“Are you serious with this guy?” he asked Lord Lifton, who didn’t respond. “All of you must know that there are other kinds of parasites...” Lucian looked to each of them for support. When he didn’t get any, he continued. “How is it that I am growing stronger from going after different types of parasites if they don’t exist? How is that possible? How have I become this strong so quickly?”
“Lord Lifton, this is not what we’re here to talk about,” Gaspard said, a disgusted look on his face.
“Does anyone else on the Committee have questions for Lucian North before we wrap this up?” Lord Lifton asked, clearly uncomfortable.
“Considering you were late,” one of the twins said, “what do you have to say about meeting the angel instead of adhering to our invitation? It appears as if you haven’t taken your predecessor’s advice when dealing with the Progeny of Life.”
“Heh,” Lucian started to say before changing his tone. “I, um, didn’t meet the angel. She was there on the beach and was about to attack me when Gaspard came.”
“Lies,” Gaspard hissed.
The woman continued. “And have you met with this angel before?”
“We have fought each other, so yes,” Lucian said, frustration starting to make his muscles tense. The fact that Danira thought he had arranged an ambush was something that he knew was going to be difficult to deal with.
“And her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you recognize her, Gaspard?” the woman asked her colleague.
“The only thing distinctive about her was the blue band painted across her eyes. I may have fought her before; I can’t tell.”
“Lord Lifton?”
“I haven’t personally dealt with her.”
“Mastima?”
“Like Gaspard, I believe I’ve seen her before, perhaps in a battle. But that is all.”
“Lucian North, I would advise you to be extremely careful when dealing or conversing with angels. Only the Council, and its Committees, should have contact with the Progeny of Light,” the other female twin said as the typewriter continued to wail away. “They have been known to lure our kind into traps before, even going so far as befriending them only to later betray them.”
“I’m not friends with her.”
“He clearly is,” Gaspard said, throwing his hands up.
“You have been warned, Lucian North,” the first twin said.
“I suppose I should wrap this up,” Gaspard told Lucian, a few of the committee members nodding. “Because of your complete and utter disregard for our request, we now have a new task for you to complete.”
“A task?” Lucian asked.
“That’s right, a task. You have a limited number of days to locate your predecessor and bring him before our Committee. If you fail to do so, we will continue to drain your power until you have decided to give up your mantle.”
Lucian felt his cape ruffle on his shoulders. “You are threatening to torture me?”
Gaspard laughed. “No, it’s not torture, it’s leverage. Find your predecessor, bring him to us, and then you can continue going about doing whatever you’d like, within reason. If you are unable to find him, we will have to strip you of your power. But only you can strip yourself of your power, hence the need for leverage.”
“What you are describing is torturing me until I give up my mantle,” Lucian said, his fists tensing. “Just to be clear.”
“Well, if it helps you to think of it that way, that’s fine,” Gaspard said with an exaggerated shrug.
Lord Lifton nodded. “We will be in touch soon, Lucian North. Until that time, good luck.”
Lucian was suddenly standing in front of his workshop, the futuristic city in the distance, stars twinkling in the deep purple sky above reflecting off the lake in front of him.
“Assholes,” Lucian said under his breath as he turned to the lake, Ezra the cat coming to him and weaving between his legs.
As much as Lucian would have liked to call it a night, there was something else he still needed to do.
Chapter Eight: Purple Demon Bug
Lucian appeared in Katy’s apartment, his cape lifting and settling.
The lights were off in her living room, and a single slit of yellow and orange cut through the darkness, letting him know that she was in her bedroom.
“I don’t know if I want you to see this,” he said, looking to his two crows.
Hugin made a gesture that reminded Lucian of someone looking away with disappointment, and Munin looked like it had shrugged.
His two crows disappeared, and after a moment to settle his thoughts, Lucian floated closer to Katy’s bedroom door.
He paused there for a moment, the weight of the day suddenly heavy on his shoulders.
With a deep breath out he pressed forward, noticing, as he had noticed countless times before, just how feminine and clean Katy’s room was. She never had a lot of talent when it came to creative decorating, so Katy went with whatever they had at the home goods store, as long as it had a gray and white theme to it.
There was a white bookshelf with self-help books on it, and a display with black lettering that spelled K-A-T-Y. Lucian felt a fluttering sensation in his chest. It was still there, the ampersand next to the Y, but Lucian’s name was now missing from the other side.
As he floated further into the room, he came to a white faux fur rug, a black-and-white picture of Audrey Hepburn on the wall, a lamp with white fringe on it, Lucian ignoring all these things as his eyes fell to Katy, who was curled up on the bed.
She breathed lightly as if she had been sobbing for so long that there wasn’t a drop of water left inside her. Lucian noticed black smears across her white comforter—her eyeliner—Katy not bothering to do anything about her makeup.
Her phone rang and she slowly reached her hand out to it. Blinking her eyes open, Katy saw that it was one of her close friends, a picture flashing on the screen of the two of them in Miami.
She hesitated, but finally decided to take the call.
“Hello?” she said, her voice hoarse.
Lucian tried to hear what Julia was saying on the other line but she spoke too quickly, Katy simply nodding absentmindedly.
“I think I’m okay,” she finally said. “Yeah, I would like that. It was just so sudden…”
Katy started to suck in deep breaths in an attempt to squeeze out more tears. None came. She listened to her friend for a moment, weighing how she should explain what happened to her father. “He hit his head,” she said, not going into detail about her father stirring up trouble at the station. “He fell and hit his head. It killed him.”
Lucian sat on the corner of her bed, wishing that he could just reach over and place his hand on her leg, to reassure her, to let her know that he was sorry.
It truly was his fault.
If he hadn’t messed with fate…
Lucian hated what he had become in that moment, and for some reason this hatred reminded him of the Committee, how they were all just like him, just feeding off people. And now look what had happened because Lucian had acted when he should have just kept to himself.
There were real-life repercussions for his actions.
Katy hung up the phone and laid down on her side, curling her legs back to her chest.
Lucian recalled what it had been like when he was with her, when he had seen her like this before, whether it had been after she’d done poorly on a test, or the couple times her family had really gotten to her, usually her father.
And as she lay there sobbing, Lucian did what he had done on the rare occasion that Katy became emotional. He laid down next to her, placing an arm over her body, his form sinking into hers.
Lucian sat up, feeling creepy, instantly moving away.
He was just starting to apologize when he noticed something on Katy’s back, something he hadn’t seen before.
It was a purple parasite with coarse black hairs, bits of its body pressing out of the
exposed part of her neck like giant zits.
“Purple?” Lucian asked as he pressed to his feet, pushing back in the air, his shotgun appearing in his hand.
As he squeezed the trigger, the demon bug exploded out of Katy’s back, wrapping around Lucian’s neck and flinging him into the wall. He continued to fire at it, and once he was out of slugs, he started beating at the tentacle with his weapon, his lava sword appearing in his other hand.
The black hairs on the parasite’s skin thickened and advanced on Lucian, pressing into his eyes and into his nose.
Horrible images. His mother split in two; his brother tearing into his cheeks with his own fingernails and ripping his mouth open; Katy being stabbed repeatedly; Danira having her head cut off and her skull caved in…
Lucian screamed, instinctively using his wind power to whip up the air around the room. He was hurled into the other wall, where he cracked his back, the pain washing over him.
Pain?
The purple parasite’s hairs dug deeper into Lucian’s face, pulling his skin apart, tunneling into his skull cavity as he dropped his sword.
It became increasingly clear to Lucian that whatever this parasite was, he wasn’t going to be able to beat it, not at the moment, anyway. And the more Soul Points he used, the weaker he felt, and the more pain he experienced.
Kamikaze it is.
Even as Lucian’s thoughts started to cloud over, the terrible images continuing to play out in his mind’s eye, he went for his grenade launcher.
The cylinder rotated as he began firing off grenades at the floor, the ceiling, at himself, his body torn in half, a piece of his torso heaved across Katy’s room.
One of his hands was completely mangled now, his other still attached to a severed arm across the room.
As the purple parasite started to descend upon Lucian, ballooning in size, Lucian’s arm sprouted legs and ran over to him, crawling up what was left of his torso and jamming itself back into Lucian’s arm socket.
The purple demon bug met him head-on, and as it did Lucian managed to press his thumb and pinky finger together, vanishing.
Chapter Nine: Cursive
Lucian fell onto his side, his Soul Points appearing before him.
He was down a lot more than he expected, but he figured it had something to do with Gaspard’s attack and the purple parasite, the way it had jammed its bristly hairs into his body. Lucian shook his head, cringing as he recalled the feeling, and the powerful visuals that came with it.
Whatever that thing was, Lucian was going to have to kill it.
But what would killing it do to Katy?
The last thing Lucian wanted was to hurt her in any way.
So maybe he would have to do something else, perhaps he would pay a visit to an old friend, if he could find her.
Yoshimi would know what to do.
Ezra came to Lucian, rubbing his head against Lucian’s mangled hand.
“It’s been a day,” he told the cat, its tail hooking in the air. Lucian summoned his crows, both of them tilting their heads as they looked him over, concern on their faces. “I’ll be okay,” he told the two, waving them off.
They took off to the shoreline, chasing one another, Ezra slowly following after them.
Lucian felt a tingling sensation as his hand started to repair itself and his leg slowly stitched back together.
It felt like his entire body was pulsing. Rather than stand up and walk, Lucian lazily dragged himself to the bed in his workshop.
He pulled his body up, and tucked himself under the red blankets.
Lucian kept alternating between red and black as a motif for his space, which was a part of his power he actually liked. Lucian had already changed up the decorations in the workshop multiple times now; there was even a point a few days ago where he had gone for almost a skatepark feel with graffiti running across the walls, tagged up skulls, and silhouetted Banksy rip-offs.
He blinked his eyes twice and the television that hung from the ceiling came on, Lucian growing drowsy as he watched another docuseries about narcotics, this time about heroin being smuggled to the Port of Miami. The documentary followed a drug dealer wearing a skull mask, not unlike the one Lucian wore.
Lucian got the urge to check on his brother, but he knew he wasn’t strong enough to kill the addiction parasite yet, and he knew that Connor would actually get in less trouble in New York and Stamford, Connecticut than he would back in their hometown.
Especially with Samantha around.
Still, he would have to check on him the next day, but not before he went back downstairs to Old Death’s room and looked through his predecessor’s things, hoping to figure out where he ran off to.
Lucian had no idea where he would find Old Death, nor did he know what he would do when he found him.
It wasn’t like he was strong enough to force the man to come with him. Perhaps he would take sympathy on Lucian and come of his own accord. But for some reason, Lucian had a feeling it was going to be challenging to not only find him, but also to convince him to meet with the Committee.
Lucian didn’t even remember falling asleep.
He simply woke up hours later, fully recharged, and as he did he conjured the sun and a fresh cup of coffee seasoned with just a touch of cinnamon.
Lucian stepped outside and formed a chair out of a root that he’d pulled from the soil. He took a seat, looking out over the water, his crows zipping forward.
Glancing at the sheer scale of things in this strange world created by his predecessor gave Lucian an idea. He didn’t want to use too many Soul Points, but at least he could get started on it, and he definitely had enough space to conceptualize his next creation.
Lucian set his coffee cup down on another root that lifted from the ground. He took a step closer to the water, scanning the lake and the trees that surrounded it. He chose a spot on the left bank, and the trees began to melt back.
He floated over to the space he’d just created and lowered softly to the ground.
Lucian knew enough about his ability to know that he didn’t have to completely understand how his creations worked. The weapons he had already made, and the ones that he would make in the future only had one limitation: his imagination.
But he also recognized the scale of what he was about to create and while it may not be useful for most situations, he had a feeling there would come a time when a weapon such as this would be handy.
Lucian returned his focus to the frame, a schematic playing out in his mind’s eye. The metal was a deep shade of purple, and as he thickened it, Ezra sashayed over to him.
The cat weaved in and out of the bars that would become the left foot of his creation. He jumped to the top of the metal and crouched on it, watching as Lucian formed what would be the waist.
Once he was finished forming the framework for the legs and the waist of his newest creation, Lucian checked his Soul Points.
“That many already?” he whispered to himself. He stopped what he was doing, a table made of roots sprouting from the bank. He turned away from his newest creation, watching the various pieces of his bone armor take shape on the table.
Lucian lowered his hand over them, the armor thickening and then condensing, hardening. He did this several times, and then checked his Soul Points again.
He was just about to stop when he decided to create one more item.
He recalled a first-person-shooter in which the player could unlock a particle-beam weapon if they played the game on hard mode and were able to beat the first boss in under two minutes.
It had taken Lucian about a week to actually do it, and he had to watch plenty of YouTube videos for pointers, but he beat the boss in the end, a cyborg with weaponized arms.
Lucian recalled reading the stats of the particle-beam cannon, and thinking about how the weapon was designed to disrupt the target’s molecular structure. It was a fun weapon to use in the game, Lucian spending a good chunk of time just running around the city and
ionizing vehicles.
But he remembered there being a bit of a learning curve with it as well.
The weapon did not immediately destroy the target; rather, it heated up rapidly, exploding inanimate objects, and basically melting a normal enemy.
As Lucian started to craft his gun, he remembered Danira’s enormous weapon, how it looked like something she shouldn’t even be able to wield.
He smiled at this thought, hoping that they would run into each other soon, that he could explain himself to her.
The weapon started to take shape, a muzzle just about the size of a dartboard, a spherical core forming at the center of the weapon, encased by what almost resembled a bubble.
Lucian ran a smooth surface down the weapon, and from there added a SWAT team vibe to it, going with all black, then shifting the color to gunmetal gray, the screws keeping the particle-beam cannon together gleaming for a moment before their color softened.
“Who cares what it looks like,” he said as he lifted the weapon, noticing that there were two power packs on the opposite side of the grip arranged along the stock.
It really was strange how his power worked.
He didn’t remember putting these there, yet here they were, and rather than ponder why his weapons arranged themselves the way that they did, Lucian raised his hand, a rock the size of a shipping crate rising from the center of the lake.
He aimed the particle-beam cannon at it and squeezed the trigger.
Lights lit up along the side of the cannon, changing shades as the weapon powered up.
Just like the video game, he didn’t fire immediately; it had to charge first. When it finally did what it was designed to do, the beam that tore out of the muzzle nearly caused Lucian to lose his footing.
“Whoo!” he shouted as he continued to hold the trigger, the rock finally exploding, sending bits of gravel into the air.
Lucian repaired the rock with a wave of his hand, his crows coming to him as he squeezed the trigger again, the lights on the particle-beam cannon glowing again as they approached the two energy packs on the stock.
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