Beast Hunters Omnibus II

by Tom Harem

  "The clock is ticking," Maggie whispered.

  "Manipulate? Not at all. He supported my entire growth without ever asking me for anything in return. He knew I'd understand. That I would see the evil in the world." He said, "Well, this minute's conversation was good, but it's time to end it. There's no way a couple of kids like you can defeat all four of us."

  "Four? I don't think you've come prepared to fight," Lipa replied. As he tilted his head and giggled like a madman, she whispered to us, "Get ready. This is going to get complicated."

  "I don't need guns to fight," he said and put himself in combat position; with his legs bent and fists at chest level, "gloves and shoes made of acix." He said and signaled us to approach.

  We had been in several fights but never against humans. It was something totally different. They could fight back in seconds, mold themselves to our attacks, but above all, they could be unpredictable.

  Before another word was said, Maggie's fireball flew across all of us, at high speed, towards the albino. None of the other three men moved. All it took was a powerful punch, from the albino, in the center of the blaze for it to disperse into hundreds of sparkles. A warm breeze flowed down the hall and past my lips.

  "I'm a little disappointed. A set of old acquaintances for an ending so... Unsatisfactory." The albino said. The acix protection that enveloped his hand had acquired a bright orange color with red contours.

  "Old acquaintances?" I asked him.

  "Sure. Lenetius' daughter. I haven't seen you since you were a kid." He said after placing both arms close to his body, "and you... Elisa and the boy, you really thought I wouldn't remember you from the bar, did you? That I don't know you took my letter? Or that you, Elisa, had been following me for weeks? I'm sorry you weren't there to watch the havoc that it was." He said it and laughed in a strangled way. He was loving that moment. Enjoying our anger, fear, despair, all mixed up in jumbled movements; from the frowning of our eyebrows to the writhing of our lips, to our rosy cheeks. It was a blending of emotions that were hard to control. Even I, who was proud to keep them under control, now found it difficult not to react to his provocations. I wanted to make him suffer even though I knew it was a path with no return.

  "If you knew I was following you, why didn't you ever act?" Elisa asked him.

  "Two minutes have passed," Vic whispered.

  "I told you. I wanted you to burn with them too. Didn't they tell you that a lot of them were carbonized? Hunters and criminals were mistaken for equals. At the very end of life, we are all mortals." He said, "Finish them off. Try to spare Lipa."

  The fight began. Colors popped up in every way. The swordsman smashed Elisa's ice into small pieces at the same time as Maggie's fire burned one of the other men's wooden spears. The other boy, probably the youngest of them, with spiky hair and light blue eyes, was flinging ice marbles. They tore our clothes and cut the skin open until it burnt to a crisp flesh. I joined the fight. I was reminded of all the lessons I'd learned at the academy. I pulled my golden gun out of the holster and bullet after bullet shattered the ice before it even reached us. The ground whitened up until the ice melted and turned to water. From the corner of my eye, I saw Kendra and Lipa fighting the albino. Both trying to strike him with the metals, but he used his arms and fists to defend himself whenever he couldn't get away. It was all happening at the same time. In that narrow corridor where the temperature was constantly changing, the walls were freezing and burning and the floor was covering itself with ice, spark scars and blood. Time was running out. There was no clock nearby, but I couldn't shake off the constant tick-tock that echoed in my mind.

  The ice boy tried to freeze the ground under our feet, but Maggie punched it with her hand shrouded in flames. The ice burned and liquefied itself on the ground. Before she could even get up, a thick trunk burst from the ground and slammed her right into her chin, tossing her against me, and I held her before we both fell.

  "We're not going to make it out of here, are we?" She asked me.

  The other girls were still fighting. Victoria fired arrows in different directions forcing everyone to pause for a few seconds. They never made it to halfway point, but they were buying enough time for Elisa to pull herself together and generate more ice. The albino had thrown Kendra to the ground and now Lipa was dealing alone with him and with the two-sword boy. She was losing ground and was already fighting practically on her knees.

  "I hate to do this, but we don't have a choice. Let it all go, Maggie. All the anger you got in there. All the resentment. Release the flame."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yeah, they shouldn't be expecting it. We must take advantage. Time is running out."

  She closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed down. A red glow surrounded the entire glove and her blonde hair tips reddened. A flaming chain unrolled, arising from the air like a braid being made, and hit the ground, vaporizing the water and fogging the corridor.

  "Let's go with everything! Get on top of them!" I screamed. We weren't going to give up. We still had about 15 minutes. We just needed an opening to get the hell out of there...

  "Come on!" Elisa said, "Vic, same as always. I've got an idea. Let's show them how we work as a team."

  Vic prepped the arrows. Elisa froze the tips. The three arrows blasted open through the fog towards both glove wearers, and just before they got there, Elisa snapped her fingers. Chains of ice burst through the tip arrows and, like a hug, wrapped the two men. They had their flanks blocked and three arrows ahead of them. The earth boy raised a wooden wall that shattered the arrows, but nevertheless, the chains did not dissolve, and fastened their hands to their bodies, extending also to the gloves and frosting them. They became useless, which angered the men even more, until they were uttering insults and shouting in an uncontrolled manner.

  "Two down. Now what?" Maggie asked, still with the fire chain in her hand, the flames spinning around half her arm.

  "The chains won't last long. Take care of the other two. Quickly." Elisa said, holding hers.

  I looked the other way. Lipa was on the floor, with the two pink metal bars hanging in front of her face, protecting herself from the metal swords that scraped on them. The metal collided with the metal and sparks splattered over the floor.

  "We have eight minutes. Quickly." Vic repeated.

  She already had three more arrows in her bow. Kendra had grabbed her whip, flung it at the albino and pinned his foot. She tried to keep him still, but all he had to do was lift his foot and she followed along, being greeted with a kick in the face. Blood dripped from her nose as she tried to get away from him while he chased her until there was no longer any wall.

  "Don't even think you're going to touch her," I screamed and fired an acix bullet. The bullet spun along the way, opening a path through the whitish air and lodging on the albino's shoulder. He was tossed through the air, striking the doors that had already closed once more and opening both.

  "You're going to pay for this!" He said, on the floor, with his hand on the opposite side of his shoulder, staunching the blood.

  Victoria shot the three arrows at the only man missing. He sliced them mid-air with precision and ease. Amid the turmoil, all I could see was Maggie pulling her arm back and throwing her flaming whip in his direction. The chain stretched, eliminating the laws of physics, and behaving like a thick flame that she could maneuver.

  "Don't stop!" Elisa yelled at Maggie, "Let's get out of here, come on. While we can. I'm not going to be able to hold this much longer. They're freeing themselves." She said.

  She was right. Small branches were emerging in the hand of the man with the earth glove and were clogging the ice. They squeezed it until the ice cracked, just moments away from tearing it to pieces. I ran to Kendra and helped her up. She could stand on her own. Then I did the same with Lipa. Both were hurt, but they weren't wounded below the waist.

  "Maggie, throw him down. Now!" I screamed.

  Her eyes turned blood red. The flames around
her arm got all worked up. The chain receded and hovered in the air with half to the left and the rest upwards. The entire upper part was shaping, the chain unfolding to both sides, up until a dragon's head with a curly mustache on both sides and thick eyebrows surfaced and made its way across the air. It penetrated the man still with his swords crossed up in front of his chest. His clothes burned and dissolved, his face was singed, and the man dropped to the ground, totally inanimate.

  "Run!" I screamed as loudly as I could until I could feel my vocal cords twitching.

  We ran into the other corridor without even looking back. The ice chains had been broken. Uneven pieces of ice crashed into the ground. The albino still grabbed my pants, but I shoved him till he got out of the way. We were already amid the second hallway when we heard his terrifyingly scary voice, "Kill them. USE ALL YOUR POWER. IT'S AN ORDER."

  "We can't stop now. Come on, we're almost there." I told them. I was running almost sideways, always looking back, seeing if someone was following us.

  When we walked past the last door, I looked back and saw the two glove wearers at the previous door.

  Their eyes about to leap out of their bodies, the blue veins bulging in their arms and one in the ice boy's neck, their fists clenched and their clothes damp. The fun was over. Now it was for real and we didn't have 10 minutes to get out of there.

  "Come on. Don't stop, keep running." I told them. I fired five regular bullets before I turned around and started running, too.

  From afar I heard the bullets crashing into an ice wall. The casings froze, landed on the ground and snapped. We were only one hallway away. My heartbeat was louder than ever. Even the walls that surrounded us appeared to have one, and they too battered and forced the walls to narrow, leaving us with no room to run together and to breathe.

  I promised myself I'd just look back one more time. The earth glove wearer had his hand on the ground. His fingers trembled, tapping on the floor, until he lost balance and leaned against the wall. I thought that he had run out of strength, that the anger had triggered something in the glove, anything but what unfolded before my eyes. Dozens of small wooden spears with sharp, light-brown peaks shattered the floor. Like a boat sailing in a storm, the spears sailed forward, tearing the ground along the way, destroying anything that dared to get in the way. They moved fast and only the man's giggle by the wall could keep up with them.

  "Maggie!" I screamed.

  As soon as she saw what was coming, she fired three huge fireballs. They didn't do anything. They banged on the sharp points and split. But Maggie didn't give up. Her wrist was already scorched, and her knees were shaking. She summoned dozens of flaming arrows and with just a swaying finger ordered them to burn all the wood. We were already smiling at each other, about to celebrate, when the arrows crashed into thick walls of ice. The wooden spear boat didn't stop. All it needed was a chimney and black smoke, with a putrid smell, blackening all the way where it passed to be confused with a real boat. Elisa tried to freeze the wood, but it didn't work. It was as if the Titanic had destroyed the iceberg in a few seconds.

  "What do we do? We can't get to the door before it gets to us." Vic asked.

  "There's only one solution. Take down the building. Hurry, now. Aim for the roof." I said. The wood was just meters away from us.

  Maggie, who was already wobbling as she walked, raised a fireball the size of her hand and flung it against the ceiling. Victoria shot three arrows. Elisa fired ice spears. Small explosions ran through the ceiling above us. It collapsed in front of us, obstructing the wooden boat's passage with scraps of the material it was made of. But it didn't stop there. The whole place started to fall apart. Cracks zig-zagged across the walls until they imploded, increasing the pile of debris in front of us. The wood was still trying to drill its way through, but it had encountered some difficulties.

  "Let's just get the hell out of here," Elisa said.

  We ran to the basement. Nothing had changed. Our van was still there, with the white coats inside and no sign of any more guards. I and Lipa got in the van and the other four girls went to the back.

  "Step on it," I told Lipa.

  Chapter XXIII

  She took off, putting us on the path to get out of there. She didn't even stop at the gate. She drove straight through it, carrying it for a few meters until it fell, and the van ran over it. The van bounced but quickly Lipa took control of it and speeded up throughout the forest.

  "Are we safe? We really did it!" I told her and smiled at her.

  But as I looked at her, I noticed that her eyes were flickering, her right hand was barely holding the steering wheel and her left hand was inches above her left hip. I asked her what was going on and she showed me a blood-covered hand.

  "Something struck me." She said, in a weak voice, struggling to stay awake, "I can handle it. It's all right."

  "Get in the back. They can take care of you."

  "No, I can do it!"

  "I'm not asking you, Lipa. Let's make the switch."

  She still grumbled but ended up stopping in a hidden place with a vast landscape of trees covering it. I opened the back door and explained to the girls what had happened. With Kendra's help, we carried Lipa to the back and Elisa took her place.

  "Shouldn't it have exploded by now?" Maggie asked. It was still possible to see part of the lab's white roof amidst the different shades of green.

  "A minute and a half to go. What we have to do is get out of here before anyone sees us. The guards must be looking for us." Vic said.

  She was right. We each went to our seats and got out of there.

  We were on our way out of the forest when a deafening noise broke out for miles. Through the rear-view mirror, I saw the laboratory on fire, minor explosions happening at different spots of it until the whole complex collapsed on itself and was nothing more than a mixture of ruins and a black powder balloon that rose to the skies. Once again, the desire to celebrate was growing inside me like a buzz that didn't shut up. And yet, I still couldn't. Not even a smile. Innocent people had died there. Maybe they weren't genuinely good, but they didn't deserve to burn to death all of a sudden. There was a slight difference between what we had done and what the albino had done with the council. I knew that. I knew that while he had done it to seize the power, we had done it to save the world. But none of this changed the fact that from that moment on, we also had blood on our hands. It took about two months, but I was no longer the boy with grandiosity lusts of yesteryear. I no longer lived without a sense of what was going on in the shadows, without knowing how close to the end of everything we were. There were still a lot of questions to be answered. Would that be the only lab with human beasts? How long would the destruction delay them? Had they all died? The answer to one of them scraped off the glass when we were already on the freeway.

  "It's the albino!" Elisa shouted, "Damn. Why won’t he die?"

  "They must have come after us and escaped. Can you slow them down?" I asked him.

  "Not much. They're getting closer." She said.

  They were in a red convertible, drifting away from the few cars that were on the road, and getting closer to us. The albino was firing a semi-automatic into the air and the two-sword man was firing at us. The bullets were going in all directions; one broke my rearview mirror shattering it to pieces, some pierced the signs along the road and some punctured other smaller cars which ended up losing control and crashing into the metal sides of the road. It was a high-speed chase and we were driving a gutter. My cell phone vibrated. Message from Maggie asking what the hell was going on outside. I called her and put her on the speaker.

  "The albino and the guards are alive. They're after us." I told her, watching the pointer going from 80 an hour to 90.

  "I'll help you."

  "Stay there. You've used too much energy. We'll take care of it."

  "Are you sure? It seems to be tricky out there." She said, the sound being drowned out by the bullets.

  Now they were
both shooting at the van. The earth glove boy seemed to have a wood-hardened wrist, but from afar, I wasn't sure. I assumed so, that the same thing that had happened to Maggie was happening to him. He overloaded his own glove and the body was suffering the consequences.

  "Hold the wheel," I told Elisa.

  I stayed away so she could put her hands on it while I was pulling my gun out of the holster. I leaned against the window and fired an entire bullet magazine into their vehicle. One of their bullets still grazed my shoulder. Still, I had more aim. They were swamped with anger and I was only thinking about surviving. There was no room for failure. One bullet broke one of their mirrors, another punctured the hood and one of them blew one of their tires. It began to deflate, whistling along the way, the open-top car, losing control on the road. The left side scraped off on the metal road dividers until it lost its color and only the original grey remained. My phone's vibrated again. This time it was a message from Elisa. Just an address that I quickly typed into the GPS. Drops of sweat barred my vision. I yanked my hair back and wiped my forehead with my sweater sleeve. They were still on our glue. The ice boy filled the holes in the tires with ice strong enough to roll down the road. We were 10 minutes from our destination, but it could be an hour. There was no difference in the time.

  "I don't know how we're going to dodge them." Elisa said to me, "Hell, this is not how I expected it to end."

  "What the hell are you talking about? This is not the end of us. At the most a beginning in which we have the advantage over the Reapers for the first time." I said, "Do you remember the fight against the human beast? It also seemed to be our end, and we survived. Now it's all the same. Put that glove to work. You're not going to tell me the great Elisa doesn't have a trick up her sleeve, are you?"

  "You're right. Damn it. No way I'm giving up." She said and we switched places again.

  I was driving and she was on her side, with her hand outside the window, a thick stick of ice stretching diagonally until it reached the road and frosted the tar. Their car swerved backward, and as a result, we earned a few minutes' advantages.