by Steve McHugh
“Fucking little—” he started as I reached through the bars and held the back of his head in place, pushing his face into the bars.
“The key, where is it?”
“Fuck you.”
I removed one my hands from the back of his head and created a blade of fire. He tried to escape, but tendrils of hardened air magic kept him in place. “Last chance,” I told him and pushed the tip of the blade into his ribs.
He screamed in pain as the smell of cooked flesh filled the cage. A second later the keys had fallen out of his pocket and into my hand. Another blast of air against his chest, sending him tumbling away and giving me time to unlock the cage.
I stepped out and took a second to stretch, while the Brute tried to get back to his feet.
“I let you hold me down because Simon threatened to kill people if I fought back. Well, Simon isn’t here now.” I kicked him in the ribs hard enough to feel them break. The Brute rolled onto his back and yelled out. I grabbed his leg and dragged him over to Fern, kicking him in the ribs twice on the way when he tried to struggle.
After unlocking Fern’s cage, I took hold of the Brute’s head and pulled it up, causing him to wince. “You’re going to answer my questions and you’re going to say sorry to the girl here. How many upstairs?”
I didn’t have long to wait at all.
“Twelve—me, my brother, Simon, five more guys and four women. And they’re going to tear you in—”
I smashed his head against the cage.
“Don’t try to make yourself sound big, it’ll end badly. What are you doing here?”
He smiled at Fern. “Killing bitches.”
I cracked his skull again. “Why are you doing this?”
The Brute spat blood onto the floor, his nose was pretty badly broken and his lip was pissing blood. “Because it’s fun, because Simon wants us to. Because we are The Vanguard.”
I was surprised enough by the Brute’s words, that I took a step back, giving Fern enough distance to grab the keys from the lock of the cage and plunge them into the Brute’s neck. She stabbed him over and over, maybe a half dozen times before I managed to grab her and pull her away without hurting her. I didn’t care how hurt he was. He’d deserved it.
By the time Fern was off him, she was covered in his blood and shaking. I tossed the keys to Glen and told him to unlock everyone else, while I went to see to the Brute, who was trying to stem the flow of blood that was squirting from the hole in his throat.
“Normally I’d end it quickly for you,” I told him softly. “But you got off lucky. So, you can bleed to death on the floor here, silently.”
He tried to say something, but no words left his mouth.
“Your brother isn’t going to be as lucky. I’ll be killing him myself.” I left him to die as I helped Glen unlock the other cages.
Bill stretched as he was freed and glanced over at the now dead Brute. “He deserved worse,” he told Fern as she wouldn’t stop staring at the body.
She nodded, but remained transfixed.
“Stay here until I come get you,” I said to Glen. “No one comes out of this cellar. No one tries to escape. When we get up there people are going to get hurt, if anyone of you are there I can’t guarantee your safety.”
“They took two girls up there earlier,” he said. “Before you got dragged in here, if you find them, help them. Please.”
I told him I would and set off up the stairs. When I reached the top I placed a hand on the cold, wooden door and allowed my air magic to reach out into the house beyond. It worked a bit like sonar, my air magic moving invisibly sending back a ping of feedback when it found something alive.
“There’s one to the right of the door, about ten feet down,” I told Bill.
“I may be unarmed, but I’m not exactly defenseless.”
“They’re all yours.”
I turned the handle and opened the door slowly. The man was standing by the front door, having a cigarette. His back was toward us as we crept out of the cellar, and I moved aside, allowing Bill to move slowly toward him. When he was just a few feet behind, he moved with deadly force, grabbing the man around the neck and dragging him to the ground with a crunch as his neck snapped. He dragged the dead body over to a small utility room, which once opened showed to be full of coats, assorted umbrellas, and shoes. Bill pushed the body inside, closing the door behind him.
“I’m going to clear out the rear of the house,” I told Bill. “Stay guard here, I won’t be long.”
Bill had taken a long silver dagger from the dead body and was weighing it in his hand as he nodded.
I left him alone and crept toward the rear of the building, passed a large empty room and set of stairs. I heard grunts and groans of pain upstairs, but I forced myself to keep going. Whoever was up there was going to have to hold out for just a few more minutes.
As I moved closer to the kitchen, I overheard two men speaking and moved into the shadows next to a large chest of drawers, giving me a good view of the occupants. The first man was short, stocky, with a shaved head and several tattoos along the back of his neck. He was digging the point of a dagger into the softwood around the doorframe. His friend was well over six-feet tall, but was just as broad as his smaller comrade. His arms were bare, except for a few scars that looked a lot like bullet holes. He was sat at a kitchen table a few feet away from his friend.
“Who’s that new guy? The one Simon wants left alone?” the shorter man asked as I moved toward them.
“No idea, but he’s freaking out about it. I think the government has finally sent someone to deal with us.”
“Then why aren’t we dealing with him first? Sending those fucks a message.”
The larger man sighed; clearly he’d heard his friend’s words before. “Because we’re not finished here yet. And because we don’t want a long drawn out battle with the Feds.”
“So, what about that cop? Moon?”
“Well that little piggy is going on a spit. Son-of-a-bitch once took me in for assault.”
“Who’d you hit?”
“Some bitch who didn’t know when she was allowed to open her mouth.”
“Never, am I right?”
Both men laughed as I entered the kitchen and silently made my way toward them. The larger man was still laughing when I slit his throat with a blade of fire. He made a bubbling noise as he died, which caught the attention of his shorter friend, who died a second later as the same dagger severed his spine.
“What the fuck?” a woman shouted as she entered the kitchen from the opposite side. She turned to shout once more, but I threw the stocky man’s dagger at her. The blade entered her skull and killed her before she’d hit the linoleum floor.
I made a circuit of the remaining rooms, but found no one else until I reached Bill. “Three down,” I told Bill. “The exit’s free now, take everyone from downstairs out through the kitchen. I’ll go deal with whoever is up there.”
“You need a hand?”
“Get them outside first, take them to the tree line. Then go get Galahad. Call a bar in Portland, the Mill. They’ll sort it out.”
“Be careful,” he said, and within a few seconds I was watching him lead a half dozen people safety out of the house.
When I was certain enough time had passed for them to get away, I walked toward the staircase. The noises I’d heard from before had ended, and I really hoped that whoever they had up there was still alive.
I crept slowly up the staircase and peered through the wooden banister onto the empty landing above. Once at the top of the stairs, I opened the nearest door, but although it held several single beds, it was devoid of life. I re-closed the door and heard muffled voices coming from the far right of the floor.
It took me a few minutes as I continued to open every door I came to in an effort to not be surprised by a
ny would-be attackers. As I got closer to the voices, I made out a woman laughing. I stopped at the door for the briefest of moments before bursting through in one motion. The explosion of sound as the door slammed open startled the two women inside. They each held a carved dagger and straddled the bodies of a young man and woman, both tied to old wooden chairs, each drenched with blood.
The first woman never even moved before a torrent of air slammed into her and flung her through the window at the rear of the room, her screams echoing in the night as she fell the thirty feet to a soft thud and then silence. The second woman flung her dagger at me, which I easily avoided and then set her legs on fire before she could try to get away through a nearby door. She screamed in pain, rolling around trying to put out the magical flames as they leapt onto her arms with seemingly a mind of their own.
I left her to scream as I checked the man and woman tied to a chair and found them both dead. Their tops had been torn off, exposing the three tattoos on their backs, one on each shoulder and one on the base of their necks. They had dozens of knife wounds, and both had been dead for a few hours. The voices I’d heard earlier hadn’t belonged to either of them.
I clicked my fingers and the fire vanished, leaving the murderess moaning in pain.
“Why?” I asked her.
“Fun,” she said and smiled through the pain.
I grabbed her by her hair and dragged her toward the unbroken window. “Where’s Simon?”
“No idea. He lets us enjoy ourselves. He doesn’t own us.”
I glanced outside at the lawn below, to the body of her friend who was lying at an impossible angle. “You may live from this high up, but it wouldn’t be a good life. Why did your brute of a friend say you were the Vanguard?”
She followed my gaze, her eyes wide open at the sight of her friend. “Because we are Vanguard. We will rid the world of the lesser souls.”
“Lesser souls?”
“Anyone we deem to be beneath us. Simon picks them and once he’s done questioning them, he leave their punishment to us.”
“You’re human, all of you. In the eyes of any true Vanguard, you’d be the lesser species.”
She appeared confused for a second. “I don’t understand. We are the true Vanguard.”
I shook my head. “No, you’re psychotic cannon-fodder.”
The gunshot exploded inside the room as bullets came pouring through the nearest wall. One of the bullets hit the woman in the temple, spinning her to the ground as I managed to throw myself behind the two deceased victims.
Once the shooter had finished, there were well over a dozen bullet holes in the wall and the door that led to the hallway. The door opened slowly, showing the framed image of Brute Two in the gap, an uzi in one hand.
A quick blast of air threw his gun arm up toward the ceiling, something he couldn’t do anything about in time to stop me barreling into him and out into the hallway. His gun skittered away into the room as I landed blow after blow on his face and chest using my fists and forearms to remove any fight that might have been in him. When finished, his features were a bloody mess and he was wheezing badly.
“Where’s Simon?” I asked.
“Out,” he said and started to cough up blood onto the floor.
I dragged him to his feet and marched him down the corridor, searching the remaining rooms on the floor until I found another woman. I pushed the brute onto the floor and checked on her. She’d been tied to a bed with cable-ties, which had cut into her wrists and ankles, drawing blood. I checked her pulse, but there was nothing there. She’d died while I was downstairs helping everyone escape. One more life lost so that others could live. Unfortunately for the brute, that didn’t make me feel any better.
I dragged the injured murderer out into the hallway once more and toward the large window that looked out over the front of the house. He struggled a few times, but it’s amazing what a well-aimed punch to the kidneys will do to get someone to co-operate.
I smashed the back of his head against the window, leaving a bloody print in the now spider-webbed glass.
“Where’s the rest of your people?” I demanded.
“They’ll find you. My brother—”
“Your brother has a large hole in his neck where his jugular used to be, he probably won’t be doing much.”
“Bastard!” he reared up at me, gaining a kick to his knee, which popped, and a right-hook to his jaw.
I glanced out of the window and saw Simon walking toward the house. I dragged Brute Two to his feet and held him steady. “There’s good news and bad. Good news, you won’t be going to jail.”
“And bad?”
“This is going to hurt like a fucking son-of-a-bitch.” I kept hold of him as I took a few steps back and then ran at the window, using the Brute’s own body to drive through the glass. I kept hold of him until we were free of the house and then I released him to fall alone, using my air magic to drop softly to the ground as the Brute landed with a sickening crunch on the porch behind me.
I took a step toward Simon, with what I was sure a murderous glint in my eyes, but he dropped to his knees, placed his hands on his head and said, “I surrender.”
It wasn’t enough and I took another step, but before I could do more, Galahad and his forces exploded out from the trees around us, screaming orders at Simon to lie down.
“You okay?” Galahad asked.
I had an urge to wipe the grin from Simon’s face, but pushed it aside. “There are a lot of scared people in the trees behind here. Most of them will need a doctor.”
“I’ll ensure it’s done. You did good work here.”
“How’d you get here so quickly?”
Galahad shook his head. “Rean found me. He knew who to contact in town.”
“Rean?” I didn’t even bother trying to hide my surprise. “He betrayed us to Simon. He wanted to save his family and clan.”
“Well, he must have had a change of heart,” he said dismissively.
One of Galahad’s men—a lanky, grizzled man with a scruffy beard—marched Simon over toward us, forcing him to his knees before Galahad.
“I only kneel to my king,” Simon said.
Galahad kicked him in the face, sending him sprawling to the ground. “Get him to the jail, I want around-the-clock guard. And I want runes on the cell, if this piece of shit touches anything resembling metal, I want his fucking arms to catch fire.”
“I want to talk to him,” I said.
“Yeah, not a problem.”
I thanked my old friend and went off to find Bill and the survivors, all the while wondering why, for a tiny fraction of a second, I thought I saw concern on Galahad’s face when I asked to speak to his prisoner.
CHAPTER 15
Simon Olson was a fairly unassuming man. It was a decision I came to while watching Galahad’s forces march him through the police station to his little cell at the far end of the row of four. The other cells were empty, although I doubted Simon would have cared one way or the other. Aside from his bland exterior, there was something not right about him. It coiled under his skin, like a great white shark just under the surface of glassy water. Danger just waiting to be released to devastating effect. He looked at people in two ways. Either as someone who was beneath him, or as prey. I apparently fell into the second category. Lucky me.
“Do you think these bars will keep you safe?” he asked me once Galahad’s people left us alone. Simon had immediately laid down on the single bed, trying to look as disinterested in his current predicament as possible.
I tapped one of the steel bars with my finger. It made a satisfying noise. “Pretty much. There are runes drawn all over these bars, you could rub them off, but doing so would make it go boom if you do it in the wrong order. That will turn you into a paste.”
“You too.”
“Nope, the focus
of the blast is directed toward you. Me, I’ll just get a bit of a jolt and try to avoid flying parts of psychopath.”
Simon’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a smug little prick, aren’t you?”
“Well I’m not in jail. So, yes, yes I am.”
“Where do you think Galahad is going to put me? He’ll take me to Shadow Falls and put me far away from any living thing.”
“I don’t give a shit if he puts you in a Siberian Gulag. In fact if I had my way, I’d probably send half of you to one place and half somewhere else. Just to make my point.”
“This isn’t over.”
“Oh really? Are some of your human friends running around the place? What are they going to do?”
“You’ll see. I don’t play the short game.”
“Good for you. Do you play the dodge-the-large-man-who-wants-to-make-you-his-bitch game? Because on the off chance that Galahad keeps you in a human jail, you’re gonna have to get really good at it. A whole life of sweaty man love and sorcerer’s bands. Never to use your alchemy. That would be a very long life for you, I think.”
Simon’s eyes narrowed again. “Why are you here?”
“Why kill those people? What did you get out of it apart from just the act of murder?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“You’re not an idiot, you tortured those people and removed parts of them. I’m guessing tattoos. So, why the interest in people’s ink?”
“I like collecting tattoos. They’re pretty.”
“That’s an awful lot of work just to get some tattoos. And why have those fucking idiots you were working with think they’re Vanguard? Because we both know they’re about as far removed from Vanguard as you are from President of Algeria.”
“What do you know about Vanguard?”
“Well, I know they’re never human. That they want to destroy Shadow Falls and anyone else who has left Avalon and that they’re full of insane idiots. So I guess you got the last one right.”
“What makes you think I want to tell you anything?”
