by Jack Porter
“You know,” I said thoughtfully, “why are these guys acting as if they don’t have any knowledge of the place? Why do they not seem to know about the mines? Sure, they still have plenty of men, but their tactics seem strange.”
Piper shrugged. “Whatever the reason, I’ll take it,” she said, and I didn’t disagree. But then she frowned. “Maybe they expected to catch us unaware?”
All at once, it clicked into place. Piper was exactly right. If I hadn’t chosen to call Dario Gambetti right when I did, I wouldn’t have been down in the basement. If Dario hadn’t wanted to gloat, I wouldn’t have known to look at the monitors at the screens.
The advancing mercenaries might well have made it all the way to the house before we could have activated any of the defenses. Before any of us knew it, they could have let rip with everything they had, blowing holes in the mansion and perhaps in us as well, and we might never have been able to make it to safety.
Was it arrogance that had led to Gambetti giving me the warning I needed? A sense of superiority?
Or a desire to make sure I knew he had beaten me before the fact?
Either way, his hubris had cost him dozens of men already, and would doubtless cost him as many again. It had given us a chance, where otherwise we might not have had any at all.
I found myself grinning very broadly indeed. It came down to luck, in a way. Lucky timing, luck that I’d been able to press Dario’s Gambetti’s buttons, luck that he hadn’t had more self-control.
I figured I was going to keep dumping points into boosting my luck whenever I could. Who knew what that might lead to?
I might get to the stage where I couldn’t walk down the street without tripping over a bundle of cash. Or I might be able to win the lottery every time I entered. Maybe even walk toward a hail of bullets only to have them all deflect miraculously away.
All things were possible.
Chapter 48
I was still thinking that maybe we had a chance when the armored personnel carrier muscled its way past the wreck of the Humvee.
The armored vehicle stopped in sight of the house, and that’s where things started to get interesting. It was a serious piece of military machinery designed to get in, do a job, and get out of armed conflict zones with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of impact.
All I could do was watch as the monster aimed a fifty-caliber gun at the place I’d called home for just over a month, and started firing at the shield wall.
The sound was like thunder, and even where we were downstairs, we could feel the whole house shake. Yet even a gun like that would take time to do real damage. The shielding Megadeath had installed was several inches thick.
But even that wouldn’t block everything.
None of the shells got through, but the intimidation did. The shock of being under fire from such serious weaponry and the fear that came with it.
Even as I kept watch on the screen, I heard Rachel doing her best to put Sandy at ease, speaking words of comfort in between the sounds of the shells hitting the walls.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We’re safe in here. They can’t get to us.”
Even as the goth woman spoke, I knew she was wrong. Other mercenaries had caught up with the armored vehicle, and several groups were setting up mortars or preparing RPGs for use.
Perhaps the shielding could withstand being fired upon by that sort of thing. Or perhaps not.
I checked to see if anyone was near enough to the remaining mines to make a difference, and noted with regret that they were not. Instead, I looked at Piper.
“Let’s see if we can take care some of those guns,” I said.
She nodded and picked up her control. Within moments, the twin guns on the roof burst into life, sending bolts of hot metal toward the mercenaries, kicking up dirt and cutting trees down to size, and sending the mercenaries scampering once again.
Not for the first time, my years of playing videogames had really paid off. I imagined each round that smashed into a mess earning me points. Five points for a flesh wound, ten for blowing off a hand or a foot. Twenty for a good solid shot to the torso, and fifty for turning a head into a puff of pink mist.
And a hundred for taking out one of the mortars.
Beside me, Piper was the cool, professional killer, racking up points in an efficient, effective manner, taking out whatever weapons and mercenaries she could. I was more manic. I laughed out loud and shouted out numbers as I did my best to outdo her.
“Fifty points!” I shouted. “Did you see that? His head is just gone!! Like magic!” “Ten points! He’s not going to be playing the violin again anytime soon!” “Twenty points! That’s him down for the day!” “Ha! Did you see that? That was a double! Went through that guy’s arm and into his buddy’s face. Is that fifty-five points? Or just ten? I mean, his head is still there… hang on! There! Now that’s a fifty pointer!”
And so on.
It wasn’t the complete massacre I was hoping for, but more of a slow, individually targeted assault. After the first salvo, the mercenaries were too canny to get caught out in the open, and many of them had set up in positions where the guns couldn’t reach them.
This move turned the tables against us. As we were firing back and forth, raising the cost of this attack as high as we could, the mercenaries were learning our defenses. We had already killed dozens of mercenaries and injured plenty more. But they were like rats. They just kept on coming.
My points tally must have run into the hundreds, and I was taking a bead on another target, when suddenly, with an explosion that felt louder and closer than usual, my weapon became unresponsive.
I didn’t need to ask what had happened. It was obvious. And RPG had taken my gun offline, and Piper’s didn’t last much longer.
Yet it wasn’t game over. Not quite.
“You know,” I said, looking at Piper. “I’ve been inside all day. I think maybe a walk among the trees would do me good. What do you say? Care to join me?”
Piper responded with a feral grin and a nod. “Sure. Why not? It’ll do us both good to get some fresh air.”
We left Rachel at the controls with instructions to blow the last of the mines should there be a good opportunity to do so, then went to gear up.
As I was buckling my armored vest on, I noticed that Sandy had followed us to the weapons room. Despite Azrael’s courage adjustment, she seemed anxious. Hesitant, almost. As if she wasn’t sure she should be there at all.
But when I looked a question at her, all her hesitation faded away. She crossed to me and gave me a hug, and kissed me on the lips.
“You’re going to come back to me, right?” she asked. With a look, she included Piper as well. “Both of you.”
With the strength, speed, and life Azrael had given me, I was a match for any dozen or so. But the numbers out there?
It didn’t look good.
Yet, there was always a chance. I kissed Sandy back for all I was worth, enjoying her soft lips. Then I gave her a smile. “You bet,” I said.
At the same time, I felt uneasy about this turn of events, and I could feel Azrael’s uncertainty as well.
Sandy tried to return my smile, but couldn’t quite do it, and I saw that her eyes had filled with tears.
“Don’t worry,” Piper said. “I’ll keep him out of trouble for you,” she said.
She said it with just enough positivity that Sandy managed her smile. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked in a strained voice.
My first instinct was to shake my head. Sandy was a noncombatant. The most innocent of all of us. Then something Azrael had said popped into my head, and I had to laugh at the thought. It was brilliant.
“Contact the girls. Our network of succubi. Tell them to find someone and get themselves laid!”
By then, all of us clearly understood the connection benefits. There was no need to explain. Sandy’s smile grew broader, and she nodded. “Will do,” she said.
With that, I turned to P
iper. “Are you ready?” I asked.
“What, are you having second thoughts?”
In truth, I didn’t want to die. I wanted more than anything to stick around long enough to stick it to Dario Fucking Gambetti. But by the looks of the weapons his army had brought, it was just a matter of time before they broke into Megadeath’s house. And that would be it.
I set my earpiece in place and figured, if my time had come, I would prefer to go out on my own terms.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter 49
The mines had discouraged the mercenaries from surrounding the house, so Piper and I were able to walk straight out the back door without being seen. If it had just been me, I could have murdered my way through the mercenary lines and made my way to safety, as Azrael’s quiet prompting suggested.
Okay, so yes, I had bonded with a demon and murdered a few people in the aftermath. But that didn’t mean I had quite stooped to his level.
If I hadn’t had the girls with me, I could have got out of there. But much had changed in the last few weeks, and for the first time in my life, I had people to care about other than myself. Sure, Azrael whispered in my mind that Rachel and Sandy were replaceable, but Rachel had been there right from the start. If it weren’t for her, I might still be going from table to table, propositioning women who were out of my league, desperate to get laid and get the ball rolling.
And Sandy? In a very short time, she had been kidnapped twice—once by a serial killer and once by Megadeath #4—and her life had been at risk far more often than it should have been. She didn’t deserve to be abandoned.
So I ignored Azrael’s whispers and turned to Piper instead. “You can go, if you wish,” I said. “Get out of here. I’ll take care of this mess.”
She laughed in my face. “What, and let you get all the glory?” She shook her head. “You still haven’t figured out who I am, have you? Despite everything we’ve been through over the past few weeks. I live for stuff like this. So how about you run along, and I’ll take care of this mess?”
Azrael perked up at this, but before I had time to say that it wasn’t something I was prepared to do, Rachel spoke through our earpieces.
“How about you both stop trying to save everyone all by yourselves, and get to work? The mercenaries are trying to flank you, if that’s the correct term. A trio of them, coming from your left side. Perhaps a hundred feet away, through the trees.”
It was enough to bring Piper and me back to the present. Both of us crouched low and headed into the woods, Piper aiming to cut in behind them, and me acting as the bait.
It didn’t matter how often I walked into danger, it didn’t matter how many improvements Azrael had made to me, there was something about conflict of all types that made my blood surge through my veins.
Sitting in the control booth with inches of steel and concrete between me and any real danger couldn’t compare with this. Inside the bunker, dealing death from afar, felt a little surreal.
As if it was a videogame, and I had as many lives as I needed to win.
But out here in the trees, with real enemies trying to kill me, my heart started to pound in my chest and my breathing quickened. It wasn’t fear, not exactly, but excitement. I was both hunter and prey, and one misstep could be my last.
At the same time, it was a contest like no other. Man against man, skill against skill, reflexes and determination against the same.
And I liked it.
It made me feel alive like nothing else. To know that blood was going to be spilled in these woods, within the next couple of minutes, and not knowing with any real certainty if it would be mine or that of my enemy.
Of course, I was very much hoping for the latter, and was going to do all I could to ensure it. So, when I judged I’d covered enough distance, I stood up straight in a clearing where I figured I could most easily be seen.
I wasn’t disappointed. Almost at once, I heard a deep voice shout from the side.
“Contact!” he said, and an instant later, I heard gunfire.
If I’d been slower, I might have been killed then and there. These guys were not shabby. But I was already moving before the first bullets headed my way, and the closest any of them got was to punch a hole through the bark of a tree next to my head.
Then, abruptly, the gunfire stopped, and I smiled. While not as satisfying as killing them myself, there was still some pleasure to gain from being part of the plan. In moments, Piper’s voice crackled in my earpiece.
“Done.”
“Any trouble?” I asked.
“Nope. Not even a proper warmup.”
I couldn’t help but admire my most bloodthirsty companion. I knew without a moment of doubt that this was going to be fun!
Chapter 50
The mission was simple. Kill them all or die in the attempt. To keep Rachel and Sandy alive, Piper and I had to take out an army, and we had to do it before they managed to get through the mansion’s defensive screen.
It was two against more than a hundred, handguns against heavy weapons, and on the surface of it, we shouldn’t have stood a chance.
But we had certain advantages that the mercenaries lacked. For more than a month, I had been dumping points into all sorts of attributes designed to help me survive in a dangerous career. It was like I was hopped up on all sorts of drugs, including speed, adrenaline, and a whole bunch of steroids.
I was strong and fast, with reflexes honed to a supernatural level. My senses were beyond sharp. I could smell the sweat on the back of a mercenaries necks from two hundred paces, and if I tried really hard, I could make out which were more scared than they should be by listening to the sound of their heartbeat.
And I was resilient as well. Durable. I doubted my skin could deflect bullets, not yet, but I was much harder to stab than any normal man, and if I was injured, I would heal at a much faster rate.
Not Deadpool fast, not yet. But a broken leg would be good again within less than a week.
In addition to the points I’d thrown into all my different physical attributes, over the past couple of weeks, I had started to feel strong as well. A different sort of strength, as if there was something surging inside me, a power that longed to break free. Like when I’d changed into a demon at the coffee shop when I’d met Sara.
I figured it had something to do with Azrael.
Whatever this new strength might have been, I felt like I could have punched through a brick wall or crushed rocks with my fists. It was like all I needed to do was climb up on the armored personnel carrier, and I could twist its fifty-caliber gun out of shape with my bare hands.
Maybe all that strength was due to the points I gained from banging all those chicks. But I couldn’t help feeling there was something more to it.
Nor was I the only one that the mercenaries would have trouble dealing with. Piper had been formidable in her own right before I met her. But now? I’d given her a substantial boost in key areas as well.
We could do this.
Perhaps nobody else could, and perhaps we would need luck on our side even so, but we could do this.
We had to do this.
Piper appeared out of the trees where the three mercenaries had been, strolling casually toward me as if she hadn’t killed three armed and dangerous men moments before.
“I think we should split up,” she said. “You go right, I’ll go left. The end target has to be the armored vehicle.”
I nodded my agreement. “Bet I take out more men than you do,” I said.
She gave me the type of grin that would chill the heart of most men. “You’re on,” she said.
With that, we parted ways, and I moved through the trees as quickly as I could, relying on Rachel to let me know where my enemies were.
Chapter 51
It was easy. I kept low, moved quickly, and came at the mercenaries from angles they didn’t expect. As much as I would have liked to linger, I killed them quickly, shooting them mu
ltiple times in the head to make sure.
I took out teams of two, three, and four without much effort, moving quickly enough that they seldom managed to turn in time, let alone return fire.
Despite my comment to Piper, I didn’t keep count. There were too many kills to keep track of, and when I passed about seventeen or so, they all sort of merged into one.
I was a killing machine. Death incarnate, the Angel of Death, a demon hellbent on destruction. No normal man could stand against me. They were too slow, too weak, and I laughed at their attempts to fire back even as I pulled my trigger again and again and again.
My world became no more than trees, the rustling of the wind, and the flavors of death. The quiet calm of the forest grew loud with the sounds of gunfire, the screams of men, and the sound of ongoing detonations as heavy weapons did their work.
The gentle breeze and fresh odor of leaves and earth had been superseded by the metallic tang of bloodshed and the stench of death. For these men, I was a nightmare come true. Swift, silent, and deadly, I was a ghost they couldn’t hit, but who could get close enough to place the barrel of my gun against their temples before I pulled my trigger.
And I didn’t approach each kill with the cold, analytical aloofness of a true professional. Instead, I reveled in it. Enjoyed every last moment. It was profound, a feeling of ecstasy, the rush I gained from killing so many, so swiftly.
I understood why those of us with access to demons or angels were said to have been touched by divinity. I was a god of death and destruction, and the army Dario had brought toward me was like the wheat before my scythe.
As I reached out with my fingers of death, pulling my trigger and reloading with smooth, cold efficiency, I found myself laughing at how easy it was.
This was not the test I had been expecting. The numbers of my enemies mattered little. I was too fast, too strong, too much for these insects with their toy guns.
