Gizzy grabbed a sword off a suit of armor and cracked her neck, letting her back face her enemy as he strolled softly, his own sword tip to the carpet. She stepped back before suddenly moving in a blur, clanking the tip of the blade off his chest and flexing the sword as she ducked his retaliatiatory swipe, then circling slowly again.
“Very creative armor. But all the canvases are missing their heads, so it seems like you neglected a rather vulnerable spot free of ink.” She said, swinging for the neck as he blocked and thrusted for her heart, clipping her dress as she leapt vertically and rolled out of the way. She landed, shirt now open slightly, cleavage exposed and a tiny scratch on her collar bone.
“One must remain sporting in some manner. My body is my dark temple, tribute to the god of night that armors me, but my mind remains my own and my artistry of ivory and ink much left to my own free will. A gift from the master. A mind freely given is more powerful than one taken by force. A heart is the same way. Lungs held of breath of those who choose not to speak are full of more power than ones deflated by the blade.”
“Oh shut the hell up, Cueball Von Creep. I grabbed a sword, not a pen. So do you wanna fight or recite poetry to me? Any way you slice it, you’re just a little prick with a lot of ink.” She said before stepping into the danger zone for a kill strike and missing him. She felt the sudden sharpness of a blade in her chest. He pulled back, looking puzzled as she grinned maniacally.
“Truly heartless indeed.” He laughed. “Oh what fun you are.”
“Oh the fun just never ends with me… neither do the surprises.” She said whi;e placing the sword to her own ribs and making a deep gash with gnashed teeth and an unrelenting stare.
...
Jack stumbled to his knees, then Demitri yanked him back up by the shirt and dragged him along.
“Jack, you must not necessarily remain standing but you must remain awake. I need a direction to follow if I am to carry you like a satchel. Be a good little pup and point, if you close your eyes, she dies.” He said as Jack slammed his boot to the tile and lifted himself up, taking half his weight and guiding Demitri along as he did the hacking and reduction of limbs while they reached their way from the darkness. Jack pulled himself from Demitri’s grip, getting a second wind and throwing a shoulder into the door. It bowed to his rage. He lifted the pistol to the bride in black, who froze in fear as Dimitri cupped his hand over the barrel.
“Save that bullet, Jack.” He whispered, stepping in and parting the bride of her head. Vicki sighed with relief, still locked in place by her own muscles and body, breathing heavily and angrily as the blood ran down her bare back from the half finished tattoo just below the neck strap of her bra.
“Vicki, I’m here.” He said, trying to move her, feeling her vampiric strength resist as her teary eyes implied that she wanted to go.
“Jack, she cannot move and you cannot overpower her. The spell was incomplete but the chalice is empty. She drank the collector’s blood. She is his property as long as he breathes… So go, let me protect her for you, and insist that he stop breathing.” He said, lifting the gun “He may listen to this.”
“I’m not leaving her, why don’t you want to kill him yourself?” Jack asked.
“Oh Jack, you confused pup. How sweetly do I WANT to kill him myself. I simply don’t have the permission.” He said looking enraged to the core and fighting for his polite composure as he rolled up his sleeve to show a spiral tattoo on his forearm. “Nothing would please me more then ending his life, but I must be satisfied with playing my part while someone else has the pleasure.”
“He controls you?” Jack asked, pointing the gun at him.
“Oh, do temper your paranoia young mutt, control is a strong word, but the more ink one has been given, the closer to that strong word you become. I am marked just enough to give him ever the slightest advantage and in ten duels, I have yet to leave my own artwork on him. Kill the artist before his masterpiece is complete, and you kill the power the art has over the canvas. Leave her now, kill the bastard with his own gun, aim for the head, and she will be your Victoria again, just with a slightly more adorned back. Move.” He ordered.
“I’m not trusting you, I’m just doing what you suggested. If you hurt her or let anyone else, I’ll carve her name on your corpse.”
“Foam at the mouth, little junkyard doggy, the hate is your strength, now go find your prey and bury a bullet in him.”
...
Gizzy pulled her hand from her abdomen, and with it, a strangely adorned sword handle, with a stub of a blade wrapped in bloody cloth. She bit the cloth from it to display the jade green blade, no more than 2 inches long and wide.
“What a production for such a miniscule surprise.”
“Oh, I bet you’ve heard that before, but the difference is…” she grinned, flicking her wrist as the blade extended to a 4 foot claymore blade. “Mine's a grower, not a shower.” She said before stepping into combat and hacking his sword in half, backhanding and taking a hand with the return strike as he winced and pulled back, gripping the purple and red stub. “Awwwwe shit… magic armor doesn’t beat magic sword, punkin? I guess the sword IS mightier than the pen after all.” She taunted.
“You arrogant swine bitch. My carving hand is my legacy!” he yelled through a caged mouth. Jack stepped into the room and lifted the pistol.
“Look me in the eye before I kill you.” He growled.
“No Jack… heel. Don’t take the shot” Gizzy ordered.
“You didn’t see what he did to Vicki.”
“I didn’t say we would let him live, I said don’t take the shot. He will pay, but that bullet is too good for him. You pull the trigger and he wins.”
“I don’t understand.” Jack said, fighting the urge to shoot.
“Fascinatingly…” chuckled the collector. “Neither do I. Your mistress is even more evil than I am, and I cannot wait to discover what horrors she has for me. I am to die, let me die as art, to the brush of an evil I have never seen before.” He smiled.
“Oh, please shut up with that shit!” she barked, putting the blade to his throat. “I’m not giving you the enjoyment of a weird torture death by a gorgeous vampire…Jack’s gonna kill you, we’re just taking your fucking soul too.” She huffed as his grin dropped to despair and Jack lowered the gun with a slight grin and a look of impressed respect, holstering the weapon.
“I’m so sorry I questioned you. Impostor blood messes with your head a little sometimes.” Jack said calmly.
...
Demitri carried Vicki’s clenched body while Jack and Gizzy drug the struggling German, now missing feet and hands, with cloth wrapped over his mouth as he screamed and thrashed pointlessly. Nicole rushed into the cargo bay with a shocked look and an open mouth ready to protest as well. Jack locked eyes with her and she stopped, terrified at the hate she saw in them.
“Don’t you dare even say it.” Gizzy said as she passed her up. Nicole stood, unable to process or argue. She walked their direction, stopping to debate whether or not she wanted to know what was about to happen, knowing she couldn’t stop them anyway. Not with that look in both of their eyes and Demitri silently following with Vicki in an alarming condition. She sat down on the cold stone floor, feeling helpless and alone, almost feeling the weight of the sins that were about to be committed and to her own horror, the debate in her mind as to whether or not they were justified this time. The stench of evil in every purple and red swirled drop of blood soaked into deepest part of her sinuses and sickened her. She stared at the dots as Vinn picked her up and guided her back away. Dee grabbed a mop and nodded as Vinn lead her to the other room to sit down somewhere comfortable.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Talk to me, what the hell was that?” Vinn said.
“Can’t you smell it?” she asked.
“Yeah. It’s vile.”
“It’s imposter blood, but… worse.”
“I knew that was a familiar stench. Why is it alive and on the ship?” he asked.
“I don’t know… I don’t want to know. I have no power here, not against Gizzy when she has that look in her eye, and not when Jack does. Both of them like that means something too dark to argue with. What did we bring on my ship?” Nicole asked while trembling slightly
“Nothing I wanna know about either.” He sighed. "Dee, you don’t have to clean that, you’re not the maid anymore. You're family.”
“I know… and I can't smell a damn thing, so you two go somewhere safe, and I’ll clean this mess. Let the killers handle whatever we just saw. I’m only half living and I’ve never felt anything with that much hatred. Not during the war that left my world barren, not in a possessed Vicki aiming for my neck and salivating. We don’t wanna try and stop them. I don’t want to go down that hallway.” She said while mopping the floor. The mop was strangely silent in its movements.
...
“Get him on the table.” Gizzy said as they slammed the collector on the medical workbench and strapped him down. ”Demitri, get Vicki comfortably in a chair and then you can go.”
“With respect, love.” He smiled. “You saw the skin room yourself, the number of human skins he had. They were all alive when they arrived, and knowing what he did to them before that and during, god himself cannot remove me from this room while you kill this creature. I will watch, and I will enjoy it.” he said darkly as Jack grabbed him and threw him to the wall throwing a punch almost through Demitri’s face.
“You knew what he does to them and you brought him Vicki anyway!?” Jack roared, pummeling him with a half dozen following punches as Gizzy pulled him back and his broken hand.
“Jack, you have expressed yourself well, and I do deserve it, and more. But until you wear the mark on your skin that she does and I do… you do not understand the power it holds over you. The way it clouds your mind and senses when you are under its haze. Your love is a statue as we fight for the power of half a mark on her flesh, and I carry a full spiral, a completed rune, and yet I went in there myself and faced that devil because for once I knew I could leave with his corpse. He is a plague that out-shadows my most horrid crimes a thousand fold. Victoria will recover and live…” he said, gnashing his teeth in rage. “MY Victoria did not. And yet I am keeping quite the composure through my century of rage, so Jack, you young and fortunate boy, do control yourself or I WILL retaliate next time. Your free swings are over until his heart has stopped, do you understand!?” he yelled, fangs out and eyes burning brightly.
“Boys, keep your shit together. He’s just feeding on our anger and turning us against one another. That’s what imposters do, and he’s soaked in their stench and his own evil. Let’s end this the right way and get it over with.” Gizzy said, calming them both with her smoldering glare and tensed jaw. Jack grabbed the tools, getting the mercury and the intubation pliers. Gizzy yanked the collectors mouth open with a sharp snap before Jack inserted the tube into his mouth and turned on the pump. They stared in silence as the thrashing slowed down and finally stopped, the air getting cold, and then suddenly warm again. Demitri lifted his head back and let out a belly laugh befitting a true villain, directing it in the collector’s face as he leaned in close.
“As my daughter’s soul finds rest, may yours rot in hell.” He whispered with a tear of joy streaking down his cheek. He turned and left the room lighter and almost euphoric.
“Hell is too good for him.” Gizzy said as the hatch closed and she spun her scalpel. “But the pieces of that soul will send a few other demons back there for sure.” She said with a crunch, pulling up and holding a blackened mass of solid metal at the end of a pair of medical pliers. “Jack, we have bullets to make.”
“I have a wife to take care of. You have bullets to make. You’re the mad scientist, I just shoot the damn things into people.” He said while tending to Vicki as she returned to her normal relaxed look and posture.
...
Jack knocked on the door as Demitri rolled his eyes, opening it regardless.
“Yes, do please enter.” He sarcastically muttered. “I was just praying for your tender loving company in my lonliness. Oh how you comfort me so.” He growled.
“I’m sorry.” Jack said coldly. “You lost someone you loved and I thought I was about to experience the same.”
“Your rage was both magnified by the sin lying on the table and your justified protective honor. You deserved the fists you threw, I merely stopped you before I did something in my own rage that would have been undeserved. I am sorry for what happened to your wife but she will recover, and I was too blinded to even consider what happened. I was a fool, clouded by my cursed mark that I am glad to say has finally stopped smoldering. As the artist dies, his incomplete works die with him. We should both be glad he did not finish many of them. For they are immortal sins that cannot be undone. My Victoria is long gone, and she is avenged, my mark of failure will fade as your Victoria’s mark will fade with time as well, and I thank fate for finally giving me what I wanted…”
“Revenge.”
“No… the friends I needed to achieve that revenge. You see me as a villain, manipulative and using my powers to use your family. I merely used you all to do what had to be done. It was necessary and it is done. I will leave you all with your mission and take my cursed form somewhere else now.”
“You’re not a villain. At least not any more than Gizzy or myself or Vicki could be considered. Lesser evils with a goal maybe. You're not evil, we just had a reminder what evil looks like and it put a mark on my wife. So I lost my cool and took a swing at the nearest thing that I could. I’m not saying you didn’t deserve a few punches, or that they didn’t feel satisfying, but it’s done and the real evil is where it belongs.”
“Cast into space in a plastic box?” Demitri grinned.
“No… right here.” He said holding up a 13mm double stack magazine. “In a plastic box where it can do some good taking down other demons like him.”
“Poetic. The man with the hammer of god in his pocket. Swing it well and harshly.”
“You could stay… keep one in your magazine too. Maybe atone for some of the sins you live with, balance them out, or just sleep better with a purpose in life better than walking alone looking for hookers and wine.”
“So I am now one of the crew. In my deception and putting you all at risk, I have proven my worth as a damned soul of The Medusa?”
“We’re all assholes, we took the risk for the mission and we’ve bled and cried for it. Now you have too. An initiation, a price of admission, or just part of the damned job of the damned crew. Who knows, and who cares? Stay or go. Your choice.” Jack said, “Welcome to the crew, asshole.”
Demitri smiled as the door swung closed and suddenly hit an outstretched shoe, bouncing it back open. He rolled his eyes with a sigh of drama, still on his knees in front of a candle and exhausted.
“Am I, or am I not at peace? Must I be bothered by another friendly visit?” he asked the figure. Dee walked in with her arms crossed.
“Friendly is a stretch. How about you just listen to me for a minute, count fuckula.” She said.
“Borrowing Gizzy’s signature style of insult are you? Was it through choice or firmly pressed osmosis that you absorbed some of her snark and bite?”
“That’s exactly what I wanna talk about.” She said as he stood up and faced her, peering down a good 16 inches to her. She shakily held her ground and crossed arms. “You don’t scare me.” She bluffed.
“Yes I do.”
“Yeah, you do. I’ll give you that one. You’re a scary dude, but not as scary as Gizzy. So listen up. She’s mine. I got to her first and more importantly, I make her happier than you do. And if you mess with her and try and steal her from me, I’m gonna come and kick your ass. And you either have to get your ass kicked by a little toaster with big tits or kill me, and then Gizzy will make you into bullets and they’ll clone me back. So there. Ha. Get fucked on. She’s my girlfriend, and I considered sharing but I don’t wanna and I honestly think she’s better with just me. That’s what my heart says, and she made that heart in the lab so it knows her better then anyone here. I’m also right at dick punching height and that’s a fact that just stays around wherever you go. Any second, any moment, unexpected, bam. And I’m protected by meaner people than you. So what’s it gonna be, buddy. We gonna throw down and show down and let the dick punchin begin or you gonna keep away from ma bitch… bitch.” She said swiveling her head with an attitude.
“I understand why you make a delightful pairing now. Well played, little toaster. May we part as friends, your woman un-persued and my dick un-punched.”
“Wow… Imma be honest, I didn’t think you’d give up that easy. I kinda had a whole other part to that, and now I don’t get to use it. Fuck… if I use it now, it’s just gonna sound dumb. There’s no way to walk away looking cool now is there? I fucked it up.” She sighed.
“Then I will grant you the gift of one last remark. If you or Gizzy ever decide that sharing is truly the way to happiness, my door is open to either of you, and preferably both. I can be very versatile. Does that help you?” he smiled.
“Oh yeah, well… No. And watch your ass, mister, because it’s right I’m shockingly flexible and your ass is at boot kicking height. UGH!” she said with a mean mug face and a fake out raised fist. “You better remember that.” She added as she stomped out, feeling slightly better.
Demitri snickered to himself before lighting the candle and opening a bottle of wine, nodding and toasting to the light of old memory.
“Cheers, Victoria. May you slumber soundly and I the same.” He whispered into the candle light, staring at it for a moment and lying back.