The second dark ages box.., p.8
The Second Dark Ages Boxed Set, page 8
part #1 of The Second Dark Ages Series
Now, she was not only a believer, she was damn near an apostle.
Unfortunately, Gerry’s time was up. Even with Bethany Anne’s enhancements, he was fading, fast. That Michael rescued his daughter was something he never would have thought a possibility. Unfortunately, he needed to ask that he do it one more time.
Michael was enjoying the hell out of himself. This building was like those video games he had heard about from the guys around Bethany Anne. He hadn’t played them, and hadn’t cared to learn about them. But he could understand the attraction at the moment. For each floor he climbed, the challenges went up. By the fifteenth, he had someone throw a grenade down at him.
He Mysted and floated up.
Puzzled, he thought about his success as he left the stairway and solidified behind those who were watching it. Michael holstered one pistol and grabbed his sword. The first figured out where the stranger was when a sword tip erupted from his stomach and he looked down, surprised. The sword pulled back out and he didn’t register that the man next to him had his neck sliced open.
Because he was on his knees, his hands failing to hold in the blood spurting out of his body.
The third, turning around when he heard the commotion, had his brain splattered across the wall, a round from Michael’s gun exploding out the back of his skull.
The fourth died when Michael kicked him into the stairway, where he failed to catch the metal railing before falling over the side, screaming on his way down. He hit the railing on the third floor with his forehead and died instantly.
His body, corpse really, made a disgusting sort of splat when it impacted on the ground floor a fraction of a second later.
The fifth had his eyes wide open, staring at the barrel of Michael’s gun, which was pressed against his forehead.
“Now, I can be a conversational person,” Michael explained, “and I’m sure you understand I might be a little twitchy at the moment.” The guy, his eyes still on the barrel of Michael’s pistol, nodded minutely. “Good, that makes this conversation easier. Is Kraven an honest leader?”
Michael allowed the man to answer, but he trusted what he took from his mind. The man licked his lips. “Yeah, honest… He uh, he uh, he tells it like it is.”
“And what does he tell most people?” Michael continued.
“He tells them…” The man started trying to concoct another lie when Michael heard three sets of footsteps come out and start rapidly jumping down the stairs from above. Michael reached up and grabbed the man. Aiming his gun, he shot into the wall parallel to the stairs going up, blasting concrete chips up the stairway. A long string of cursing occurred and Michael threw the man he was holding, into the stairway heading up as he heard a pair of boots coming around the final corner.
“No, It’s MEEE!!!” Too late... the man was shot three times before the one coming down realized he was shooting his own man. His mistake was short lived, as Michael, stepping around the corner, shot him between the eyes before resuming his climb up the stairs.
Step… step… step…
Michael could see a man leaning over the rail trying to get a clue. So he shot through the railing then watched as the man fell screaming past him.
Step… step… step…
The third man had turned, retreating back up the steps.
Step… step… step…
Michael looked at the count on both of his pistols. He reduced his loadout about seventy-five shots in one, eighty-two in the other.
Step… step… step…
He wasn’t attacked again as his final step took him to the door on the twentieth level.
If those waiting on the other side thought he was just going to walk on through those doors, they were insane.
Gerry watched the confusion on the second level from his position on the first floor. Looking around, he also noticed the group of people around the stairway. It was too clogged up to use so Gerry decided he would wait for Michael to come back down. If he chose to come back down, that was. He could always Myst out of the building.
But that didn’t seem to be what he was doing. Assuming he could Myst, he obviously wasn’t doing it. Not based on…
Gerry heard a very weak scream that was escalating in loudness, and closeness. People started rushing away from the open doorway to the stairs and Gerry heard a THUD as a body landed on the bottom floor. The guy’s head, did a good imitation of a dropped egg, exploding on impact.
Seemed Michael was still busy up top, he mused. Gerry turned and looked around, finding a niche in the wall near the exit. It would allow him to see what was going on, while still being out of the middle of the floor. No telling how Michael would come back down and he would prefer not to be killed by friendly fire.
Michael tried to Myst again, and it didn’t happen. His lips compressed in annoyance.
Apparently, some of his abilities worked on instinct and need. He needed to get past whatever block was happening. It was almost like his mind associated the pain of Mysting and the explosion, and didn’t like going back into that state because of negative associations.
Well, there was always one talent that worked every time he tried it.
Alvin Sudacki sucked on his lower lip, looking to his left and his right. There had to be… seven, eight, nine. He turned to look on his right and finished his count. Plus himself, that made seventeen men aiming guns at the doorway to the stairwell. This guy might be a badass, he thought to himself, but he can’t dodge seventeen guns all aiming at him.
A sudden pulse of fear went through him. He clenched up on his pistol and let his eyes dart to his left and right. He wasn’t the only person who felt that!
At least four turned their heads, questions written on their faces.
“Don’t let that bastard in here!” Kraven ordered from behind them. He was in the back, so technically there were eighteen men.
And Kraven counted for two, easily.
Alvin was there because his usual post, two floors down, had been called to come up top for the ambush.
Another flash of fear ran through the group and two men shot into the closed door.
“Stop!” Kraven called. Another three started firing before Kraven was able to get them to stop wasting ammunition. “I don’t know what’s happening, but we’re just wasting our ammunition. Wait until…”
That’s when the real fear hit and the men ignored Kraven. Guns started blasting at the door. It was an old door. An original for this building from so many years before. It was made of metal, but holes were being punched into it, some bullets getting lodged in the door, most moving on to pepper the stairwell beyond.
A few men, bullets spent, grabbed another magazine and reloaded.
“SSTTOP!” Kraven was yelling, but his commands were being ignored.
Kraven was frustrated. He hadn’t had his command authority ever tested like this. The fear was real, palpable. He had a slight idea what might be on the other side of that door and, as far as he knew, it shouldn’t be there.
The men were gone, mentally. He stepped backwards, turning finally and entering his office. He moved with purpose to his armory and opened the door, reaching in to grab his M1911 with silver ammunition. He checked the magazine, made sure the ammunition was silver like it was supposed to be, and stuck it in his waistband.
He turned back towards the firing and was almost to his office suite door when the third wave of fear elevated, and he dropped to his knees in pain and fear. He turned slowly and looked at his window, the external staircase was just outside.
Michael waited, his guns holstered for the moment, he was looking at his nails wondering where he was going to find a pair of nail clippers. Was he going to have to raid an old drugstore? The metal wouldn’t degenerate over time, but were they all stripped bare over the years?
He sighed and pulsed another level of fear, amping it up this time and the gunfire ratcheted up. The wall across from the door one floor above was getting peppered by the gunfire. He imagined no one up there could hear anything.
Awwww, dammit! Michael could sense Kraven leaving the group. He grabbed his pistols and started for the steps, his coat fluttering behind him.
He pushed out his fear, turning it up to eleven, as Bethany Anne would say, and the gunfire stopped.
Step… step… step…
He made it to the final landing and walked to the door, kicking it off its hinges and stepped into the hallway, both guns out in front of him.
Kraven had fallen down the second set of stairs, but the fear level was decreasing the farther away he got.
Then, the fear stopped and his eyes widened in surprise and his body straightened. He got himself up, ignoring the pain in his arms and legs and made his way to the next set of stairs down. He went down as quickly as he could possibly go.
Michael shot two men in their heads as soon as he could find targets. The door was still in the process of slamming into a couple… or three… people who had been in front, throwing them back as the door rotated above them, slamming into and rebounding off the wall behind them.
Michael’s arms spread, as he continued down the line on both sides, shooting the men in the head, and a couple in their chests when their heads were blocked.
One he double tapped for having been smart enough to try and dodge behind another person.
“You messed up my perfect score, jackass,” he murmured. And then he looked back and forth, and nodded his head as he walked into the office behind them. He holstered his weapons as he got to the open window and looked down.
A man was halfway to the ground, racing down, trying to reach the level beneath him as fast as possible.
Disgusted at the cowardice, Michael stepped out and walked onto the fire escape. Jumping down the flight he landed with a BANG on the next turn around, the reverberation carrying through the metal down to the bottom.
BANG, one more floor down.
Far below him, Kraven Cochrel looked up and his eyes opened wide…
Bang!
Gerry’s head twitched.
BANG!
The bangs were getting louder, so he started watching outside, and noticed one person looking up, and then pointing.
He looked around inside the building and decided that maybe the fun had moved outside.
He left his little hiding place, walked back through the doors and kept his head down, not acting like he had any suspicion something was going on behind him until he was across the street from the building. Then, he turned around, looked up and smirked.
Some guy had just shot a couple of rounds from an old M1911 at a figure that was rapidly descending. The person was wearing a black trench coat that flared out every time he jumped down a flight of steps.
BANG! Hitting the next landing below.
The lower man, who Gerry assumed was Kraven, turned and quickly, almost without worry for his own safety, started his own process of jumping down the next level. Recover and run to the next set of stairs to jump again. He was definitely going to make it to the sliding ladder before Michael.
Then Gerry looked close at the figure. His eyes, not as sharp as they used to be but still good enough, yeah, that was Michael… but he had no hair?
Kraven, his breath reduced to erratic gasps, was finally at the slide down ladder. He stepped over the railing and grabbed the ladder, his weight dropping him down rapidly. It hit with a CLANG on the sidewalk. People were watching, but staying out of his way.
Two shots fired from his guards on the walls, then two screams and Kraven saw one blasted off the wall.
Then, the stranger jumped the last three flights of stairs to land on the ground right in front of him.
The first bullet from the guards on the wall hit just beside his face as he landed. The fragments from the wall peppered his skin.
Michael’s eyes narrowed and he reached into his jacket. He had dialed down the destruction capability of the pistols. His hand had actually started hurting. Something John had mentioned in the instructions that came with the pistols. At the time he had smirked, thinking maybe John had been getting soft.
Apparently not.
He casually aimed and took out the two guards that had guns up, and found two more who had turned to watch what was going on.
He shot them both in the shoulders. They wouldn’t be shooting anything today.
He looked down to see Kraven had made it down the sliding ladder. So, he grabbed the railing and jumped over it.
Gerry shook his head in wonder. The calm assurance of this Michael was apparent. But he wasn’t fighting like Gerry thought he would have a couple of hundred years ago. He had followed the man down the steps instead of Mysting. He hadn’t killed all four of the guards on the wall. Two of those Michael had shot received definitely survivable wounds, provided they got medical help soon enough.
Kraven brought his pistol up, but the stranger merely swatted it out of his hand so fast he hadn’t seen the movement. Kraven had, however, felt his trigger finger break as the pistol left his hand, bouncing off the sidewalk and clattering down the street.
“It seems,” the stranger said, his voice calm and deadly, “that you have not governed for the benefit of the people, Kraven.”
“Who the URGHG,” Kraven grabbed the arm that was holding him up in the air, his feet dangling, the hand clenched around his neck.
“My name,” the stranger said, as Kraven beat on his arm and then tried to kick him, “is irrelevant.”
Across the street, Gerry heard the crack of Kraven’s neck before Michael tossed the now dead man off to the side. He snorted. By now, everyone realized that there was a new man in town, who had just personally decimated everyone he had come across.
“Just like old times, eh, Michael?” Gerry said.
The stranger turned quickly, his eyes sharp as he recognised Gerry. His nostrils flared and then he started walking towards him, looking across the street like he expected cars to be coming before turning back to Gerry.
“What the hell,” Michael asked as he got closer, holding his hand out to shake Gerry’s, “happened to this world, Gerry?”
Chapter Ten
Gerry reached out to shake the vampire’s hand. Normally, back when he was the American Council’s Alpha, he had let Nathan deal with vampires.
Nathan had a way of keeping his head on his shoulders. The secret, Nathan explained, was keeping one’s mouth shut and only answering questions.
And being polite… very, very polite.
“Ah,” Gerry looked around as he put his hand up to his mouth and coughed. “Love to answer your question but I don’t suppose we can go to a safer location to chat?”
Michael looked around and then raised an eyebrow. It seemed the two toughs from earlier, and the three from the bar had come back, and were racing through the door.
“You going to talk with them?” Gerry asked, surprised that Michael hadn’t just killed them.
He shrugged. “I’m tempted to ease my headache.”
“You get headaches now?” Gerry asked, surprised.
“What?” Michael glanced in his direction before looking back towards the five men. One of those on the outskirts were talking with the lead guy, and pointing towards Michael. “No, figure of speech. In the older times, I would have just killed them. There was no thinking involved. No concern that they were someone’s son or daughter.”
“That sounds like Bethany Anne,” Gerry ventured.
“That’s because it is.” Michael agreed before starting towards the men, calling back over his shoulder, “but unfortunately for these five, she isn’t anywhere near here at the moment.”
Gerry started walking to catch up to Michael.
Jimmie followed the five toughs, wondering what they were going to do. One of the members of Kraven’s group had run into the bar, and yelled that the fort was under attack before running back out. The five men left, quickly. Jimmie, thinking it had to be the stranger, tossed off his bar apron and told Juliana he was taking a break.
Keeping his pace so that he stayed a block behind them, he kept looking behind him.
He had seen the pistols, all it would take would be one, or both, of those and he would be half the man the stranger was.
And Juliana would be his.
Michael walked towards the toughs.
Yessss, these five were part of Kraven’s inner circle. They had dishonor flowing through their blood like silt in the Mississippi.
“You stole my money!” Robert yelled at him.
Michael said, “I took it as punishment for your poor manners. I didn’t kill you, so I believe you received the better part of the bargain.”
Michael stopped twenty feet away. “Apparently, you’re going to make this easy for me.”
“We aren’t making anything easy, shithead,” The lead guy reached for his shirt. “Looks like it’s going to be you and me, man-to—”
Michael sped up, reached into his jacket, and pulled out his pistol, shooting the man in the chest. His body twisted in the air twice before he could finish the next word.
“I despise showboating,” Michael said as the other four men started grabbing for their own guns and trying to separate.
Michael turned and shot, turned and shot…
One…
Two…
Three…
“Dammit!” He was annoyed, the fourth was able to get behind a small cinderblock structure. He started walking towards the building, focusing his hearing on whether the man was going to come out the left or the…
“DOWN!” Gerry pushed Michael out of the way as another shot blasted.
Michael, his eyes going red, twisted in the air like a cat that had been dropped. His pistol aimed backwards to find the bartender from the first bar, his eyes wide, standing in the gateway to the fortress. The man was grasping a still smoking pistol.
Unfortunately, Gerry’s time was up. Even with Bethany Anne’s enhancements, he was fading, fast. That Michael rescued his daughter was something he never would have thought a possibility. Unfortunately, he needed to ask that he do it one more time.
Michael was enjoying the hell out of himself. This building was like those video games he had heard about from the guys around Bethany Anne. He hadn’t played them, and hadn’t cared to learn about them. But he could understand the attraction at the moment. For each floor he climbed, the challenges went up. By the fifteenth, he had someone throw a grenade down at him.
He Mysted and floated up.
Puzzled, he thought about his success as he left the stairway and solidified behind those who were watching it. Michael holstered one pistol and grabbed his sword. The first figured out where the stranger was when a sword tip erupted from his stomach and he looked down, surprised. The sword pulled back out and he didn’t register that the man next to him had his neck sliced open.
Because he was on his knees, his hands failing to hold in the blood spurting out of his body.
The third, turning around when he heard the commotion, had his brain splattered across the wall, a round from Michael’s gun exploding out the back of his skull.
The fourth died when Michael kicked him into the stairway, where he failed to catch the metal railing before falling over the side, screaming on his way down. He hit the railing on the third floor with his forehead and died instantly.
His body, corpse really, made a disgusting sort of splat when it impacted on the ground floor a fraction of a second later.
The fifth had his eyes wide open, staring at the barrel of Michael’s gun, which was pressed against his forehead.
“Now, I can be a conversational person,” Michael explained, “and I’m sure you understand I might be a little twitchy at the moment.” The guy, his eyes still on the barrel of Michael’s pistol, nodded minutely. “Good, that makes this conversation easier. Is Kraven an honest leader?”
Michael allowed the man to answer, but he trusted what he took from his mind. The man licked his lips. “Yeah, honest… He uh, he uh, he tells it like it is.”
“And what does he tell most people?” Michael continued.
“He tells them…” The man started trying to concoct another lie when Michael heard three sets of footsteps come out and start rapidly jumping down the stairs from above. Michael reached up and grabbed the man. Aiming his gun, he shot into the wall parallel to the stairs going up, blasting concrete chips up the stairway. A long string of cursing occurred and Michael threw the man he was holding, into the stairway heading up as he heard a pair of boots coming around the final corner.
“No, It’s MEEE!!!” Too late... the man was shot three times before the one coming down realized he was shooting his own man. His mistake was short lived, as Michael, stepping around the corner, shot him between the eyes before resuming his climb up the stairs.
Step… step… step…
Michael could see a man leaning over the rail trying to get a clue. So he shot through the railing then watched as the man fell screaming past him.
Step… step… step…
The third man had turned, retreating back up the steps.
Step… step… step…
Michael looked at the count on both of his pistols. He reduced his loadout about seventy-five shots in one, eighty-two in the other.
Step… step… step…
He wasn’t attacked again as his final step took him to the door on the twentieth level.
If those waiting on the other side thought he was just going to walk on through those doors, they were insane.
Gerry watched the confusion on the second level from his position on the first floor. Looking around, he also noticed the group of people around the stairway. It was too clogged up to use so Gerry decided he would wait for Michael to come back down. If he chose to come back down, that was. He could always Myst out of the building.
But that didn’t seem to be what he was doing. Assuming he could Myst, he obviously wasn’t doing it. Not based on…
Gerry heard a very weak scream that was escalating in loudness, and closeness. People started rushing away from the open doorway to the stairs and Gerry heard a THUD as a body landed on the bottom floor. The guy’s head, did a good imitation of a dropped egg, exploding on impact.
Seemed Michael was still busy up top, he mused. Gerry turned and looked around, finding a niche in the wall near the exit. It would allow him to see what was going on, while still being out of the middle of the floor. No telling how Michael would come back down and he would prefer not to be killed by friendly fire.
Michael tried to Myst again, and it didn’t happen. His lips compressed in annoyance.
Apparently, some of his abilities worked on instinct and need. He needed to get past whatever block was happening. It was almost like his mind associated the pain of Mysting and the explosion, and didn’t like going back into that state because of negative associations.
Well, there was always one talent that worked every time he tried it.
Alvin Sudacki sucked on his lower lip, looking to his left and his right. There had to be… seven, eight, nine. He turned to look on his right and finished his count. Plus himself, that made seventeen men aiming guns at the doorway to the stairwell. This guy might be a badass, he thought to himself, but he can’t dodge seventeen guns all aiming at him.
A sudden pulse of fear went through him. He clenched up on his pistol and let his eyes dart to his left and right. He wasn’t the only person who felt that!
At least four turned their heads, questions written on their faces.
“Don’t let that bastard in here!” Kraven ordered from behind them. He was in the back, so technically there were eighteen men.
And Kraven counted for two, easily.
Alvin was there because his usual post, two floors down, had been called to come up top for the ambush.
Another flash of fear ran through the group and two men shot into the closed door.
“Stop!” Kraven called. Another three started firing before Kraven was able to get them to stop wasting ammunition. “I don’t know what’s happening, but we’re just wasting our ammunition. Wait until…”
That’s when the real fear hit and the men ignored Kraven. Guns started blasting at the door. It was an old door. An original for this building from so many years before. It was made of metal, but holes were being punched into it, some bullets getting lodged in the door, most moving on to pepper the stairwell beyond.
A few men, bullets spent, grabbed another magazine and reloaded.
“SSTTOP!” Kraven was yelling, but his commands were being ignored.
Kraven was frustrated. He hadn’t had his command authority ever tested like this. The fear was real, palpable. He had a slight idea what might be on the other side of that door and, as far as he knew, it shouldn’t be there.
The men were gone, mentally. He stepped backwards, turning finally and entering his office. He moved with purpose to his armory and opened the door, reaching in to grab his M1911 with silver ammunition. He checked the magazine, made sure the ammunition was silver like it was supposed to be, and stuck it in his waistband.
He turned back towards the firing and was almost to his office suite door when the third wave of fear elevated, and he dropped to his knees in pain and fear. He turned slowly and looked at his window, the external staircase was just outside.
Michael waited, his guns holstered for the moment, he was looking at his nails wondering where he was going to find a pair of nail clippers. Was he going to have to raid an old drugstore? The metal wouldn’t degenerate over time, but were they all stripped bare over the years?
He sighed and pulsed another level of fear, amping it up this time and the gunfire ratcheted up. The wall across from the door one floor above was getting peppered by the gunfire. He imagined no one up there could hear anything.
Awwww, dammit! Michael could sense Kraven leaving the group. He grabbed his pistols and started for the steps, his coat fluttering behind him.
He pushed out his fear, turning it up to eleven, as Bethany Anne would say, and the gunfire stopped.
Step… step… step…
He made it to the final landing and walked to the door, kicking it off its hinges and stepped into the hallway, both guns out in front of him.
Kraven had fallen down the second set of stairs, but the fear level was decreasing the farther away he got.
Then, the fear stopped and his eyes widened in surprise and his body straightened. He got himself up, ignoring the pain in his arms and legs and made his way to the next set of stairs down. He went down as quickly as he could possibly go.
Michael shot two men in their heads as soon as he could find targets. The door was still in the process of slamming into a couple… or three… people who had been in front, throwing them back as the door rotated above them, slamming into and rebounding off the wall behind them.
Michael’s arms spread, as he continued down the line on both sides, shooting the men in the head, and a couple in their chests when their heads were blocked.
One he double tapped for having been smart enough to try and dodge behind another person.
“You messed up my perfect score, jackass,” he murmured. And then he looked back and forth, and nodded his head as he walked into the office behind them. He holstered his weapons as he got to the open window and looked down.
A man was halfway to the ground, racing down, trying to reach the level beneath him as fast as possible.
Disgusted at the cowardice, Michael stepped out and walked onto the fire escape. Jumping down the flight he landed with a BANG on the next turn around, the reverberation carrying through the metal down to the bottom.
BANG, one more floor down.
Far below him, Kraven Cochrel looked up and his eyes opened wide…
Bang!
Gerry’s head twitched.
BANG!
The bangs were getting louder, so he started watching outside, and noticed one person looking up, and then pointing.
He looked around inside the building and decided that maybe the fun had moved outside.
He left his little hiding place, walked back through the doors and kept his head down, not acting like he had any suspicion something was going on behind him until he was across the street from the building. Then, he turned around, looked up and smirked.
Some guy had just shot a couple of rounds from an old M1911 at a figure that was rapidly descending. The person was wearing a black trench coat that flared out every time he jumped down a flight of steps.
BANG! Hitting the next landing below.
The lower man, who Gerry assumed was Kraven, turned and quickly, almost without worry for his own safety, started his own process of jumping down the next level. Recover and run to the next set of stairs to jump again. He was definitely going to make it to the sliding ladder before Michael.
Then Gerry looked close at the figure. His eyes, not as sharp as they used to be but still good enough, yeah, that was Michael… but he had no hair?
Kraven, his breath reduced to erratic gasps, was finally at the slide down ladder. He stepped over the railing and grabbed the ladder, his weight dropping him down rapidly. It hit with a CLANG on the sidewalk. People were watching, but staying out of his way.
Two shots fired from his guards on the walls, then two screams and Kraven saw one blasted off the wall.
Then, the stranger jumped the last three flights of stairs to land on the ground right in front of him.
The first bullet from the guards on the wall hit just beside his face as he landed. The fragments from the wall peppered his skin.
Michael’s eyes narrowed and he reached into his jacket. He had dialed down the destruction capability of the pistols. His hand had actually started hurting. Something John had mentioned in the instructions that came with the pistols. At the time he had smirked, thinking maybe John had been getting soft.
Apparently not.
He casually aimed and took out the two guards that had guns up, and found two more who had turned to watch what was going on.
He shot them both in the shoulders. They wouldn’t be shooting anything today.
He looked down to see Kraven had made it down the sliding ladder. So, he grabbed the railing and jumped over it.
Gerry shook his head in wonder. The calm assurance of this Michael was apparent. But he wasn’t fighting like Gerry thought he would have a couple of hundred years ago. He had followed the man down the steps instead of Mysting. He hadn’t killed all four of the guards on the wall. Two of those Michael had shot received definitely survivable wounds, provided they got medical help soon enough.
Kraven brought his pistol up, but the stranger merely swatted it out of his hand so fast he hadn’t seen the movement. Kraven had, however, felt his trigger finger break as the pistol left his hand, bouncing off the sidewalk and clattering down the street.
“It seems,” the stranger said, his voice calm and deadly, “that you have not governed for the benefit of the people, Kraven.”
“Who the URGHG,” Kraven grabbed the arm that was holding him up in the air, his feet dangling, the hand clenched around his neck.
“My name,” the stranger said, as Kraven beat on his arm and then tried to kick him, “is irrelevant.”
Across the street, Gerry heard the crack of Kraven’s neck before Michael tossed the now dead man off to the side. He snorted. By now, everyone realized that there was a new man in town, who had just personally decimated everyone he had come across.
“Just like old times, eh, Michael?” Gerry said.
The stranger turned quickly, his eyes sharp as he recognised Gerry. His nostrils flared and then he started walking towards him, looking across the street like he expected cars to be coming before turning back to Gerry.
“What the hell,” Michael asked as he got closer, holding his hand out to shake Gerry’s, “happened to this world, Gerry?”
Chapter Ten
Gerry reached out to shake the vampire’s hand. Normally, back when he was the American Council’s Alpha, he had let Nathan deal with vampires.
Nathan had a way of keeping his head on his shoulders. The secret, Nathan explained, was keeping one’s mouth shut and only answering questions.
And being polite… very, very polite.
“Ah,” Gerry looked around as he put his hand up to his mouth and coughed. “Love to answer your question but I don’t suppose we can go to a safer location to chat?”
Michael looked around and then raised an eyebrow. It seemed the two toughs from earlier, and the three from the bar had come back, and were racing through the door.
“You going to talk with them?” Gerry asked, surprised that Michael hadn’t just killed them.
He shrugged. “I’m tempted to ease my headache.”
“You get headaches now?” Gerry asked, surprised.
“What?” Michael glanced in his direction before looking back towards the five men. One of those on the outskirts were talking with the lead guy, and pointing towards Michael. “No, figure of speech. In the older times, I would have just killed them. There was no thinking involved. No concern that they were someone’s son or daughter.”
“That sounds like Bethany Anne,” Gerry ventured.
“That’s because it is.” Michael agreed before starting towards the men, calling back over his shoulder, “but unfortunately for these five, she isn’t anywhere near here at the moment.”
Gerry started walking to catch up to Michael.
Jimmie followed the five toughs, wondering what they were going to do. One of the members of Kraven’s group had run into the bar, and yelled that the fort was under attack before running back out. The five men left, quickly. Jimmie, thinking it had to be the stranger, tossed off his bar apron and told Juliana he was taking a break.
Keeping his pace so that he stayed a block behind them, he kept looking behind him.
He had seen the pistols, all it would take would be one, or both, of those and he would be half the man the stranger was.
And Juliana would be his.
Michael walked towards the toughs.
Yessss, these five were part of Kraven’s inner circle. They had dishonor flowing through their blood like silt in the Mississippi.
“You stole my money!” Robert yelled at him.
Michael said, “I took it as punishment for your poor manners. I didn’t kill you, so I believe you received the better part of the bargain.”
Michael stopped twenty feet away. “Apparently, you’re going to make this easy for me.”
“We aren’t making anything easy, shithead,” The lead guy reached for his shirt. “Looks like it’s going to be you and me, man-to—”
Michael sped up, reached into his jacket, and pulled out his pistol, shooting the man in the chest. His body twisted in the air twice before he could finish the next word.
“I despise showboating,” Michael said as the other four men started grabbing for their own guns and trying to separate.
Michael turned and shot, turned and shot…
One…
Two…
Three…
“Dammit!” He was annoyed, the fourth was able to get behind a small cinderblock structure. He started walking towards the building, focusing his hearing on whether the man was going to come out the left or the…
“DOWN!” Gerry pushed Michael out of the way as another shot blasted.
Michael, his eyes going red, twisted in the air like a cat that had been dropped. His pistol aimed backwards to find the bartender from the first bar, his eyes wide, standing in the gateway to the fortress. The man was grasping a still smoking pistol.
