Carnage (Remastered) (2 page)

He took another breath and focused on his
absolute conviction that he was doing the right thing. The world
became firm under his feet again as brought himself back into the
Knight State. There were formal names for it but he didn't use
them. When he was focused, he shed his identity as Vlad, son of a
human woman and became the Knight, son of battle.

All Knights were born for war, but most were
forced to suppress their abilities around other wizard in order to
hide from the Hunters. Without training those abilities atrophied
and would come only as imperfect shadows of their full
capabilities. But Vlad didn't live among other wizards, and humans
didn't have the context to understand what he was. His powers had
never been suppressed. Without another Knight to teach him he'd had
to learn things the hard way, in trial by fire. In the last year
he'd fought and killed demons, walked battlefields in the Middle
East and spent every hour he could learning combat strategy and
tactics. He had a long way to go before he reached his full
potential, he was no Harrower.* But these Hunters had still never
faced anyone like him. A battle tested Knight.

Fully committed the Knight turned his
terrible mind to the task of murder.

First order of business was to eliminate the
watchers on the perimeter. They couldn't be allowed to report back.
Deception could not abide accuracy. Using shadows and girders for
cover The Knight headed straight for the wall surrounding the
construction site.

These Hunters were thinking like they were
in a wizard city. They hadn't added independent shields to hide
their Reigh shadow to their armor. Not like he did. Wizard cities
were made with materials reinforced to dull Reigh sense for the
sake of privacy. The Knight could sense them but they couldn't
sense him. It allowed him to time his attack perfectly; he would
catch each pair at their least alert.

In seconds he was over the
wall and scaffold and was behind the first pair of soldiers. The
Knight struck quickly. A fist to the back of each soldier
transferred webs
^*
of pure fire into their bodies. They burned from
the inside out. Before their remains hit the ground he was off and
running. Bare feet moved him faster than should have been
physically possible. A Knight's warp at work. He moved so fast his
thoughts became flashes.

Rounding the corner, using part of the
scaffold as an axle, the Knight struck the next pair, a man and a
woman this time. Pure fire again. Faster. Two women. Fire and
earth. One burned one broke. Faster. Two men. Fire and lightning.
Flesh blacked and peeled. Faster. Last corner. One man one woman.
Fire again.

Less than a minute. The Hunters didn't make
a sound as they died. He disintegrated the bodies. A good magic
trick left no evidence.

With the perimeter guards taken out, he
turned his attention to the Hunters inside the construction site.
The Knight climbed back up the scaffold and jumped from there onto
the framework of girders. Carefully, he made his way over the steel
beams until he was roughly above the center of Knight Hunter
formation.

Regular wizards may not have been born with
the instinct for battle, the way Knights were, but they weren't
stupid. The hunters were spread out in groups of five, their
commander with the group in the center and the others encircling
them. They covered each other from at least two directions.

Simple strategy. Groups of five were strong
enough to engage and pin him down while the others poured on the
fire. Between brute force and the law of averages the Hunters would
beat him down. Not so good for the unfortunates of the first group
he went after. If he didn't kill them friendly fire would. But a
loss of five to one was actually about the best you could expect
with a Knight. They hoped he'd take the lesser bait of a single
scout instead of a whole squad. Simple, but nearly impossible to
beat single-handed. Too many directions act once.

If you had the right set of tricks in your
game bag, however, and you were good enough, fast enough, the odds
could be improved. To about fifty percent. Life and death decided
by the same odds as a coin flip.

A slow smile that had no place on a fourteen
year old boy curled up the Knight's face. A smile of mad hunger, of
relish. He may have stumbled at first but his nature could not be
denied. Knights lived for moments like this. Every one of them was
hopelessly addicted to the high of victory. The more difficult the
victory, the greater the high.

Mind racing to work out his course and
calculate his angles of attack, he reached into his pocket and
pulled out an MP3. He'd never done this in an actual fight, but if
he was supposed to do his greatest dance yet, he couldn't do it
without music. Silently, he thanked Kat for teaching him the trick
and used a small spark of Reigh to slave the audio-out to his own
eardrum.

Jeans and a tee-shirt wouldn't do for this
kind of fight. And the black lion on his chest might give something
away he didn't want out there. The New York Comic Con wasn't for
another four months but the night felt like a good one to wear a
costume. Around him he wove something he'd been working on. A cloak
of living shadow that covered him from head to toe in slowly
swirling darkness but for a pair of glowing red eyes. Something to
scare the kids with.

Below, the commander was trying to hail the
perimeter guards on her orator. One of her scouts had not re-turned
when she gave the order. The commander was beginning to realize
that they would not answer. She was getting ready to order her
people to pull out. Too late. The Knight had finished crunching the
numbers. He was ready.

Thumbing the MP3 to shuffle, the Knight
leapt from the girder. Johnny Cash's weighty gravel spoke into his
ear.

And I heard as it were a noise of
thunder.

Fire bloomed all around the commander and
her group. Not hot enough to burn through their shields. Just
enough to mess with night vision and mark their position for the
other groups. Before any of them could react, he was there, among
them, close enough to smell the stink of sudden terror that rose
off their bodies. The light haired commander was his target. Take
her out and the rest would be slow to change tactics, too slow.
While she was still trying to draw her sword or fire a spell to
hold him off, the Knight put his hand on the small woman's chest. A
single cord of air broke past her shield and expanded in her heart.
The mass of muscle and blood exploded. He was moving before she
knew she was dead.

There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.

Breaking right he slipped through the
remaining Hunters of the commander's group. They were still trying
to react to his attack. To his eyes the four soldiers moved as if
in slow motion. The other groups reacted faster. The Knight got out
of range a split second before they were torn apart by bolts of
lightning, balls of fire and bars of light. The music did not cover
the sound of their screams.

The hairs on your arm will stand up.

Ozone tickled the Knight's nose and sparks
of power began to crackle as the air grew heavy under the weight of
magic. Spells followed him as somebody tracked his movements. But
he wasn't the only thing they were chasing. He'd sent decoy shadow
cloaks flying to his left and to his six. Split their attention,
split their power.

Will you disappear into the potter's
ground?

The Knight hit the next group like a
bulldozer. The shield he wove ahead of him was strong enough to
block their fire for the seconds it took to get among them. Bars of
saffron light lanced from his palms and streaked as he swung them
like swords, cutting down the second group of five. Again, he was
gone before the last began to fall.

When the man comes around.

Forward this time, he ran, chased by the
strikes of lightning and the crashes of explosions. Two especially
loud explosions told him the surprises he had hidden in the decoys
had triggered. Spells of earth and fire that dug into the ground
and exploded, sending flaming shrapnel in every direction. Flying
land mines.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.

The third group saw him coming. The Knight
had to dance and dodge his way through a hail of destructive spells
to get to them. No time for anything smooth, the other groups were
starting to get a bead on him. He wasn't a good enough dancer to
dodge fire from so many directions at once. Not for long. He had to
take out the whole cluster in one shot. Fire, lightning, air and
earth compressed into a volatile ball. The knight threw it into the
center of the group like a grenade as he flew past. It exploded
into a ten foot orange sphere of chaotic heat and energy. The spell
consumed the whole group in a flash, leaving nothing but a smoking
circular crater where there had been five wizard soldiers.

Some are born an' some are dyin'.

A wall of air from the explosion slammed
into his back like a speeding car. The back of his shirt seared off
but his shield protected his flesh.. No advantage, no moment, could
be wasted. He jumped and let the thrust launch him like a cannon
ball over the next group. In mid-air, he turned so he was upside
down and fired five beams of violet light. The lances burned
through the Hunters and they fell like rag dolls.

It's Alpha's and Omega's Kingdom come.

Righting himself at the last possible
moment, he landed on his feet and hit the ground running. Time to
change things up. He'd been taking out groups of Hunters counter
clockwise from the center but the defenders were getting too close
with their spells. A storm of death crafted by magic thundered on
his heels just a half tick behind. Running behind a thick support
girder, the Knight stopped dead and sent another cloak along the
path he had been following. The Hunters' fire tracked the decoy
while he turned around and cut across to the last group in
line.

Till Armageddon, no Shalam, no Shalom.

The Knight's bare feet splashed through a
greasy stain. The stench of blood and burned flesh coated the back
of his throat. Another especially loud explosion told him his decoy
had reached another group of Broken Bolts. They'd already been hit
once and this second blast took out the survivors of the first
mine. The stain marked the spot where he'd broken the commander's
heart. A needless reminder of the price of failure. Win or die.

At his feet they'll cast their golden
crowns.

The first four of the next group were easy.
Too surprised by the decoy's explosion to react he sent bolts of
lightning into them. Blood misted the air as their as bodies were
shattered. The fifth Hunter was a little more alert. The tall woman
was able to deflect his bolt so it went sideways into a girder.
Electric current ran up the steel beam like half a Jacob's ladder.
She answered the Knight's attack with a ball of compressed air and
fire. Fast as he was, strong as his shield was, she was to close,
her spell fueled by desperation and hate.

When the man comes around.

Taking the hit felt exactly like what it
was, a giant's flaming fist punching him in the side. At least
three of his ribs broke and he felt the skin above them burn and
crisp away blackly. He suppressed the pain and made the bitch pay
for it with another bolt of lightning. This one blew her head from
her shoulders.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.

If he allowed himself to slow just because
of a few broken ribs and a burn they would be the least of his
worries. So the Knight ran straight towards the next group. Fortune
had smiled upon him. There were only two groups left and the one he
met first was already at half strength. Victims of another mine.
Only two Broken Bolts left. Water and earth forced kinetically into
their bodies, liquefying their organs. He hated using the same
trick twice but he needed this over quickly

It's Alpha's and Omega's Kingdom come.

Knowing they were the last,
the final group gave up the pretense of putting up a fight and ran
towards the exit. Growling with contempt, the Knight raised his
right hand. Never show your back to the enemy. Once upon a time
that had been the motto of the regular army corps.
Their
motto. Spiraling
bars of cobalt fire lanced from his hand into the backs of four of
the cowards. Limbs and heads fell from torsos scattering into ash
on the breeze. He had plans for the last one, so he
lived.

When the man comes around.

A web of shadow slammed between the running
Hunter-no-more and his connection to the Reigh.* The vortex he had
been trying to weave terminated in a flash of light. Stupid, even a
Knight couldn't run and open a vortex at the same time. Air
hardened into the consistency of steel around the fleeing man and
he collapsed to the ground under the weight of it. Caught, like a
bug in amber.

Blood trickled down the Knight's side as he
walked slowly toward the last soldier. He ignored it. His words to
the worm on the ground required all his concentration. They would
set the tone for what was to come.

The Knight stopped almost on top of the
Broken-Bolt-no-more. He released the web of air that held the
prostrated man but the soldier didn't move except to shiver on his
belly.

"Look at me." Cold rage added gravel to his
already deep voice; it came out as a grinding whisper.

Hesitantly, the man turned onto his back and
looked at the Knight. He was not seeing a fourteen year old kid or
even a twenty-five year old man. He saw a mass of slowly swirling
shadow with eyes that glowed crimson.

"Do you know why you live?" The
Hunter-no-more shook his head jerkily, not quite believing he was
and certainly not believing he would stay that way.