Red Twilight: A Dawning Of Power

Chapter 7 The Slayer part 1

My eyes are heavy; I've been lying face-down in the dirt for hours. I check my watch. It's almost 9 AM. I can hear a car coming down the dirt road to the southeast of me, so I turn the rifle, stare down the scope. It's Moses, the strange Spanish Italian dwarf I met last night. He stops his car out in front of the door and makes his way for the Gekks brothers' car. He opens the trunk then hops up and down approvingly. Then he looks at the hotdog taco truck. He reads the trailer number and I feel him thinking, They're early.

There is something strange about Moses, but I can't figure it out yet. He knows all too much. He pounds on the door to the bar, then yells through it to the patron. A minute later, an arrow flies through the roof, landing at Moses's feet. There's a key ring attached. Moses receives his instructions through the door, then takes the keys to the truck owned by David Lay, or El Driver, if that's more correct. He pulls the truck up to the door, attaches tow cable, and turns on the crane. There's a moment of struggle, but then the door bends and quickly falls, revealing a crowd of men and women.

Snake is the first out the door. I can feel that his soul is in turmoil; he fights with himself. Though he is good, he can seem to only to do bad; greed, l.u.s.t, and pride cloud his vision and darken his spirit. His aura flickers gray to signal to me his inner conflict.

He yells harshly at Moses, but quickly calms before Moses's charming demeanor.

Next is David Lay along with Mattimeto Whitewolf. David Lay wastes no time; he whispers something into Moses's ear then briskly climbs into the truck. He offers a meaningful glance to the party, but no one notices. Whitewolf follows Lay into the cab, then they are off onto the road again with the sun at their back. David Lay glows a pale blue. He hides his power; he hides everything and lives with honor and grief as his dance partners. Mattimeto burns more brightly than any spirit I've seen before. I can't decide what to make of him.

The next two I don't recognize—it's an old man in a white polo shirt and tan slacks, a cowboy hat, and snakeskin boots carrying a child, female, Caucasian, roughly ten years of age. The old man has been touched by evil, I can see that clearly, but the evil can find no home in his heart and is burning away within his pure, loving convictions. The child is an innocent aware of the evil, but untouchable by it. Or is she? I see something, something like a psionic insect asleep under her skin, powerless, dormant, but still alive, waiting, maturing.

Time is running out. My evacuation should be here soon; I have to head inside. I make my way around one side, staying low to the ground, out of sight. Four more lone warriors come out at the end, practically holding each other upright. They are three men and a woman: Charlie Belmond, Mohamed Quinn, Lucia Wingate, and Larry Gekks. Charlie Belmond seems brave and noble; he flares with a bluish white energy in an almost electric fashion. Mohamed Quinn has a green glow; he is spirited, but his powers have been fading away for years. Lucia Wingate has yet to awaken as a full-fledged warrior like me, but I feel the gift in her. Given a year or two more, she'll be ready to fight. With any luck, she'll never have to.

Larry makes me nervous. He is changing; he is corrupted. Alien blood flows through him and has changed his body already, but his mind is uninfected as of yet. I slip in through the door behind them. I stretch out with my mind and grab Larry's shoulder. I

don't know why, but I feel inclined to let Larry see me. He looks at me, we lock eyes, and I nod my head slowly. He knows I know who he is, and I want him to know that after I'm done here, I'll be looking for him. It's like destiny's cold hand has pushed us to meet. I only wish things were clearer—are we to fight, or are we to be friends? Or maybe the destiny is his, and I'm standing in his way. Enough is enough, he knows I'm here, and now I'm just dillydallying.

***

I grab my bag and step inside. It's a terrible mess. The ground is littered with the corpses of seemingly hundreds of men and women. Impalement, crucifixion, decapitation, bludgeoning, and shooting victims surround me. I've never seen such a horrifying sight as what lies before me. I feel myself tremble in excitement for a moment. By the looks of things, I missed the blunt of the party. So I dig through my bag, looking for only the fastest to draw and most versatile tools. Probably won't need the machine gun, maybe the tactical shotgun. Come to think of it, underground a grenade is a bad idea. Best stick with my good old .44 mag and this blade; I'll hide them both in my coat for now.

I extend my psionic influence again. I read the impressions left lingering in the air to take in the story thus far. As I do so, my danger sense tells me I'm not alone; there are two others with me. The stronger is a high Baatezu. "I think I know exactly who that is," I say aloud. And now that I have a lock on him, his mind control powers are meaningless. The other is a mid-level undead called a Juju, not much more than a ghoul, but smart enough to use tools and simple weapons; a straggler, I guess?

The Juju jumps out from beneath an overturned table. It produces a machete. Ironically, it's the one the cleric had lost. It howls gustily, swinging the big knife. I duck and roll, unsheathing a gladius from my coat, a single-edged short sword with a short hand guard, the preferred sword of Roman cage fighters. The Juju charges, I block with the back of my blade. It swings downward furiously three times, and three times I block and push against it. The fourth time I twist the blade, forcing the creature to kneel, and with one upward slash I've claimed its head.

I walk around the top floor—the stage, the bathroom, and the bar, taking in the sights, for what they're worth, then it's down to the trial of nightmares. My stalker remains as a shadow, but I know he's there, and now he won't sneak up on me again.

The blood on the ground turned half to jell squishes under my feet the most power vision I would see tonight starts to play out behind my eyes. Every drop of blood has a story to tell. Last night was a night like no other that came before. But one that would become a story repeated a dozen time in the coming years