by Brian Fuller
“Beheaded!” the crowd responded.
“Second, no Bestowals may be used. Those who use Bestowals will be . . .”
“Beheaded!”
“And third, the fight only stops when someone is . . .”
“Beheaded!”
“If neither fighter can perform a beheading, the one with the most appendages still attached is the winner. It is the winner’s responsibility to place all loose body parts in the spare-parts pile by that boulder to the east. The severed heads, however, will receive a place of honor on the sticks to my right so they can watch and learn from their betters.” Faramir signaled to three rows of stakes driven into the ground with pointy ends sticking up. “All parts will be returned to their original owners at dawn. Any questions? No? Then take a couple minutes to get ready, and I’ll announce the initial pairings.”
Helo grinned at the theatrics and nudged Aclima, whose bored expression remained unchanged. It looked like good fun—if he could remember Dolorem’s training. The Old Master had trained him using the Impart Bestowal, so Helo felt he could hold his own. But how old and how experienced were these Ash Angels? They all looked like a bunch of adolescents, all save Shujaa, whose somber looks made him seem the lone adult unhappy with a bunch of idiot college freshmen. Helo pulled his katana from its decorative sheath and let loose with a couple of practice swings. This had to be the weirdest thing he had ever done.
Goliath walked over twirling a katana not unlike his in style but with considerably more dings along its blade. “You two are probably thinking this is the weirdest thing you’ve ever done,” she said.
“You’re good,” Helo said of her apparent powers of divination. Aclima nodded in agreement.
“Yes, I am, as you’re about to find out,” Goliath stated matter-of-factly. “But if you think this is weird, wait until you try Slaughterball. Now that’s a good time.”
“Do I dare ask what Slaughterball is?” Aclima said.
Goliath rested her katana on her shoulder. “It’s soccer but with baseball bats and Bestowals. Great way to let off a little steam.”
The mic squealed, and Faramir’s voice echoed out into the desert. “And to begin tonight’s festivities, it looks like we have Helo versus Goliath!”
“What a totally random coincidence,” Goliath said with a sly grin. “Let’s see what you got, Helo.”
She sauntered off with a confident strut, and Helo turned to Aclima. “Any advice?”
“Be a graceful loser,” she said.
“Thanks,” Helo returned. He’d do better than Aclima thought he would just to wipe the know-it-all smirk off her face.
He stepped into the ring. The Ash Angels gathered around the circle outlined by small rocks, their auras creating a makeshift halo around the place of battle, a halo broken in one spot by Aclima.
Goliath took a relaxed stance with her game face on, sword pointed toward the ground. While Ash Angels didn’t need to warm up or stretch, Helo did anyway out of a habit acquired during his football days. Time to give sword fighting half naked in the desert a shot.
“All right, folks,” Faramir said. “Let’s give it up for Helo the Graveyard Cowboy and Tiny Goliath!”
“Hooah!” those in the circle chanted.
Goliath’s sword popped up, but she turned her head toward Faramir. “Don’t call me tiny!”
Then she sprang.
The first two wicked cuts came fast, first from the left and then the right, and Helo shuffled backward, the force of the blows sending a shiver down his arm as he intercepted them. Then she hammered down hard with an overhand strike, blade flashing in the light. No sooner had he intercepted it than she surged forward with a hard thrusting kick to his midsection.
He stumbled back again, mere inches from the edge of the circle. He had to get on offense, but she was pressing again, lunging, blade outstretched. He knocked it aside, but she used the momentum from his deflection to bring her blade around with a backhanded swing.
Though dinged, the blade was sharp. It passed through his neck with little resistance. The world wobbled and spun as his head toppled and hit the ground, rolling until his nose kept it from going any farther. From the crowd rose laughter and a collective “Oooh!”—which almost covered up the sound of his body thudding to the dirt.
“There you have it,” Faramir crowed. “Helo the Cowboy got no game! That’s probably the shortest fight we’ve ever had. Now, if someone could help Tiny Goliath move Helo’s body to the spare-parts pile and add his head to the gallery.”
Helo knew it was all in good fun, but the humiliation burned him anyway. Why couldn’t he have scored at least one hit, or even gone on offense at all? Sure, Goliath had a few decades on him, but for how long had she used the sword?
Somewhere in the confused shuffle of being carted out of the ring, Aclima ended up with his head. She made her way to the pointed stakes forming the grisly gallery and affixed his head to the center-most one.
She leaned down so her eyes were level with his. “We’re going to train. They will fear you by the time I’m done. Oh, and I’m going to use your sword instead of this mangled long sword. I hope that is okay.”
Helo tried to mouth his gratitude, but his mouth wouldn’t work right.
“And next on the fight list,” Faramir’s voice boomed, “we’ll have our other—and more interesting—newbie. Can six thousand years as a Dread make a girl queen of the ring, or will her head hit the dirt before we can count to ten? I give you the Bride of Satan, the Dread that ain’t red, the girl as old as the world, Aclima! And her opponent, thirteen-time Slice-and-Dice winner, Spike!”
From his position on the Gallery stake, Helo could just glimpse Aclima’s opponent heading into the ring. He looked like someone from a heavyweight boxing division, wide, tall, and all muscle. As his name suggested, his hair was gelled into spikes all over his skull. He gripped a claymore with two meaty hands, the long blade catching the lantern light as he whirled it overhead.
Aclima stood with her feet slightly apart, arm across her body, holding the sword downward at her waist as if it were in a sheath. She didn’t move, her statuesque body still and her gaze pegged unblinkingly on her opponent. She almost seemed meditative.
“All right, folks,” Faramir said. “Let’s give it up for Aclima and Spike!”
“Hooah!” rang out into the desert, and then silence fell.
Helo figured Spike wasn’t one to play defense, and he didn’t disappoint. He surged forward with a long arcing swing. As if she had done it a thousand times, Aclima stepped forward and lashed her katana out from her hip in a blur, the sword streaking with such speed it was like lightning in the night. In a fraction of a second, Spike’s head fell from his body, and his body and the claymore hit the ground with it. Aclima had returned to her original stance almost as if she had never left it.
Dead silence from the crowd.
And in that silence, a phone rang, the ringtone Elvis’s “Devil in Disguise.”
“That’s mine,” Goliath said. “One sec.”
“Well,” Faramir said, finally finding his voice. “That was without a doubt the shortest match in Slice-and-Dice history. The Dread that ain’t red does got game.”
Applause broke out, and Aclima bowed, exiting the ring after collecting Spike’s head, holding it by one of the long clumps of hair that had been smashed by the impact with the ground. She walked toward Helo, and despite all her griping about the stupidity of the event, her eyes glowed a little brighter.
“I hope you were taking notes, Helo,” she said with a grin after affixing Spike’s head to a stake. “I just showed you how it’s done.”
The applause and commentary died down, and Faramir’s voice rose into the night. “And now we—”
“Hold up!” Goliath said. “I need Sicarius Nox team members right now. We’ve got the green light to go wheels up in two hours. Faramir, heal Helo. It’s time to burn some Dreads.”
Chapter 7
Convoy
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Helo had parked the borrowed police car next to one of three yellow road signs with left-facing chevrons indicating the two-lane road curved ahead. Missouri Route 19 passed through Mark Twain National Forest, winding up and around gentle hills packed with trees sporting the tender, vivid-green leaves of spring. As had been the Dreads’ pattern, the three-truck convoy they’d been tracking had chosen to travel southward on this back-country road instead of Interstate 55 to the east. They were clearly trying to keep the truck out of sight from normals and Ash Angels alike.
The driver-side window of the police cruiser was down, and Helo rested his forearm on the steering wheel, listening to the late-morning buzz of insects, birds, and Faramir’s quad-copter drone hovering above the tree line. The police uniform Helo wore had been dragged out of a Gabriel supply facility in St. Louis, a friendly courier delivering it only hours ago via motorcycle. It even had a utility belt and radio, though the radio didn’t work.
“We should see them anytime,” Faramir reported.
He’d said something to that effect three times now. Faramir, Goliath, and their telltale auras were concealed in the dense thickets of trees lining both sides of the road. Shujaa was a half mile ahead waiting to dump the propane truck on its side with a surge of Strength, and Aclima was back about a mile in an SUV, ready to block the road once things got into full swing. Her swift beheading of Spike had earned her respect from Shujaa and Goliath, though Faramir still kept her at the other end of a suspicious glare.
Aclima had helped Helo morph into his current persona: buzzed hair (easy), a nice military mustache (harder), and a gut that suggested he had only slightly given in to the donut-shop routine (hardest). Beyond that, he’d tried to implement some of Dolorem’s detail drills and to add random freckles, moles, and scars. Helo checked his look in the rearview mirror. With the addition of a wide-brimmed trooper hat and aviator glasses, he figured he looked quite intimidating, though Aclima’s mirthful eyes made him wonder if his disguise was a bit over the top.
“There they are!” Faramir announced. “Three miles out. No normals between them and us.”
“It’s a go, Helo,” Goliath said. “Block the road and deploy flares. Shujaa, dump the propane truck and take up your sniper position. Let’s keep this sharp, people. We do this right, we’re out of here before anyone knows what happened. Faramir, get the drone down. We don’t want them to see it.”
“Duh. That’s why I already landed it,” Faramir said.
After angling the police car across the road and flipping on the red and blue lights, Helo opened a toolbox on the passenger-side seat and pulled out three road flares. Also inside was a sanctified bowie knife, glowing with an angelic aura, that would destroy any Sheid it cut. For now it would stay in the toolbox; if the Dreads even spotted the aura, the gig would be up.
Helo closed the toolbox and stepped out into the sunshine of a clear spring day. It was perfect for Sheid killing as long as they could keep it out of the shadowy boles to either side of the road. He’d only killed a Sheid once and had done it underwater using a piece of rebar sanctified by the death of his trainer, Cassandra. He wished she were here. While her personal life always dragged her down, when she was in the field and working, there wasn’t a more capable Ash Angel.
A horrible clang down the road scared the birds out of the trees, signaling that Shujaa had upended the propane truck onto the asphalt. Helo jogged down the road, and by the time he had deployed the flares, he could hear the diesel engines powering toward him on the other side of a low hill. It was time to remember his Gabriel training and start acting like a normal person. Breathe. Itch. Sweat.
For a moment he stood in the middle of the road, ready to flag them down, but when he realized it might look like he was waiting for them, he headed back to the patrol car and acted like he was on his radio, deep in conversation with a dispatcher.
Aclima’s voice broke in over his earpiece. “They just passed. There are Dreads driving, but I don’t think there’s a Sheid in the truck.”
“No Sheid?” Goliath said. “But Ash Angels have seen the Vexus.”
“There’s Vexus in there, a lot of it,” Aclima explained. “But I don’t think it’s a Sheid. It feels wrong.”
“And she should know,” Faramir added. “Maybe she’ll be useful after all.”
Dread Loremasters could gather Vexus—the dark energy from atrocity sites. It was used to create Shedim and could be stored as Helo had witnessed aboard the Tempest. “Do we abort to get more info?” Helo asked.
“No,” Goliath and Shujaa said in unison.
“I make the calls, Shujaa,” Goliath said. “Stick with the plan. Let’s get those trucks. Shujaa, Faramir, get to your sniper positions and get ready.”
The engine sounds got louder. A few moments later, the trucks rose ponderously over the hill and started braking. Helo walked forward, waving his arms, the Dreads’ red auras visible through the windshields. Like a tainted fog, Vexus swirled around the trailer of the middle truck, but he didn’t have the sensitivity of Aclima to tell whether it was a Sheid or not. If not a Sheid, then what?
Chiding himself for staring at the middle trailer, he walked toward the trucks as they squealed to a stop. Helo pulled the fake radio off his shoulder and spoke into it, the comm piece in his ear broadcasting to his team.
“The ducks are in a row,” he said.
“Execute,” Goliath ordered.
Three shots, almost in unison, rang out. The driver-side window of the first truck was down, and the bullet slammed into the Dread’s head, blasting it to pieces inside the truck, the bullet taking out the passenger-side window, too. Glass shards tinkled onto the pavement.
“Truck one is clear,” Goliath said.
“Truck two is clear,” Shujaa followed.
“Um,” Faramir broke in tentatively, “three is hit, but I think the shot went low. Can’t confirm clear. I don’t have eyes on anymore.”
“On it,” Helo said, pulling his .45 service pistol and sprinting down the line of trucks.
“That’s twenty hours on the practice range for you, Faramir,” Goliath said. “Careful, Helo. We’re breaking cover now. Shujaa, stay up here on overwatch.”
Helo pressed past the second truck, raising his weapon to the windshield of the third, where he could still see a slight aura edging up over the dash. Was the Dread keeping low, or was it down? The third truck was still moving, inching forward, fifteen feet from ramming into the second trailer and its Vexus cloud. If a Sheid were in there, it would no doubt come for them any moment, and his sanctified weapon was back at the car.
“Goliath, grab the sanctified weapon on your way down,” Helo yelled over comms.
The muttering of a voice inside the cab in front of him rose above the din of the throaty engine, though Helo couldn’t make out the words. Grabbing the mirror, he planted his foot on the step beneath the door and brought his gun to bear. The Dread was slumped over, left arm nearly detached, with a gaping hole on the left side of his leather jacket. He was a dark-haired Latino, his brown face pocked-marked and long hair tied back in a ponytail.
Before Helo could fire, the Dread snapped up so fast it was a blur. The Dread clamped its hand around the gun barrel and pushed it aside. Flaring his Strength, Helo yanked the gun away, but before he could retrain it on the Dread, a shot rang out from behind him and the Dread’s face exploded.
“Truck three and Faramir’s mess are cleared,” Shujaa announced.
The truck rolled toward the trailer in front of it. Five feet. Four feet. Helo dove in through the broken window, yanking the red-and-yellow parking-brake knobs on the dash. With a whine and a hiss of air, the truck stopped one foot from the trailer doors. The Dread’s phone was on the console, and Helo snatched it before pulling himself out the window.
“You good?” Goliath asked, jogging up to him from the side of the road with a Big Blessed Shotgun in her arms.
“Yeah,” Helo answered. “The Dread called someone,
though.”
“Great. Hey, Faramir,” Goliath said as he emerged from the woods, “what happened to your shot?”
Faramir shrugged, the tassels of his knit hat swinging. “Glass made the shot go low.”
“Uh-huh,” Goliath said, face skeptical.
Faramir set the backpack he’d been carrying on the ground. “I got the Stingers.”
Goliath glanced up at the middle truck. “Aclima must be right. If a Sheid were in there, it would be all over us by now. Let’s burn these Dreads fast and take a look. I want to be out of here in five. I didn’t get the knife, Helo. Burn the Dread in the first truck, get the sanctified knife, and move the car. Shujaa, keep your weapon trained on the second truck.”
Faramir handed Helo a Stinger, one of the large metallic syringes he remembered well from his days in the Gabriels. The instructions were simple: insert into the Dread’s chest cavity, push the plunger down, and in two seconds a micro detonator set off the liquid explosive and incinerated the Dread’s heart. All that was left was a pile of dirt and clothes.
Helo sprinted past the idling trucks and used the Stinger on the Dread in the lead truck, grateful when the gore splattered all over the cabin turned to dust. The pile of dirt and clothes would have to wait for a truck stop and a vacuum. After a quick jog to the squad car, he jumped inside and pulled it off the road as far as he could. From the toolbox he retrieved the glowing knife, and from the trunk his Big Blessed Shotgun. Geared up, he returned to find Goliath and Faramir by the trailer of the second truck, having swapped their sniper rifles for the same BBS he carried.
“All right, Shujaa,” Goliath said. “Break position and return the propane truck to upright. Then get over here double-quick.”
Helo shoved the sanctified knife in his belt and loaded his shotgun, noting the “AF” printed on the side of the shotgun shells.
“What’s the AF?” Helo asked as he pressed the shells into the chamber.
