Lance wanted to tell the Mover thanks, but he found that he was panting too hard.
Diamond stood up. Wobbling. He took a halting step, and then collapsed on his face with a moan. He’d been stabbed repeatedly, and there were bright red spots blooming across the back of his white shirt.
There were screams and gunshots coming from all around the apartment building. Shadow Guard were slaughtering everyone, and as the flames spread and Diamond’s blood spilled out of his body, it was just like being back at his home in Mar Pacifica all those years ago, on the night the Imperium had murdered his wife and children.
Not again, you sons a bitches. Not again. Such a powerful hatred filled him that he couldn’t even feel his wounds.
They’d be coming for the others. Lance activated his ring to send a warning. He was hurt bad. The stab wound in his chest was deep. He couldn’t hardly breathe. The laceration on his strong arm was making it hard for his bicep to contract, and his other hand had been cut to the bone. He’d gotten a single healing spell carved on him before leaving on this mission, and that would keep him going and slow the blood loss, so if he found a place to hide, he could probably survive.
He looked at the spreading flames and the dead and dying knights. Fuck that. These Imperium bastards were going down. Lance threw his gun belt over one shoulder and began reloading his empty Colt.
Then Lance Talon went hunting.
Judging from the engine noises, there were boats all around them. While staying at the hideout over the last few days, Sullivan had seen the Imperium patrol boats from a distance. They were sleek, grey things, heavily armed, and so fast when they were moving that they left a giant plume of water in the air behind them as they skipped across the waves. Their little boat was dead meat if the Jap patrol boats were looking for them.
Sullivan kicked Barns. “What? Huh?” Their pilot automatically reached into his leather jacket for one of the Saive GP32 machine pistols he kept there. Those things had a cyclic rate like a buzzsaw, and Sullivan had a bad feeling they’d be needing them in a moment.
“We’ve got company.”
Lady Origami was sneaking a peek out a hole in the tarp. She gasped as the hole suddenly filled with light.
They were being spotlighted. The patrol boat’s engines roared as they closed.
Sullivan’s ring began to burn.
The Nishimura armor was many things. Stealthy was not one of them.
Toru did not bother to hide his approach. That would have been impossible. The armor clanged and rattled as he made his way up the stairs. Normally, he was six feet tall and two hundred and forty pounds of muscle. In the suit, he was seven feet tall and over six hundred pounds of muscle, steel, and righteous fury. The tetsubo he was wielding was a five-foot-long, eighty-pound bar of heat-treated steel and spikes. There was simply no way the Shadow Guard could not hear him coming.
Luckily, like the first Shadow Guard he’d eliminated, they were not yet aware that he was not on their side. They were looking for the traitor Toru Tokugawa. Apparently their intelligence had neglected to tell them Toru might look like a walking samurai tank.
Two of the assassins intercepted him on the stairs. A Fade and a Traveler. “Master Hayate did not speak of any Nishimura-equipped—”
Toru swung the club. The armor may have appeared lumbering and slow, but it was not. The club whipped through the air so fast that it was a blur. The impact pulverized both of them. The Traveler died instantly, rupturing into a fine red mist. The Fade barely caught the edge and went over the side of the stairs, screaming. He might have been able go grey and survive the landing, but since one of his legs had been torn off and was lying there, twitching, at Toru’s feet, he would not be of further concern.
There were so many magical connections moving within the building that Toru could not discern ally from enemy. The building shook as some powerful Active utilized destructive magic. At first he thought that the blasted ashtray smell had somehow grown stronger, but it was smoke. The apartment was on fire.
The next floor was a chaotic dance of knight and Shadow Guard. Most of the Grimnoir had left, and it appeared that the majority of those who had been staying there had been quickly overwhelmed. Sullivan and Koenig had left to ready their respective parts in the mission. Talon was the senior knight here, but Toru did not see him.
The few survivors seemed to be fighting with the ferocity of demons. He surveyed the room and found Mottl the Icebox, Simmons the Torch, Genesse the Mouth, Willis the Reader, and two of the local Shanghai Grimnoir of unknown name and ability futilely trying to fight off the quicker and numerically superior Shadow Guard. The Mouth was shouting commands in the lull between gunfire, trying to confuse or turn the attackers against each other. Fire and ice streaked across the floor to sweep away the Imperium warriors. The Reader was firing an American automatic rifle. One of the Shanghai Grimnoir appeared to be extremely skilled in a martial art the locals called wing chun, and had engaged two of the Shadow Guard in hand-to-hand combat.
The knights were using the sparse furniture for cover, moving and shooting, sending out bursts of magic, and trying to watch every impossible angle a Shadow Guard could choose to attack from. They had stacked the bodies deep, which was a testament to their courage, but it would not be enough.
He did not quite fit through the doorway, so he lowered one shoulder plate and smashed his way through onto the main floor. Toru walked into the melee. Now the Shadow Guard were aware that he was not their ally. Subsonic pistol bullets and thrown knives bounced harmlessly off of his armor.
Iron Guards were trained to think clearly as they fought, to ascertain an opponent’s abilities and then understand how they would best counter. A Traveler used his Power to get out of Toru’s way, but Toru anticipated where he would move. Most Travelers were not capable of going very far, so it was a simple process to guess where they would consider a safe place to go. The Traveler landed to the side just in time to catch a backhand that nearly tore his jaw off.
Toru clubbed one of the Shadow Guard who was distracted fighting the martial artist. The impact launched him through the wall in a spray of red. The Grimnoir used that distraction to disable another Shadow Guard with a swift blow to the throat. Another Fade went grey to avoid the arc of the tetsubo, reformed, and ran for his life. Toru kicked the disabled Shadow Guard into the fleeing one, knocking them both down, and then Willis finished them off with several rapid shots.
Momentarily surprised, the remaining Shadow Guard retreated, Traveling away or Fading through the floors and side walls. Toru picked up a dropped sword and hurled it through the boards where a Fade had just gone. He was rewarded with a scream of agony.
Toru turned toward the injured Grimnoir and let his voice radiate through the magical kanji. He could see that every one of them had been injured, some worse than others. “Flee, Grimnoir.”
“We’ve got men unaccounted for!” Genesse shouted back at him. In their brief conversation while training aboard the Traveler, the Reader had struck Toru as an argumentative, proud man. Those were useful qualities in a barbarian society, but they were hindrances now. “We can’t leave them—”
“You can and you will! Sullivan’s mission comes first. You must survive in order to complete the mission. These are Shadow Guard. The men you cannot see here are already dead. Get to the water. I will hold them.”
They knew he was right. Nobody wanted to debate with the walking tank, so the Grimnoir took up their guns and limped for the stairs.
Toru waited. He knew what was coming next.
His brother, Hayate, appeared first, landing smoothly amidst the spreading fire. His Shadow Guard came next, appearing through the walls or dropping through the ceiling, surrounding Toru with lifted blades that had never been intended for this sort of work.
“Toru . . .” The First Shadow Guard did not bother to bow. “I was not expecting such armament. This is an intriguing development.”
“Our father has seen fit to bless
my endeavors by placing this armor in my path.” Toru’s voice passed through the magical kanji of the mempo. It could be magnified to terrible levels, but for now, he kept it as if they were having a polite conversation.
“I was frankly shocked to see you trying to save the lives of these Grimnoir. Sending them away is interesting . . . yet ultimately pointless, since my men will pick them off one by one as they attempt to escape . . . After them!” Hayate barked the command at the Shadow Guard surrounding Toru. “Kill them all!”
The other Shadow Guard disappeared, leaving Toru and his brother alone.
Lance let his mental control of the rat slip. He didn’t speak Japanese, but he’d still understood the Shadow Guard leader’s meaning clear enough. The ninjas were going after the remaining Grimnoir. Knowing he didn’t have much time or much blood left, Lance forced himself onward. One bare foot in front of the other. He had to keep one hand pressed against the wall so as not to fall over. It left a bright red trail along the peeling wallpaper behind him.
There wasn’t much he could do with his Power. There weren’t many useful animals around here, and most things were running from the spreading fire. He kept on scanning, using his Power to pick out living creatures from the surroundings. There were rodents in the walls, fish in the water below, birds in the sky, and he kept grabbing hold of one, taking a quick look through its eyes to keep track of the bad guys, his fellow knights, and any other hazards.
It was hard work switching between so many different brains, but it was all he could do. Lance reached the stairs, already knowing that there was a ninja waiting in ambush because a mouse had smelled him and sensed the vibrations. Lance pressed the muzzle of the Colt into the wood and let the ninja have it right through the wall.
The door was harder to shove open because of the dying ninja blocking it, but Lance squeezed through. The Imperium man was squirting blood out of his neck, but still trying to raise his sword, so Lance shot him again.
Keeping his mind in multiple places made it hard to be graceful even when he wasn’t bleeding to death. He nearly slipped and fell on the stairs. The blood from his chest had run down his jeans and into his socks, and now things were getting slippery. Smoke was coming out of everything and curling its way up the stairwell. He coughed and stained his beard with blood. The Healing spell Sullivan had carved on him felt like it was on fire. Without it, he knew he’d already be dead. Lance hoped it would be enough to get him out of this.
There was a terrible roar as a big chunk of the flaming building’s interior collapsed above.
He took a gull past the bank of windows below. They were blacked out, but enough were broken that he caught glimpses of black-clad men preparing to jump the escaping knights. Lance gathered up all of his mind back into his own body so he could concentrate. He’d need it.
Second floor. The bad guys were looking the other way, waiting for his friends. It was going to be hard to aim. One arm didn’t want to flex and the other was slippery with blood. Lance lifted the Colt and went to work anyway. He managed to drop a couple of them with bullets before a Traveler reacted and appeared behind him. Lance had been waiting for that, so he let himself drop as soon as he felt the change in the air.
The sword swept by overhead and embedded itself in the door jamb. Lance was at a funny angle, so the .45 only hit the Shadow Guard in the thigh. There was a mighty big artery there, though, and that Shadow Guard let out a terrible holler and dropped. He raised the Colt, but the Shadow Guard smacked it away. Lance crawled up him, grabbed one of the ninja’s knives off of his belt and stabbed him in the chest, once, twice, three times, and on the fourth wild swing, the ninja gathered up enough magic to Travel away.
Lance fell on his face. That ninja landed in a bloody heap fifteen feet away, spitting blood.
There was a Grimnoir knight nearby on the floor. A Chinaman. Chen had been his name. Nice fella. Lance had taken a liking to him. He’d found that Chen had a good sense of humor and was always going on about how funny his kids were. But now Chen was dead because some Imperium asshole had nearly sawed his head off, so Lance lurched over and took the sawed-off double-barreled shotgun from Chen’s hands.
The smoke parted. A ninja was coming his way. Lance pulled the trigger and filled the hall with buckshot. Fade! He managed to go grey just in time and came out of it unfazed. Lance pulled the second trigger. The Fade barely made it again. Lance broke open the shotgun and the shells auto-ejected as he knelt down to pick up some of the buckshot shells scattered around Chen’s body.
Lifting his sword, the ninja charged. He opened his mouth and let out a battle cry. Most Fades never got to Heinrich’s level of control. The ninja would need to be solid well before he could hit Lance with that sword.
It was a race.
Lance got the shells into the chambers and snapped it shut. The stubby double-barrel came up as the Fade swung.
Lance won the race.
The ninja got splattered across the hall. He hit the ground with a gaping hole in his ribs.
The Imperium bastard was still moving, so Lance tried to give him the other barrel. Lance grunted as he tried to manipulate the shotgun, but it wouldn’t go. He looked down. His right hand wasn’t responding because it was lying on the ground, along with most of the rest of his arm, and then the unbelievable pain hit. “Aw shit.”
He hadn’t won after all. It had been a tie.
Lance went to his knees. His right arm had been removed just above the elbow. Blood was pumping out. He’d better do something about that. There were still Imperium in need of killing.
With unnerving calm, he pulled off Chen’s belt, looped it around the stump, and pulled it tight. Lance screamed. Now that hurt. He bit down on the leather with his teeth to keep tension on it until he could get his pocket knife out to poke a new belt hole.
It was a strange feeling, pulling his own severed hand off of the shotgun, but he did it anyway. There was movement in the smoke as a ninja ducked across the hall. He fired the last round of buckshot through the wall but couldn’t tell if he’d gotten anything.
There was shooting ahead. The surviving Grimnoir had engaged the Imperium. He grabbed the nearest available weapon—the short sword that had cut his arm off—and used it like a crutch to get to his feet. Lance staggered toward the sound of gunfire, the tip of the sword dragging along the dirty ground behind him. Lance knew he was a goner, no denying that, but he was going to take as many Imperium assholes with him as possible.
The next room was a red haze. He hacked a Shadow Guard in the back, cutting him clear to the spine, and then he shouted for more. The other bastards saw him coming and ran. Lance went after them.
And then he got shot. He knew that feeling well.
Lance lost the little sword. He hadn’t even seen that sneaky Shadow Guard who had appeared behind him and shot him in the back. Lance turned around and started limping toward the ninja, who then shot Lance again. It was a funny-looking little pistol with a big sound muffler on the end. Lance barely even heard that one, but he sure felt the impact. The ninja got him with one more round before Lance got ahold of his wrist and pushed the gun aside. Lance tugged him in and headbutted the ninja in the face. It took them both down. That’s what they get for using those pussy little 8mm rounds instead of a real gun. Lance wrestled the weird little Nambu up, stuck it under the ninja’s chin, forced his finger into the trigger guard, and put a bullet hole through the assassin’s brain.
He got back up and fired the pistol at the fleeing Shadow Guard. “I’m Lance Talon, you sons a bitches!” He wasn’t nearly as good a shot with his left hand, but he still hit at least one of them. “You’d better run!”
And then he was down.
His ears were ringing. He couldn’t hardly see. The bastards had shot him in the back again. He started getting up, but they shot him again, and again. He slowly sank to the ground. Lance grimaced and tried to force himself back up, but his legs wouldn’t respond. He tried to lift the gun, but a split-t
oe shoe appeared in his vision and kicked the Nambu away.
Had he bought the others some time? Had they got away? If so, then it was all worth it.
The remaining Shadow Guard gathered around him in a circle, seemingly in awe at the berserker fury of the American. They were warriors. They could appreciate a good death.
He was nearly dead, but Lance wasn’t done yet.
There were always stories about Beasties so incredibly powerful that they weren’t limited to just controlling animals, ones who could actually take over humans. As far as he knew, those were just stories, but he did think it was possible, just that it required more magic than he’d ever been able to use at once without fear of killing himself in the process. Lance had never been able to pull it off, and even poking around with it had told him that for him to draw that much Power at once would mean certain death.
He reached for his Power. There was absolutely nothing left to lose.
His vision faded. The world was a flat, grey, quickly shrinking circle. The Imperium ninjas were half-a-dozen glowing blobs of life, with minds far greater than any animal. He picked one in particular. The son of a bitch who had finally brought him down was carrying a big Type 70 light machine gun, so at least Lance had been killed by a real gun.
The Imperium men drew closer. A ninja lifted his sword to take Lance’s head.
He gathered up all his Power, all his life, and then reached for more. He concentrated on the man with machine gun and treated him just like he’d treat a rat or a dog or horse. This mind was complicated in comparison, but it didn’t matter, Lance just forced his way in and slammed that spirit right out of the way.
Now he was seeing through different eyes. Human eyes. There was his executioner, and there was his body. Lance was wearing socks. He’d died with his boots off, and that struck him as so damn funny he started laughing.