by D. Levesque
“Be careful, all right?” I tell the three girls.
“You be careful as well. You will be fighting the stronger target. I think this mage will be easy enough for the three of us. Especially with Sylvana with us,” Lina says, grinning at her.
“Hey, you two are powerful in your own right,” Sylvana says with a laugh. “But yes, leave the mage to us. You go get Newborn.”
Nodding to the girls, I watch as they head toward the left door. Johanne is standing next to it, beside the door frame, and she slowly reaches out, grabs the handle, and throws the door open. Suddenly two fireballs shoot out and hit the opposite wall. Not waiting, Lina disappears into the doorway and Johanne moves in with a handgun in front of her, followed by Sylvana. I hear gunshots and the door slams shut. I fucking hope they are all right. But I need to go get my own target.
“Roger, since I doubt you will be useful in there, can you stay out here and if you don’t hear from the girls within ten minutes, let me know?” I ask him, tapping my right ear.
“Got it. Good luck, as you humans would say,” he says quietly.
“Thanks,” I tell him, trying to swallow saliva that suddenly isn’t there because my mouth is so dry.
Going to the door, I can feel that the magic is much stronger than the original door I blew away. I slowly put my hand out, but suddenly the magic shield disappears.
“Oh, do come on in,” says a female voice.
I stare at the door in shock. What the fuck? This isn’t what I expected. I expected to have to blow shit up, shoot shit. Stab shit. Hell, maybe even tear shit up. Not have someone say come in. Yeah, as if I am going to walk into a trap. But then suddenly the door opens and standing there is none other than the singer Melissa Newborn. She looks stunning. She is dressed in black slacks and a red top, which highlights her blond hair.
“Please, come in. I would rather you didn’t blow another hole in my home,” she says, motioning for me to walk into the room.
I stand there looking at her, uncertain what to do. I didn’t expect this. I hear a gunshot from the other room, followed by yelling, and I can hear a male screaming in pain.
“Don’t worry. I am sure your girls will kill the mage. He’s a shit anyhow. Makes it so I don’t need to kill him myself,” she says, walking into the room and heading towards the desk that is there, before sitting down in the chair. She motions me over to the chair on the opposite side of the desk.
“Hmm, you know that I am here to kill you, right?” I tell her, coming into the room but not taking the offered seat.
“Of course. I felt the spell you cast over the area. Sleep spell, right?” she says inquisitively.
“How do you know about magic?” I ask her, on guard now.
“Ah, let’s just say that’s one thing about being one with the Void, I am privy to some knowledge. I also know that you are an anomaly. I’m not too fond of anomalies. I know you aren’t a Vampire, or a Werewolf, or even an Elf. I have no idea what you are with those horns and that tail, but I will take great pleasure in finding out what you are made of,” she says with a smile.
But I see that the smile doesn’t go to her eyes. All I see in them is malice, greed, and even some fear. Good, fear me bitch, because I am your death, I think to myself.
“Sit down,” she says in a commanding voice. I stare at her with a raised eyebrow.
“No thanks, I am good,” I tell her. I don’t think she expected that since she looks at me in shock, but then her face clouds over, and again she says in a much stronger voice.
“I said sit down,” she growls.
Wait, is she trying to use the Voice on me? Oh shit, so those who have the Void in them can use the Voice? Oh, that is going to make things much harder. Is the reason it’s not working on me because I am an Elveesian and they are the race who made hers? I remember Tatus saying that they had created the race before they became the Void.
Deciding to try something, I use the Voice myself and say, “Stand up.”
Suddenly she is standing up and looking at me in shock. “What are you?” she gasps.
“For you, the last thing you will ever see,” I tell her, and I cast fireball and shoot it straight at her face. How she is able to move out of the way on time is beyond me, since I didn’t say the words as I cast, but move out of the way she does.
Even in my Incubus form, I am barely able to avoid the claw that comes my way. Somehow Melissa Newborn has transformed into, well, a monster. She is about eight feet tall, all muscle, and dark purple. She almost looks like a Werewolf half-hybrid, but when I say almost, I mean almost, like how a chicken looks somewhat like a peacock. They both have wings.
Her claws are enormous, and her face looks like it came straight out of a horror film. There are teeth everywhere, and she has three eyes. Two where you would expect them to be, and one above them in the middle of her forehead. Suddenly I see a clawed hand coming at me and I slap it out of the way, but then she punches me in the chest and I go flying across the room, hit the wall hard, bounce back, and get kicked in the face. The claws on her feet rake across my face, opening wounds and causing me to scream in pain. Without thinking, I use the training that Lina gave me, and I cast shadow to disappear and reappear on the other side of the room.
Good thing, too, since Newborn had thrown a punch that landed right where I had been standing. Her claws end up hitting the floor instead, but I look over and see that they landed about four inches into the floorboards. Shit, that was close.
“What the fuck are you?” she asks again, but her voice is a distorted version of the original. Must be all those teeth.
“Your worst nightmare,” I say. But then, as soon as I say it, I groan. Seriously, Brandon? Going with the cliché phrases? What’s next? Hasta La Vista, I think, but then I end up scrambling out of the way as she comes at me, fast. It takes all I have to slap her claws out of the way before they hit me. We end up in that same cycle for a good two minutes, with me defending and her on the offensive. Without warning, she suddenly jumps back from me.
She points her hand at me and begins to say something in a language that is mostly barks and guttural sounds. Like the idiot I am, instead of moving or hiding while she is casting, I just stare at her curiously. Suddenly a purple flame shoots out of her hand and comes straight for me, and I know I won’t be able to avoid it. Right as it’s about to hit me, Roger jumps in front of me and takes the brunt of it. His ball expands to its original size, but then he hits the wall next to me and explodes in a shower of sparks.
“What the fuck!” I yell. Now I am angry. This fucking Void chick just killed Roger, the one being that had a connection to the Elveesians, but also someone who I was starting to consider a damn good friend. Deciding enough is enough, I call up power without thinking about what I am doing and bring it into my body this time, but not as a spell. Instead I am enhancing myself. I feel myself grow an extra four feet tall, and now I have claws as big as hers, but mine are black, with a metallic sheen to them.
“Oh, you done fucked up now, lady,” I growl at her. Faster than even I expected, I am behind her, and I stab my new claws into her lower back. Still, she is just fast enough that only about four inches of them end up in her back before she moves away and is facing me again, crouched in a defensive posture.
“You have no right to be here,” she growls. “You left us, you left us!” She screams that last part.
What the fuck is she talking about? Wait, is this how Elveesians looked to her race? “Too bad,” I tell her. “You shouldn’t even be here yourself. Your race fucked up big time and paid the price. Well, I guess I am the ferryman and you need to pay.” Shit, here I go again with the clichés.
“I don’t know what you mean by a ferryman, but we are done here,” she says, and suddenly she grows much larger, until she is almost twelve feet tall.Somehow her arms have also grown longer, and her legs got shorter. She looks more like a four-legged animal than anything else. Her face even changes, and she grows a snout and man
y more teeth, which I didn’t think was possible. Then she growls.
The growl reverberates through the room; almost a physical thing. Shit, time to bring out the big guns. With that, I make my claws disappear, and I grab both my daggers out of their sheaths and into my hands.
Unexpectedly, she shies away from me and coughs. Oh, so it affects her, I think with a grin.
“You should have just let me kill you from the start,” I tell her with a vicious grin. “Now that you killed Roger, I will make sure you die in pain.”
She growls, but I can tell it’s now in pain and fear. Not waiting for her to go on the attack again, I throw one of my daggers and she does exactly what I had expected of her. She tries to avoid it by moving sideways, but I use the shadows and disappear into them. Reappearing in the spot I had hoped she would go, I stab the dagger I am still holding right into her side.
She screams in pure pain and surprise and scrambles away, but I keep my grip on my dagger so she doesn’t take it with her. She quickly changes back into her human form in one of the corners of the room, and she is a bloody mess. She doesn’t look sexy anymore. She looks angry, upset, scared, and in pain.
“Please, we can work something out,” she says, holding her bleeding side, and I can see the purple smoke seeping out of her dagger wound.
“Should have just let me kill you from the start,” I say again, slowly walking towards where my other dagger had fallen when I threw it, making sure I keep an eye on her the whole time. “Now that you killed Roger, and after seeing the gravesite we found, you deserve to die even more,” I tell her, picking up the dagger and putting it away, but keeping the other one in my hand.
I walk towards her and she scrambles back in fear.
“You have no idea what you are fighting,” she says desperately. “Killing me won’t end it. I am not the only one. My patron will find you and kill you,” she says with a growl of defiance.
“Really? Well let’s try this out,” I tell her with a grin. I call up power and using the Voice, I ask her, “Who is your patron?”
She looks at me in shock, and I can see she is trying to fight the compulsion to tell me, but finally she spits out, “Sir William Stewart.” The look she gives me is one of pure hatred.
“Thank you for that,” I tell her, and without warning I throw the dagger right at her heart, the way that Lina had taught me, without showing any forethought on my face. The dagger flies quickly with my strength behind it and imbeds itself into her chest. A look of surprise crosses her face as her hands come up to block it, but she’s not fast enough. She looks down at the silver dagger in her chest as purple flames begin to crawl out from around the dagger.
Suddenly, she lifts her head and screams, but then she stops and closes her eyes. She is dead. Within seconds, her body is engulfed in a purple flame. Somehow it doesn’t affect anything else, even the carpet she is lying down on. A couple of minutes later all that’s left is ash and my dagger, which fell onto the carpet. Reaching down, I grab it and shake the dust off, and put it back into its sheath.
Then I remember Roger. Shit! Rushing over to where Roger’s ball had crashed into the wall, I see that the ball is open and Roger is hanging out of it, and I can tell he is dead. Fuck! I gently lift him and hold him against my chest, kneeling down on the ground with him in my arms. Looking him over, I see that he is covered in burns. I guess that fireball did more damage than I thought. I look at his Pe-ep, and see that it’s a mangled mess and is still burning in spots. Somehow, even though the purple flame didn’t affect the carpet, it’s eating the metal in his ball.
Placing him gently on the floor a couple of feet away, I fix his small limbs so that they are straight. Shit, I don’t even know how to bury him. Does he get buried?
“Brandon?” I hear Lina say quietly.
Turning, I see the girls are all there. Lina, Sylvana, and Johanne.
“Brandon, what happened?” Lina asks quietly, looking around at the damage.
“Roger was a dick,” I tell her. “He took a purple fireball that was meant for me, and it got him killed,” I finish quietly. I’m not even angry, just sad. That I just lost a friend.
“Oh no,” Sylvana cries, tears coming to her eyes.
Johanne comes over to me and hugs me from behind. Sighing, I tell her, “Thanks, hon.”
“What’s next?” Lina asks me gently.
“I am not sure. I don’t know if there is a burial for him and his race. As you can see, I don’t need to worry about his ball. The flames have almost eaten it.” There was barely anything of the ball left, and even as we watched, it turned to ash.
I look down at Roger again, and I get a shock. His body melts and flows into the floorboards.
“What the fuck!” I say in shock, getting up from where I am kneeling on the ground.
“That is how Fairies die. They go back into the earth. I would say that even though he wasn’t a magical Fairy, that is how his race dies also,” Sylvana says sadly.
Sighing, I nod. “Well, I guess I should say goodbye to him. Goodbye Roger, you odd fucking Fairy. I am going to miss you. I was just starting to get used to you,” I say with a sad smile.
One by one, the girls come over to me and give me a big hug and kiss.
“I assume you got the mage?” I ask the girls.
“Oh yeah, but fuck me, he was tougher than I thought he would be,” Lina says vehemently.
“Yeah, but we worked together, and while Johanne kept him down with her bullets, Lina was able to use the shadows and cast a spell to confuse him. It almost didn’t work, but then Johanne thought of shooting a silver bullet, and that got his attention quickly. So yeah, we got him—one dead Void mage. We used our daggers after to make sure, and sure enough, purple flame,” Sylvana says.
“What were you doing?” I asked Sylvana curiously. It’s not like her to stay out of a fight.
“I was healing. The Void mage had this spell that shot out blades of air. Thank the Gods for our large pools now since I am sure I would have run out of power,” she says with passion.
“So, she is dead?” Lina asks me.
“Yeah, but we might have bigger issues. I found out who her mentor was, so I assume that is who corrupted her. Want to guess?” I ask the girls.
“Brandon, just tell us,” Johanne says, smacking me.
“Sir William Stewart,” I tell them.
“Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me?” Johanne says in shock.
“Nope. I assume she meant Sir William Stewart, the same person who owns one of the world’s largest IT companies, who works on defense contracts for fuck knows how many countries. The USA, Canada, and Europe, to name a few,” I tell them.
“Brandon, we need to go tell your mother! How the hell are we supposed to even get to him?” Johanne says in shock.
“No clue, but if he is what Newborn called a mentor, how many more like her are there?” I ask around.
“Oh shit. We don’t even know! Stewart has access to the highest people in government circles!” Sylvana says intensely.
“Yeah, that was my thought too,” I tell her worriedly. Looking down at the spot where Roger died, I take a deep breath and say, “I will get them for you Roger, I promise.”
“Agreed. I was starting to like him,” Lina says with a sad smile.
“It’s sad to know that his race died out as well, though,” I tell the girls sadly.
“Who’s race died out?” the voice of Roger says from behind me.
Turning so fast that I almost stumble, I blurt out in astonishment, “Roger?”
“Yes?” says a floating black ball.
“But you died!” I cry out at him.
“No I didn’t,” he says in a mystified voice.
“You did! I fucking watched you die! I pulled your burned, broken body out of the fucking wreckage,” I yell at him, pissed off somehow.
“Oh, you did?” he says, sounding surprised. He flies over to where he had died, and there isn’t anything lef
t but ash.
“Why did you pull me out, though?” he asks me, confused as he turns back towards me.
“Well, because you died,” I tell him lamely.
“I got that part, but why would you pull out my dead body?”
“Nevermind that, how the fuck are you alive?” I shout at him.
“Oh, that is because I transferred myself to another body as I died.”
“So you did die!” I tell him in an ah-ha moment.
“No, my physical body died, but not my mind. I have, I guess what you call, clones of myself in my base, and I just transferred over there. I told you we are immortal. I can’t die. Though I will be honest with you. That death fucking hurt, as you would say. I never want to burn like that again,” he says, with a quiver in his voice at the remembered pain.
“Roger, come here for a second?” I ask him softly.
Roger floats over and hovers in front of me. As quickly as I can manage, I slap his ball as hard as I can, causing him to careen into a wall.
“What the fuck!” Roger screams. “What the fuck was that for?” he says indignantly.
“For fucking scaring me and making me think you died, you fucking dick!” I yell at him, shaking the pain from hitting him out of my hand.
“Wait, you were worried after I died?” Roger says in surprise.
“Well, yeah. I thought someone who I considered a friend had died!” I tell him.
“You consider me a friend?” he says softly.
“Well, yeah. The girls do as well. We were sad when we thought you had died,” I tell him.
“Really?” he says, turning his ball to face the girls.
“Really,” Lina says with a smile.
“Yes, we were sad to hear that you had died,” Sylvana says with a smile of her own.
“I didn’t care either way,” Johanne says, trying to be tough, but there are tears in her eyes.
“Damn, it’s getting dusty in here,” Roger says emotionally.
“Well, don’t fucking do that again. Don’t try to take one for the team, all right?” I tell him softly.
