“That hypocritical bitch!” Ledge threw the remote into the TV screen. He regarded the rest of the Golden Eagles’ command staff.
“So… does it sound like that we’re about to get attacked by an angry mob?”
“That was one of the possibilities in the scouting report… way down on the list though,” Jimenez chewed her lip.
He eyed the twitchy woman from the California State Government.
A liaison, along with the other two, a young man and another woman.
Jimenez’s impressive ability to sense danger in specifics unsurpassed by anyone else with the same Skill was supposed to keep him safe long enough for the Golden Eagles to link up with Spear Captain Doran’s larger and better armed force.
“We were only supposed to fight the slavers after the slave soldiers were freed throwing their forces into chaos. Instead, not all of them are free.”
“They’re fighting right now. We need to move to support them before the slavers put them down and turn their attention on us. Not to mention all the regular people right behind them. The mob’s already on its way,” Jimenez said.
“Yeah,” Ledge cautiously peeked out the hotel window.
Fires burned across the entire street.
Multiple mercenary groups, adventuring bands and assorted wild cards were already fighting.
Some fought for the slavers for promised pay and reward.
Some fought against.
Others sought to settle grudges.
While more fought in a panic to get out of the cordon the slavers had placed around the entire hotel district.
“Gonna be a bloodbath,” Ledge sighed. “I’m too old—”
“Don’t finish that!” Jimenez snapped. “You just triggered a spike,” she grimaced, clutching her head.
“Yeah, dude, let’s not tempt fate. The spires are always listening,” Rowen said.
“Idiot!” Selena slapped the young man upside the head.
The woman was a stone-faced killer.
Ledge knew her kind.
He was glad they were on his side.
“Okay, we’re moving out,” he barked orders. “We’re going to get a bloody nose just crossing the street.”
Doran’s forces were a few hotels farther down the street.
“I’ll give us an opening and a head start,” Rowen said.
Time passed in a blur and Ledge found himself in the hotel lobby.
The rest of the Golden Eagles, roughly 300 men and women, gathered in the expansive space.
They were alone.
Everyone else had already fled or was dead.
The latter wasn’t their work, unless it was to defend themselves.
Ledge had made that clear and his company was a disciplined bunch.
“Open the barricades,” Rowen said.
The young man closed his eyes and spread his arms wide.
A glow emerged from both hands.
Like a shimmering rainbow.
“Mass Illusion,” he whispered.
The Golden Eagles ran screaming out of the doors, Ledge in the lead.
The people fighting took one look and decided to be elsewhere.
Ledge led his company down the street, eastbound.
Ledge stood in the shadows of the open doorway.
The night sky poured as it had been for hours.
“Bad visibility helps. It’d be pretty obvious if it was day time and the sun was shining,” Rowen grinned.
“Jimenez?” Selena said.
“We’re good, but let’s not wait too long,” Jimenez said.
“You heard her, Golden Eagles. Let’s get moving,” Ledge led them out into the dark rain.
In a different place, out of the whipping winds and lashing rain, liquid splashed across the True Patriot’s blindfold.
It wasn’t cold like the rain, but hot, leaving an iron tang on her tongue when stray droplets fell into her mouth.
Caving the crazed man’s face in had bought her and her two super soldiers space to back into one of the dining alcoves set at semi-regular intervals along the walls.
An over-turned table and broken chairs partially masked the blood-covered bodies.
One was noticeably smaller than the rest.
The enslaved’s thirst for vengeance knew no mercy.
She weighed their options.
Death’s Dancer had gone off script.
The primary objective sacrificed for what the young lieutenant had called a ‘greater good’.
He had urged her to pursue the secondary objective as the first was no longer possible to achieve.
His words had said much if he was certain that her considerable strength and power wasn’t enough.
For the first handful of years after the spires had appeared she had thought herself, perhaps, the physically strongest person in the country.
That notion had been squashed by a flying man.
A traitor, but one beyond their means to punish and control.
It had been further made clear to her in these death games masquerading as a celebration of freedom.
The gall of the slavers to use that word in any way to describe their so-called New American Republic.
If it had been up to her and had it been within her capabilities she would’ve burned this entire place to the ground.
She would’ve completed the task, utterly, unlike General Sherman, who stopped too soon on his march through the south.
If she couldn’t do that, then perhaps she could help put the Slaver King down.
The man stood in the eye of the hurricane.
Spells and bullets struck him from every direction.
Glowing balls of magic orbited around him, showering with magical bolts of fire like a comet’s debris tail bombarding the planet.
He took it all.
He healed from all.
He grappled with a towering Amazon whose dark skin shined like metal underneath the bright lights.
Steel Hammer.
A woman stronger than the True Patriot.
That strength proved lacking.
The Slaver King gained the advantage and flipped the titan over his shoulder, throwing her into the Watch.
They were only saved from being crushed by multiple layers of magic shields. The emitters burning out with the effort.
Magitech.
True Patriot recognized their like, though these looked much more advanced that then ones the techmages back home were capable of building.
So many talented people working at cross purposes.
They should’ve been all underneath the aegis of the United States of America where they belonged. If they had been together from the beginning they would’ve already reclaimed their country from the monsters and taken control of the spires.
The woman with the sword returned to battle the king. This time with a shield and wearing advanced-looking armor.
The king’s punches boomed like artillery as they struck, but to her shock the shield and armor took them.
The woman’s dull, dark blade carved into the king’s bare skin, drawing thin red lines that vanished almost as quickly as they had appeared.
No.
The True Patriot decided that joining the fight wouldn’t guarantee the king’s death.
She made her decision.
It was at that moment that Lt. Rico and Lt. Contrary returned from the weapon’s check-in area with their gear.
True Patriot gave new orders as the two distributed the weapons.
To their credit neither questioned.
Though she could see the unasked ones in their eyes.
What about Death’s Dancer?
“You have your mark on the secondary objective?” True Patriot said.
“Yessir, I can track him. He’s not that far, but down,” Lt. Contrary pointed.
“We pursue,” True Patriot took the lead as they skirted the chaotic battle that had consumed the entirety of the king’s great hall.
The overall plan hadn’t changed despite Death’s Dancer throwing a wrench in their primary.
The rest of her elite forces, regular and super soldiers, were already getting in position beyond the king’s outer walls securing their egress out of the castle grounds, then the city.
The chaos only aided them.
As for the young lieutenant?
She trusted in his abilities.
She’d wait for him at the extraction point outside the city.
When the American soldiers fled the battle another fully-committed herself to it.
She saw with more than her own two eyes.
The Magus of the Ten Eyes had pierced through to glean enough of the truth behind the Slaver King’s second Skill.
Though his people were willing subjects she couldn’t find it in herself to take pleasure in their impending doom.
They knew not the fate that hung over their heads.
The Sword of Damocles.
“He’ll draw strength from the souls of everyone that dies tonight!” she yelled down to her disparate allies. “Everyone that swore an oath to him! We must kill him! Quickly!”
A thought, as easy and instinctive as raising a finger, triggered one of her monster eyes.
The large pupil flashed.
A bright, thin line lanced across the king’s raised fist before he could land a blow on the one-eyed Sword of Freedom.
The beam disintegrated skin, muscle and bone, severing the arm.
An instant.
Bloody threads pulled the limb back into place as if nothing had happened.
A blur of movement.
Too fast for the magus to follow.
A heavy impact on her magic shield sent her careening all the way through the enormous glass dome high up in the center of the great hall.
The Sword of Freedom tumbled back down to the floor.
Rain pelted the magus’ shield while the winds forced her to anchor herself in place.
From her vantage point, she saw the entirety of the vicious battle centered on the Slaver King.
Sparky, Hayden had the big clown on the floor, pinning him with her knee while grasping his head with armored hands.
The clown laughed maniacally even as she poured electricity into him.
White painted face blistered and bubbled, charring black.
Hayden’s face was a rictus of desperate rage.
Somehow the clown continued to stab with his knife despite the thousands of volts flowing into his body, cooking him from within and forcing his muscles to contract.
He succeeded even as she turned him into an acrid, smoking corpse.
The knife had found a gap in between Hayden’s front and back plate.
It pierced through chainmail beneath.
Through tough, padded cloth.
Into flesh.
Up under the ribs.
Hayden staggered away, coughing blood.
The woman needed healing, but she had time.
Not far away, a golden-furred weredog, newly healed, launched herself at the Slaver King’s back only to be intercepted by a pair of even larger, more fearsome melding between man and animal.
The difference was apparent to even a non-magical eye.
One looked almost friendly, despite her size.
The other two triggered the primal fear in all men from the days their ancestors feared the night as prey for the predators.
The weredog wore clothing, armor while the two werewolves were clad in only their gray fur.
They rolled across the floor in a ball of snapping teeth and slashing claws, claiming those unlucky or too slow to get out of their way.
The werewolves were bigger, heavier and stronger.
One bit down on the golden-furred weredog’s arm, tearing it too shreds.
The other grasped her muzzle, pulling upper and lower jaw wide.
Muscles in the weredog’s neck and face bulged and clenched as she fought against the inexorable power in the werewolf’s arms.
Salvation came from an unlikely source.
A young man, scared, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the power being hurled violently around, rushed in.
He struck with a silver-coated axe.
Powered by a Skill the axe blade cleaved through the supernaturally tough fur, skin and muscle of the werewolf’s arm to sink into bone.
The wolf yelped. An animal sound of pain. He released his hold on the weredog.
She lunged forward, closing her jaws around the thick neck of the werewolf savaging her arm.
Growling, she bit down and shook her head like a dog with a rat in her mouth.
Silver Axe faced the other werewolf.
Over ten-feet-tall, the monster loomed over the young man.
Silver was anathema to the werewolves.
The gaping wound in his arm didn’t heal, it gushed blood, matting his fur.
He was no less dangerous.
He rushed forward with quickness that belied his size.
By some miracle, Silver Axe blocked the claw swipe.
A Skill saved his shield and shield arm.
The young man wasn’t the only one with Skills.
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The werewolf’s next strike flashed double.
Two strikes in one.
The shield and Skill took the first, but failed on the second.
Silver Axe gave a great cry of pain that was drowned out by the tremendous crash of clawed-hand on stout wood.
Armor and arm broke.
The werewolf’s feral grin was full of triumph.
He rushed forward to snap his jaws over the young man’s head.
The silver-edged axe blurred.
A Skill.
A last ditch effort to save his life.
The blade sang as it cleaved through the werewolf’s lower jaw, sending teeth flying in the spray of dark blood.
Triumph was short-lived.
The werewolf lashed out instinctively.
Silver Axe caught the blow on his armored chest.
The young man vanished into a crowd of fighting people several dozen feet away.
The Emerald Bomber zipped across the magus’ vision, drawing her eyes.
The flying wing’s engine whined, flames, blue in the core, turning to orange at the edges, pulsed from the main thruster.
The green and purple-armored woman strafed a thick knot of the king’s fighters as they poured into the great hall from one of the side doors. She caught them by surprise before they could cast spells or active Skills.
The magus looked away.
She didn’t have the stomach to see people turned into bloody chunks.
Emerald Bomber continued her aerial assault, throwing bombs that dissolved an enemy mage’s shield before dripping down on the young man’s face.
His screams turned into gurgles as he died horribly.
She threw another bomb that exploded into something resembling a spider’s web.
It reminded the magus of the remnants of such webs that the giant spiders weaved in their Manhattan territory before Cal’s battle with the golden-winged alien angel had wiped most of the area out.
This web fixed a dozen king’s fighters to the floor.
Shootystabby, Dayana flickered into view.
Even with her monster eyes the magus struggled to follow.
Dayana moved too fast.
The magus only saw still frames of action at the beginning and ending of movement. She missed everything in between.
Dayana flickered through the king’s fighters, somehow avoiding the sticky webbing on the floor.
Where she passed, men and women died with fountains of blood from opened throats and stabbed eyes.
The magus descended back into the fray, focusing on saving the lives of her allies rather than taking the lives of her enemies.
A monster eye flashed a sickly light across the slavers mobbing Silver Axe.
Arms grew heavy, bodies weakened, fingers let weapons slip to the floor.
The young man looked up at her with gratitude as she levitated him off the ground.
She moved over to Hayden next.
Arcs of electricity danced across the young woman’s armor.
Nevertheless, the magus lifted her up despite the protests.
She carried them above the battle toward the Watch.
A dark blur flowed across the floor, up a pillar and toward her only to strike her magic forcefield to reveal himself as the Blood-soaked Assassin, the Lord Alain De la Sangre.
Red eyes glared at her from beneath dark hood and mask.
“You—”
His words were lost, swallowed by the explosion that rocked the magus back.
The Emerald Bomber swooped past on her flying wing, giving a thumbs up.
The woman had fired a miniature missile without regard for the magus or her two passengers.
If the magus was willing to be charitable then she’d accept that the Emerald Bomber knew that the magic shield was strong enough to handle the explosion.
As for the vampire lord?
He fell to the floor, trailing smoke from the fire.
“That won’t be enough to keep him down for long, magus,” Hayden said, spitting blood.
“Then, perhaps, this will,” she replied.
An act of will.
A monster eye zipped down to face the fallen vampire.
The pupil flashed a gray ray, striking armored chest.
It spread quickly.
Steel, cloth, flesh.
Nothing was spared.
Lord Alain De la Sangre sat in a half-crouch, rising from the floor. He was gray. Like a stone statue.
“Uh… what was that?” Silver Axe coughed. The young man wheezed, his breathing labored.
“Petrification.”
“Permanent?” Hayden grunted.
“That depends on the level of his constitution.”
“You should make it permanent then.”
“That isn’t my concern at this moment. Your lives are,” the magus dropped them off with the Watch so that they could be healed and sent back into the battle before she went in search of others she might save.
It started as an itch in her eyes.
All twelve of them.
Like a mote stuck in the middle of her pupils.
She saw it coming from outside, from the broken skylight.
Dancing motes flowing down toward the Slaver King.
The man battled with the Sword of Freedom in the middle of the raised platform.
A punch hit her shield with such force that the shockwave knocked over all but the strongest for a hundred feet in all directions.
Even the magus was forced to brace herself in the air.
The Sword of Freedom’s armor and shield bore multiple fist-shaped dents, still she fought on.
The air around her dark gray blade shimmered and glowed with energy.
The magus didn’t need to use her eye to see it.
It carved a chunk out of the Slaver King’s shoulder only for the gaping wound to heal nearly instantaneously.
Dancing motes continued to flow into the man.
They were streaming from every door and window.
The magus blinked all twelve eyes.
The motes didn’t vanish. They became more distinct. Larger. Taking disturbingly familiar forms.
A small girl rushed in behind the king and tried to run him through with a sword.
The blade merely nicked his back.
The king kicked the Sword of Freedom off the platform, turning to the one-eyed girl.
“Good guts!” he grinned. “You’ll make a great gladiator!”
The girl’s eye flashed.
The magus saw it taking the king’s strength and funneling it into the girl.
“You’re trying to empty the ocean with a cup!” the king laughed, holding his arms out wide.
The girl snarled, thrusting the blade.
The king took it on his muscular chest.
The blade sunk perhaps a few centimeters.
His hands blurred.
Steel snapped.
The one-eyed girl tripped backward.
The magus fired a beam of disintegration.
The king slipped his head to one side. “Don’t think I didn’t see you up there, magus. Your actions will not reflect well on your friends.”
“My friends are safe from your grasp.”
“Ah… you know? I’ll have to ask you how they were taken out of my custody under so many layers of security without a trace of anything.”
The motes swirled around the king.
Was she the only one seeing them?
The one-eyed girl leapt a dozen feet with stolen strength and a broken blade.
All the rage from what had been done to her, her parents, her community laid at the feet of the one man that had made it all possible.
The blade shattered on the king’s face, drawing a thin red line down the center of his forehead.
He grabbed the girl’s throat.
“Ten out of ten. Considering how young and skinny you are. Truly, I can’t wait to see you fight when we’ve trained you up properly and fed you a few steaks,” he squeezed.
The girl’s eye rolled up into the back of her head.
He dropped her limp form on the platform.
“Relax, magus. She’s too valuable to kill. As for you… I need information. And since you’re all about those eyes, I think you could do without an arm or a leg.”
The Slaver King blurred across the floor.
The magus shot red beams, gray rays, fire and frost as she floated back and higher.
She laid down a field of malaise. Tried one of anti-magic.
Nothing worked.
The king was too fast, too strong.
He leapt, landing an earth-shattering punch on her magic shield, cracking it, sending a spike of pain through her head.
The next punch broke it and caused her vision to darken for a moment.
She came to as she slowly floated toward the floor with the king’s grinning face in hers as he reached for her.
Instinctively, a monster eye placed itself between them.
He popped it with a punch.
She screamed, clutching her face.
That had—
It had felt like her own eye!
The king’s body suddenly sprouted dozens of shallow cuts.
The Sword of Freedom glared at him from the distance.
Not enough.
The king almost had the magus—
The king was gone from her sight.
It had happened too fast, but her eyes caught it.
A body had broken as it slammed into the king like a missile, knocking him away.
She looked down.
Hammer had thrown one of the slavers.
The magus’ head spun.
She blinked away the pain.
There was a void.
She had lost an eye.
The Slaver King laughed as he threw the dead body back at Hammer. “You people have no idea who you’re fucking around with, but you’re going to find out. I’m only getting stronger and stronger as the night goes on.”
He crashed into Hammer.
The two traded blows the sent shockwaves through the great hall.
Blood and teeth flew.
Though the latter only grew back for one of them.
The magus struggled to understand what she saw entering the king’s bare torso.
Not motes in her eyes.
Not anymore.
She had seen and fought inhuman spirits during her journey through several continents.
These resembled those superficially, but something about them called to her own spirit. Her own soul…
Dawning horror filled her.
The king’s Skill.
She saw them with certainty.
The souls of the king’s subjects flowing into him.
In part or whole, their ethereal forms gave him strength, allowing him to heal from seemingly anything.
It had started as a trickle, but they were coming in faster now.
Ghostly forms emerged from the king’s back.
She saw the anguish in the dark hollows where their eyes should’ve been.
Their mouth’s opened in soundless wailing at their fate.
Their hands grasped and reached as if they were drowning, fighting against being dragged into the depths of hell.
She wasn’t fighting one man.
She fought an entire nation.
“He’s stealing the souls of the enslaved! Maybe even anyone that’s sworn an oath to him!” she called out.
Hammer lost despite the strength to throw cars, the durability to shrug off powerful guns and spells and the toughness to ignore the pain.
The Slaver King took everything she hit him with and came back with more.
Metallic skin bruised and split under his assault.
Her nose was smashed.
One eye swollen shut.
A dent in her cheek from broken bones stronger than steel.
She smashed her forehead down on his face, deforming it for only a moment.
He kicked her between her legs, lifted her up and slammed her to the floor, cratering it. He grabbed her arm, stepped over and twisted it.
She roared defiance.
He responded with one of triumph as he broke the arm and popped the elbow.
“You’re lucky you got good genetics,” he sneered down at Hammer. “Makes you useful to me in more ways than one. So—”
A giant rock bowled the Slaver King over.
“You are just the skeeviest perv in the world,” Punchy, Jayde, smirked.
The young woman punched the floor.
A pillar of stone shot the prone king into the air.
“Air combo!” she pointed.
The magus bombarded the king with spells, sending him spinning higher.
A large, golden blur leapt.
Claw slashes were slowed by the wailing souls emerging from the king’s back.
The weredog felt a bone-deep chill run into her fingers along with the hot blood from parted skin and muscle.
She kicked the king toward the floor right into the path of a second leaping weredog.
Black and white-furred Rino carved into the king’s chest before striking him back into the air with a two-footed kick.
A much larger gray blur came out of nowhere, crashing into Rino and disappearing with her into the second level mezzanine.
The king crashed into the ceiling, sending glass and wooden shards down along with the rain pouring from other holes.
Gravity asserted itself pulling the king down.
Right into the path of the Emerald Bomber’s attack run.
The green and purple armored woman strafed the king with her flying wing’s gun.
Blood spun, spiraling out like a blooming flower.
She zoomed over him, tossing a few bombs in her wake to consume the king in explosive fire.
An arm of wood and earth shot thorn-covered vines, snaking up to coil around the king before cracking like a whip to keep him aloft.
The rest of them opened fire from the floor.
Jayde missed most of it.
Strong hands ripped the steel protecting her neck off like it was made of tin foil.
A warm arm as hard and unyielding as marble snaked around her exposed neck.
“Relax, let me taste you,” a soft, sibilant voice whispered huskily in her ear.
Jayde’s eyes widened. She had been warned about this. She tried to fill her thoughts with everything else rather than listen to the compelling voice.
“Don’t you want the kiss?”
Something wet and sinuous swirled in her ear.
“I bite, but you’ll love it.”
Hard, warm hands pulled her head to one side exposing her bare neck.
“Damn you!” Jayde struggled to concentrate. Her will became a ponderous, heavy thing to hold. The spell kept slipping from her thoughts like a slimy fish through her fingers. “Stone Spike!” she punched back over her shoulder.
Thank you to the spires for making spell casting automatic when you said the words.
Sweet, sweet contact!
A pained yelp.
Freedom!
Jayde turned to face the vampire, Lady Velvet.
Form-hugging dress revealed a perfect, voluptuous body.
Red hair fell perfectly on bare, alabaster shoulders.
“Hot, if you’re into that sort of thing… even with the hole in your eye,” Jayde smirked.
“It will heal,” Lady Velvet hissed, baring fangs. “I shan’t say the same for you.”
“‘Shan’t’? The fuck? Pretty sure we haven’t circled back to medieval times or the Renaissance or whatever,” she shrugged.
“Surrender yourself to me. Let me embrace you and fix that ugliness on your face.”
Lady Velvet’s words filled the vampire with a presence that overwhelmed Jayde.
The Heartfury reacted, relying on muscle memory to carry her through the muddled cloud that was her thoughts.
She dashed the few steps separating the two.
At the last moment she went low with an uppercut between the vampire’s legs.
The fireball boomed Lady Velvet all the way up to the third level mezzanine.
“Uppercunt!” Jayde smirked. “I shadn’t be doing such a thing… pip, pip, cheerio.”
Her triumph was short-lived.
A blur bull-rushed her through the wall into one of the private dining rooms.
Jayde rolled awkwardly, punching the ground to cast a magic wall of hard-packed earth from floor to ceiling between her and her attacker.
She came up slowly, spitting blood.
She took a moment to pull a finger-long splinter out of her cheek.
“One day I’ll get a full-faced helmet,” she muttered.
The earth wall exploded.
“What the hell? Is my blood that tasty?”
A second vampire stepped through.
This one was in rough shape.
His clothing and armor was ruined, flaking off with each movement.
His skin wasn’t in much better shape. Gray flakes shed to reveal the raw red of muscle and glistening blood.
Lord Alain De la Sangre coughed gray dust, vomiting more flakes.
“No. It isn’t, but beggars can’t be choosers. I need you to heal, so that I may repay that Arab.”
Jayde raised her fists.
The vampire lord blurred underneath her strikes, cutting where she wasn’t covered by armor.
Too fast for her to hit consciously.
She couldn’t use her newest and most powerful spell on the decidedly corporeal vampire.
Spell-Punch Combo!
She triggered her old Level 30 capstone with a thought.
It had only gotten stronger as the levels and years passed.
A flicked jab encased the vampire lord’s raw-red face in ice.
A straight left punched a spear of wood through the chest.
A right hook shot a stone spike into an ear.
A shot of explosive fire to the liver.
Three more punches crushed ribs and throat with added magic.
“Fuck! I got you in the heart with a stake! Why aren’t you turning to ash?” she stepped back warily.
He ripped the ice from his face, taking a layer of flesh with it.
The vampire’s cough was wet with blood and rasped with the stone flakes from the magus’ petrification spell.
It took her a moment to realize that the strange warbling rattle was his laughter.
From the holes in his lungs and throat?
“Not… natural… the wood… conjured… requirements… not met…”
“Gonna punch your head off,” Jayde slammed her fists together. “That should work.”
The vampire pointed. “Distant Touch of the Leech,” he said.
“Hey!”
The blood from Jayde’s wounds streamed like tiny rivers from her to the vampire’s fingers.
She rushed forward, but was too slow.
He healed quickly. Enough to tear the wood spear out of his chest.
“I’m connected to your blood now,” he bared fangs, “Blood Explosion.”
Jayde’s left arm turned into fire.
A sick squelching sound, like a wet balloon popping assaulted her ears.
She looked down in shock.
Pain radiated up from her elbow.
The floor was painted in bright red.
She spied bits of meat and ivory glistening underneath the lights.
She dropped to her knees.
Lord Alain De la Sangre approached slowly, blood flowing into him, healing him by the second.
He reached down and almost gently grasped Jayde by the chin slowly lifting her up until he could stare into her eyes.
Blood red pupils shined.
“I’m not too clear on where exactly you rank on the king’s list. It’s the pain you see. Makes it hard to focus on anything but the blood I need to stay alive. I suppose it’s better to ask for forgiveness after rather than permission beforehand.”
His mouth distended impossibly wide enough to swallow two fists.
Fangs lengthened.
“Inferno Burst!” Jayde punched her fist into the vampire’s mouth.
The explosion scorched her up the elbow despite the inherent protection from her spells granted her and sent her crashing into the large round table.
Glass shattered around her.
She blinked the white glare out of her eyes.
Grimacing, she slapped fire on her bloody stump.
There’d be time to take care of that later.
Her friends still needed her.
Now… about that vampire?
The smoke slowly cleared to reveal the Lord Alain De la Sangre standing in the middle of the large dining room.
The upper half of his head was just gone.
All that remained was bloody gore.
The body took a step.
“Seriously?” Jayde snapped.
The body crumpled to the floor.
She waited for it to turn to dust.
It didn’t, so she settled for hacking the limbs off with her machete before she stepped back into the great hall.
Where she’d spit at the irony that while she no longer had both a right and a left fist, only the former remained, the Slaver King, rat bastard that he was, had been keeping his Right Fist of the Slaver King and Left Fist of the Slaver King in reserve.
Their entrance proved to be the stuff of nightmares.