chapter IV
I WAS ABOUT TO relax—silly me.
A trio of smaller demons fell to the earth—zippy little things. They looked like they might have once been children, at least in their faces. Apart from their classically cherubic countenances, though, they bore on every other surface of their bodies what I could only imagine was part of the penalty for their original rebellion in paradise. Sickly looking growths of fungus covered their bodies. Some of the growths were like little tubes, others had caps like mushrooms, others secreted ooze or bursts of black spore clouds.
I gagged. They moved in twitchy jerks; they were fast. They would be dangerous.
I quickly tried to assess the situation from a martial point of view. We stood in three separate units; Michael and Kim together on one side of the road, me on the opposite, Ellie off to one side. Michael was armed only with his street-brawl weapon, what looked like a piece of pipe. Kim, too, looked determined, brandishing a pistol. It could only be the gun Michael had flashed when we first met Ellie at the burned-out school.
As for Ellie, she stood off on one side of the road, forming the point of our little triangle. She was armed with her sword, but she also had slung the shoulder strap of some massive firearm over her shoulder. She had no doubt commandeered it from one of the three men she had just killed. The three fungus demons stood twitching like squirrels in front of her on the opposite side of the road.
Whether it was She or the Sword’s power still ebbing through me, I knew that the way we were positioned was better than trying to get into one big defensive circle and face outward—at least this way, in order to totally take us out, these three evil little things would have to split up.
But as I scanned the scene, I saw movement in the darkness. “Ellie, behind you!” I shouted.
She wheeled, sword at the ready.
A huge man, over seven feet tall, strode out of the darkness.
Ellie backed off as he approached, joining Michael and Kim, which pissed me off. I couldn’t understand why, one, she didn’t stand her ground; two, why once again she basically sold me down the river and left me on my own with the strongest enemy; and three, why she had to be close to Michael, darn that woman, I’m going to hurt her, and frickin’ soon.
“You dat one we come fo’,” said the giant man, addressing me with his thick accent and wide, insane-looking eyes. He sounded native African or Caribbean, and his arms were like trees, the massive stubby branches of them his hands and fingers. His skin shone like the blackest bronze in the light of the burning wreckage behind me, which was starting to die out in the unrelenting downpour.
I looked him over, searching for chinks in his armor. A thick red vertical line had soaked through the fabric of his t-shirt, from his clavicle to the buckle of his belt. I figured I had just killed his Brother. I was happy to provide that service. He held a short sword loosely in one hand, a big gun in the other. “It’s H&K and you don’t want to taste that medicine,” She said, and I made a note for trivia night, saying a little prayer that I would live to see happy times again. Will this not end?
“Don’ preten’ you don’ know what we talkin’ ‘bout,” he said.
“Okay, fine. I’m not pretending,” I said, baring my teeth in irritation. “I actually genuinely have no idea why you want to kill me or my friends. But I can promise you this: I can handle your stupid Brother; I can handle you too. So bring it!” I clasped my hands together and took my fighting stance.
For a split second, he looked scared. But then his brows furrowed and he bared his disgusting dirty teeth, yellow protrusions sharpened into points, and growled at me.
I heard a pop. A single gunshot. The man winced. What just happened? I looked around wildly. Kim. She had taken a shot! I looked quickly back to the giant man; he was grasping his left shoulder, applying pressure to his wound, and blood was flowing out in between his fingers. He looked at me, and I wondered if he knew who had just shot him.
Don’t go after my Kimmie! I had to distract him.
I gave him my own crazy wide-eyed stare and called him on as if I had been the one that shot him. “That’s right! You want more, big fella?” I said. Confusion worked as well as any other weapon, and it seemed to be working on this guy quite well. I advanced on him, hoping the Sword would show up on time again.
Michael looked at Kim as if she had just slapped her own mom in the face. “Kim, not yet!” he hissed at her in a whisper.
She huffed at him. She looked at Ellie and returned her disapproving glare.
He gently lowered Kim’s hands, pointing the weapon away and down, hiding it from view. He looked past her to the trio of demons.
These were the worst. Very slippery and very fast. They were difficult to defeat because of that, but it wasn’t impossible. He just had to outsmart them somehow, get them to walk into a trap. For now, it looked like they were waiting for something, perhaps a signal, from the giant man or something else.
He didn’t much care about anything though, as long as Airel was safe. It was murder watching her stand up against and fight these evil things; almost unbearable. But she was obviously tougher than he gave her credit for. She was impressive, for sure. He couldn’t help but smirk in admiration and satisfaction as he watched her.
“You cannot make us die de death,” the giant man continued on. “Da Bruddahood is beega dan you. Da Bruddahood can nevah die de death! Wen you kill one, you see, two or tree mo take de place of dat one; we beega dan you! You on ow-ah propahtee! Dis ow-ah place! We de originah rebels, not you!”
He was wagging a finger at me, as if he was going to sit me in a corner to punish me. “Would you just shut up and—” I raised my clasped hands above my head and swung them down together hard at the ground, “—BRING IT!” I was so sick of his stupid monologue.
The Sword became real once again, cutting through asphalt and rock like pie crust, opening up a huge gash in the road, melting the edges of the clean cut like a cauterized wound.
I brought the blade up between me and my enemy, who outweighed me easily by a factor of three or four. I looked quickly up at him from my crouch, my eyes signaling as much danger as I could bring to bear on him in the awesome light of the Sword.
Just like his counterpart had done, the depths of his eyes betrayed foundations of fear within him.
“Fear is like castles of sand on the shore,” She said.
What a stupid way to build a kingdom, I answered.
“Exactly. El is like the sea…”
I nodded and launched myself at my enemy.
Michael watched in honest awe as Airel the warrior woman opened the earth with her Sword. Sure, he thought, maybe that was Kreios’s Sword…but she owns it now. She was shouting at the giant and rushing forward.
As a matter of fact, he thought, it sure as heck feels like we’re being stalled out here. For what reason, he couldn’t figure, though.
Peeling his eyes away from Airel, he stole a glance at the trio of dangerous Anti-Cherubim. They were still waiting, watching; their wings, like those of a swallow, twitching nervously around them.
He looked back to Airel. She was launching herself at the man Sword-first. That’s when Ellie poked him in the ribs and pointed back to the demons. He looked back just in time to see them take to flight, fleeing the scene.
Gone.
It was too simple, too quick and too easy with the Sword. Almost unfair. I must have been moving very fast, because the whole world stood still around me as I moved in for the kill.
I didn’t make any crafty zig-zaggy moves. I didn’t feint, didn’t do anything clever. I just went for him like a bullet, the blade of the Sword held parallel to the ground on my right side.
“Mandritto tondo,” She said, and I understood her perfectly: forehand strike from right to left, mandritto; horizontal strike at the target’s three o’clock, tondo; and just like that I was the picture of elegance in battle.
The Sword cut clean and easy at the man’s undefended waist, and I could feel the debole of the blade pierce his skin, gliding through his innards. I could sense in detail when the Sword impacted and sliced cleanly through the bone and cartilage and nerve tissue of his spine; as it finished, exiting out the back of his body. I had cut him in half at the waist in a single fluid motion.
I finished on one knee, both hands grasping the Sword across my body and down to the left. The giant man collapsed in a heap of two great pieces at my right side in bloody spasms. I did not hear him speak another intelligible word.
As quickly as I could, I turned around, looking for the next objective. But all was quiet.
I found Michael as the Sword began to fade and disappear again. His face was marked with worry.
“The other three are gone,” he said.
I felt my legs grow weak.