Death's Mantle 2

by Harmon Cooper

  It was so bright when it fired that Lucian wished he was wearing a pair of sunglasses. As Lucian was deciding if he should take one more shot, he figured it couldn’t hurt to create a pair of aviators.

  “That’s more like it,” he said as he placed the sunglasses on.

  To pair them with the weapon, Lucian quickly made a carbon sunglasses case on the opposite side of the gun. He made sure the aviators fit, and once he was sure, he put them back on, aiming at the rock again.

  “I am ridiculous.”

  Lucian tested the weapon again; it took a moment before the particle beam finally met its target, but once it did it was glorious indeed.

  He lowered his new cannon, sending it to his inventory list.

  “All in a good day’s work,” he said to Hugin and Munin as his stats appeared.

  With his gun put away, Lucian turned toward the entrance to Old Death’s home.

  He took the stairs down into his old bedroom, making his way over to the window and staring out at the city.

  Lucian hadn’t slept in his room for several days now, and as he examined his old workshop and the giant flat-screen television that he had created, gaming systems beneath it, he was feeling almost nostalgic.

  He shook his head at this notion, wondering how he could feel this way for a place that he had barely lived in.

  Stepping into the living room, Lucian glanced to the couch where Old Death used to sit, the man always looking tired.

  He figured there would be more information in the library on the floor below, but he wanted to check his predecessor’s bedroom first, hoping that there would be something there indicating where he could have run off to.

  Lucian made his way into Old Death’s bedroom, the centuries-old furniture immaculate, everything clean and where it should be. As he had countless times before, Lucian looked out the window to the city beyond, wishing at that moment that people lived there, that it was actually a city worth visiting and not an empty shell.

  He recalled the time he visited, and another time, just a couple days ago, that he had decided to fly over and check it out.

  It was an illusion, a frustrating one at that, and it reminded Lucian of some of the games he’d played in which there had been towns on the horizon, or a part of the city just beyond reach.

  That is what would have been there had Lucian been able to reach those zones.

  “But why?” Lucian asked aloud as he continued to look out at the city. “Why create something like this?”

  His two crows burst into the room, Munin colliding with Hugin, the two spinning off into a portrait of a ship moving through a tumultuous sea.

  “Hey,” he said, both of them zipping in front of him and coming to attention. “Search his room, and don’t make a mess. Let’s see if there are any clues regarding where he may possibly have gone.”

  The retractable claws came out of the top of his crows’ heads and they took off, searching through his predecessor’s things. Munin tore into the dresser, flinging things out of the drawers. Hugin zipped through the blankets and twisted under the bed.

  “I said not to make a mess,” Lucian told them as Munin latched onto a comb and tossed it into the air. Lucian caught and examined it, noticing that it was a nice piece, one made of bone. He thought about combing his own hair, but then he stopped, realizing that he never really combed his hair at all, he really wasn’t that type of guy.

  Making his way to the dresser, he placed the comb back in the drawer.

  Hugin raced over to Lucian, his body weighed down by a thick leather journal. He dropped it on the drawer, causing a magnifying mirror to fall off onto the ground, shattering.

  “We have to be careful,” Lucian told them as Ezra snuck into the room. The cat hopped onto the bed and did a single circle before making himself comfortable.

  Lucian started to thumb through the journal, impressed by Old Death’s beautiful cursive handwriting. It looked like something that would be in a famous letter in a museum, the penmanship perfect.

  Cursive was a lost art; with computers and text messaging and emails, and everything in between, there really was no need to utilize this medium anymore. Still, part of him wished that his culture had held onto it, just to preserve its beauty.

  It was amazing how quickly things became obsolete.

  He leafed through the journal, skimming through the passages, noticing that everything was written before 1920.

  As his crows continued to go through the room, both of them turning to the armoire, Lucian wondered why the journal stopped when it did.

  “Are there any more like this over there?” he asked.

  Hugin shook its head and continued searching through the armoire.

  “Munin, head to the library below and see if you can find anything that looks like this.”

  His crow took off, and as it did Lucian sat on the bed, finding the very last entry in the journal:

  Leliel,

  Words can’t express the sorrow I feel knowing you will never see what I’m capable of, what I would like to do for you. I know that you will never read this; I know that we may be forced to fight each other, and if that is the case, that you will kill me.

  I sense that is not what you want, that you desire much more than what the Progeny of Light can give you, and I desire much more than the confines that have been handed to me. I write these words not for you, then, but for me. I write these words to remind myself that Life or Death, Heaven or Hell, Angel or Demon, love still exists, and that I have experienced it even in this form. Love transcends anything that humanity could ever create, and anything that spiritualism could ever fabricate or destroy. I can’t bear to think of never seeing you again, but there are those that would condemn us for eternity for what we have done. I wish…

  Lucian turned the page, seeing that it was blank. He flipped through all the other pages as well, noticing that there wasn’t another marking after the very last sentence.

  Munin burst back into the room.

  “You didn’t check that quickly,” Lucian told him. His crow nodded, Hugin also looking up at its counterpart skeptically.

  “Go with him, both of you check around. In the meantime, I will do some checking of my own.”

  Lucian closed the journal and placed it on the bed, his pinky finger and thumb meeting.

  Chapter Ten: Fifth Avenue Showdown

  Lucian North appeared outside of a side street coffee shop, Fifth Avenue directly behind him. It was a cloudy day, a bit cool, but not as cool as it would have been in Massachusetts.

  He ignored the people moving past a taxi driver as the cantankerous man honked his horn repeatedly. A woman handed out flyers to a flash sale at one of the dozens of fast fashion shops that lined the famous street. A man wearing a baseball cap instead of a helmet biked past, followed by a woman in a cashmere dress walking a Shiba Inu and talking on her glittery smartphone, her high heels clicking against the dirty pavement.

  Lucian focused on Connor and Samantha, who were just entering a boutique coffee shop with minimal seating and vines growing from the walls.

  He floated over to his brother and future sister-in-law, Connor complaining about shopping, even though neither of them was carrying a shopping bag.

  “We just got here,” Samantha said. “And we even ate before we started.”

  “There has to be a bathroom around here,” Connor said, changing the subject. “All coffee shops have bathrooms. Hey,” he said to the barista behind the counter, a thin man with a prominent Adam’s apple and a nose piercing. “You guys got a bathroom?”

  “Sorry,” the barista said in an effeminate voice. “There’s one at the Nike store, if that helps.”

  “The Nike store?” Connor spun around, looking to see if he could see the Nike store from the inside of the boutique coffee shop.

  “It’s on Fifth Avenue,” the barista said, a hint of disdain in his voice as he silently judged Connor. “There’s also a public bathroom in Rockefeller Center too, bu
t it’s further.”

  “Okay, well, how are you supposed to have a coffee shop and not have a bathroom?” Connor asked him.

  “Connor,” Sam said, her hand coming to his shoulder. A couple of customers in line started to grumble; one man actually told Connor to hurry up with his order.

  “You know what? I’ll step out,” Connor said, his hands in the air, “and I’ll meet you at the Nike store. Unless you want to come with me…” he told his wife to be. “We can get coffee somewhere else.”

  Embarrassed, Samantha quickly slipped out of the boutique coffee shop, Connor stomping up a cloud of dust as he made his way to the traffic light. “These New Yorkers are so goddamn rude, way different from the people in Boston. And there aren’t enough goddamn bathrooms in the city. With all this walking around here, you’d think there would be a public bathroom.”

  “But you just went back at the restaurant,” Samantha told him.

  “And I have to go again. I drink a lot of water. What’s wrong with having to go to the restroom?”

  “I didn’t say anything was wrong with having to go to the restroom…”

  An Asian woman shouldered past, an enormous shopping bag in each hand, her cheeks artificially red.

  “We don’t got enough money to shop,” Connor said once he saw Samantha look at the woman’s bags for just a second longer than she normally would have.

  “I know, but we could window shop, and Baby Jen…”

  “Baby Jen has plenty of clothing,” Connor told his fiancée as they reached the intersection, the Nike store just across the street in a three-story building. There was a big orange check on its exterior, a mob moving in and out of the place.

  “Where’s the restroom?” Connor asked the first sales associate he saw after they made it inside, the two of them now standing before a grouping of video installations showing the history of Nike shoes.

  “Third floor, all the way back. Past the athletic shorts,” a young black woman said, as if she had said the same thing a thousand times before. She continued rearranging neon shoelaces as Connor turned to the stairs.

  “I’ll be right back, Sam.”

  Lucian waited with Samantha for a moment, watching as she was finally able to take a breath, Connor clearly stressing her out.

  “I’m sorry,” Lucian said, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him. He then started to wonder why Connor need to use the restroom so badly, especially if he had just used it.

  Lucian floated up through the ceiling, moving past a pair of mannequins in active poses.

  He arrived on the third floor and turned in the direction of the restroom, where he saw Connor waiting with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall and tapping his foot. His brother looked at his watch, looked up at the locked door, and sighed miserably. “Come on, come on…”

  Another person got in line behind him; Connor gave the man a look that tried to showcase both his annoyance and his desire for sympathy. Both were going to have to wait in line for God knew how long just to take a quick piss.

  They were in this together.

  “Can you believe this?” Connor asked as another thirty or forty seconds passed.

  The man behind didn’t say anything; he had headphones in.

  “How hard is it?” Connor asked under his breath. “Whip it out and go; squat and go. That’s it. How hard is this…”

  Lucian almost chuckled.

  His brother was being erratic, and if Lucian weren’t suspicious of his brother’s intentions, he would have found his behavior humorous.

  Connor had a short temper; sometimes it worked to his advantage, but most of the time he ended up looking like an idiot and having to apologize after.

  In a way, it was part of his charm.

  The bathroom door finally opened and a Muslim woman stepped out, not making eye contact with either of the men.

  Groaning now, Connor slipped into the restroom, Lucian floating through the door as he slammed it shut. His brother locked the door, and then waved his hand in front of his nose, complaining now about how strong the woman’s perfume was.

  Making a face like he was holding his breath, Connor quickly took a small plastic bag filled with white powder out of his jacket pocket. The bag had been twisted until it almost resembled a small carrot.

  Connor reached into his back pocket for his wallet and set it on the counter. He got out a flat gift card, made sure it was clean, and placed it down.

  Connor used his teeth to tear off the end of the twisted baggie, carefully laying out a line.

  He glanced at himself once in the mirror, and then went about rolling a dollar bill.

  “Please,” Lucian said as he watched his brother snort the line. “Connor, you have to stop.”

  The parasite on his brother’s back seemed to swell in size for a moment, something Lucian had never seen it do before.

  An eye popped off the demon bug, examining Lucian.

  But he knew he was still too weak, and rather than do anything, rather than stand here and watch his brother snort pills, Lucian simply started to sink into the floor, cursing himself for not being stronger, for not being able to stop his brother.

  He floated through the floor back to the second floor, where he paused, looking curiously toward a burst of light heading in his direction.

  Lucian was sent spinning backward as an incredible force exploded through the window, sending the mannequins, shards of glass, and displays flying, all the people suddenly gone.

  Lucian pressed himself up and as he did he saw Menor down on one knee, the dark-skinned Death Hunter completely naked, a skull painted across his face.

  Lucian’s armor grew out of his body; his semi-autonomous energy weapon formed on his shoulder; a wall of injurecrows took shape as his carbine appeared in his hands.

  “Lucian…” Menor said as he got to his feet, their interaction now taking place on a different plane of existence, all the people now just mannequins and displays and a blast radius rimmed with sparkling shards of glass that reached well past Lucian’s feet.

  “Showing up naked?” Lucian asked.

  “You killed her…”

  Jagged bone protrusions tore out of Menor’s arms and legs.

  They quickly spread up his body and as they did they turned to metal, forming rugged spikes, the Death’s muscles swelling, the white skull painted across his face swallowed up by his newfound armor as it formed into a sharp helmet.

  He opened his fingers and his ax burst through one of the windows, coming straight to his hand.

  The bit of the ax spawned sharp teeth, saliva dripping off them and onto the ground as they gnashed.

  “And now…” Menor narrowed his eyes on Lucian, who also had just called his armor to him. “Now, you pay.”

  Lucian was struck so hard that he was momentarily blinded, the Death Hunter slamming him through the walls until they were outside, where they crossed a side street and collided with another building.

  They tumbled to the ground, Menor’s ax taking flight, lifting into the air as Lucian lost hold of his carbine.

  His shoulder-mounted cannon started to fire at the ax, Lucian conjuring an enormous fireball, which he used to blast himself in the opposite direction before turning his burning hands to Menor’s throat.

  “You can’t kill me!” Menor cried, his armor puncturing Lucian’s hands even as flames poured from Lucian’s palms, the inferno raging all around them.

  Lucian’s injurecrows caught up with him, exploding into Menor’s back, sending both of them tumbling down to the street, where they landed in a patch of manicured trees, smashed through a small iron fence, and ripped through the pavement, depositing the two in the sewer.

  Lucian managed to get on top, cement and bits of rebar falling on top of his head as he stabilized. He blasted off, his cape lifting off his shoulders, momentarily distracting Menor.

  Menor’s ax cut Lucian in half, his torso spinning off to the side, his feet still standing.

  L
ucian conjured Grim Mecha, who swiftly grabbed the ax and began hacking at its maw with his blade arm. He spilled forward toward his legs, hoping to reunite his body with his torso.

  A loud noise met his ears as Menor zipped out of the sewer, Lucian’s cape still smothering the Death Hunter as injurecrows hurtled into his body.

  Lucian’s legs dropped to the ground; he managed to whip his body around, willing them to reattach as sewer water gushed by him.

  He went with his carbine again, this time triggering the zero-point energy field manipulator and using it to further disrupt Menor while he healed.

  His body mended, Lucian toggled the weapon, firing his carbine at Menor just to distract him for a moment, Grim Mecha continuing to battle the ax above him.

  He knew that at some point he would have to equip his particle-beam cannon, but he wanted to wait until it was the right time, until he knew that he could either get away, or finish Menor off.

  Killing a Death gave him a huge boost when it came to Soul Points, and if this one was going to be actively hunting him…

  Lucian torpedoed into the air, slamming into his cape and Menor, the three of them cracking into the corner of a building before spinning off and bringing down a tower of scaffolding.

  Lucian went through three levels with Menor on top of him, the man punching him repeatedly, his armor absorbing it all.

  “You killed… You killed my sister!”

  Menor headbutted Lucian as they continued to break through the scaffolding, everything going black for a moment.

  Lucian threw him off; Menor clipped his back against the crane operator’s booth.

  In the moment it took to catch his breath, Lucian noticed that he wasn’t quite experiencing pain, but he was feeling himself grow weaker.

  His stats appeared.

  “Shit…” he whispered as he got to his feet, accidentally kicking away a traffic cone. “Your sister?” Lucian asked, not knowing if that was what the Death Hunter had actually said.