One Plus One (The Millionth Trilogy Book 3)

by Tony Faggioli

  The Gray Man lunged forwards in a dive that brought him right up against the driver’s door window, his fist flashing backwards in an apparent plan to smash through it, but he was repelled by something around the car, invisible but strong, that bounced him away and off a good thirty yards towards the open desert.

  Kyle didn’t hesitate to call on the blue. From deep in his chest it coursed to his elbow, reverberated down his forearm and into his hand, where he opened his fingers and released it. A fine laser of it shot towards the car with lightning speed, striking it directly over the roof. The same shield that had just repelled The Gray Man now absorbed the blue, but not nearly as well. Part of the blast made it through, rocking the car and forcing the rear end to fishtail ever so slightly.

  Kyle’s heart jumped into his throat. Tamara was probably in that car somewhere. If he accidentally blew it up or caused it to crash and roll…

  “Gray?”

  I’m coming.

  “Is she in there?”

  I can’t tell.

  “Damnit!” Kyle couldn’t take it anymore; the car had slowed and he saw his opportunity. He ran, faster than he ever had, alongside the car on the passenger side, at last able to see a shadowy figure within. The man wasn’t right; he was agitated and bouncing in his seat, jerking himself back and forth against the steering wheel, engaged in a whole new level of road rage. After flipping Kyle off a few times, he made hand motions as if to say “C’mon, let’s fight!”

  Kyle almost took the bait, wanting nothing more in the world than to hurt the man who’d hurt his family. But then he felt the blue nudge his mind, refocusing it: to the passenger seat, which was empty, and then the back seat, which was empty as well.

  No Tamara.

  She’s here, Kyle. I can feel her now.

  Kyle paused. Breathed. Reached out with the blue. “Yeah, Gray. I can too.”

  Rage mounted in him as Kyle Fasano realized that his wife was in the trunk.

  The son of a bitch had crammed her into the trunk like some sort of animal.

  Kyle. Hold it in. Don’t lash out yet, Kyle! The Gray Man urged as he closed to within striking distance of the car.

  “I’m trying, Gray… but—”

  Hold on! We’ve almost got the shield down. Give it another blast. I will time my attack to coincide with yours this time.

  Kyle looked over at The Gray Man and nodded, but not before he took a split second to really see what he was looking at; The Gray Man, when fully unleashed, was larger somehow, like a force of nature, a pulsating shadow of power, his gray a stark contrast to the light blue sky behind him.

  Kyle summoned the blue and shot forth another bolt, commanding a wider blast this time and getting just that.

  It hit the shield around the car so bright and fierce that it crackled, like the sound of Pop Rocks in your mouth. A dome was revealed that stretched all the way around the car and into the road; after The Gray Man struck the top portion of the shield and it shattered, the bottom half of it simply rotated around swiftly from beneath the road to over the roof, again protecting the car.

  Kyle didn’t know if the damn thing could regenerate, but he didn’t want to wait to find out.

  “Gray?”

  Do it.

  Kyle shot another bolt at the shield, almost striking The Gray Man in the process. A large crack appeared and in a split second The Gray Man was on top of it, prying his hands into the crack, pulling in opposite directions, a fierce scream escaping his throat as he ripped the entire shield asunder.

  The driver punched the gas again and the car sped off, away from them at a blindingly reckless speed.

  The Gray Man accelerated after it and so did Kyle, as best he could on foot, and then, for no apparent reason, the car began to slow, before it came to a complete stop.

  Kyle ran up next to The Gray Man, who had descended to the ground and come to a stop behind the car, not pressing the attack. “What’s he doing?”

  I don’t know. But… something’s wrong.

  Nothing happened. They stood behind the idling car as it rocked slightly back and forth in unison with the raving madman inside, whose silhouette could be seen now through the back window, his arms and hands going off in all directions, as if he were directing an orchestra, his screams bouncing around inside the closed car like a bad song.

  Kyle stepped towards the trunk but The Gray Man raised his hand. Wait. Something’s not right. I know it’s hard, but wait.

  A few maddening minutes passed and Kyle was just about to toss The Gray Man’s warning to the wind when all the screaming, bouncing, ranting and raving came to a stop.

  Then, revealed in the sudden silence, Kyle heard his wife’s faint pleas for help.

  And that was all he could take.

  He took two steps forwards, intent on ripping the trunk completely off the car, when the man inside the car screamed. “Okay! Okay! You guys want to do this? Do you?” he shouted. “Fine. Let’s go then!” The engine stopped as the car was shut off.

  When he stepped out of the car he was a tall, rail thin man just this side of being dead, with wild eyes and greasy hair, a battered face and blood on his shirt. There were scabbed-up cuts all over his body, as if he were a cutter who just couldn’t stop hurting himself.

  Kyle didn’t know if Tamara had anything to do with that face or with that blood, but he sure hoped she did. It would make him proud. Then he had a sickening thought: what if that were Tamara’s blood?

  The man wobbled briefly, his eyes filling with hate as he looked with contempt at The Gray Man and then with pure disdain at Kyle.

  Then, incredibly, he lifted his hand that was holding his car keys and punched a button on the fob; the trunk of the car popped wide open.

  Kyle heard Tamara’s cries again but he couldn’t see inside the trunk from where he was standing. Without even thinking he sent the blue to his feet and felt himself rise a little off the ground, just high enough to look in and see her. He knew he was supposed to be horrified by the vision of the bruised and battered figure within, but that could come later. Right now he was just relived beyond all measure that she was still alive.

  She was looking back at him in disbelief. “Kyle?”

  He was just about to reply, to tell her “Yes, baby. It’s me!” when the coyote-faced creatures struck him, one on each side, and began to tear at his flesh.

  They growled with a ferocity borne of hell alone, and when he next heard his wife’s voice it was screaming. “Kyle!”

  “Gray!” Kyle yelled, but glancing over he realized he’d been far too focused on the car. The Gray Man had his own problems; two men in long black leather trench coats, with Nazi arm bands, had grabbed him and were holding him firm. But they weren’t the worst part. No. The worst part was the creature with the face of an old woman but the body of a salamander, black with yellow spots, which had wrapped itself around The Gray Man’s head and neck, its body squeezing in strong undulations, the muscles in its back rippling under the sun.

  No wonder The Gray Man hadn’t screamed. He couldn’t. He was in the process of being smothered.

  Kyle swiped at one of the coyote creatures, only managing to knock him off briefly before it was on him again. Stumbling backwards, the pain ricocheting sharply through his body, Kyle summoned the blue, but it was hard because the creatures were after his hands and arms, the one on his right biting so hard into Kyle’s wrist that he heard his bones crunch like dry twigs. The blue had nowhere to go. No outlet. No way to target.

  Then, slowly, ever so slowly, as if pleased with the scene before him, the crazy man stepped towards the car and closed the trunk.

  “Tamara!” Kyle screamed, but it was no use. He couldn’t defend himself against the creatures attacking him and get to the car too.

  The crazy man looked intently at Kyle and smiled. “Silly, silly man.” Then he turned around, walked back to the driver’s door, and got in.

  “No!” Kyle screamed in desperation.

  The C
amaro began to pull away, the motor roaring ominously before it sped off, the coyotes gnawing at Kyle’s arms as the car slowly became a black speck on the road, growing further and further away.

  ONE THING you could be sure of in a standoff: first one to blink, loses. It really was that simple. Nerves were the end of more than one good man, overmatched or not. That didn’t mean you waited for the other guy to make a move. No. Not at all. Napoleon’s grandfather had always taught him to throw the first punch in any fight. Always. Take the advantage, right away, when you could. Then? After that? Never let go of it.

  The guy who blinked was the first guy to hesitate. That could be right out of the gate or sixteen punches into a totally even fight. Whatever. Eventually, someone was the first to take accounting of the beating they were getting, and then take a split second to consider it. That was the blink. That was when, for them, all was lost.

  When Parker had come to him as a detective first grade trainee just a few months ago, right before the Fasano case shat all over them, Napoleon knew that the last thing he would ever have to train him on was how to fight. The guy was a war vet. Decorated. Solid. How he got into the department with a PTSD diagnosis just after his discharge, in this day and age, when most law enforcement agencies in the country would avoid such applicants, was anyone’s guess. Maybe he knew someone who knew someone. Maybe, like Napoleon himself, hiding his gang friendships all the way through the academy twenty-five years ago, Parker had just gotten lucky. Whatever. Parker would have to be trained on good “detecting,” and have a few instincts honed for the field, but on how and when to fight? Nah.

  So when Parker simultaneously looked towards Napoleon as he swung wildly at the man sitting across from him, Napoleon knew something was way off. Parker would never do that. No man in his sane mind looks away from his opponent as he swings at them and leaves himself vulnerable, unless he’s trying to protect the person he’s looking at…

  Someone was behind him.

  Napoleon ducked.

  A hand with bracelets whizzed through the air where Napoleon’s head had been just a split second earlier. He spun and followed the hand to an arm tattooed with skulls and demons, then to a body dressed in all black, and finally to the face of a girl in her early twenties with black lipstick and… eyes that were not human. Red eyes, like all the rest of her kind, lit by the fires of hell.

  Good, he thought. Hitting a woman was not his thing, though he’d had to do it a few times before, usually during domestic disputes when the person you were trying to rescue was all tears until you tried taking their boyfriend or husband to jail. But this? This was not a woman. It was a thing.

  So, with no thought whatsoever, he punched her right in the nose.

  Her head rocked backwards, and as blood poured from her nostrils, her lips curled back to reveal large shark-like teeth.

  “You mooooother-fucker!” she screamed as her hands came up in front of her. In her left was a switchblade; in her right, just a good ol’ steak knife.

  “I had no idea McDonald’s served fine cutlery with the Big Macs these days,” Napoleon said with a smile. He charged her, but it was a feint, to get her to back up some and give him some space. Because it was apparent now who was also in on the rumble; the two guys in Edison uniforms were making their way towards Parker, who was wrestling with the guy in front of him. The fat guy with the iPad tossed it aside and began approaching Napoleon’s flank, his face melting into a plump, fleshy mass.

  Napoleon glanced his way twice. The first time was to verify that, yes, indeed, that was a mace—a freakin’ mace of all things—in his hand as he came forwards, and the second time was to level his gun at him, take aim and fire.

  It was a good shot.

  The bullet struck the man directly between the eyes and blew the back of his head out like meat art on the entrance doors nearby. He dropped like a bag of cement, the mace clanging across the floor.

  This only enraged the punk girl more, and she charged Napoleon with the switchblade held over her head and tried to stab him in the neck. He barely stepped aside, feeling her rib cage bounce off his elbow. He was just considering the idea of launching his body against her when, at the last second, he thought better of it. And that was a good thing, because as she passed him by, she crouched and spun with inhuman speed, her right arm stiff as a board as she swiped the steak knife through the air with vicious force. It barely missed Napoleon’s right kidney, instead slicing an even line through his shirt.

  Shit. That was close.

  He stepped back. Napoleon could see that Parker was winning his fight with the idiot in the suit, but the Edison guys were closing in and—

  Now it was Napoleon’s turn to take his eye off of his opponent. She had the knives and wicked-fast reflexes, but he had the gun and she knew it. She wasn’t advancing yet. He had her in his peripheral vision and for now that would be enough. Because right now all Napoleon wanted to do was watch Parker at work.

  Seeing the Edison men closing in on him, Parker had evidently had enough with the man in the suit; he snapped his arm at the elbow. The man let loose a guttural scream and clawed at Parker’s face, but Parker only snapped his head side to side to avoid the attack and then seemed to take aim before he smashed his forehead repeatedly into the man’s face, the first time shattering the man’s nose, the second time into his mouth, causing blood to immediately spill across the man’s teeth, and then a final time to the sweet spot right between the man’s eyes.

  He collapsed, but that wasn’t enough for Parker.

  Evidently he was somewhere else now, perhaps in an Afghan desert, because he stood, picked the man up and chucked him through the window and out to the sidewalk beyond.

  The Edison men came at him like twins of trouble, but Parker didn’t retreat an inch. Instead he stepped between them, punching the taller one in the side of the jaw before he spun around and brought his elbow up and across the face of the shorter one, striking him flush against his temple. They flew in opposite directions, flashes of orange, before righting themselves against the cheap wooden McDonald’s tables, which creaked beneath their weight.

  Punk Girl was trying to be scary now, babbling in some foreign language as she whipped her tongue out of her mouth like a nymphomaniac and scraped the steak knife against the wall. Napoleon was unimpressed. Compared to the dude on the horse outside The White City, this bitch was a fucking Girl Scout selling boxes of Tagalongs. Napoleon smiled and waved his gun at her, holding her at bay, determined to see how Parker finished this.

  When the tall Edison guy lunged at him, Parker went through a series of moves that Napoleon had seen before. There was a Jewish guy in their department, Meyer, who was very proud of the fact that he had taken Krav Maga classes for many years. Napoleon had seen Meyer use it twice in the field, once after a rock concert at the LA Coliseum that had gotten out of hand and another time with an assault suspect on LSD that had acted up inside the station while being booked. The fighting style consisted of short, succinct moves that swiftly incapacitated your opponent.

  And Parker was using them now, in rapid succession, first on the tall man, who took the back of a closed fist to the throat before being spun around, kicked in the back of the legs, and, as he fell to his knees, an elbow to the back of the neck, right between the shoulder blades. He fell over face first, probably unconscious, maybe even dead. Then Parker turned his attention to the shorter one. Stepping into his lunging punch, Parker caught him square in the solar plexus with the heels of both of his hands. Air burst from the man’s lungs as Parker pushed him backwards and went judo for a moment with a spin kick that caught the man cleanly on the right side of his face. He fell over like a chained and yanked tree stump, arms limp at his sides, his head thudding hard against a green and orange chair.

  Napoleon smiled. Yep. Parker could take care of himself.

  Seeing the rest of her group now fallen, the girl looked panicked, but made her move anyway. To Napoleon’s awe, she ran up the side of t
he wall and launched at him with both knives out. Instinctively, he brought the .22 up and shot her in the throat mid-flight, the bullet ripping through her flesh as her eyes went wide with pain.

  They were demons, yes. All of them. But it was evident that here, on this plane, they had to play by the rules. Physical bodies and limitations included. It was obvious she was neither used to this concept nor willing to accept it, because amazingly, she still tried to scramble to her feet as blood poured out of her. Numb, Napoleon shot her again, this time in the side of the head.

  Sorry, honey. No brain, no body. No body? No fight.

  Napoleon was just beginning to relax when he heard Parker’s voice.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  Parker was looking out the shattered window and shaking his head. “Fucker’s gone.”

  Shrugging, Napoleon tried to make the best of it. “One of them had to be smart enough to run, right?”

  “Yeah,” Parker said, “but I gotta feeling that outta all these idiots? He was the most dangerous one.”

  “Why?”

  “He was in my head, man—or his master or whatever the hell. I was trying to buy time when you got here but I think he knows…”

  “Knows what?”

  Parker looked at Napoleon with deep concern. “Where the kids are.”

  CHAPTER 25

  ELYWOOD, NEVADA WASN’T A small town. With a population of 4,262 people it barely qualified as “tiny.” It sat in the distance framed neatly by the massive mountain behind it, a single two-lane highway cutting through the middle of a series of red brick buildings and white plaster-walled shops. The tallest building had a sign that read “HOTEL” in big block letters, hand painted vertically on a wooden sign mounted to the facade. A single late-model white pickup truck drove down the road at a lazy speed among a half-dozen other cars that were parked at the curb, again, all late models.