“I said I’ll shoot!” The cowering man in a lab coat shrieked as I advanced on him, but it only made me grin wider.
“Not so confident now, are you?” I taunted him, stepping slowly closer. At my back, I could sense Finn and River standing guard on either side of the new door I had just created. How I’d ended up with two denizens of the Underworld as my backup, I had no idea. But for what was about to happen… it felt damn right.
“Y-you’re making a big mistake, you mutant bitch,” Doctor Florsheim whimpered unconvincingly. “You don’t know who you’re messing with.”
“No, that’s where you’re wrong, Doctor. You don’t know who you’re messing with. You made one hell of a big mistake back in Toronto, my friend. Taking my blood and then leaving me to be tortured by that disgusting excuse for a meat suit, Richard Liath.” The doctor’s eyes widened even further with fear, even though I would have said it wasn’t possible given how wide they already were. “Want to know what happened to your buddy after you took off? I bet you knew something bad was going to happen, didn’t you? That’s why you never came back for the blood bags.”
He swallowed nervously, and his hands shook on the huge, black machine gun he clutched. Any moment now, he was going to fire simply because he couldn’t stop his hands from trembling.
The room erupted with the sound of gunfire, right on cue, and I froze them before they could hit us. Not that they would have killed anyone in the room except the good doctor himself, but given we were in this mess thanks to my blood, I preferred not to spill any unnecessarily.
“It’s because of idiots like you,” I snapped as I reached forward and wrenched the machine gun from his quivering hands, “that this country needs stricter gun control laws.”
I tossed the weapon aside and planted my hands on my hips to sneer down at the sniveling worm who’d caused so much death, thanks to that tiny vial of my blood he’d stolen. It was almost hard to believe that this was the person who could have led the human army against supernatural beings.
Not that they would need an army when I was through with Bridget. I had no intention of oppressing humanity and letting magical beings shit all over the only lives most of us had ever known. All of the blood I had shed, and would shed, was to prevent a much larger-scale devastation.
“I’m going to kill you now,” I informed the man in a painfully calm tone that even gave me chills. “I’d like to say it’ll be quick, but that would be a lie.”
“Killing me will get you nowhere,” Doctor Florsheim babbled. “You think I’m the only one involved? This has gone way beyond me now. Why do you think I’m here? In this top secret military base? The government is funding my research now. They want my freaks! If you kill me, they’ll just recruit the next-smartest geneticist out there to continue my work. Besides, things like you deserve to be dissected for the good of science.”
“So… what? I should spare your life because of this?” I squinted at him, and the shadows all loomed closer, crowding the corners of my vision until it was almost hard to see my victim. They were hungry, desperate for blood, and I was all too happy to provide it for them.
Whatever Doctor Florsheim said next was lost in the rush of magic pounding around in my head like waves in a storm, fueled by the darkness of my own charred soul. There was only one way I was leaving Nevada tonight, and that was drenched in the blood of this man.
His frantic, pleading words were silenced by the first lash of my magic.
The long, thin whip of it unfurled from me without even the slightest effort. It was as easy as a flower petal opening, and it bit deep into the flesh of his face.
After that first strike, the power simply rippled out from me in waves, sliding over his skin like the rays of the sun. But unlike the sun, this didn’t warm or caress like the kiss of spring; this fucking cut. My power slipped the man’s flesh from his body like a husk from corn, easy.
No, shit, it was almost too simple.
Too damn quick.
But trying to rein in the darkness was like trying to dam Niagara Falls. Nothing was stopping it now that it had a taste for Doctor Florsheim’s blood, so the best I could do was slow it down. Make it hurt.
Strip by agonizing strip, my magic tore his skin away from his flesh, exposing fat and sinew and blood—so much blood, cascading across the floor like crimson silk. Hauntingly beautiful, in a sick kind of way. The sight of it held me mesmerized while my magic continued to tear the skin from Doctor Florsheim’s flesh in long, drawn-out strips.
His screams and howls ended far too soon, as he lost consciousness from the pain, but I was done with this particular task. I wanted to be done with this chapter and move on to dishing out a little family love. If anything, this was nothing more than a warm-up for what I truly wanted to do to my mother.
“Holy shit,” Finn’s voice cut through the heady rush of magic, and I startled. “And I thought demons were brutal. This is…” He trailed off, and I blinked at him a couple of times before turning to look at what he was seeing.
What I had done shocked even me. I sucked in a sharp breath, gagging on the metallic tang of fresh blood that clogged the room like heavy perfume. k^1^2
Doctor Florsheim hung from the wall, his body held in place by twisted pieces of metal torn from the shredded metal bed frame nearby. Not an inch of skin remained on his flesh. It all lay in crumpled ribbons in a pile at his feet, like discarded wallpaper.
But somehow… his heart still beat in his chest—something made all too clear by the pulsing blood radiating from that area of his chest.
“He’s still alive,” I murmured, mostly to myself, but Finn responded anyway.
“I have to say, that was an extra twist of cruelty I didn’t know you had in you,” he commented, sounding a little sick. When I frowned at him in confusion, he raised his eyebrows. “I can see magic. Yours, little fox, has turned particularly dark recently, so it’s a hard one to miss. Here.” He pressed a thumb to my forehead and uttered a guttural, foreign word. “Take a look for yourself.”
When he removed his thumb, I blinked and saw immediately what he was talking about. All around the room, a black, soot-like residue clung to the walls—clear evidence of how much power I had just used. Doctor Florsheim himself was wrapped up in shadows that pulsed with active magic, showing that despite what I’d thought– we weren’t finished.
Fascinated, I stepped closer and peered at the dark tendrils wrapped around his heart, visible through a gap in his ribs. They squeezed and pulsed it, keeping it artificially beating like they were performing some sort of fucked up CPR.
“He won’t last much longer, even with the help of your magic,” Finn commented, dragging my attention back to him again. “Humans can’t survive without blood, and he looks like he’s running a bit low.”
“You’re right,” I mumbled, feeling the numbness of magic exhaustion start to spread through my body. We needed to finish up quick and get the hell out of here.
Turning back to Doctor Florsheim, I snapped my fingers to wake him up with a shot of electrical-like magic. Awareness returned to his lidless eyes, but before he could begin screaming once more, I silenced him by tearing out his tongue with my magic.
“I just wanted you to see my face one last time before you die,” I told him in a quiet voice, not totally sure he could actually hear me but also not caring. “Mine is the face of vengeance, Doctor Florsheim. No one will be spared.”
With that, I released the grip of magic on his body and watched as everything in him stuttered and stilled.
It was done.
“Let’s go,” I announced to my companions. “I want to see this whole compound in ashes before daybreak.”
Finn said nothing, and River simply dipped his massive head at me in something that vaguely resembled respect. But how I interpreted that from his fire-pit eyes, I had no idea.
The three of us strode quickly from the building, pausing only occasionally to lay runes on walls, which would all eventually connect up to form one massive fucking explosion. Every scrap of data or research held within this base would be destroyed. No exceptions.
Once the three of us were clear and standing within a safe distance, I spoke the word of power and watched with satisfaction as the infamous Area 51 was reduced to little more than rubble and debris.
“Let that serve as a warning to whoever else holds Doctor Florsheim’s research.” I turned my back on the burning mess and cast a portal.
One enemy down, one psychotic Ban Dia mother left.
Now, to assemble my army. That bitch would not know what hit her.
