by Ben Stevens
With all the steadfastness of the ocean’s incoming tide, wave after wave of attackers poured into the plaza to break over Lucy’s blades and gun. Despite her best efforts, however, for every four that she killed, at least one would indeed slip by to threaten Maya and Ratt. Part of her was aware of this, yet she was unable to do anything about it. It wasn’t that she preferred to fight the ones that she was fighting; it was that she was overwhelmed by them and any hesitation or alteration in her dance of death would result in her being wounded first, then slowed down, then killed. And dead guardians meant a dead goddess. Even though she was spinning, ducking, and lunging like an entire troupe of acrobats rolled into one, she had spotted, locked on to, and was tracking the location of one Sofia Fernando, and inch by bloody inch, she was getting closer to her. Knowing that she had waded too far out into this hostile sea to turn around and stand by her lady, Lucy and her war-clubs were now banking on the hope that if Sofia were to fall, the New Puebla counterattack would rout.
Sofia stood at the edge of the bloodbath, continuing to bark orders, rally her human sympathizers and otherwise organize the counterattack, which, despite the massive losses at the hands of Lucy and Carbine, was slowly turning the tide. Nearly all of the deadly floodlights had been shot out, and close to two dozen vampires were now at the stage, clawing at a glowing bubble that seemed to be protecting the traitorous Lily Sapphire.
First I need to get through this ninja bitch, then I will have you, you little skank.
Sofia relished the thought of killing Lily slowly and redoubled her efforts at getting past the cyclone of death that was Lucy. She glanced around for her husband. Where is he?
It was not concern for him that she felt, of course, but a desire to kill him herself. He didn’t know it, but she had years ago visited his little secret in the catacombs. He thought he was invincible; that no vampire would dare oppose him after the revelations that came to light when he had her cousin executed. He would be cocky, would not defend himself. He would be quintessentially himself. And then she would show him who was really boss.
She didn’t see him, which meant one of two things: either he had died from the initial blasts of sunlight, his body now ash, or he had escaped and still lived. He was coward enough to hide. Not a real man at all.
As her eyes scanned the plaza, she caught a glimpse of one of her men, a human sentry, running from the eye of the Lucy storm. It would seem that the lady of death had killed a comrade of his, for this man was dragging the top half of another to the edge of the plaza. Sofia watched as the sentry noticed the web of dirty, torn entrails where his friend’s legs should be and screamed. Her eyes narrowed with hate as she watched this sentry of hers release his comrade’s underarms, clutch his face in horror, glance up at the bloody melee, and then turn to run.
Coward!
Sofia bolted from her square of ground and intercepted the fleeing man, coming in from the side, entering his peripheral vision at the same time that her smooth, polished-nail-clad hands clutched him by the throat and lifted him a half-meter off the ground, his legs and feet still trying to run. The sentry’s hands instinctively went to his throat and clawed feebly at Sofia’s fingers. He looked like he wanted to say something, to scream perhaps, or maybe beg for mercy, but not even the sound of escaping air could breach the collapsed tunnel of his throat.
“Mama had a baby and its head popped off.” Sofia’s eyes lit up with wicked glee. Her nostrils flared, and her lips peeled back in a sneer. Her fingers closed into a fist, and the sentry’s head rolled to one side and hung there, still attached by flaps of skin to the body that now drooped from below Sofia’s clenched fist. She glowered at her ragtag army.
“Immortality to those who bring me their heads! Death to all cowards! Death to the families of cowards! I will fucking kill every last one of you! Me cago en todo lo que se menea!”
That seemed to do the trick. The attention of her men lingered on her only long enough to watch her relax her grip on the sack of skin that used to be the man’s neck and then throw his ragdoll body to the ground.
Fully in the grip of bloodlust, Sofia launched herself into the throng, gunning for Lucy instead of standing back and encouraging her men to make the best use of their small-arms fire and spray the painted bitch with a sea of bullets.
Sofia headed straight toward Lucy, wading through the sea of men like a Lily Sapphire concert-goer attempting to rush the front row. The painted cyborg appeared not to notice her, not altering the rhythm of parry, dodge, riposte, slash, tuck, roll, shoot, rinse and repeat that she had going.
Pushing her way forward, Sofia drew closer and closer, circling behind her prey, until she was nearly within arm’s reach.
Ratt fell hard. His vision, along with his knowledge of who and where he was and what he was doing, faded in and out in throbbing waves of darkness. He wanted to cry uncle, to give up, but he found something inside himself—that same something that had gotten him this far, that helped him when his parents fell in the battle of Texhoma.
Ratt may not have been, and never would be, a big, strong warrior-type like Jon, but he was no coward. Tears of pain, rage, and frustration burned down his cheeks, the weight of impotence nearly crushing him. He struggled under the whole sum of it all. The world, the loss, the horror, and tragedy; it was almost too much to bear. Throw in the nerve-splitting pain of first a gunshot wound, then a five-meter drop to a hard floor, and the levee of well-meaning bravado had just plain burst.
Somehow, without even knowing what was going on or who he was, he breathed through it. In breath—ragged, shaky. Out breath—smoother, smoother.
There ya go, bud.
In times like this, in the thick of battle, under intense duress and pain, there comes a phenomenon. To one that has never experienced it before and been able to look back and reflect on it, it may seem like one is losing oneself. Of course, the opposite is true.
In situations like the one that Ratt presently found himself in, one doesn’t lose oneself; one finds oneself. One only loses the identity that one has built up, the identity fettered to the circumstances of one’s life, the experiences, memories, ego.
What one finds in the space left behind in the ego’s swift departure is one’s authentic self. The you who was before you were named.
“Ratt” was gone, driven out by pain and fury. What was there now was the fox caught in the trap’s steel jaws, the seal twisting in the waters just ahead of the orca’s jagged tooth, the cybernetic angel of death who dips into the oncoming blade rather than shy away.
It could be argued by people cut from the same cloth as Lucy that, in times such as this, one is more “at one” with the universe than any other time in one’s life. It could not be denied that one is fully in the present when experiencing this phenomenon. It is the golden rush that athletes speak of, the frenzy of orgasm, the meat-over-mind.
Somewhere in that primordial no-self of now, the boy with no name just breathed and breathed until, slowly, the boy called Ratt returned, opened his eyelids, and saw through the dull blur of tears that he had fallen onto the stage and landed only a few feet from the goddess of song and Strange.
Even from his distorted vantage, he could see that he and Maya were both in trouble. There was no sign of Lucy, and many people were rushing the stage. His loyalty combined with adrenaline made him temporarily forget about the gunshot wound. He rolled over to his front and attempted to push himself into a standing position. He was maybe an inch off the ground when he quickly and painfully became re-acquainted with the shoulder injury as well as met some new friends—Hello, broken leg; nice to meet you, broken hip. Sprained ankle? Come on in! Ratt tried to curse his luck but only managed a muffled “Murghrpoh!” as he collapsed back down onto himself and the floor, his face mashing into the stage, drool and blood spilling out of his mouth and wetting his cheek.
Without breaking her song or even looking at him, Maya sidestepped a few paces to get closer to him, bringing her circle of light w
ith her. Ratt felt the warmth wash over his body. Its comforting energy brought back long-forgotten feelings of safety, as well as subconscious, locked-away memories of being a swaddled babe in his mother’s arms. Unlike the sunlight that poured from the dozens of mini portals that Maya had opened in the stage lights, this light was not harmful to attacking vampires; it was a protective globe that prevented vampire and human, as well as their projectiles, from getting too close to Maya—and now Ratt.
Ratt watched with mounting relief as incoming bullets ricocheted off the sphere. A vampire, screaming with rage, leapt and clawed at the light, only to be repelled and pushed back a few inches. Maya’s Strange was strong, but her face showed strain from the effort. She sang non-stop and gestured with her arms, hands, and fingers, doing some interpretive dance, looking like a child making a cat’s cradle with invisible string.
How much longer can she keep this up?
As he studied the crowds surging and being repelled, he was likewise relieved to see that their “eye in the sky,” Carbine, was focusing his attention on them. Here and there, a vampire or human would explode in a cloud of red mist, followed by the familiar sonic boom a second later. Despite pulling a trigger as fast as he could, getting off a shot every two seconds, it seemed that Carbine’s efforts were a drop in the bucket. The human sympathizers would never get back up, but the vampires’ bodies began to regenerate before all the spray had even landed. Still, enough drops fall into a bucket, and the bucket will eventually overflow.
Ratt willed himself to roll back over onto his back. Above him and through the golden hue of Maya’s Strange circle, he could see the catwalk from which he’d fallen. He remembered now trying to climb down the ladder, the jolt of fire that had shot through his shoulder… but the rest was a blank.
It was then that he remembered his hoverboard.
He raised his wrist to his face and punched a few buttons on his bracelet with a trembling, bloody finger. A few moments passed, the space between command and execution filled by the animal sounds of the vampire mob and Maya’s protection song, its lovely melody tainted by the edge of worry and fatigue in her voice. Then, in the split second before the board began to crack skulls and part the Red Sea, so to speak, Ratt took a deep inhalation and summoned a sound of his own.
“Maya!” he cried to the sky as loud as he could, overcoming the cacophony of scream and song.
Maya heard the boy’s cry and thought perhaps Ratt was calling for her out of fear, or because of his injuries. Then she saw one of the heads belonging to the wall of monsters that clawed at the edges of her sphere dip forward in a sudden and violent motion. Replacing it and coming straight toward her was Ratt’s oversized hoverboard.
A flash lit up her eyes, one part comprehension, two parts relief. Down the hatch went a shot of optimism, followed by a chaser of doubt that scrunched up her brow.
The shield! A double realization that hit as hard as any bullet slammed Maya’s mind. The board couldn’t penetrate the shield, meaning she would have to stop shaping Strange to allow it in, which would also allow the vampires to reach her. She took another two steps closer to Ratt, standing directly over him. She closed her eyes for a heartbeat, wished Lucy and Jon well, then all at once quit the song and swept down to pick Ratt up.
“Come on, Ratt!” she squeaked as she tried to lift him up. The board was on them in a second and promptly lowered itself down to a height appropriate for its pre-programmed operator to easily be able to step onto it, were he standing. The incoming assailants were tripping over themselves to be the first to get at her. They were mad with rage, desperate for revenge for the slain, as well as to garner their queen’s favor. Maya knew that if they reached her and Ratt, their end would come. It would come messy, and it would come bloody, and it would come fast.
Ratt took her by the elbow even as her hands clutched the lapels of his leather jacket, pushing her off the ground with his other arm. His legs came alive underneath him, and he sat up halfway, rolling onto the obedient remote-controlled board.
The board began to ascend vertically the second Ratt was on it. Maya felt the fingernails of the vampire mob scratch down the flesh of her calf and tear at the edges of her clothes as she stepped onto the board and rose into the sky. Suddenly, the board's ascension hesitated. Maya panicked, knowing she and Ratt were seconds away from being torn to shreds like a hunk of steak thrown into a pack of hungry dogs.
Glancing around to see the source of the problem, Maya noticed the arm of the big vampire that had lunged and caught the edge of the board. A chain of other vampires clung to him and were now working together to pull the rising board back down to their level.
Maya lifted her foot and brought it down on the vampire’s fingers as hard as she could. Nothing. She tried again, this time keeping her foot there and twisting it back and forth. Still nothing.
Then, as suddenly as the board had stopped rising, it lurched again and began floating up like a released balloon. Maya felt for and realized that the muscled vampire's hand was still under her foot. Confused, she leaned over the edge of the board to see whether the chain of clutching vampires had broken and instead saw the severed arm hanging from beneath the board, pinned in place only by her foot. That was when the next sonic boom reached her ears.
She first glanced off in the direction of the foothills she knew were there in the darkness, overlooking and cradling the city, then she looked down into the faces and saw nothing but a sea of animals. No, they are below animals; animals kill only when hungry. Don Luis Fernando had tried to paint a picture of civilization here, tried to make her believe his delusion, that he and his kind were simply the ruling class and behaved with civility toward their flock, not even killing, but “milking,” as it were, taking just enough to sustain them, while keeping everyone alive.
Animals? No, not by a long shot.
Maya stared at a sea of gibbering, howling monsters, and shuddered.
If Don Luis Fernando was to sit down with himself and have a serious, nakedly honest chat about the attribute that he would most credit for his survival and rise to power, it would be his ability to identify an opportunity and seize it.
It was much like the opportunity you might seize when waiting for a person to bend down to tie their boot laces before you slip a poisoned dagger into their ribs from behind.
Cunning? Maybe. Daring? Not really. Don Luis was all about survival at any cost. Running to live and fight another day was the norm, but every norm has its exceptions. Capturing and enslaving the Drop-Beastie that had made him had been one of those exceptions. Leaving the relative safety of cover to take out Lucy instead of fleeing was another.
From his sheltered crouch, he watched Lucy leap over him and sprint into the crowds at the edge of the plaza. He realized with growing dread that she had transformed from Lily Sapphire’s assistant and sound booth operator into a whirling dervish of perfect death, becoming, in reality, the Santa Muerta that she so resembled.
More than once, he’d thought about bolting for it, just running, but his fear kept him frozen in place. This hesitation had turned to a glimmer of wicked hope. He’d remained crouched behind the stone retaining wall, hidden from Lily Sapphire and her sunbeams. From there he’d watched as Sofia, his wife—his poor, estranged wife—led the counterattack. He’d watched as the sunbeams blinked out of existence one at a time, like the fading stars of dawn’s approach.
When this is over, I should honor my queen and raise her up… or maybe I’ll kill her in her sleep so that she can’t lord my error in judgment over me…
At one point, he’d dared to turn and peek over the wall to glimpse the stage. He had watched from the shadows as dozens of his vampires rushed the starlet-turned-sorceress, and his curiosity had gotten the better of him.
Good. She is trapped. Soon, then. Don Luis had smiled inwardly, and ducked back down behind cover, satisfied with what he’d seen—a flickering globe of golden light, protecting her and her whelp from the tooth and claw of N
ew Puebla’s justice. He needn’t be a sorcerer himself to know that her shield wouldn’t last for much longer.
Now then… This other one…
She appeared not to notice him, but then again, she appeared not to notice anyone. Her eyes were locked in a thousand-yard stare, and the decorated skull of her face was as devoid of expression and effort as the desert was of rain, only reinforcing that appearance. She looked as one lost in thought, in a daydream, yet no one touched her. She deftly dodged claw, fist, and bullet equally, as if she and her combatants had practiced every day for a year to dazzle judges at some synchronized death-dance competition.
There is no way I’m going anywhere near that. The thought had just crossed his mind when he saw his wife squeeze the head off a fleeing soldier and then proceed to push her way through the troops to get herself a piece of lady Death.
She’ll get herself killed… The prospect of seeing his wife slashed apart frightened him as much as it amused him. The mental image of her bloody head rolling across the ground, coming to a stop and then looking up at him as he watched her life force evaporate like spilled water on the hardpan plain flashed across his mind’s eye. He realized that he was hard.
Yet… There would be no glory or satisfaction. Sofia was a good deal stronger than any man out there, but if she fell to this painted one, then the odds of him following his wife into the forever-sleep increased dramatically. In one of his rare moments of opportune brazenness, Don Luis Fernando saw something in the midst of the chaos that everyone had missed.
He realized what he must do, and leapt from his hiding place into the thick.
