Necromanson (Beta) Chapter 7 (Patreon)

A surge of panic filled Henry as a man walked up to Athena, and without preamble, drew his pistol, taking aim as her face turned ashen. Henry focused, pushing the gun up and away, and as the man was staring at his gun in wonder, Henry pulled the rubber band in his mind back. Henry built up force until he released a breath later, slapping the side of the man’s head with about two well placed punches worth of force.

The killer toppled to the side, senseless after a heavyweight punch had scrambled his brain through his helmet, Athena leapt for his gun as the others looked on. A strangled shout came from the man closest to the unconscious one, and his hands went to the submachine gun resting against his waist.

Henry glanced at the gun on the waist of the leader who stood beside him, scowling furiously at the clusterfuck that was unveiling itself in front of him. The safety was off, the little metal tab turned down, parallel with the barrel of the gun. with a modest effort of will, Henry twisted the safety of every gun in the parking lot into the safe position, then bent them, inducing a mild headache, and ensuring they would stay safe for the time being.

The flurry of soft clicks was lost in the shouts and clacks as Athena dropped to the ground, rolling behind the van, leveling the stolen pistol on the kidnappers. For their part, they shouldered their weapons, drawing a bead on her and pulling the triggers.

A few seconds went by as Athena and the men facing her squeezed their triggers to no avail. Henry might have found the dry firefight amusing but for the deadly implication behind their actions. Henry slapped the two men holding him on the back of the head with a wave of force, and bent down to retrieve a pistol from the slumped body beside him.

As Athena and the men surrounding her desperately scratched their nails across the safeties of their guns, Henry cleared his throat. “Ahem,” he said, not gaining their attention. Athena took the initiative, and charged one of the guys closer to the cabin, pistol whipping him in the face as she brushed past, heading for the trees.

With a snarl, a man drew his knife and began stalking after her. Henry turned and gave their leader a curious gaze, meeting his ashen-faced stare. Henry shot him in the stomach. The explosion resounded through the trees, echoing off the distant mountains, drawing the attention of the knife wielding asshole and his associates. Henry saw Athena disappear further into the woods, unaware that they weren’t shooting at her.

“Excuse me,” Henry said through the silence that followed, adopting his nearly forgotten military-trained attitude. “Your boss told you to stop.”

“I didn’t say shi-“ Henry interrupted their leader with another shot to the stomach. The man’s eyes bulged and he bent over, throwing up onto the gravel.

“I’m your boss,” Henry said cheerfully. “And I say stop.”

“What the fuck do you-“ Some idiot started talking, and Henry shot him in the leg. He fell to the ground screaming. Their leader retched into the dirt, holding his stomach where Henry had shot him the second time.

“Is that Kevlar?” Henry asked, peering at the man, who despite being shot twice, was not bleeding. The one who had spoken, on the other hand, panted and whined as blood oozed from his leg. Henry glanced over to him and waved the gun at his stock-still cohorts. “Could you patch him up and stuff something in his mouth? The sounds he’s making makes it hard not to shoot you guys.”

“What did you do?” Their leader demanded, trying to catch his breath. Henry found his mood darkening at the audacity they had to feel offended when the people they were trying to kill or kidnap turned out to be able to defend themselves.

“This is probably your first time being killed in a gravel driveway in the middle of nowhere,” Henry said, kicking the retching man onto his back before leveling the gun on his legs. “But I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt. I’ve got the gun, I’ve got-” a flicker in the corner of Henry’s eye drew his attention. Knife Guy was charging him silently, trying to close as much distance as he could before Henry noticed.

Henry seized the knife and plunged it into the man’s chest, his hand still attached to the handle. He fell to the ground, sliding to a stop over the gravel, face down, ten feet away. Henry watched, chuckling before he returned his gaze to the man beneath his gun.

“I killed a fair number of innocent kids in my day,” Henry said, showing a smile he didn’t feel. “So I want you to believe me when I tell you that offing a dozen or so assholes capable of killing a woman in cold blood doesn’t particularly phase me.”

“So,” Henry said, lightly resting the barrel of the gun against the man’s kneecap. “Where were you going to take me?” Henry asked, keeping his tone even and grim. The leader of the kidnappers looked at him with new eyes.

“You’re one of them,” he said, his face pale.

“One of who?” Henry asked. the snaggletoothed man shook his head, shivering.

“I can’t tell you,” he said, his hands trembling against his stomach.

Henry moved the barrel of the gun until it was pointed at the man’s forehead. “Can’t or won’t?” he asked. “Are you sure there’s no wiggle room there? Because there’s a big difference between the two.”

He took a shuddering breath, locking his eyes on Henry’s “I can’t,” he said. Henry pulled the trigger, spattering himself with a fine spray of blood as the kidnapper’s head rocked back, his helmet having caught the bullet on the inside.

Henry stood, praying to god the guy didn’t have HIV or some other terrible blood-borne pathogen. He turned his gaze to the sixteen-odd men watching in horror, before fishing another clip out of their leader’s belt.

“Could you guys do me a favor and line up?” Henry asked, scanning the men in front of him. “It would save me a lot of time.” The mask-wearing, Kevlar-clad commandos met each other’s eyes, and with wordless acknowledgement, they all scattered and ran.

Henry watched them run, ducking and weaving in all directions, capitalizing on the safety of numbers. Henry didn’t particularly relish the thought of killing them, in fact, it turned his stomach, but the path with the least bloodshed involved whoever sent them being absolutely terrified of him. Henry supposed that the best course of action would be to kill them all, deny any information from reaching their puppetmaster, but Henry felt as though the bile in his throat was about to forcibly eject.

Henry’s gaze was drawn to where Athena had disappeared into the woods, and he broke into a jog, calling her name. Henry didn’t have to run far. Athena emerged from a bush as though she had sprouted from the ground, just a few feet into the treeline.

“We gotta get out of here,” she said, jerking her thumb towards the woods. “The vans probably have GPS.”

Henry thought about it for a moment, and shook his head. “We’re not going to get far on foot, and unless the guys coming after us have cruise missiles, it should take them at least a few minutes to catch up. Let’s take two of the vans and leave them running in a bad neighborhood.”

Athena thought for a moment, pursing her lips. “Not a great plan, but something like one,” she said, heading back to the driveway. When the two dead men came into view, she stopped, her breath catching in her lungs. “Did you do this?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“Yeah,” Henry said, avoiding looking at her face.

“Good,” she said, kicking the corpse with a knife in his heart on the way past. Athena bent down and stripped the submachine gun and extra clip of ammo off each of the bodies.

“Excuse me?” Henry asked, his head cocked. “I was under the impression that you’d get upset and lecture me about the sanctity of life.”

Athena knelt beside one of the unconscious men, the slimmest one, and began stripping his vest off of him. “People like this have no respect for the sanctity of life,” Athena said, slipping the unused bulletproof jacket off the unconscious man. “The only thing they respect is force, and I think you gave them a taste. The first thing they’re gonna do is push back hard, try to get rid of you, and if you weather that storm, then they’ll respect you. from a getting-out-of-here-alive standpoint, you should have killed them all.”

Henry knelt beside the boss as Athena slipped the jacket on, it was a little big on her, but she wore it naturally. “I’m not exactly comfortable with that,” Henry said, the bile rising in his throat as he searched the man’s pockets for keys.

Athena looked at him, and Henry spotted the tears dampening her cheeks, “Me neither, but I’d choose myself over people like this any day,” she said, turning back to her work. When she was done, she had the ridiculously clumsy look of someone about to take on an army singlehandedly.

“Get yourself a vest,” Athena said, pointing at one of the slumped over thugs that had held his arms. “As far as I know, you can’t stop bullets with your mind.” Henry nodded, and after he retrieved the keys from the corpse, he tore a vest off of one of the big men holding him just a minute before.

Henry slid the vest on. The familiar stiff, clumsy, scratchy, and claustrophobic feel of the vest cinching down around his chest made the hairs on his arms stand up. Henry grabbed one of the helmets, throwing it in the van, before he jumped into the driver’s seat, exchanging a glance with Athena before setting out, the two of them driving separately.

The day wore on, and Henry found himself on the wrong side of town. The smell of grease assaulted him, and he felt eyes piercing the tinted windows of the fan intently, eager to divine his purpose, and his vulnerability. Henry was aware of his status as a fugitive, and uneager to get locked in a cell a second time.

Henry parked the van by the curb, wiped the blood from his face, buried the vest beneath his jacket, and hopped out, tossing the keys to the nearest kid with a warning that the car was hot. The kid’s eyes widened, and he whipped out a hand-me-down cellphone, presumably calling his uncle who knew what to do with stolen property.

“Seems like it’s always the uncle,” Henry mused as he disappeared into an alley, eager to get as much space between himself and the car as he could in the few minutes he had before whoever owned it showed up. Behind him, he heard the van rumble to life, and tacked a few extra minutes onto his estimate, praying that he didn’t just condemn the kid to getting executed facedown in a ditch.

Marcus Niles waited in his shop for his nephew to show up, a dirty rag slung over one shoulder. The lights of the van cut through the chain link fence, scattering patterns across Marcus’ face as the van rolled into the driveway. Marcus’s experienced eye was already dissecting the vehicle based on its make and model, estimating only a thousand dollars profit.

The car was only barely worth his time, and only because he had nothing more pressing going on. The damn thing wasn’t the slightest bit sexy, but it would buy groceries, so Marcus shrugged and stood aside as his nephew drove the van into his shop. The kid, Gus, leaned out the window and grinned widely. “Whaddya think?” he asked.

Marcus stretched his neck. “I’ve always been straight with you kid. This isn’t gonna make me a lot of money,” Marcus said, fishing in his breast pocket for cash. “It’s a van, one step away from a soccer mom special, Take a hundred bucks and consider this your lucky day.”

“But Mark-“ Gus said before he was interrupted.

“No buts, you said some stranger just tossed you the keys and walked off? That stinks to high heaven. You got thing at no risk to yourself, or at least you thought you didn’t, but the only reason he’d just give it to you is if someone was following it. Take a hundred bucks, go home, and I’ll stay here and deal with anyone that comes looking for it. You got that?”

The kids looked aside, his lip twitching. “You got that?” Marcus repeated, glaring fiercely at his nephew. Gus nodded, taking the two fifty dollar bills out of Marcus’s hands before unloading his bicycle from the back of the van and heading home. Marcus watched his sister’s oldest child disappear into the night, a faint smile passing across his lips before he parked the van where he wanted it.

Marcus crawled under the van and found the GPS, his skin crawling as he identified the kind as one that could be used to actively track the vehicle. Marcus tidied his shop, hiding anything incriminating, waiting for the eventual visit by people looking for the car.

He didn’t have to wait long. About an hour later, a limousine rolled into the driveway, scattering blue-white light off of the damp black pavement. Glancing over from his work, Marcus caught the luxury car approaching from the corner of his eye and pursed his lips as the amount of money he expected to make from the van skyrocketed.

Marcus turned to face the bright lights of the limousine as an old man with a vigorous step got out, heading to the rear of the vehicle and opening the door. Marcus squinted, catching the bulge of a pistol under the driver’s suit. Thick fingers grabbed the doorframe of the car as a seven foot tall monster climbed out of the back seat.

The passenger looked like he had been born with a silver spoon in one hand and human growth hormone in the other. He walked with the arrogant confidence of a man who didn’t even know what losing felt like. He turned and locked his eyes on Marcus, pinning him to the spot with his gaze. Marcus swallowed, resolving to just give the man what he wanted. Life was precious, after all.

The Aryan wet dream turned his gaze back to the old man, and with a nod, took the keys and the chauffer cap back from the old man, sliding into the front seat. Marcus stood and stared as the old man turned back to him, the low hum of the giant adjusting his seat carrying through the air.

“I like to drive myself.” The vigorous old man said, stepping forward with his hand extended and a charming aftermarket smile adorning his face, looking for all the world like a lively grandpa.

“Evening,” Marcus said as he clasped the old man’s hand, careful not to damage the knotted bones of the liver-spotted hand. The man’s grasp, however, was much tighter than Marcus ever would have expected, and he swallowed a hiss of discomfort as the bones of his work-hardened hands creaked against each other.

“Good evening,” the old man said, fishing in the pocket of his vest “I’m here for-“

“The guy driving the van,” Marcus said, nodding.

The smile returned to the man’s wrinkled face. He withdrew a crisp stack of twenty dollar bills from his jacket. “Indeed,” he said, hefting the money, bearing a purple band with two thousand written in white across it.

“Where did he get out of the car?” the old man asked, his eyes piercing.

Marcus, answered all the old man’s questions. Where he got out, what he looked like and what he wore, all questions he had asked Gus before his nephew had dropped off the car. In the end, the old man, nodded satisfied, and handed Marcus the stack of bills before turning to go.

“Do you want the van back, sir?” Marcus asked, and the thin man glanced over to the white van parked in the driveway. He turned his gaze back to Marcus, sending goosebumps up the back of his neck.

“I’ll send someone to pick it up within the week, thank you,” The old man narrowed his eyes, running his gaze up and down the mechanic. “You’ve been very helpful, why?”

Marcus shrugged. “Seemed like the smartest thing to do, I don’t want any trouble.”

The old man glanced around Marcus’s shop, taking in the spread of tools and car parts. “You got a business card?” he asked. Marcus scoffed. “I can tell you’ve got potential, I bet you’re the biggest fish around here. Tell you what, you ever want a higher paying job, call me.” The old man withdrew a card from his breast pocket and flicked his wrist, sending the piece of rigid paper slicing through the air. It passed through twenty feet in the blink of an eye, finally coming to a rest nestled in between two of the twenty dollar bills in the stack atop Marcus’s workbench.

Marcus watched, his brows raised. The old man raised his head and took in a deep breath, smelling the air with his eyes closed, his lips trembling as though he was tasting the air as much as smelling it. “The offer extends to your… nephew as well.”

The Adonis chauffer ducked out of the front seat and allowed the old man back into the driver’s seat, and the old man shot him a grin as he adjusted his seat and checked his mirrors, moments later the limousine rolled backwards, its lights retreating back into the darkness of the evening.

Marcus released a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, and sank to his knees, gasping for air. “The fuck was that?” he muttered to himself. Putting his hand on his knee, Marcus hoisted himself back to his feet, and found himself looking at the stack of bills atop his toolbox, the gold embossed business card jutting from the center.

He reached for the money, and caught himself, a terrible feeling swirling in his stomach. The cash would make a lot of ends meet, sure, but was it worth taking money from what could have very well been the devil? Marcus went back to work, finding his gaze returning over and over to the money on the toolbox.

A wrench slid, and Marcus cursed, wiping another bleeding knuckle against his rag, tossing the useless tool to the table. The purple of the strap caught Marcus’s gaze, and he threw the rag aside, grabbing the windfall and business card, tucking the money into his pocket after pulling three twenties off the top, breaking the strap in the process. Marcus turned off the lights, closed the garage and jumped on his motorcycle, absentmindedly mulling over where to get dinner.

Marcus pursed his lips. Actually, his sister’s cooking was above and beyond what he could expect ant any restaurant, and he had half an hour before they ate dinner. Marcus nodded his head, resolved to pick up supplies for a surprise visit to his sister’s. He pulled out of the driveway, pushing off of the ground as he gained his balance.

Marcus walked into the wal-mart, and began gathering a few things to bring to dinner. Two twelve packs to share between the adults, some sweet fruits for the kid, a machete for trimming the family tree, and a five gallon container of gas to burn their house down. Marcus had a hard time making all the dinner supplies fit on the back of his motorcycle, but with some creative use of bungee cords, he managed to pull out of the parking lot okay.