by Doug Burbey
Declan recognized the Blood War's rage returning to his mind and body. The Demon Killer, DK, side of him was now in charge again. It had been years since he had to deal with the fact that the blood rains and magic had soaked him to his core, changing his body chemistry. Corrupting him. It had been so long since the rage had pushed forward inside of him that he wasn't prepared to temper it. His ability to think narrowed and pushed to the side by his need to fight and destroy. Declan learned to control it towards the end of the war but it always came with a cost. He had almost nothing left to pay that cost with anymore but it had begun to take over now and any cost to pay was now just an afterthought. Killing the threat was all he needed now.
DK could almost feel the soldiers in front of him now. His unnaturally charged senses guided him forward.
One-hundred meters to the front. Two targets drifting at an angle away from me back towards the west. That's not right. Are they moving away from the house? I'll close on them in just a few seconds for the kill. These amateurs move like drunk elephants. Easy. They will die nice and easy. Why are they so loud? This is wrong. This definitely is not right. I'll stand in their blood and they will feed my power. Soldiers don't make stupid mistakes like this. Why would they send amateurs after me? Surely they know what I lived through.
He noticed movement in the trees in front of him. A baring of teeth cracked his face as he proceeded to walk slowly but deliberately towards the shifting shadows through the trees. He approached the trailing soldier and closed to about fifty meters. The shifting light and density of the trees made it difficult to get a clean shot. He needed to be able to sight both soldiers nearly simultaneously before he fired his first round, guaranteeing they would not be able to return fire on him. Twenty-five meters in front of him now as his target moved clumsily and noisily away from him. DK no longer cared why they were moving like rank amateurs.
If you come here to kill me, you better bring your A game.
At twenty meters behind his targets, he saw a break in the trees and dropped to one knee then centered his rifle on the back of the first soldier. His senses totally keyed. He sighted down the barrel and caught a glimpse of color through his scope.
What the hell? Orange?
A stripe of orange wrapped around the soldier's hat and another was placed vertically down the back of his jacket. Declan's brain screamed a mental warning. But his finger tightened around the trigger about to release the first round. He shifted his eyes upwards to ensure his second target was positioned for his next shot.
More orange, what the hell?
DK noticed both of the soldiers had a blazing orange stripe on both their hats and jackets. The instant recognition of the standard hunter’s orange caused a momentary pause on his trigger finger. His mind screaming to destroy the threat immediately.
Kill them now! Clean shot!
A primal instinct to destroy the threat now drove his mind. Declan struggled to resist it. He tried to retain control over his subconscious actions. Declan forced his body to freeze momentarily. Struggling to clear his mind, the first soldier must have heard him. DK could see him turning in his direction. He fought against the powerful desire to pull the trigger on his target.
The target is right in front of me. Now or never.
"Wait! Please, God! Don't shoot!" The first soldier yelled with desperation in his voice. As the second soldier Declan had under his sight turned, there was confusion clearly on the face of the very young boy in front of him. Declan could see now that the second soldier was merely a child. Confusion clouded his judgment as he fought with his rage, uncertain whether or not he was facing a threat.
"Sir! Please, please, don't!" The tall soldier pleaded.
"What?" Declan weakly responded, not dropping the barrel still pointed directly at the child.
Jesus Christ, these two are just deer hunters. A man and a boy. Not soldiers at all. What the hell am I doing?
The man raised both his hands above his head and held them there. "Jeremy, raise your hands now – real, real slow. It'll be okay." The man addressed his son directly, staring straight at Declan.
"Really sir, we're just a little lost. We were tracking a deer we shot across the ridgeline. We don't mean any harm, I swear."
DK tried forcing himself to lower his weapon, barely moving an inch as he struggled against the rage now screaming into his mind to kill the threat. The rage demanded that he kill the threat and survive.
These two are not a threat.
Declan tried to pull his finger off the trigger struggling against himself. Knowing what he had to do before he killed this child, he focused his energy deep into his core, down into a part of his body that old religious shamans had once called a person's chi. It is the spot within his own mind and body that held a personal energy. DK never knew he had such a force in him until the war. He forced this energy out of his core and directed it to flood into the rest of his body and mind. He forced it to calm and clear his thinking. He felt this energy reserve flow through himself. It flowed, bringing clarity back into his mind. Control over his body seeped back. His finger came off the trigger as he looked again with the fog of the rage lifting and he could see without a doubt there was no threat in front of him. Just a father and a son wearing normal commercial hunting camouflage and tracking a wounded deer through the woods.
No, not a threat at all. There was no diversion or incoming assault team. I was about to murder a child and his father.
Declan looked at the father and lowered his weapon. With his voice barely above a whisper, "Head due west and you will be back towards the state park and the road. Leave now."
He sat on the ground with his back against a tree and watched the father and son quickly move to the west away from him and back towards the state hunting areas and most likely their waiting car. His body and senses returned to normal. A tired sense of mental exertion settled in bringing with it the familiarity of old post battlefield thoughts and sometimes regrets. It had been a long time since he had to repress his rage by burning his personal core energy. Always it carried at cost. The cost was that he had to replenish his core energy or the next time the rage would overtake his mind. He would be powerless to shut it down.
I can't keep doing this. The war always offered me opportunities to replenish myself after fighting back the rage. Hell, I was drenched in blood, power I had in ready supply. But I can't do that anymore. How much longer can I go on like this before I do actually kill someone else because I can't control myself?
Chapter 5 - When Dealing with Mages
Shane watched the demon twitch as blood flowed out of its body into his personal harvester.
Mostly full. I can probably get one more before the battery gets too low.
With expert motions, he swapped out an empty container for the full one as the demon quit moving. It took him a bit, but it was a strong Ley crossing which made it possible for him to summon demons. Fifteen minutes later he reopened the portal, and sure enough, a ring two came racing in, obviously waiting for him.
Shane remembered the monotone voice of the Special Skills Attack Unit training officer giving the intelligence briefing rang clear in his mind though it seemed a lifetime ago.
“Soldier demon. Ring two demon realm categorization. Eight-foot humanoid with fleshy tendrils draping from the mouth. Quantity per Horde, in the thousands. These lobster squid looking bastards are the shock troops for the Horde's bulk forces ripping us to shreds. Lower face area is vulnerable to ballistic weapons. That's your best shot on one of these things. Approximately six hundred pounds. Spined and segmented, hardened, insectoid-like front and backplates. Blades can slide between segments, or at joints but projectiles should be focused on jointed segment areas such as shoulders, neck or hips. Three fingers on each hand tipped with four-inch claws. Avoid that three-foot arm reach. It's a deadly strike from those claws. They've been seen ripping open half inch steel armor plates. Feet have four toes each, thick and wide spread, allowing for excellent s
tability. Don't try to knock one over unless you are driving a truck at it. Semi-intelligent by human standards. Seen operating some of the simpler demonic machinery. Has not been witnessed operating human machinery. Seldom uses melee weapons, preference appears to be claws. In horde formations, they are not currently known to use explosives or magic. The Soldier Leaders have been known to be adorned with forms of paint like colorations and show some tactical situational understanding. Leaders are believed to command Horde subunits at a ratio estimated at one per one thousand subordinate soldier demons. There have been some rumors of Leader Soldiers using low-level magic. This is unconfirmed as of yet. It is suspected that if this rumor is, in fact, true then it's likely from the use of talismans or demon magic hybrid equipment. Not from any natural ability of a demon Soldier or Soldier Leader, itself.”
The advice from the long dead major rattled around his brain almost like a soundtrack to his current situation, timeless and underlying his movements.
SSAU didn’t know what I know now.
With an almost bored sigh, he shot it with his high powered taser as he switched on the harvester and shut down the portal. Keeping it open would drain him quickly. Blood began welling to the surface of the demon's hide and flowed into the harvester like a reverse sprinkler. Shane smiled as the screams started.
I love how that sounds. So much pain for my pleasure. Best loot ever. Running into that raid team with a single ring two and two drones. The takedown was fast and I got my own little harvester to play with. Too bad DK never listened to me about how important R&R was. He wouldn't have approved of how I use this though.
His sated smile faded as the memory of his one best friend surfaced. Pushing those memories to the past, that friendship was dead and buried like so many other things in this world. Not worth wasting his time thinking about.
Still amazes me none of the geek geniuses at the DoD have figured this out yet. How portals convert energy still amazes me and I keep thinking the key is there. I just can't figure it out yet.
His thoughts stayed amused as he watched the demon collapse and twitch as he picked up his specially constructed tasers.
But then most of them focus too much on science, never thinking that religion might hold the answer. You'd think given that we were fighting DEMONs they might actually consider it.
He rolled his eyes detaching the full canister and slipping in a new one, just in case. But the demon lay unmoving next to the three other corpses. Rising he pulled out his ax. Impractical in battle, too heavy to swing for long periods of time, it worked perfectly to decapitate dead demons.
Decapitation kills damn near everything and you don't take a chance with demons.
He grinned as he dropped the ax through the necks or at least roughly the neck area of the demons. Personal harvesters didn't leave the corpses dried and desiccated like the large ones did, so it squished a bit as he chopped. A few minutes later he walked out of the area, his bag full of canisters with blood. The small harvester on his back like a backpack, his ax in a sheath under his coat, and his .45 clearly visible on his hip.
The North Korean countryside showed the merest hint of life coming back to the devastated area. While magic amplified radiation and created demons that acted like berserkers on PCP, it also cleansed the area fast. In another decade this might be nice farmland. With the amount of dead that had been crushed into the soil between human and demon machines and feet, the ground wouldn't need fertilizer for decades.
He moved with assurance through the land, never stopping scanning, looking for dangers, even though he knew there were none. Humans still treated this as a wasteland. Too caught up in what they believed to pay attention to what was.
Granted the demons aren't much more intelligent. Too many assumptions that they understand humans when they don't have a clue. Wonder if this Fae will be any better?
He'd found an old temple outside of where Kumchon existed before the war. A small camp lay exactly as he'd left it, his warning charms glowing undisturbed. He set down his bag and started to dismantle his charms.
"Interesting. Tell me, exactly how does a human pull blood from the demonkind without killing it first?" The liquid voice that spoke of beauty, sex, and knowledge cut through his thoughts.
Shane spun his hand up, a spell on the tip of his tongue, power flowing through his body from the blood he'd used while killing demons. Military training, aimed at split-second decisions on information let him halt the spell before he'd uttered it, though he seriously considered letting it go.
"You must be the Fae I was to meet." He glanced at his watch. "In an hour, two miles from here."
The Fae shrugged at him with a languid gesture that made him feel awkward and ungainly. "Bored. Knew you were in the area so I decided to follow. So how did you override the need for a dead body to extract the blood? Killing that many demons alone would be impossible for a human."
Shane resisted snorting at the arrogance and narrowed his eyes at the Fae, trying to figure out its game and decide if he wanted to share that info. They had no reason to use it against humans and if a few more demons died, lured out of portals, his heart wouldn't break. The beautiful being, and the Fae qualified as beautiful, looked at him, eternally patient. It had short, perfectly styled blond hair that reflected gold and silver, luminous eyes of green that made him long for emeralds, and a body that most women would lust after. The look in the Fae's eyes made him pause. It reminded him of a cat watching a mouse, trying to decide if killing it would be worth the energy. But then he knew Fae.
"Depends. You have what I'm looking for?"
The Fae waved a hand in dismissal. "It really doesn't matter. But yes, with the right enchantments you can direct a portal anywhere, even a place that doesn't exist though normally not even humans are that stupid. If you go through a portal to a place that doesn't exist, you cease to exist. A waste of energy, and your life, at that point."
Ideas sparked deep in his mind but he kept his face blank. "You have the book?"
"Of course. Not that it will do you much good." The Fae drew out a small book, a journal bound in skin, most likely human or demon, not that he cared. He held it up to him as if taunting an animal with a treat. "You have my payment?"
"Why won't it do me much good?" Suspicion sparked deep within him, his body tensing as he became hyper-alert.
"It's written in my language, in Faelerian. You can't read it."
Shane shrugged. "That's my problem isn't it?"
Please, I learned to read Faelerian years ago. Lewl taught me many things.
He turned his back on the Fae and took down his protections. Moving the bag of blood canisters to sit in front of the tent, he reached inside and pulled a pack out of the tent. "I have your payment."
"Explanation first. This interests me."
No matter how he twisted it, he couldn't see any way the knowledge could be used against him or even humans in general. Killing humans required no effort for demons or Fae so his method seemed immaterial.
"Electrical disruption."
The Fae tilted his head. "Elucidate."
"As near as I can tell the electrical field all bodies contain, which many religions refer to as the soul, holds the blood in. If I disrupt it with a high enough electrical charge, the internal field shorts out for a second, maybe two, but that is enough time for the harvester to grab the blood and start extracting. Once started even the re-establishment of the field won't interrupt it. Granted, the electrical force has to be strong enough to drop an elephant, but creating that didn't take too long"
The Fae looked at him, gaze sharpening and he wondered if the cat had decided to pounce.
"Interesting. I had not considered that as a reason death was required. Payment."
Shane took a deep breath and pulled two feathers out of the silk bag in his hand. They were long, golden white, and radiated in the light of the noon sun as if they could pull the sun's light into them.
The Fae sucked in a sharp breath. "Wher
e did you get them?"
"Not your problem. I have the payment, give me the book."
The Fae moved closer, handing over the book. He could taste the knowledge hiding in it. He traded the silk bag, letting go as his hand closed over the journal, the skin screaming human as his fingers touched it.
"Price paid. Now get out of here." The need to open the book and start reading clawed at him. Curiosity would kill him someday but he would achieve his goal first.
"We'll be watching you, Colonel Shane Michael Gris trained by the Fae Lord Caedrich Arc Irilian and vengeance taker for his children."
Shane didn't think, he didn't even pull power, knowing the Fae would expect it and have protections against it. With a motion he'd spent hours practicing, he pulled his .45 and put three cold iron bullets into the Fae's skull.
The ruins of the beautiful face looked at him in surprise as the Fae crumpled to the ground. "Legends are good for something. Your arrogance killed you. You overplayed your hand showing you knew my full name and rank. You just became too dangerous to be allowed to live. Lewl would be disappointed in me." His voice remained conversational as he walked over and picked up the silk bag with reverence, getting this back did not hurt his feelings.
Huh, no reason to waste power.
He grabbed the harvester, flipped a setting and aimed it at the Fae. Seconds later light pink blood flew out of the body and into the container.
Tucking the book into his inner jacket pocket, he started breaking down camp and loading everything onto the jeep that was hidden in the ruins behind the tent. By the time he finished the corpse looked drained and he'd gotten three containers of blood. His mouth watered as he looked at the pure power.
Book with the answers I need, angel feathers I get to keep, and Fae blood. Been a damn profitable day. At this rate my world will be constructed before Earth gets invaded again.
He grinned as got in the jeep and headed out. With luck, he'd be in Vladivostok by tomorrow and then he could catch a flight or boat to Tokyo. He had a very interesting book to read.
