I can’t believe what I’ve done. I look at my hands and see blood running down my arms, dripping from my fingertips. The blood is my own. I can feel the burning on my upper arms, but I don’t have time to worry about that now.
I have barely noticed how fighting the creature caused the pain in my head to subside. At least, I don’t notice until it comes back, throbbing in my skull as strong as ever. I wince, squeezing my eyes shut, but not before a glimpse of the other creatures fills my vision.
I can’t stay here. Maybe I could take down one of them, but not this many. I’ll be overrun and overwhelmed if I don’t escape quickly. I have no choice.
Darting back toward the building, I leave the writhing creature behind me. It still hasn’t gotten to its feet yet. Maybe it never will.
The noise of the others coming to investigate resounds in the street behind me as I slip through a partially open door and move deeper into the darkness. I hear a barking call as the group finds the injured beast I’ve left in the street. They’re definitely communicating with one another.
I can distinguish the anguished return call from the wounded beast. Not as dead as I might have hoped. So much for killing them with a touch like Solomon said my father could do. Yet, I certainly felt a power welling up within me while I held the creature by its throat. I felt like I could end it right then and there, if I had wanted to, like its life force was a tangible piece that I could rip away from the whole.
I stand still in the dark, waiting inside a room with overturned furniture and a musty smell where the weather has invaded through the broken windows. I hear them approaching. Some of the beasts are near the door. Others are climbing the building, scaling it like spiders to enter higher up and make their way back down as they search for me.
Their movements would be practically silent to a normal person, but I can hear everything they’re doing with ease. I can smell them, which means they can probably detect my scent as well. If I were normal, I’d be easy prey, but their caution is warranted. I’m not normal, and I’ve just wounded one of them.
If need be, I’ll do so again. My head still feels like my brain is swelling inside my skull, but I fight back the urge to scream. My breathing is deep and focused, a technique I learned in martial arts training. It helps a little to keep my mind off the pain, but not much. I would like nothing better, at the moment, than to go after my pursuers with a full frontal assault, but I still have enough presence of mind to know that I would lose. There’s just too many of them.
Scuttling noises come to me from every direction, like rats in the walls. I close my eyes and try not to think about how close to death I really am. I’m surrounded by creatures—monsters—I don’t even know what to call them. Nightmares has a nice ring to it.
The floorboards to my right make the slightest groan beneath the weight of a creeping monster. I’ve been found, or at least I’m about to be. The pain in my head intensifies again. It’s like a taskmaster, whipping me until I do its bidding.
I have no choice. I attack. The pain recedes as I do, being replaced by a white-hot fury and desperate self preservation. It’s either me or them, and I’m very determined that it’s not going to be me.
I reach for the beastly head as it rounds the corner, driving my right knee up under its chin. I feel the satisfying crunch of bone breaking, but I don’t stop there—I can’t stop there. As it tumbles over, moaning out its pain because I’m holding its jaw closed with my knee, I pummel it with rapid-fire blows to its misshapen head until the body is only twitching.
The noise brings others, but I move off quickly, leaving the battered beast on the floorboards. As they close in, I find another hiding place in the darkness behind a couch. I can hear them nearby, investigating my handiwork. Their rumbling growls inform me of their disapproval.
For the moment, the ache in my brain is satisfied, but I can feel the pressure beginning to well up again. I don’t know what to think about it. If not for this driving compulsion, I would already be dead, hunted down like a terrified gazelle on the Serengeti. Yet, I’ve never acted with this much brutality in my life, never even thought I could.
I can’t stay here. I’ve ended up in what appears to be a living room or parlor. There are couches and a coffee table, but no windows here and no other way out. I managed to leave the fatally wounded monster beneath the archway leading into this room. Now, the others are here. I’m trapped, and I don’t think I’m the only one who realizes it.
James Solomon stands on the street opposite the building where Jonathan entered only moments ago, following his altercation with one of the fiendish plague victims. “They do have an interesting appearance, don’t they?”
Gregor Malakov stands beside him, still dressed in his dark fatigues. He rarely wears anything else, a mark of the dedicated soldier he is. “They are gruesome animals,” he replies. “Worse than the humans they used to be.”
“You don’t find them reminiscent of your own kind?”
Malakov gives his master a perturbed sidelong look. “I trust you are joking, sir.”
With a slight chuckle at Gregor’s annoyance, Solomon says, “I am. However, they do bear some real resemblance to Lycans.”
Gregor smiles a little at this comment. “That I can certainly agree with, sir. As I said, brute beasts.”
“But they will be a devastating army in the right hands,” Solomon observes.
“I still believe my Breed warriors would be better suited to the task of taking Haven. Look what the boy did to that one,” Gregor says, pointing to the dead creature on the opposite side of the street.
“Look what he did to one of your finest, Dathan, after he awoke,” Solomon replies with a grin. “And he wasn’t even under the kind of pressure I’ve placed upon him here. He’s fighting for his life and it’s bringing out the dormant power within him.”
Gregor doesn’t reply immediately.
“Besides, I want these brutes to sweep through Haven like a storm, like locusts. They’ll devastate it, and that is what I want, not military precision. I want glorious chaos.”
“The city itself could be useful to you,” Gregor counters. “Why not preserve it and be rid of the cowards inhabiting it?”
“Do you think me one dimensional, Gregor?”
“Of course, not,” he replies. “I just don’t understand why we don’t take over and bring them under submission.”
“It’s not always about ruling over more people,” Solomon says. “Sometimes, it’s just about destroying one’s enemies and relishing their pain.”
Gregor remains silent, contemplating the mind behind such a statement. He is a soldier. He follows commands to accomplish the goals of his master. This goal of pure destruction with no favorable outcome is foreign to him. Yet, it is not for him to question his master’s desires, only to fulfill them.
Solomon’s attention strays for a moment. “Someone is coming,” he says.
Suddenly alert, Gregor asks, “Who?”
Solomon grins devilishly. “Mister West has managed to track the boy here.”
“We should have involved the humans already—set them to tracking West down and destroying him for this plague.”
“As interesting as it would be to use him as a convenient scapegoat, West is too powerful to be taken by human law enforcement,” Solomon says. “He’s one of the so-called Sons of Anarchy. He could be standing right in front of them and they would never notice him.”
Malakov nods, accepting the truth of his master’s statement. It is certainly true that most Descendant races can weave glamours to hide their identities from mortals. Some, like the Breed, are simply so quick in their movements that they can move undetected; particularly in the night. But, for all that Descendants can do, someone with Brody West’s power can do so much more.
“No, Gregor, it is our new recruits here that will help us destroy Mister West, and if not them then our young Jonathan will do the deed with some further coaxing on my part.”
; “And those with West?” Gregor asks. “The boy fancies the young girl.”
“Brody’s great grandchildren will become his Achilles heel,” Solomon replies, waving his hand with a flourish that takes them from street level to high upon the ledge of the building across the street from the one where Jonathan has taken refuge. The two of them watch as a portal delivers four individuals onto the street below: three Descendants and one human woman.
Gregor Malakov turns to ask his master for permission to kill West. He pauses before the words form on his lips. James Solomon is gone.
Rescue
I’m not the first to notice a disturbance out in the street before the building where I’m currently attempting to hide from my gruesome pursuers. The creatures hiss in agitation amongst themselves. I can only assume this is some form of communication. Whatever is going on, they are highly irritated and ready to leave off pursuing me to face-off with whoever is outside.
Could it be the police? I consider that possibility and almost laugh at the absurdity of it. London is a dead zone following the plague that transformed so many into flesh-eating zombies. And now, apparently, that same disease, somehow concocted with the aid of Cassie’s grandfather, Brody West, has also transformed those same zombies into worse things than they were before.
He has come for you, Jonathan.
I hear this as a whisper, but there is no one with me. The voice seems to be inside my head. My own thoughts? With my brain trying to pound its way through my skull, I feel disoriented. I can’t tell any longer what might be real or imagined. There is only this incessant pain and the drive to dispel its grip by fighting the creatures and killing them.
I look up to find a man in the doorway to the parlor. He appears middle-aged, but something in his eyes tells me he is much older than this. I feel as though I should know him. I’ve never seen Brody West, the man James Solomon told me tried to kill me as an infant and murdered my parents. Yet, I sense that this must be him.
He looks right at me with disdain in his eyes and then speaks. “The one that got away,” he says. “Time to finish what I started.”
Flames ignite upon his fists, but he doesn’t appear to be in pain. The creatures who were pursuing me, wait in the hall around West to attack. Is he their master?
The pain in my brain erupts again, and my anger explodes like a caged animal wanting to be released. The urge to kill this man becomes overwhelming. I stand from my hiding place in the dark behind the sofa.
Brody West laughs at me.
One of the beasts waiting to be loosed speaks through a barking call to the man. He listens but doesn’t take his eyes off me. The creature appears to be expressing some concern about me. I get the feeling it is warning West about what I did to its companions.
He grins, showing no concern at all.
“His parents were easy enough,” he says. “I imagine their pathetic pup won’t present any difficulty.”
The pounding rhythm in my head is too much. I unleash my anger, leaping at West. The flames on his hands erupt towards me, but I hit the ground, rolling beneath the attack. I spring upwards to my feet, connecting a well-placed palm strike under West’s chin that sends him backward through a sheetrock wall.
The fighting makes my pain subside again. Fighting this man, after what he just said about killing my parents, feels satisfying in a primal way that courses through me like my own blood. It is pure and raw, welling up, needing release. West is the best possible outlet. I’m going to kill him. It’s just that simple.
For his part, West isn’t going down without a fight. He leaps out of the wreckage, soaring through the air at me. Bolts of flame erupt from his hands. I leap over them as he rakes the ground with flames, scorching the pavement. We collide in mid-air.
West is strong—stronger than I would have given him credit for, but he still has nothing on my recent surge in power. When we collide, I hammer him in the breastbone with my full momentum behind my fist. West flies backward again through the same fractured wall. As I land on my feet again, I hear him call in his reinforcements.
“Kill the boy!” he croaks, trying to get air back into his lungs.
I go after him, but West’s minions are ready and quick. They intercept me, driving me away with tooth and claw, sheer ferocity and overwhelming numbers. Reluctantly, I dodge away, attempting to circumvent these predators and get back to West. He is my desire now. I must kill this man.
Strangely, I want to do it with my bare hands. I’ve never felt this way before, never had the desire to kill anyone. This savage need alarms me and exhilarates me. What is happening to me? This thought is driven out of my mind by the return of the pain.
Lucifer stands out of the rubble of the wall, wearing the body of James Solomon, wearing a glamour which makes him appear exactly like an aging Brody West. Jonathan flees his horde of plague monsters, unable to remain in the fight with him with so many creatures in pursuit. Lucifer grins and then drops the glamour of West, appearing again in the body of Solomon. He vanishes from the spot, materializing in the street not far from the real Brody West and his group of followers.
West immediately identifies the Superomantic power emanating from nearby, just as Solomon anticipated. He stops crossing the street toward the building where the plague monsters are fighting against Jonathan Parks. His expression is puzzled. He has never met James Solomon before. It’s not until a terrible burst of power sweeps his entire group off their feet that he realizes the stranger materializing on the street with them is an enemy.
Brody stands firms, allowing the energy of the stranger’s attack to divert around him. He immediately sends out several bolts of lightning that connect with Solomon from different angles. He is astonished to see their energy easily absorbed.
“That’s not good,” he whispers to himself, rethinking his options. The average Superomancer would have shielded himself to absorb the attack or redirected it away into some other object. Not this man. He absorbed it right into his body. Only one kind of being he knows could do something like that.
Malak-esh comes to Brody’s hand instantaneously, as Garth, Cassie and Holly get to their feet behind him. “Reveal yourself!” Brody demands.
“Solomon is the name, James Solomon,” he says.
Brody’s eyes narrow on the man. “I mean your true name, not the name of the body you wear.”
“What is he?” Holly asks, holding her gun on the man but unsure if she should fire.
“One of the Fallen,” Brody says through gritted teeth. “An angel.”
Garth flourishes his twin Malak-esh. “Then we’ve got just what we need to deal with him.”
Garth runs at Solomon, quickly blurring, dodging back and forth upon his approach, looking as though he is teleporting from point to point along the way. However, when he makes his final lung for Solomon, holding Malak-esh aloft, its blade glowing with power, a blast of mental force pummels Garth, slamming him backward into a derelict automobile nearby on the road.
Almost as quickly, Solomon wrenches another vehicle off the road with his mind, sending it at Garth’s splayed form resting within the metal imprint on the first car. Brody reaches out to him, whipping a line of energy at his grandson to ensnare him within a portal envelope. The automobile smashes into the other. Garth reappears behind Brody, deposited just in time by his portal.
Garth, still dazed by Solomon’s defense, examines himself, wondering that he hasn’t been smashed flat between the two automobiles.
“Nobody move!” Brody demands, still holding Malak-esh, its blade glowing with power.
James Solomon laughs as though he’s just heard some wonderful joke. His unconcern only serves to further reassure Brody of the nature of his opponent. The calamitous fight taking place in the nearby building also hasn’t left his attention, but they cannot simply walk away from a fight with one of the Fallen to see to Jonathan’s safety.
Brody raises Malak-esh, preparing to attack with the only weapon at his disposal that ca
n defeat a fallen angel. Then James Solomon changes the game. Duplicates of Solomon appear before them, behind them, and on all sides. So many images of the man materialize—hundreds at least—that Brody and the others soon lose sight of the original individual. Then they all open their mouths, issuing one command.
“Kill them and bring me their mutilated corpses!”
Bewildered, Brody, Garth, Cassie, and Holly stand still with powers and weapons ready. Turning around and round, Brody expects the real James Solomon to attack from the direction they least expect. Unfortunately, the tactic is working. He has no idea where the real Solomon will come from.
Then every image of James Solomon morphs into one of the vicious predators spawned by the viral plague. Brody swallows hard against the lump gathering in his throat. They are not surrounded by mere apparitions, but an army of ravenous killers with bloodlust in their crimson eyes and death’s dank breath issuing through gnashing teeth.
I launch myself off a wall then up over a banister, trying to evade my pursuers. West has sent an entire horde after me. Every time I think I’ve found an exit from this building, more creatures hem me in again, keeping me on the run.
The burning pain within my head is subsiding just when I wish it would spur me on to fight. However, I know there are too many to for me to handle. I would take down some of them, but the rest would quickly overwhelm me and tear me apart. I stay on the move, dodging away with them on my heels.
I think about Cassie. Hard not to. Pretty girl who’s shown interest in me—any guy with half a brain would. I wonder if I’ll ever see her again. I wonder about her grandfather, Brody West. How can she be with such a person—the man who is trying to kill me, the man controlling these monsters, the man who obviously masterminded this entire plague against mankind and used me as his guinea pig to do it?