The Nightmare Game_Slayers

by S. R. Witt

  That wouldn’t be true for long, though, if the Sleepers had their way.

  As Chase approached the entry to the truck stop’s parking lot, the Escalade’s doors opened and its occupant emerged. The crow-faced Slayer, his red hair blazing above the black mask, raised his hands over his head.

  Motherfucker must have been right behind me, Chase thought, furious that the red-haired killer was fast enough to reach the truck stop before she had. With the Sleepers working with him, he didn’t have to be careful or worry about sneaking up on anyone. He had the power to do whatever he wanted to do, and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it.

  The Sleepers howled and gathered around the crow-faced killer like supplicants approaching the Pope. They kept their heads down, and their weapons pointed at the ground as they drew near, clearly in awe of their dark ally. The Slayer raised his hands overhead, addressing his foul minions.

  “Fuck this shit,” Chase said. Sometimes, the best plan was the most direct plan.

  She eased the Porsche into the truck stop’s parking lot, lined up her shot, and stomped on the accelerator. The luxury SUV’s engine roared and gulped gas into its fiery heart. Chase clung to the wheel and screamed her rage at the gathering of Sleepers and the Slayer who’d tried to kill her. She was no longer a person, not even a monster, She’d transformed herself into a hateful missile.

  The Cayenne roared past the gas pumps, and Chase grinned like a madwoman as she hurtled toward the Sleepers. A handful of them ducked behind the Escalade, dragging the crow-faced Slayer with them, but most of the group were too stunned to move. They threw their hands over their faces, shielding their eyes from the searing glare of the Porsche’s blazing halogen high beams.

  Bodies crumpled under the Cayenne’s impact, and black-masked skulls shattered like piñatas filled with rotting meat and clotted blood when they were dashed against the asphalt. The airbag burst from the Cayenne’s steering wheel, throwing Chase back into her seat and momentarily blinding her when the SUV smashed into the front of the truck stop’s diner.

  “Goddamnit,” she snapped and tore the bags loose from their mounting. Cubes of safety glass rained down on her, but Chase was less concerned about those than the Sleepers drawing a bead on her head from behind the Escalade.

  Rifle fire rang out, punching through the Cayenne’s sheet metal in a shrieking hail. Chase threw herself down below the SUV’s windows, out of sight from any of the Sleepers. Bullets whined through the air around her like a swarm of angry hornets. It was time to move.

  Chase triggered her Horrifying Apparition ability.

  Time slowed, and Chase sensed bullets rippling through the air near her head, but they were moving so slowly she felt safe ignoring them. Her vision shifted to the overhead view that showed Chase her immediate surroundings. She spotted the Sacred Martyr, and let her ability transport her to the target.

  Chase's sudden appearance sent a shockwave rippling through the Sleepers who’d survived her automotive assault and moved to guard the martyr. Apparently, word of Chase’s special abilities hadn’t spread to all of the Sleepers just yet.

  The martyr turned to Chase, a mixture of adulation and mindless, primal terror twisting her face into a dark. A delicious wave of horror washed over Chase, tickling her senses like the scent of a perfectly seared steak.

  “For the Red God,” the martyr gasped. The gathered Sleepers groaned as if the name burned their ears, and they stood in stunned silence as the Harvest began.

  “Trick-or-treat,” Chase growled and slammed her sickle down into the hollow behind the woman’s collarbone. Chase shoved the sickle’s handle up, pushing the blade forward. The ribs on the left side of the martyr’s chest burst free of her sternum with a rapid-fire series of wet cracks. Chase pulled the sickle free, and the left side of the woman’s chest flopped open like a bloody wing. Her heart thudded in the exposed cavern, glowing like a rare diamond in Chase’s sight.

  The heart came free with a simple tug from Chase’s right hand, and she ripped the token free of its fibrous tissue with her teeth. Casting the tattered muscle aside, Chase spat the marker into her right hand and pressed it against the naked skin of her chest. Hunger raged through Chase, and her flesh parted to suck the token into her chest.

  “The Oracle,” the ancient voice groaned in Chase’s mind. Images flashed through her head, possible futures, forgotten pasts, all blurring by too quickly for her to understand what she was seeing. Another skull appeared in her talisman’s pattern, its title emblazoned above it in bloody runes.

  Chase realized her error as the gathered Sleepers closed in around her.

  She should have hacked her way through the Sleepers first, then claimed the token. That way, even if she had been badly wounded and low on Willpower after the assault, taking the marker would've filled her back up and given her a better chance to escape.

  The nearest Sleeper slashed at Chase’s face with a hockey stick with razor blades taped along its blade.

  Chase fended off the attack with a swipe of her sickle, lopping the wooden stick in half. The Sleeper gawked at the damage done to his weapon, and Chase responded by punching him in the throat with her right hand.

  The man gasped and gagged, staggering away from her. Chase rushed through the hole she’d opened in the ring of Sleepers, then dropped to her knees and slid down the slick tile toward the back door.

  A Sleeper jumped toward her from the bathroom door, swinging a baseball bat at Chase’s head.

  Chase saw him coming a second faster than she would have thought possible before she’d taken the Oracle marker. She wasn’t sure what benefit she’d received from the Fool’s token, but the Oracle’s gift had just saved her life. Chase bent back over her heels, limboing beneath the spot where she knew the bat would be, then popped up past the man. She drove a savage kick into the side of the man's knee. Bones splintered and flew apart beneath the sole of Chase’s heavy motorcycle boots, crippling the man instantly. He collapsed in a booth, and Chase ran toward the door.

  But another Sleeper had been hiding, ducked down in a booth, and this one was armed with a shotgun. Chase sensed the attack just before it came, but even she wasn’t fast enough to dodge a firearm at close range.

  The shotgun’s twin barrels roared, peppering the back of Chase’s leather jacket with pellets. The thick leather and remaining metal studs deflected some of the missiles, but far too many punched through the jacket and buried themselves deep inside Chase’s flesh.

  Hot lead burned alongside Chase’s spine, and her lungs itched where pellets had nicked them. There was an ache in the meat of her heart, and she coughed a gout of blood as she staggered from the attack. Her Armor had saved Chase from being instantly killed, but the shotgun blast had still carved her Fortitude from six to two.

  Chase slammed through the back door and stumbled away from the diner. Another shot rang out from inside the station, and a rifle's bullet clipped the outside of her right hip. The mask’s protection saved her from losing her leg in a bloody spray, but the impact was still enough to push her Fortitude down to one. Chase stumbled, then righted herself. She tottered, almost fell, then burned one of her Willpower to keep the pain from incapacitating her.

  She was back on the ragged edge, trapped between the need to keep moving and the even greater need to remain in control of herself. If she didn’t claim another victim and restore her Fortitude, and soon, Chase would burn away the last of her Willpower and end up going berserk. With so many Sleepers and a rival Slayer around, she didn’t think that would work out so well for her.

  “Shit,” Chase growled. “This fucking sucks.”

  “That about sums it up,” the crow-faced killer said as he emerged from the diner, his gigging spear poised to strike.

  “Blood Plague,” an ancient voice croaked from the back of Chase’s mind, and she understood it was the Oracle’s gift identifying this Slayer for her.

  “Let's finish this,” he snarled, jabbing the weapon at Chase’s
face.

  She sidestepped the blow, trying to use as little energy as possible. She didn’t want to squander any Willpower if she could avoid it.

  Chase tossed her sickle from hand to hand, trying to decide how to end this fight as quickly as possible. She was too wounded for a stand-up fight, even if she didn’t have to worry about burning through her Willpower, and the crow-faced asshole had too many allies nearby ready to jump into the fight if she stuck around for much longer.

  And then she saw a new problem walking across the parking lot toward her. Another Slayer, this one swinging a long chain overhead. She’d had her hands full dealing with one other Slayer, she had no hope against two.

  “Fire Binder,” the Oracle’s voice informed Chase, as if the name would do her any good.

  A battered pickup raced across the parking lot, screeching to a halt near the front of the diner. A hooded man in a floor-length duster hopped out of the cab, a massive revolver clutched in his fist.

  Chase groaned as the Oracle named the newest Slayer to jump into the ring, “Hex Gun.”

  “Three to one,” Chase growled. “That seems about fair.”

  Blood Plague turned away from Chase to see what she was talking about.

  “Well, well, well,” he said, “what do we have here?”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Dealing With Devils

  Chase took advantage of Blood Plague’s distraction to open some space between herself and Blood Plague. The remaining Sleepers gathered around their crow-faced leader, nervously glancing from one Slayer to the next. Frozen by indecision, they were waiting to see what the boss had to say.

  Chase hadn’t thought much of her chances against the Sleepers and three Slayers all by herself, but if it was a free for all, she might be able to lay low and clean up the scraps after the rest of them beat the shit out of each other. There was no sense fighting if someone else was willing to do it for you, after all.

  Hex Gun raised his right arm, and the sodium arc lights of the gas station glinted off the foot-long barrel of the revolver clutched in his right hand. The weapon roared, and a tongue of flame burst from its tip. In that split second, the light revealed the bandana stretched tight across the Slayer’s face from just below his eyes to his throat. His eyes were hollow sockets filled with blazing sparks of hellish orange flame.

  One of the Sleepers rose up on her tiptoes as Hex Gun’s bullet entered the back of her head and exploded from her nasal cavity in a spray of blood and bone shards. The black mask parted to reveal the bloody, vermin-infested crater in the center of her face, then sealed itself as she collapsed to her knees and flopped, twitching, onto the asphalt.

  The cowboy cocked his revolver with his thumb.

  “Ouch,” Chase said, shifting position to keep Blood Plague between her and the cowboy. She didn't know how many shots he had left in that monstrous revolver, but she didn't want to be on the receiving end of one of those fiery missiles.

  “You might want to do something about those assholes,” Chase said to the crow-faced killer, nodding toward the approaching Slayers. “I know you’ve got a real hard-on for killing me, but I’m not your biggest problem here.”

  Fire Binder stepped out of the shadows and into the glare of the sodium arc lights on the right side of the truck stop. The stark illumination revealed a head and face covered entirely by a featureless red leather hood with a long, zippered tail that dangled down his naked back. His weapon was a long, weighted length of chain that hummed as he spun it over his head. A flaming hook appeared at the end of the flame and gushed a blue tail of screaming fire like a blazing halo above the Slayer.

  The crow-faced killer stared at Chase as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “I'll kill you first, then I'll deal with them.”

  He waved the Sleepers back, and they formed a semi-circle facing away from Chase and toward Hex Gun and Fire Binder. The crow’s allies were focused on the other Slayers, intent on keeping them from joining the fray.

  “Look,” Chase said and ducked away from a stabbing lunge from Blood Plague. “I know I’m all beat to hell and don’t look like I could kick a sick kitten out of my way, but don’t you remember what happened the last two times we tangled?”

  She shifted position, using the human shield formed by the Sleepers to stay out of Hex Gun’s line of fire. She tossed her sickle from hand to hand and waited for her opponent's next attack. Her Willpower was flickering, which told Chase she was going to burn through more of it if she didn’t find somewhere to hole up and rest for a few minutes.

  “You're outnumbered, and there's no way you can defeat me,” the red-haired Slayer taunted. “Make it easy for yourself. Let me take your tokens and your talisman. It'll be over before you know it.”

  He laughed, throwing back his head to bray like a hyena. Without warning, he thrust with the gigging spear, forcing Chase to take a hopping step back and to her left.

  The Sleepers reacted instantly to her new position, staying an equal distance from her and the other Slayer at all times. When she went right, they went right, allowing Blood Plague to approach her without exposing himself to another shot from the cowboy. Their eerie synchronization unnerved Chase, and she wondered what other tricks the Sleepers and Blood Plague had up their sleeves.

  For his part, Hex Gun seemed to be content to walk slowly and steadily forward, revolver extended before him, like a dowsing rod searching for death. The barrel moved ever so slightly, staying trained on the back of the crow-faced killer’s head with every step. If Hex gun got a single clean shot, Chase knew he’d blast her enemy’s skull apart.

  But the Sleepers were too synchronized and kept that clean shot from appearing by shielding their Slayer with their bodies.

  The chain-wielding Slayer slowed his approached, pacing himself, moving cautiously to avoid attracting Hex Gun's attention or alerting the Sleepers to his intent. His head swiveled slowly from side to side, absorbing the scene before him, and evaluating his options.

  Chase weighed her choices and found none of them to be particularly enticing. She dodged another clumsy spearing attempt from the crow-faced killer, which cost her another orb of Willpower. “If you kill me then it’ll be you and your black-masked dumbasses against those two Slayers. The cowboy is going lose his patience and start blowing your Sleepers to pieces here in a minute, and the chain-link gimp over there will take care of any he doesn’t kill. You couldn’t beat me even with help, how are you going to handle those two without any of your little buddies to back you up?”

  Chase knew offering an alliance was desperate gamble because she didn't believe for a second she could trust Blood Plague, even if he accepted her offer. On the other hand, if she could turn his attention off her and toward the other Slayers, her chances of survival shot way up.

  The crow-faced killer cocked his head to one side, and pursed his red lips beneath the glistening beak of his mask. He turned the spear over and over in his hands, rotating it slowly, like a snake charmer trying to mesmerize his prey. “What's in it for me?”

  Chase shrugged. “Those two have to have one or two of the martyrs’ tokens between them, right?”

  The crow-faced killer nodded.

  “If we work together to stop them, then your Sleepers won’t get slaughtered trying to protect you from the Slayers. Once we’ve killed the cowboy and the gimp, your Sleepers can protect you from me while you take the tokens from the dead Slayers.” She shrugged. “It doesn't really work out in my favor, but what choice do I have? While you're claiming the tokens, I might get a chance to run for the hills.”

  Blood Plague chuckled. “That’s not much better than letting me just kill you right now.”

  Chase's pumpkin-faced mask grinned. “That’s not true. The Temple of Bone is sacred ground for the Slayers, right? I bet your Sleepers can’t even come inside.”

  The crow-faced killer seemed to consider this for a moment. “True. That’s your gamble? I kill the rest of the Slayers, and then the two of us
face off in the Temple of Bone for a final duel?”

  Chase rolled the sickle around her wrist and caught it in her hand. She tossed it into the air and snatched it with her other hand without looking. She wanted Blood Plague to see that she wasn’t too weak to fight if push came to shove. "We’re running out of town. While we’re standing here, those two are figuring out how to carve their way through your people, and then kill us. If we take the fight to them, we can take knock them out of the picture. I'm willing to take the chance and trust you for the next few minutes because if I don’t we’re both going to die. Tell me you’re smart enough to see past the end of your deck, and take this fucking deal.”

  Enraged, Blood Plague reared back with his spear and lunged at Chase, throwing all of his weight behind the attack.

  Chase spun out of the way, allowing her rival Slayer to pass her like a toreador stepping aside from a charging bull. Before he could recover, Chase slammed the sickle’s handle across the back of his neck. She'd wanted to drive the tip of the weapon into his throat and tear out his spine, but she knew that was a losing proposition. The moment he died, his Sleepers would leap on her, and then she'd be fighting everyone at the same time. She’d be berserk in second, and dead in a few minutes.

  The crow-faced killer stumbled, then turned and held his spear in a defensive guard. He studied Chase for a long moment, rotated the spear a final time, and rested it across his shoulders. As pissed as he was, Blood Plague couldn’t see a way to finish Chase before the other Slayers reached them. “All right then,” he said, “let's get that fucking cowboy first.”

  Chase took a deep breath. She’d bought herself a few more minutes of life.

  She hoped it was enough.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Fire in the Sky

  Hex Gun’s revolver roared, and another Sleeper folded in half, the severed ends of his spine erupting from his back on a geyser of blood. He flopped face down on the cracked blacktop, a pool of crimson spreading around his broken frame.