Rob Thurman - Slashback

Jack knew more than he should.

I tried flipping that switch in my brain, starting small, a tiny gate to eat away at the chains and set me free. Nothing. There was only the creeping return of the muzzy sensation around the edge of my thoughts. If I couldn’t do something so small, gating myself was impossible. Jack had seen me moving like him, if not as quickly. Jack had taken a leap of faith. . wasn’t that hilarious. . that frying my brain would put a stop to that, temporarily. Permanently. Either one suited Jack.

Yeah, Jack knew way more than he should, but Jack didn’t know me.

Gating didn’t make me who I was. It was a part of me, but with or without gates, I’d always be half of something that could take him out if I had to use my last breath to do it. I remember the torn flesh weeping blood that had circled Nik’s wrists from his stay in Junior’s basement. I’d seen him pop a dislocated thumb back into place, with a towel clamped in his mouth to keep from screaming. If my brother had the balls to do that for me when he’d been a kid, there wasn’t anything that would stop me from doing the same for him as an adult.

Junior must have used handcuffs on Nik. Dislocating a thumb wouldn’t help with chains. A willingness to give Jack his pound of flesh would. Or half a pound. Nik had been right. Thinking you’re invulnerable makes you sloppy.

Jack had gotten sloppy.

He’d seen human weapons were nothing compared to him. They couldn’t hurt him, and he hadn’t bothered to take mine. He’d also left me that slack, not too bright of him either. I loved the arrogant ones. I was thinking all that when I maneuvered my hands and pulled the Mossberg Tactical shotgun out of Nik’s coat. I thought on it harder than I had to. If I hadn’t, I’d think about what Jack was doing to my brother right now.

I couldn’t think about that. God, I. . no. Just no.

This had happened to him when he was fifteen. When he was unarmed and had no experience with the evil in the world, other than the kind that then he had only watched. Trapped in a basement filled with the dead while Junior had been offering me to his master upstairs, he’d thought it was his fault for not believing me. The wonder wasn’t that he’d had a time bomb in him. The wonder was that he hadn’t given up on life then and there. The wonder was Nik himself who did not give up on me, no matter the odds, who saved my ass every last time.

I wasn’t going to be any different. I was getting him out of this. Somehow. And I was going to make him goddamn proud as I did it.

If that meant that I had to take on Jack with no gating ability and no weapon that could touch him, I’d fucking come up with something. Step one: the chains. If I’d known Jack was going to turn this into a psycho high school reunion of sorts I’d have brought bolt cutters. Now, I tucked the shotgun under my arm, pressed the muzzle against the chain and fired. I then switched hands and did the same several inches over.

My hands and face burned as I reloaded and ran up the stairs.

Cuts and embedded metal fragments from the shattering of the chain in two places when I hit it with a couple of steel slugs were responsible for that. There were ugly powder burns on my hands as well to accent the blood that made me look as if I were wearing black and red gloves. I’d had to aim close to where the chain wrapped around my wrist. If the chain didn’t shatter completely, I’d still have to pull my hands free of metal that wasn’t completely intact, looser but still snug, and would be the new equivalent of razor wire.

That was what had happened, and that’s what I’d done. I’d yanked my hands free, losing large patches of skin down to meat. Nothing I couldn’t live without. Nothing I gave a damn about.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Nik, wait for me, goddamn it. You’d better fucking wait.

I kept running, limping, moving up any way I could. It was hard to breathe and if a piece of bone in your lung felt worse than this, I pitied the bastard that had that. I hit the first floor, didn’t slow down as I ran for the door to the balcony and went up those too. As I staggered out onto the balcony, I was surrounded by color. Subtle but true. Moonlight washed through the stained glass of the giant window I’d seen walking into the church. The soft light wafted in a quiet drift of blue, purple, and the deep green of grass on a night shadowed grave.

This time, this close, I could smell Niko’s blood and I jerked my head to the left. He was standing with his katana between him and Jack. He knew he didn’t have a chance, but he was buying time, hoping I could get away and would have the sense to run.

He knew better than that, but he still tried. Nik was incapable of giving up on me, no matter how bleak the odds. Who did he think I’d learned it from? And Jack had picked up on that, was playing with him. “I left him his weapons,” came the thick flow. “His human toys. He had knives. If he’s the soulless animal I know him to be, he’ll do as they do when caught in a trap. I am kind however. He won’t have to gnaw his way free. He can use a knife to cut off his hand. I did chain both hands. Cutting off the second hand will be more of a puzzle without another to cut with, but Auphe are nothing if not persistent.”

I leaned in the corner between wall and rail. “Nik, get down.” He jerked his head toward me. I think it was the first time in my life I’d managed to appear and him not see me coming, not counting gates. But we were both caught in a past nightmare now and we were both less sharp and more desperate than we’d ever been.

There was blood on his face that started at his hairline, followed closely in front of his right ear, and ended at the tip of his chin. Superficial but messy and as Nik had told me in the beginning of this, a game, but also a start to being skinned alive if that’s what Jack wanted.

Reloading on my run up the stairs, I didn’t think the shotgun would work and thanks to ECT for Dummies, Jack had taken gates out of the picture. Chances were that both Nik and I were going to die here, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for Jack. When he looked back on taking us down, if it couldn’t be with fear, then I’d settle for vast annoyance. “Nik, down!” I repeated as I fired the first slug into the swirling mass of every nightmare come to life that coiled between us and instantly pumped the shotgun for the next round.

Nik didn’t get down, because Nik knew I had no plan. He would fight the same as I would and if we survived, kick my ass for suggesting he wouldn’t.

“I neutered your mutt of an Auphe. I filled his head with the light of the storm. He can’t leave. He can’t walk through doors not meant for him. He can’t save himself and he can’t save you either,” Jack gloated, the slug having disappeared in the shadows around him before it dropped to the floor coated in ice. “He cannot do anything. He may as well be human now, weak and ready for judgment, but he still won’t have it. Death is all that’s for him. Redemption is beyond him, neutered or not.” The glitter of his eyes focused on me, disappeared-toward Nik, and then back to me. “But who shall first give up his skin to the priest that is Jack? Who is the first offering?”

Nick slashed with his katana in a movement as quicksilver fast as Jack’s lightning. He was aiming for the eyes, but it was the same as with anything we’d tried. The blade bounced back and Jack laughed. The son of a bitch laughed. “You then, with a skinning tool of your own. I think I shall use it on you and then use your skin to choke your soulless sibling to death. A fitting end for the talented apprentice you took from me. Hammersmith gave me many of the wicked. Now you die in my pet’s name.”