Death's Mantle 2

by Harmon Cooper

  “I played a few because of the younger brother I had in a previous life. But nothing substantial, nothing that makes me agree with you that life is a video game.”

  “It sort of is,” he said, taking another sip from his coffee. “I know that you don’t want to admit that, and I’m sure there’s a lot of people on this Earth that wouldn’t want to admit it, but the way you play life determines the outcome. I would say life is the hardest, and possibly most rewarding video game, and that’s before you die and you’re given Death’s mantle, or an angel’s mantle, if that’s how that works.”

  “It is not how it works.”

  “Good to know; we never really went into that very much. But, especially toward the end there, that’s how I viewed life. With the heart condition I had, to think that my life was so trivial that it would just start and end kind of bummed me out. So I would think of it as a video game. I made it to a certain level, and if I kept fighting, maybe I could have made it to the next one. After all, miracles do happen. Hell, if I was a Buddhist, maybe I would respawn,” Lucian said, trying for a joke and falling flat.

  “What you just said trivializes the experience of living.”

  “I’m not saying that living…”

  “What?”

  “I’m just sitting here thinking about the fact that I’m dressed as the Grim Reaper looking at a beautiful angel and having a conversation about how life is a video game in my brother’s cold-ass backyard, not that I feel the least bit cold. And, I’m dead. Kind of odd, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what to say to you,” Danira said after a long pause.

  “Are you busy at the moment?” Lucian asked her.

  “If you’re asking me on another date…”

  “No, nothing like that. Well, maybe something like that. I’m trying to get rid of my ex-girlfriend’s parasite. It’s a real shitty situation she’s in, and I would like to help her. But this parasite keeps doing something to my mind,” Lucian said, knocking on the back of his head. “I was wondering if you would like to check it out with me. Maybe its power won’t affect you the same way.”

  Danira looked out at the yard, and from there up to their crows, which were spinning in the air, all of them now chasing Munin. “Okay, but only after another cup of coffee.”

  Chapter Fifteen: Jellyfish in Salem

  Lucian and Danira stood on Katy’s rooftop, looking out over the small city of Salem, its downtown mostly made of brick buildings, the homes just across the street seemingly abandoned, on the verge of blight.

  There was a Dunkin’ Donuts sign hawking pumpkin spice concoctions, the flavor of the season even as winter rolled in from the northwest.

  It was a hazy day, a gray day, the sun a pale yellow orb partially hidden by the clouds, Lucian not at all affected by the gloomy weather.

  This was New England.

  This was what it looked like in winter.

  And having never lived anywhere else, it was entirely normal for Lucian.

  “Are you going to stare at the donut sign all day?” Danira asked him.

  “Was I staring?”

  “You seem to be gazing off into the distance, like you are contemplating something.”

  “I’m wondering how I can make a donut,” Lucian joked. “I mean, I know how, but I want to make one that tastes good, one that’s just right. And everyone I know knows that Dunkin’ is garbage when it comes to donuts. That place is only good for coffee.”

  “Good to know. If I ever decide to become human again and I, for some reason, make the unfortunate decision of being born in this region of the United States, I will keep that in mind.”

  “How’s that work anyway?” Lucian asked.

  “Being reborn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a decision that I make, but as you can imagine, it does have to go through a process.”

  “See? I was just ranting to myself about that,” Lucian said, smirking at her.

  “Ranting to yourself?”

  He shrugged.

  Hugin collided with one of Danira’s golden crows, the two spinning off.

  “Watch it,” he called over to his spherical creation. “Anyway, yeah, ranting to myself about all the bureaucracy in the spiritual world. And who else am I supposed to rant to? There’s pretty much you, and…”

  “And?”

  “Another Death, a friend of mine. You saw her back at the South Wind. But she’s a little older than me and from a different culture, so we really don’t have that much in common. I mean, we do, we have this,” he said, gesturing to himself, “but you know what I mean.”

  “And you think we have something in common?” Danira asks, as her enormous weapon started to form in her hands.

  “I mean, you were American, I was American…”

  “I was an angel reborn in an American’s body. I have lived in all regions of the world. I am over four thousand years old…”

  “Okay, so we have a few differences. We can learn from each other.”

  She was just starting to look down at her weapon when she paused, the angel raising an eyebrow at Lucian. “And what am I supposed to learn from you, exactly?”

  “Easy, I can teach you to play video games, how to do construction, I don’t know… Probably some other things too.”

  “Why am I starting to regret this?” Danira asked as her wings started to grow larger. “Let’s deal with this demon. She’s in there, right?”

  “Katy? Yeah, last I checked,” Lucian said.

  Just to be sure, he dropped down into the roof, saw that Katy was lying on the couch, a pack of ice on her head. Lucian zipped back to the rooftop. “She’s still there.”

  “Distract the demon; I will come at it from the outside.”

  “A surprise attack, huh?”

  “Something like that. We will make this quick, and then I have other things to do.”

  “You sure you don’t want to go to the movies after?” Lucian asked, trying to hide a snarky grin. “We can get in for free.”

  Danira scoffed at the suggestion. “Don’t press your luck, demon.”

  Rather than respond, Lucian equipped his scythe and one of his handguns with the extended mag. He knew he would quickly discard the gun, but figured he would go in stirring up trouble, in an effort to be as distracting as possible.

  His bone armor began to press out of his body, rippling as it hardened, his skull mask stretching over his face.

  “You look tough.”

  “Where’s your armor?”

  “Here,” she said as a similar process started up, Danira’s armor painting over her body, made of what resembled tempered steel, with golden and white flex joints. A glimmering cross took shape just beneath her breasts as her sharp golden mask formed, completely covering her face.

  “The cross is a nice touch,” he told her.

  “It has always been there.”

  “I never noticed.”

  “It’s not for you to notice.”

  Before he dipped down into the rooftop, Lucian also invoked a dozen injurecrows, his black airborne IED’s floating before him.

  “I haven’t made any of those yet,” Danira said.

  “If you do, you’re going to have to pay me a royalty or something.”

  Lucian dropped through the ceiling into Katy’s living room, sending a row of injurecrows at his ex even though he couldn’t currently see the purple parasite.

  It was strange doing this, but he knew what his action would do, and he was right as explosions rocked the couch, the plane of existence changing as the parasite grew larger, sending a half dozen writhing purple tentacles in Lucian’s direction.

  He fired his handgun at it until he finished the magazine and tossed his weapon aside, cutting through stingers and tentacles, his crows also helping him, his IED’s exploding at random.

  Lucian’s cape flew off his shoulders, smashing into a muscled arm with centipede legs on the bottom side of it, stingers lifting off the back of the ar
m, black bristly hairs curling in his direction.

  The stingers tore through Lucian’s cape, but their struggle gave him the moment he needed to dive out of the way. Lucian hit the parasite with fire daggers, all of which exploded out of his open palm.

  A stinger came at him; Lucian sliced through it with his claws. Another tendril wrapped around his neck, thick hairs starting to press out of it and dig into his armor.

  He glanced at the window, expecting Danira any moment now, and when she didn’t come he conjured more injurecrows, ignoring the terrible strain he was now feeling in his head.

  Just to give himself a little space, Lucian equipped his carbine with its zero-point energy field manipulator. He toggled the switch to the field manipulator, even as he was being smothered by the demon bug’s tentacles.

  He squeezed the trigger, a blast of energy engulfing the parasite and allowing Lucian to slam against the ceiling, throwing it off guard.

  The windows blew out and Danira flew in, the angel firing shot after shot at the parasite.

  It responded by growing even larger, the tentacles around Lucian’s waist and chest bulging, tightening their grips. They bashed him against the wall, the building material giving way.

  Lucian was thrown outside, and he would have easily recovered had it not been for the fact that he was now partially hallucinating, all of his movements heavily exaggerated.

  His fingers were suddenly twice as long as they should be, and in one moment he would see himself freefalling out of the building, only to be sinking into a deep body of water, and then back to falling.

  As he tried to lift himself up, he overcompensated, flipping over onto his belly.

  Lucian fell onto a parked Oldsmobile, the impact jolting him awake.

  He lay there for a moment, blinking, at points seeing what he expected to see—the building overhead, and the occasional blast indicating that Danira was fighting the parasite. But he was also seeing other things, a whale passing over him, a school of sharks circling above, jellyfish, tons of jellyfish...

  Lucian brought his hand to the side of his head, everything spinning, his focus now on his heart.

  Was it beating differently than it should have been?

  Lucian shook his head.

  “You don’t have a heart,” he reminded himself as he finally was able to get to his feet, and wash himself of his bizarre hallucination.

  He shot up into the air, and as he did, he looked inside the apartment to see Danira now on her knees, the purple parasite pulsing all around her, one of its tendrils jutting into her mouth, her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

  Lucian was just starting to take off to her when he realized he would need backup, that he wasn’t going to be able to do this on his own.

  He thought in that moment of calling Yoshimi, but he didn’t want to bother her, and he didn’t know how Danira would react if she actually showed up.

  Even though the last time he had summoned him it hadn’t gone as well, Lucian went with Grim Mecha. But rather than just one, he focused more energy into his replicant, splitting him into two reaper androids.

  “Let’s do this, boys,” Lucian said as he twisted forward, his sword in hand.

  He cut through tendrils and stingers and fists, the parasite hissing and squealing as he fought his way in.

  Lucian was not going to let this thing hurt Danira.

  He reached her in a matter of moments, and as he did, he saw his two replicas coming at the purple demon bug from the other side, blasting and slicing their way through.

  And he thought he had done it.

  Lucian thought this was the end of it, that he was going to save the angel and tear the damn thing apart at the same time.

  But Lucian was sadly mistaken.

  The parasite snapped the tentacle that was in Danira’s mouth, her body flipping across the room. It latched onto Lucian’s face, more tentacles starting to squeeze around his head, his body, two sharp stingers diving into his eyes.

  Even as his imagination flared up, colors and lights and insects and terrible screams at the back of his head, Lucian managed to conjure more of his spherical IED’s, explosions all around him now.

  He could feel that his torso was now separated, at least partially, his arm starting to rip back, Lucian experiencing complete terror as the parasite started to shred his body to pieces.

  A flash of light, blinding white, and the parasite let out a gasp.

  Another flash, this one coming so close to Lucian that it felt like he had flown next to a star.

  One final blistering shot.

  Lucian’s torso fell to the floor, and as his eyes started to regrow, his vision blurred into focus.

  Danira stood over him in her golden armor, her hair matted with blood, her weapon pointed at the ground, smoke billowing off its muzzle. She blasted what was left of the parasite again, and once she was finished, her armor started to melt back.

  “Lucian…” she said, her voice a little haggard as she turned to him. Danira stumbled for a moment, quickly regaining her composure as she grabbed his leg and brought it over to him, dropping it to the ground.

  “Thanks…”

  “Heal up,” she told him.

  Lucian patted his hands on his body to see what was missing.

  While he’d thought his torso had been ripped to pieces, it was only his left leg, which Danira had already brought back over to him.

  He began the healing process, his strength starting to return to them as his Soul Points flashed in front of his face:

  “Crap,” he whispered to himself after seeing the damage.

  That fight really had taken more out of him than he would have expected. He assumed it was what had happened at the end, whatever the parasite was doing to his mind and his body at the same time. Perhaps it was draining him in some way, which would account for how quickly his numbers had depleted.

  Once he was able to stand, he did so.

  Danira stepped through the debris and out of the hole in the wall and batted her wings once, lifting into the air, the sky gray all around her.

  His crows now with him, Lucian joined her.

  “I thought I was going to save you there…”

  “You did, and then I saved you.”

  “So we’re even?”

  She smirked. “Yeah, we’re even.”

  “Thanks for doing this,” he told her, nodding back down at Katy’s apartment. “She was a good girl, and she has been dealt a couple of nasty cards, myself included.”

  “The poor thing.”

  “I guess you have to go?”

  Danira nodded, the blood quickly drying up as her armor disappeared, the angel back in her short skirt and partial armor, her hair shimmering again.

  “Okay, well, maybe…”

  “How about we go someplace I want to go next time?” Danira asked him, running her hand through her hair.

  Lucian looked at her for a moment, trying to see if she was kidding with him. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I am. As long as you are going to keep working on your food skills. I know a place we can go, something a bit interesting. I’m guessing you haven’t been there before.”

  “About the only places I’ve been are the East Coast, Japan, and Tibet. I guess that’s not so bad when I put it like that.”

  “Next time, then.”

  “When?” Lucian started to ask, but Danira was already gone, a spark of golden energy left in her wake.

  Chapter Sixteen: Eavesdropping

  It was definitely a strange shift in dynamics to go from hunting Katy’s parasite with Danira to his brother’s home, but that’s exactly what Lucian did.

  Sam and Connor had just arrived, Sam in the kitchen whipping something up for a late lunch. She hummed some songs she’d heard on the radio, their cat weaving between her legs until it caught sight of Lucian.

  Tuck hissed; Sam quickly dropped to pet the cat, her fur-lined sandals squeaking against the linoleum floor.

&
nbsp; “What has gotten into you?” she asked.

  Sam’s phone buzzed; she looked at it, nodding as she read the message. “Honey, it’s your mom. She says she wants to keep Baby Jen another night if it’s okay with you. I think she’s showing her off to a few of her friends or something.”

  “Showing her off?” Connor asked as he came up from the basement, an agitated look on his face.

  “Yeah, she mentioned something about it before we left for Stamford. She’s got a couple of friends that want to meet with her before they head south for the winter. She even bought Jen a dress, just to make her look cuter.”

  “She’s not a doll, and I wish I could head south for the winter,” Connor said.

  “No, you don’t. You and Lucian both like the cold; it would be too warm for you down there.”

  “Maybe, but maybe I would get used to it. You making sandwiches?” he asked as he saw her slicing cucumbers.

  “I told you I was. Don’t you listen to me?”

  “I listen, but sometimes you speak too quietly,” he said as he came up behind her, placing his hands around her waist. Connor kissed Sam’s neck, as she slowly lowered the knife to the wooden cutting board.

  “Tuck is acting strange again, just hissing at nothing,” she told her husband-to-be.

  “Maybe he’s getting older, or maybe we have a ghost.”

  “Stop it.”

  “He’s a good cat though, aren’t you, boy?” Connor asked as he bent down and scratched the cat behind the ear. “A little mouthy, but what good pet isn’t?”

  “So what do you think? Should we just let Jen stay over there tonight?”

  “What does Baby Jen want?” Connor asked.

  “You know how she loves her grandma. She doesn’t even know we’re back.”

  “Then I think there’s no harm done in letting my mother keep her hostage. We have the house to ourselves for once,” Connor said, gesturing toward the living room.

  “Honey,” Sam said, “your nose.”

  Connor reached his hand up to see that his nose was bleeding. “Shit, must be the weather,” he said, quickly turning from her and going for a paper towel.