked at her b.l.o.o.d.y left hand. She was still clutching that tiny blade. I shook my head in disbelief. A box-cutter. It was a box-cutter. She had opened up a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound man with a freakin" boxcutter.
Rei answered the blue thug"s advance with a wolfish grin. There was something off about that smile, something inhuman. Her teeth were too bright, her incisors, too long. And I could sense killing intent now. It projected out of her like the rattle of a snake. Her world was small now, made up only of her enemies. Everything else had ceased to exist. She was feeling neither pain nor fear. Those silly feelings no longer compelled her. She yearned to open him up. She wanted to work her way through his insides. She wanted to be there for his last rattles as he turned from man to corpse. Those crazed eyes, that gleeful smile...Rei had totally lost it. She was battle-mad.
As the thug dashed forward roaring his reply, I only wished I could pause time long enough to figure out what the h.e.l.l was going on. Was I still on planet Earth? I wondered. On Earth, people didn"t move that fast. People didn"t hit that hard. People didn"t stand back up after taking that much damage. How could any of this be possible? And better still, what the h.e.l.l was I still doing here?
A new scent distracted my focus. It smelled like...ozone. The hair on the back of my neck shot up, and my Sight forced my attention back to the tall man. He had backed away as the other three fought. Now he was clutching an object dangling from his neck with his right palm stretched out facing Rei.
I shook my head. My Sight was telling me that the tall man was about to do something impossible. I knew what was about to happen, but I found it absolutely absurd. I was a scientist at heart. I knew thermodynamics. I knew physics. Energy had rules. Those rules were absolute. I told myself that make believe never actually intruded on reality, but then I remembered the photos Ms. Curray had shown me. The three men in DEA windbreakers...
Rei"s intensity faltered. She must have sensed it too. Her eyes shifted desperately.
"Fulgurus!" The tall man roared.
Rei made a dash to the right. A bolt of electricity erupted from tall man"s palm. The room flashed white.
If Rei hadn"t moved that instant, the bolt would have struck her in the chest and stopped her heart. The main bolt swept past her instead, but it wasn"t a focused blast. Tendrils of electricity crackled into her torso anyway. They shocked her body rigid. A yelp made it halfway out her mouth before it was pinched off. She landed stiffly on her side. I watched helplessly as the spasms induced by the electrical charge pulsed through her body.
Exploiting the opening, the remaining thug delivered a kick to her chest. I heard her ribs break from fifty-yards away. She suppressed a whimper as a second kick crunched into her side. A steady wheeze left Rei"s lips. Her eyes bulged. She couldn"t breath. A rib must have punctured a lung.
I felt at my own chest reflexively as the tall man started to laugh. I"d heard that laugh before, that glee, and my body started to tremble. Again. It was happening again. Thinking stopped. Reasoning stopped. I abandoned any semblance of stealth, stood, and broke into a dead sprint. I shifted the pipe for a broad, two-handed strike. I didn"t hesitate. I aimed straight for the b.a.s.t.a.r.d"s spine. The blue thug yelled a warning, but it was two late for the tall sack-of-s.h.i.t. I landed the blow clean below his shoulders and waited for the satisfying crunch...
An explosion of sparks shot me fifty feet in the opposite direction.
Stunned, I found myself on my back, the smell of fried bacon in my nose. I let loose a few coughs. It felt like someone had wrapped both of my hands in cotton. I looked down at them. My hands were burnt charcoal black. They looked like two slabs of overcooked meat. And as disturbing as that sight was, it wasn"t my biggest concern. There was a sharp pain rising in my chest, and I had a pretty good idea why.
The realization hit me like the bag of bricks. I had been careless. I hadn"t thought it through. The tall man had been one big ball of static charge, and my pipe had been a metal one. I"d electrocuted myself, and now both my palms were burnt. That meant the charge had pa.s.sed through my chest. That wasn"t good. The pain growing just above my sternum had to be my heart. Right now it was probably fluttering at about 300 beats-per-minute. At that speed, it didn"t even have time to fill with blood, and if a heart can"t fill, it can"t pump. If it can"t pump, blood can"t flow. And if blood can"t flow...
I knew the math: 2 minutes of consciousness left; 3 minutes more before I went brain dead; and 1 more till I started to cool. And the only cure was those paddles they had in ERs. They gave the heart a chance to get back in rhythm. Nothing else worked. I wondered if the management at Sketchy Warehouses, Inc. kept one of those automatic defibrillators lying around. Better yet, I wondered if any of the nice folks around me would be kind enough to give me CPR till the paramedics arrived.
I turned to my head to my left. The tall man was cursing as he limped towards me. That perked me up a bit. At least I"d done some sort of damage with my strike. I turned my head right. Rei lay in an expanding pool issuing from the red thug"s neck. The blue thug stood over her, his face twisted in rage. The pain from the broken ribs was etched on Rei"s face. Pink foam coated her mouth. She definitely had a punctured a lung. Rei flinched, and I heard more cracks come from her insides. Her eyes were an empty grey. Not a hint of blue remained.
The tall man screamed something to the remaining thug.
The big man nodded and shuffled off.
The tall man was hunched over, guarding his back, but he still managed to deliver a savage kick to my side. The blow blinded my vision, but I could hardly feel the pain. I knew what that meant; my body was failing.
I looked back over to Rei. She was on her hands and knees spitting up pink foam. Dark blood coated her face, and her hair was a grubby mess. She spit out the last of foam and took a deep breath. I decided I was getting loopy. You don"t start breathing after you burst a lung.
My Sight burned as a blanket of icy needles danced over my flesh. The tall man wasn"t done with me. He struck my side again.
Rei continued her coughing. I stretched out my hand to reach her, but it only slumped in her direction. The muscle was useless. It sucked, really. All I could do was lay still and wait till my body ran out of oxygen.
Rei"s rally faltered. She collapsed into the thick puddle of blood.
I couldn"t do anything as she choked on it. She must have reached her limit. Her hand still grasping the tiny box-cutter, but she looked ghastly. Her cheek was dented in. She could hardly see. But as her eyes met mine, all I saw was defiance. I held onto those pale grey orbs, and for some reason they sent me back to my grandmother"s house.
My grandma used to insist on taking me to services every Sunday. Even in Las Vegas, the Church had a big presence. (Nothing like fear and despair to drum up new converts.) Our local church was huge. Before the service, I would stomp up and down the aisles listening to the echoes bouncing off the walls. I hated how you had to sit on those hard wooden seats, but I did like the parts when everyone sang. I didn"t quite get the reason for it all-they kept saying G.o.d was everywhere, but if that was the case, why did we have to go to a special house to visit him?
After the services, grandma would take me back to her house for the whole afternoon. It was fun there. Everything was old and strange and ripe for exploring. Better still, no one ever yelled at me. Grandma had hundreds of porcelain dolls decorating her house. I didn"t like the dolls, but I dug the general idea. I decided that when I grew up, I would decorate my entire house with GI Joes. Decorations aside, the best part about Grandma"s house was the cookies. She baked them fresh every weekend. The sugar cookies with the jam in the center were my favorites. I would eat the outside first, and then chomp down on the jammy centers. Cookies gone, we would sit at the kitchen table and talk. Grandma was the only person I knew that would actually listen to what I had to say, so I tended to blather on endlessly about my week. The way she would just sit and listen...that was better than the cookies.
On the walls of my grandmother"s kitchen were some old Briton Riviere prints. Two of them featured lots of dogs. Since dogs were awesome, paintings of dogs were totally awesome. There was this one of a guy named Daniel. He was playing with lions. (I figured he must have been Siegfried and Roy"s dad or something.) And then there was my favorite. It was one of a knight next to a dead dragon. The knight"s horse was dead too, crushed under the monster"s giant, scaly hide. It was frightening to see how the horse"s huge body had snapped like a twig. How could something as strong as a horse be broken like that? The knight looked almost as bad as his horse. He was lying on the ground staring up into the sky. He looked totally exhausted...except for one thing: His right hand still gripped his sword. His horse had been shattered, but the knight"s grip had held firm.
One day, as I dusted off another half dozen of Grandma"s finest, I asked her if the knight had a name.
Grandma looked up to at the old print and smiled.
"That"s Saint George, Dieter," she said.
"Saint George," I repeated. "He looks really tired."
"Hmm...he does, doesn"t he," she said. "And tired he should be...do you want to hear his story?"
I slid my milk to the side and nodded eagerly.
"Long ago, there were dragons, many dragons. Dragons were terrible monsters, bigger than a city bus, stronger than a herd of elephants, craftier than a council of scholars. They dined on people-and they terrorized the lands of man. In one kingdom lived an especially evil dragon. He could breathe poison. Any man who caught a whiff of his foul stench writhed and died on the ground. The beast demanded from the king of the lands children to eat lest it weave its poison among them all. The people became angry. They loved their children. They didn"t want them to die. But all of the king"s brave knights had dropped to the ground like flies.
"His army defeated, the king gave in to the giant lizard"s demands. Every week the people held a lottery. To lose was a pitiable thing. It meant sending one of your children into the dragon"s jaws."
I clutched my gla.s.s of milk tightly. Grandma didn"t seem to be joking.
"Years pa.s.sed, Dieter. The dragon ate many children, and the people despaired. The king hung his head in shame. But what could he do? How could he fight that which could not be killed?
"Then, late one evening, a knight arrived at the gates of the capital. This knight came from far away. A place he called Cappadocia. The name of this knight was George, and after hearing the peoples" sorry tale, the knight"s eyes grew dark with fury. He told the people of the capital, "I shall go forth and slay the beast. Who will come with me?" But the people looked upon him in silence. Many men had tested their mettle against the fearsome dragon. All had fallen. There was none brave enough left among them to stand with this strange knight named George."
I balled my little hands. What cowards these people were. "What did George decide to do, Grandma?"
"The hard thing, Dieter. He decided to face the dragon alone.
"Alone?" There was brave...and then there was crazy.
"Sir George believed the dragon had to be stopped. He believed it was his duty."
I looked up at the painting of this George and frowned. "He doesn"t look very strong, grandma. And that dragon is way bigger than him. Why did he think he could win?" I wondered how I might fight such a dragon. Was there a weakness? A trick?
My grandma laughed.
"Look at his eyes, Dieter. I don"t think Sir George believed he would win. I think he believed he would die fighting the dragon."
"But he still fought?" I asked. That didn"t make any sense to me.
"He lived by a code, Dieter."
"A code?"
"A code is like a rulebook for living. He valued his code more than he valued his life. His code told him that when he saw evil, he had to slay it. It was as simple as that for Sir George." She looked at the painting and her face saddened. "Living by that code would eventually cost him his life. That is why he is called Saint George now."
I frowned. I didn"t understand. Sir George had fought a dragon-so he must have been very brave-but he didn"t look it. He looked like a normal person. Maybe even a little sad. Brave people weren"t supposta look so sad and tired. Brave people weren"t supposta think they were going to die. Brave people were brave because they were strong. Because they knew they could win. Why would such a normal looking person decide to tread that path of a hero? Why had he chosen such a terrible, terrible fate?
It didn"t seem very fair.
My grandmother smiled sadly back at me. She didn"t need me to ask the question brewing in my head. "Sometimes the right thing costs," she said, sliding the tin of cookies closer. "Sometimes it costs a great deal."
The memory faded, and I returned to the cold cement floor. I hadn"t thought about my grandmother for a long time. I was thankful for it. It was a nice last memory to hold on to at the end. The right thing costs...I chuckled.
I looked past my scorched palm at Rei"s bloodied body. It was funny. Rei shared something in common with old Sir George of Cappadocia-they both liked to bite off way more than they could chew. A twinge of pain ran the length of my spine. Then again, who was the idiot charging in swinging a pipe a few minutes ago?
Rei"s breath seemed to be coming easier. Lucky her. I couldn"t say the same. My muscles ached, and my breath was coming faster and faster even as it shallowed. Deprived of its blood flow, my body was running out of gas. It was curtains for me, but I wasn"t scared. You see, death is only scary when you don"t know when it"s coming, when there"s still some hope it might not. Death isn"t scary once it"s already got you...just depressing. One thing was bothering me above all else. I was about to die without firing off one last snide remark. Now that seemed unjust.
"Hey, Rei," I said in a raspy voice.
Her body remained still, but she managed to raise an eyebrow.
"For future reference, a knight should probably pack more than a box-cutter."
"A knight?" She smirked. Her beautiful black hair had been reduced to a b.l.o.o.d.y mop. The right half of her face-where the goon had landed a blow-was nothing but ground meat. That single punch had even ruptured the blood vessels in her right eye, but through the tangled mess of blood and guts, her white teeth still shone. Her long incisors accented her wolfish grin.
"Next time," she said, "I"ll be sure to bring a pipe."
"Touche." A fit of coughs took me. Too bad I wouldn"t be around to see next time.
The tall man was screeching something at the two of us. Rei turned to him, her eyes burning savagely. She struggled but couldn"t move.
I could smell the ozone before I even turned my head. The tall man stood over me, right palm pointed at my chest. He was clutching that thing around his neck again. That red crystal must be what he used to ready the strike. I thought frying me again seemed a tad overkill. I was already a goner. I did the only mature thing I could think of. With the last of my energy, I willed up my left arm and flipped him the bird.
The tall man looked down at me and smiled. There was no hesitation as he fired.
My chest exploded. Everything went white.
Chapter 8.
SINGED.
I awoke in a haze. The crushing pain in my chest was gone. Only a dull reminder remained. My senses returned to me gradually, like a slow computer coming back online. It felt like every nerve needed a reboot, that every cell needed time to recharge.
My hands were still blackened toast. Throbs of pain shot forth from them in regular intervals. I took the throbbing as a good sign. The throbbing meant I had a heartbeat. That was certainly a plus. I lay there in disbelief. The last shock must have restarted my heart. That guy was a walking defibrillator.
Did that mean I had to send him a thank you card?
I was thinking that all and all things were going pretty well compared to a moment ago when a piercing scream snapped me out of Zen-land. Whimpers and gasps followed, then more wretched screams of pain. At first I thought they were coming from Rei...but the noises were too masculine. Riled, I struggled to lift myself into a seated position before freezing in fear. Anyone looking would have just realized I was back in the land of the living. My death averted, the fear of it had returned. My heart started the race. The pain in my hands flared.
"Think before you leap, Dieter," I reprimanded myself.
I needed to calm down. The human brain can be a huge help in a crisis, but "can" is the operative word. Our big juicy forebrains only get to play ball if the old-school noggin" lets it. Thoughts need to get past the amygdala first. If fear hits you hard enough, the amygdala acts like it has for millions of years and switches to autopilot. You get the cla.s.sic fight-or-flight response. The nuance of the cortex gets tossed through the nearest plate gla.s.s window, and you"re either left staring into s.p.a.ce, p.i.s.sing your pants, or running away screaming (or sometimes all three at once). Fortunately, getting electrocuted twice in the last minute was making it kinda hard to get any more riled up.
I forced my attention back to my surroundings-which were now 100% covered in blood. Man, oh man, there was a lot of it. And it all trailed back to the fresh corpse of the thug in red. I didn"t care to enjoy the irony of the color coordination; I was struggling to keep down my lunch. The red thug"s face was twisted in an expression of horror and pain. One giant hand still clasped his slashed throat. From that opened artery the blood had flowed. It"d formed a circular pool. Some time must have pa.s.sed, because the blood was clotting into a dark gelatinous mess. The spot where Rei had laid was the one noticeable exception. It was dry, and more importantly, empty. From the look of the blood, Rei had gotten up under her own power. Stranger still, between her old location and myself, a section of the blood was charred.
I raised an eyebrow. How was any of this even possible? Those guys had broken a bunch of her ribs and caved in at least one of her lungs. How on earth had she been able to move under her own power? And what was up with the charred section of blood between us? Strange s.h.i.t was going on here. s.h.i.t that didn"t obey natural laws. People don"t shoot lightning bolts out of their fingertips. Young women don"t go skipping off after getting their bones broken by giant bruisers.
People don"t explode one another"s heads in schoolyard fights either, Dieter, a little voice chimed in.
I looked down at my blood soaked jeans. This wasn"t going to work. I needed to forget about how things were supposed to work and get myself the h.e.l.l out of here-preferably while I was still breathing. I could worry about rewriting the laws of nature later.
My hands burned, but the pain was manageable. No one else was in the room, and I noticed a light was on in a small office about 50 yards off. Part of me wanted to just get the heck out of Dodge, but nothing about the past few minutes made any sort of sense. Sure, I was terrified, but d.a.m.n it, I wanted answers. I turned my attention back to the b.l.o.o.d.y footprints. After a few shaky steps, I followed them off into the darkness. They led right to the man wearing the blue tracksuit.
He was in two pieces.
I blinked a few times.
The scene made no sense. The man was as big as I remembered. His torso was still as thick as a barrel, but now a huge diagonal slash separated his upper and lower halves. The cut started low and went clean up through his left shoulder blade. I knelt down. All the bones where hewn straight through.
How the...
Like every American male, I had my samurai-phase growing up. I knew that the amount of power needed for that type of slash was nearly impossible. In real combat, swordsmen perform focused slashes on vital areas. Trying to cut through bone is a huge no-no. It dulls the blade and risks it getting stuck (both nasty propositions in the midst of combat). Yet here was a man, splayed open on the floor, split cleanly in two.
Another bout of screams erupted, and I jumped straight up into the air. (People getting cleaved in half tend to put my nerves on edge.) The screams were coming from an office in the corner of the warehouse. I was scared s.h.i.tless, but that was the direction my feet were taking me. My entire body shook from the adrenalin coursing through me, but I wanted to know-had to know. I went flush against the wall and carefully edged toward the window. The noises were coming from inside the warehouse office. Shuffling. Pattering. Whimpering. A shadow moved to and fro. I took a deep breath and peered inside.
The tall man sat tied to an office chair, his arms and legs bound by twisty ties so tight that they dug into his flesh. His shirt was torn off-and so were large swaths of his skin. A long strip from his back lay on the desk in front of him. Two more strips sat in heaps near his feet. Strip after strip, someone was peeling the skin from his body. I swallowed. He was being flayed alive.
Nausea was getting the best of me when I finally caught sight of her. I looked at the girl who had sat next to me on the bus, slept quietly, elbowed me clumsily, and talked with me late into the night and came to an abrupt conclusion: Monsters were real.
Rei"s skin blurred under the fluorescent light. It was far too translucent and pale. The light seemed to bounce off it, producing a fuzzy whiteness that made it hard for my eyes to focus. The lean muscles of her arms were tense, and I couldn"t help notice the nipples pushing against her blood-soaked tank. Like a merry gardener tr.i.m.m.i.n.g roses, her eyes lingering over her work.
I looked upon the scene with utter revulsion; she smiled serenely.
I had once watched my cat bat a mouse around for nearly twenty minutes. If you didn"t know any better, you would think they were both having fun. But then, without warning, she pinned the little b.u.g.g.e.r with her paws and peeled open its abdomen. Not the slightest change in expression while she did it. The cat just flipped onto her back and went on to play with the mouse"s entrails. The cute little kitty didn"t react to the little rodent"s spasms. She didn"t so much as blink as it died. She was indifferent. It didn"t even occur to her that she should feel anything. It wasn"t in her programming. It wasn"t part of her design. To kill as easy as you breath...that"s the nature of a true predator.
Rei slid her boxcutter up under the tall man"s breast, driving the thin piece of metal deep into his muscle.
As blood oozed out of the wound, the tall man screamed.
"Who?" she purred.
The tall man stuttered nonsense. Spit dribbled from his mouth. The pain must have been incredible.