Carnage (Remastered)

by Vladimir Duran

They were all over the city. Wizard and demon magic clashing left distinct traces. There was no way to remove them or he'd have done it already.

  But if they didn't find him they might assume he'd moved on. They would consider the city just a temporary hunting ground. The Broken Bolts would look for him elsewhere. For that to have a chance to work, however, he would have to leave everything behind. Anything that made the city seem like something other than a temporary place to sleep painted a target on it.

  Staying and hiding was out of the question. Finding and killing people like Vlad was what Knight Hunters did. Eventually, they would sniff him out. And, if not him, those traces would lead them to people who knew him. The Hunters would hurt them to get to him. That was how they worked.

  Shit! They might do it even if he did run. They'd tear the city apart looking for clues to where he might have run off to. Why hadn't he thought of this before?

  No, there was only one way for this to work out so he could keep his life. Make it seem as if they'd been deliberately lured here as part of a trap. Anything the Hunters found after that would be written off as part of the trap. They would investigate of course but they'd start out with bad assumptions. Everything they found would looked like it was just there the make the bait more genuine. Of course, you didn't set a trap in your own home. You did it somewhere far away. Somewhere you didn't care about. But, for the lie to work, the trap would have to appear to be successful. He would have to kill more of them. Kill them all.

  Or he could walk away right now and he wouldn't have to take another life this night. All he had to do was leave everything and everyone he cared about behind and run.

  He took a breath, slowed his racing thoughts and focused on what mattered.

  All his life he'd heard that life was precious and that killing was wrong. But there was one simple truth that no amount of sanctimonious bullshit could wash away. The lives of all these Knights Hunters combined were not as valuable to him as his own. He thought of Whit and the feeling he got when she kissed him, her lips hungry against his. Ethan, with whom he argued incessantly and who'd taught him everything about what it meant to be a wizard. Kat, who teased and mocked him constantly, his first in many ways but chiefly his first real friend. His mother, who never threw the sacrifices she'd made for him in his face, no matter how much be bickered with her.

  Vlad knew what it was to be alone, truly alone. Alone not because of an absence of people but alone because you couldn't connect to them. Becoming a wizard, a Knight had saved him form that. He'd fought it, fought the connections. But they'd dragged him kicking and screaming into being a real boy. And now he was scared to go back. Without them in his life he just know that's what would happen.

  In that moment Vlad had the power to choose between the lives of these soldiers and his. So he chose. He would not walk away. These people had chosen to make their living off the pain and suffering of others. Looking down at the man he had just killed he expected to feel sadness or pity or something like regret. He was supposed to. You were supposed to regret killing…but he didn't. All he felt, was contempt for someone who whored themselves to the council.

  He took another breath and focused on his absolute conviction that he was doing the right thing. The world became firm under his feet again as brought himself back into the Knight State. There were formal names for it but he didn't use them. When he was focused, he shed his identity as Vlad, son of a human woman and became the Knight, son of battle.

  All Knights were born for war, but most were forced to suppress their abilities around other wizard in order to hide from the Hunters. Without training those abilities atrophied and would come only as imperfect shadows of their full capabilities. But Vlad didn't live among other wizards, and humans didn't have the context to understand what he was. His powers had never been suppressed. Without another Knight to teach him he'd had to learn things the hard way, in trial by fire. In the last year he'd fought and killed demons, walked battlefields in the Middle East and spent every hour he could learning combat strategy and tactics. He had a long way to go before he reached his full potential, he was no Harrower.* But these Hunters had still never faced anyone like him. A battle tested Knight.

  Fully committed the Knight turned his terrible mind to the task of murder.

  First order of business was to eliminate the watchers on the perimeter. They couldn't be allowed to report back. Deception could not abide accuracy. Using shadows and girders for cover The Knight headed straight for the wall surrounding the construction site.

  These Hunters were thinking like they were in a wizard city. They hadn't added independent shields to hide their Reigh shadow to their armor. Not like he did. Wizard cities were made with materials reinforced to dull Reigh sense for the sake of privacy. The Knight could sense them but they couldn't sense him. It allowed him to time his attack perfectly; he would catch each pair at their least alert.

  In seconds he was over the wall and scaffold and was behind the first pair of soldiers. The Knight struck quickly. A fist to the back of each soldier transferred webs* of pure fire into their bodies. They burned from the inside out. Before their remains hit the ground he was off and running. Bare feet moved him faster than should have been physically possible. A Knight's warp at work. He moved so fast his thoughts became flashes.

  Rounding the corner, using part of the scaffold as an axle, the Knight struck the next pair, a man and a woman this time. Pure fire again. Faster. Two women. Fire and earth. One burned one broke. Faster. Two men. Fire and lightning. Flesh blacked and peeled. Faster. Last corner. One man one woman. Fire again.

  Less than a minute. The Hunters didn't make a sound as they died. He disintegrated the bodies. A good magic trick left no evidence.

  With the perimeter guards taken out, he turned his attention to the Hunters inside the construction site. The Knight climbed back up the scaffold and jumped from there onto the framework of girders. Carefully, he made his way over the steel beams until he was roughly above the center of Knight Hunter formation.

  Regular wizards may not have been born with the instinct for battle, the way Knights were, but they weren't stupid. The hunters were spread out in groups of five, their commander with the group in the center and the others encircling them. They covered each other from at least two directions.

  Simple strategy. Groups of five were strong enough to engage and pin him down while the others poured on the fire. Between brute force and the law of averages the Hunters would beat him down. Not so good for the unfortunates of the first group he went after. If he didn't kill them friendly fire would. But a loss of five to one was actually about the best you could expect with a Knight. They hoped he'd take the lesser bait of a single scout instead of a whole squad. Simple, but nearly impossible to beat single-handed. Too many directions act once.

  If you had the right set of tricks in your game bag, however, and you were good enough, fast enough, the odds could be improved. To about fifty percent. Life and death decided by the same odds as a coin flip.

  A slow smile that had no place on a fourteen year old boy curled up the Knight's face. A smile of mad hunger, of relish. He may have stumbled at first but his nature could not be denied. Knights lived for moments like this. Every one of them was hopelessly addicted to the high of victory. The more difficult the victory, the greater the high.

  Mind racing to work out his course and calculate his angles of attack, he reached into his pocket and pulled out an MP3. He'd never done this in an actual fight, but if he was supposed to do his greatest dance yet, he couldn't do it without music. Silently, he thanked Kat for teaching him the trick and used a small spark of Reigh to slave the audio-out to his own eardrum.

  Jeans and a tee-shirt wouldn't do for this kind of fight. And the black lion on his chest might give something away he didn't want out there. The New York Comic Con wasn't for another four months but the night felt like a good one to wear a costume. Around him he wove something he'd been working on. A cloak of liv
ing shadow that covered him from head to toe in slowly swirling darkness but for a pair of glowing red eyes. Something to scare the kids with.

  Below, the commander was trying to hail the perimeter guards on her orator. One of her scouts had not re-turned when she gave the order. The commander was beginning to realize that they would not answer. She was getting ready to order her people to pull out. Too late. The Knight had finished crunching the numbers. He was ready.

  Thumbing the MP3 to shuffle, the Knight leapt from the girder. Johnny Cash's weighty gravel spoke into his ear.

  And I heard as it were a noise of thunder.

  Fire bloomed all around the commander and her group. Not hot enough to burn through their shields. Just enough to mess with night vision and mark their position for the other groups. Before any of them could react, he was there, among them, close enough to smell the stink of sudden terror that rose off their bodies. The light haired commander was his target. Take her out and the rest would be slow to change tactics, too slow. While she was still trying to draw her sword or fire a spell to hold him off, the Knight put his hand on the small woman's chest. A single cord of air broke past her shield and expanded in her heart. The mass of muscle and blood