Mage Hunters Box Set

by Andrew C Piazza

  “Reload your weapons,” Dread said loudly to the rest of the survivors. “Catch your breath fast and get ready to fight. This ain’t over.”

  He moved another dozen yards further away from the shield before setting Lysette down as gently as he could. She hadn’t moved at all when he picked her up; in fact, she felt like a rag doll, and Dread was worried she might already be past saving. Then, when he set her down next to the wall, she let out a groan and opened her eyes with a flutter.

  “Dread,” she said when she saw him.

  “Don’t talk. Jolly’s coming,” Dread said, taking a second to see how bad her injuries were.

  One of the wounds was in her abdomen, bleeding freely, and the other was punched into her ribcage. The way she wheezed her breaths in and out, Dread knew one of her lungs had collapsed. Still, she grabbed at him with enough strength that it hurt where her fingers dug in to his forearm.

  “Don’t,” she wheezed. “Don’t let Kel… bring me back… the things I might do…”

  “I won’t,” Dread said, straightening up and changing the magazine on his pistol. He didn’t really believe that he was going to have a choice in the matter, but he’d lost enough friends over the years to know that you promised the dying whatever they asked.

  He didn’t have any illusions on what was about to happen. Their retreat into the gatehouse hallway and Shifty’s shield had bought them a few seconds’ worth of reprieve, but Shifty was already trembling with exhaustion, and Dread knew from experience that meant that the shield holding the ghouls back was about to fail. With as many ghouls as he could see massed in the hub, pounding on the shield trying to get to them, there was no way this was going to end well.

  I find out I’m not going to lose my mind after all, just in time to die here, he thought. The hell with it. At least I die on my terms, with my mind intact. So come and get me, you bastards. Let’s see how many of you it takes to bring me down.

  Jolly finally made his way over to where Dread stood next to Lysette, shaking his head dizzily. “How bad is she?”

  “She’s still alive,” Dread said, his eyes never leaving the ghouls massed just beyond the shield. “Collapsed lung, I think… Jolly, watch out!”

  He cried out his warning as the shield fell, letting the flood of ghouls flow into the hallway like a water though a broken dam. The few remaining guards and the last of Shifty’s Wreck Squad fired whatever ammunition they had left in a desperate attempt to hold back the ghouls, but the tide of undead washed over them, swirling past them, enveloping each of them in the midst of a whirlpool of tearing claws and teeth.

  Dread fired into the crowd with his pistol as fast as he could, taking a few ghouls down before the flood reached him. As the nearest of the ghouls leapt towards him, he drew the machete-like kukri knife from his belt with his left hand, swinging it wide to sweep the ghoul’s head off of its shoulders.

  He saw red, losing himself to his battle rage, firing point blank into the faces of ghouls with his right hand and striking out with the kukri in his left. One of the ghouls grabbed his gun arm and Dread twisted it upwards, swinging down with the kukri to cleave the ghoul’s arm clean off at the elbow. He pistol-whipped the ghoul to keep it off him long enough for him to shoot another ghoul in the face, punching a hole through its teeth and out the back of its head.

  Dead ghouls began to pile around his feet as he slew them, but the sheer weight of their numbers began to suffocate his movements and even his huge bulk became nothing compared to their collective mass. Another ghoul grabbed his gun arm and he split its skull to the teeth with his kukri, but the knife stuck firmly in place, and before he could recover, they were all over him.

  He staggered toward Lysette, trying to cover her body with his, acting as a human shield to buy her another second or two before the ghouls could get to her and tear her helpless body apart. Jolly was nearby, on the ground, hunched into a ball to try to protect his head and neck from the swarm of ghouls around him.

  Countless ghouls were all over Dread, fangs and claws driving down into his arms and shoulders like hot needles, and as their combined mass finally pulled him down on top of Lysette, all he could think was Cass… Cass, I hope you made it.

  Cass

  I didn’t really have a play. I didn’t really have a plan. All I knew was that the hub was overrun, and now Kel had arrived in the midst of the madness, invulnerable behind her shield. She had come for the device, that stupid metallic sphere rolling across the floor that was the cause of all this death and destruction, and I knew I had to deny it to her.

  That, and get my ass out of the hub. Past that, it was anybody’s guess.

  At least Dread might have some sort of chance, I figured. If he and the others could get into the hallway leading to the gatehouse… the one hallway we knew Kel couldn’t attack from… they would have the advantage of only having to defend against attackers from one direction, rather than from every direction at the hub. They could put the gatehouse to their backs, and try to hold the entrance to the hub.

  If they could make it.

  In the meantime, I could play decoy and draw Kel and some of her ghouls away from the hub, and that might give Dread and the others enough of an edge to hold out. But there was no way for me to know if it had worked. I pulled Mickey behind me and through the intact steel door of Six and into the open cell block beyond.

  It was a pretty safe bet that the cell block would be clear. Kel’s army had smashed the doors to three entrances to the hub during the probe; Two, Four, and Seven. She was only going to run ghouls down those cell blocks, the ones with the open entrances. It would’ve been a waste of resources to station them in cell blocks that still had intact doors; the ghouls wouldn’t have been able to get through the steel doors by themselves and would’ve been trapped somewhere away from the fight.

  “What are we doing? Cass? What do we do?” Mickey said, sprinting down the cell block hallway next to me top speed, out of breath, sounding like she was on the verge of tears.

  “Keep going! Get ready to fight!” was all that I could give her, as I reloaded my last magazine and turned to fight off whatever had followed us into the cell block.

  Maybe five or six ghouls were close on our heels; I had to burn through most of my ammo in my rush to drop them, but I managed to kill them all before they got close enough to grab a hold of me. There were a few tense seconds while I backed away from the door, further into the cell block, watching and waiting for more ghouls, but no more were coming. Yet.

  Stray thoughts pushed into my mind about Dread; thoughts I couldn’t afford right now. Thoughts about the last things we’d said to each other before the attack, regrets that those words were spoken in stupid, foolish, reckless anger. Apparently I hadn’t learned a damn thing from my near death experience with Polonius. Apparently I’d forgotten all about how important every moment is, how words spoken in anger can shatter a relationship beyond repair.

  I had to shake myself out of my introspection. There wasn’t any time for it. I had to fight for my life.

  I turned and ran further down the cell block, glancing down at the top of my weapon to check how many rounds were left in my clear plastic magazine. Maybe fifteen, twenty rounds at most… not so good. Mickey might have another magazine on her, though, so I called out to her.

  Nothing. No one. The cell block was empty except for me.

  God damn it. God damn it. After all this, as far as I’d taken her, and now, now when I needed her the most, the little shit ran away and left me.

  Almost on cue, the steel door to the hub crashed open again, and maybe ten or fifteen ghouls ran into the cell block and straight at me. I fired two bursts before I remembered how low I was on ammo and took a second to switch to single fire.

  They were coming on fast, and I was having trouble keeping up with shooting them down. I was just starting to anticipate running out of ammo and having to transition to my sidearm… not that it was going to make much of a difference, as many ghou
ls as there were coming at me… when there was a loud, familiar popping sound behind me.

  I spun towards it, my blood running cold. I knew what that sound was, before I even saw her.

  Kel. Not ten feet away, safe behind her shield, bracketed by a pair of ghouls she had teleported into the cell block along with her.

  I tried to get my gun around fast enough to shoot one of the ghouls, but it was on me before I could line up the head shot, and my round punched uselessly into its chest. It didn’t go for my throat; it grabbed my weapon and twisted it out of my grasp, as the second ghoul clamped on to my arm with those long, black talons.

  Its claws dug into the flesh of my arm and I screamed, fighting back as best I could, but the ghoul who had ripped away my gun now grabbed my other arm. Those bastards were stronger than they looked, and with one of them gripping me on each arm, struggling against them was like struggling against a steel vice.

  I twisted and looked back at the ghouls who had charged in from the hub. They now stood at a disinterested standstill, at least twenty yards away, and as one, they turned their backs on me and went back into the hub.

  Why wouldn’t they? Kel didn’t need them here any longer. She had me at her mercy.

  “The dog,” she said, as the ghouls forced me down to my knees in front of her. “Of course it’s you. I told you, dog… nobody is going to leave this prison alive. I keep my word.”

  “How about you drop that shield, shitbag,” I said, gritting my teeth through the pain of the ghouls’ claws digging deep into my arms. “Come on. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  “Adorable,” she said, shaking her head at me. “I could stop your heart with a thought, and you want to have a boxing match with me. Perhaps that’s what I’ll do; kill you with a Trick, and then you will tell me where you’ve hidden the sphere.”

  She leaned in close, staring into me with those dark, soulless pools she called eyes. The shield she kept constantly around her flickered for a second and then finally disappeared… not that it was going to do me any good. I was about as likely to get to my pistol as I was likely to jump to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

  “The dead have no secrets from me,” she said, smiling her arrogant little smile. “They speak to me as I speak to you, and tell me all they know. You cannot hide the…”

  She stopped, frowning as she caught sight of the sphere bulging out of the vest pocket where I’d stashed it. With a laugh that sounded like nails screeching down a chalkboard, she dug it out and held it in her hand.

  “You still had it on you? You didn’t even try to hide it? Bad doggie.”

  She turned the sphere with her hand, looking it over, and once again, I fought against the ghouls pinning my arms. All I got for my trouble was the searing pain of claws digging more deeply into my skin.

  At last, Kel seemed satisfied with her work, turning her attention away from the sphere and bending her knees so that she could stare closely into my face. Everything inside of me screamed and raged with fear and desperation and hatred, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do.

  “It’s time for me to go,” she said. “But before I leave, I have one more Trick to show you. I call it Wither. It will make your body age sixty years in sixty seconds. I won’t let it kill you, but it will hurt worse than you could possibly imagine. I will leave you in this place as a withered, blind, toothless old invalid, cursed to spend the rest of your few remaining days in constant misery. And as you suffer, as you slowly succumb to the darkness, I want you to think of me.”

  I struggled. I fought. I strained against the ghouls holding me with the panic of someone who is drowning just below the ice, but it was useless. They were too strong.

  Kel came to me slowly, baring her cruelty in a sneering smile, until she was close enough to touch. She began to reach out her hand, and I could feel it start inside of me, as if my soul were being drawn out of my lungs along with my breath.

  “No!” a loud voice shouted, and suddenly, Mickey was there, leaping up behind Kel to grab her head with both hands.

  As quickly as it had started, the sensation of my soul being torn from my body ended. Kel tried to straighten up, but her face became a twisted mask of agony and she screamed, her cry piercing the air of the cell block like an air raid siren.

  It was ear-splitting, intolerable; her scream drove into my mind like a drill, and even when the ghouls let go of me, the intensity of it kept me paralyzed. All I could do was stay on my knees, my hands over my ears, trying to keep out the death mage’s cry that felt like it was tearing me apart from the inside.

  The ghouls echoed her scream, standing as she did, their heads thrown back in pain, their arms held wide. It was constant, unrelenting; blue light began to erupt out of their eyes and mouths like searchlights as their howls echoed off the walls of the cell block. All the while, Mickey held on to Kel’s head with both hands, grimacing with pain.

  Finally, when I thought I couldn’t endure another instant of that sound piercing me down to my core, Kel disappeared in a rush of displaced air, leaving Mickey to stumble and fall forward in front of me. The ghouls fell as one, dropping like puppets with their strings suddenly cut.

  For a while… I’m not sure how long… all I could do was stay there on my knees, trembling and shivering like a newborn calf. There was no sign of Kel. The ghouls stayed motionless where they lay. No sounds of battle came from the direction of the hub. Everything in the prison was deeply, deathly quiet.

  Mickey lay curled in a ball in front of me, her hands over her face. She looked even more miserable than I was, shaking like a leaf, but at least she looked intact.

  “Mickey,” I said. “Mickey?”

  “Ow,” was all she could say. “Ow.”

  ***

  To his surprise, Dread took a breath.

  His entire body was agony. Beyond the innumerable wounds all across his body inflicted by the ghouls, it felt like every single one of his cells was aching.

  Just as the ghouls had forced him down over top of Lysette, their weight had suddenly lifted, but before Dread could try to regain his feet, they all began to scream with one voice. The sound of it drove him down to the floor, clamping his hands over his ears in agony. The hallway became filled with a blue light emanating from the eyes and mouths of every ghoul there, each of them standing with their head thrown back and arms held wide as they screamed out the anguish of the death mage who had created them.

  And then, it was over, and the ghouls dropped en masse, falling all around him like Dominos. It took him some time to come back into himself; it was the sight of Lysette lying propped up against the wall that got him moving.

  “Hey, hey,” he said, “you still with me? Are you still with me?”

  She blinked a few times and seemed to focus a bit. “Still.”

  “I think,” Dread said, looking around at the inert bodies of the ghouls, “I think it’s over.”

  “Hey, great,” Lysette said. “Good for us.”

  Dread dragged his body to a seat propped up against the wall next to her. “I told you, you should’ve taken that body armor.”

  “You needed it more than I did,” Lysette said, wheezing through her words. “Pussy.”

  Dread couldn’t help a little laugh, even though it stabbed hot pain through his ribs. Something in there was broken, there was no doubt about that; his arms and shoulders were practically hamburger, and he was pretty sure one of his ears was torn halfway off, but another look at Lysette’s gruesome wounds and he forgot all about his own injuries.

  “Hey, Jolly! Jolly! You still with us?” he said. “Get over here.”

  Jolly’s weak voice came back from halfway across the hallway, buried underneath the bodies of ghouls. “I can’t move. Everything hurts.”

  “Lysette needs you.”

  “Oh. Right. Be right there.”

  I figured that would get you moving, Dread thought.

  “Who else is with me?” Dread said, as loudly as his aching head could st
and.

  “Here,” Shifty called out, raising a hand up amongst the pile of corpses. “I feel like I’ve been on a three day tequila binge. And not in a good way.”

  “Tell me about it,” Dread said.

  He looked around the hallway as a few more weak voices of survivors called out from amongst the scattered remains of the dead. Their voices were the only sounds in the entire prison; after all the gunfire and shouting and madness, the still and the quiet seemed like an alien force pressing in all around him.

  “It’s really over,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “We actually made it.”

  “You were right, Dread,” Lysette said. Her face was pale and coated with a sheen of cold sweat, worrying Dread about how long she could hold out, but he could see that Jolly had crawled out from under the dead ghouls and was on his way.

  “About the armor?”

  “About me. About Cass. What I used to be… I may be past saving, but she’s not. Don’t let her leave, Dread. Don’t let her try to escape. Don’t let her waste her second chance.”

  Dread looked at her. “No one is past saving, Lys. Every day, you get to decide who you’re going to be for the rest of your life.”

  Lysette was quiet for a second. “You sound like a fucking self-help guru.”

  Dread smiled and leaned back against the wall. “Maybe I’ll write a book. When you’re still above ground, anything’s possible.”

  Mickey

  Everything hurt. My hair hurt. My fingernails hurt. Can fingernails even hurt? Well, mine did.

  Cass kept saying my name, and finally I answered her by saying, “Ow.”

  “Mickey, what happened?”

  I finally opened my eyes and sat up.

  “I’m sorry I ran away,” I said. “I was out of bullets, and I tried to reload my gun like Dread showed me, but I was scared and running and shaking and I ending up dropping the magazine thingy.”

  “Mickey.”