19. Men. I was surrounded by a pox of men.
NINETEEN
Men. I was surrounded by a pox of men.
Much like two oversized children, Ben and Emerick played with Breckenan.
Sometimes, they treated him like a ball, which they batted at each other just to listen to the miscreant squeal.
A few times, they engaged in a game of tug-of-war, and without the necromantic magic shielding him, Breckenan would have been torn apart within moments.
At the forty-four minute mark, I tired of their games, grabbed my bowl, and flung it down at the source of so much misery, who darted to and fro between the panthers, seeking a path to freedom.
Despite a bowl being less than ideal for using as a thrown weapon, my aim proved to be true, bonking Breckenan upside the head.
The force of the impact sent the rat flying back while my bowl clattered over the asphalt.
Rather than come to a rest, it bounced, floated in the air, and emitted a low thrum along with a golden luminescence.
It pulsed, and the rat screamed before popping back to human form.
His clothing burst into blue-white flames, and he screamed.
Ben’s ears turned back.
Emerick lowered his head and growled, and his rump twitched as he prepared to leap forward and put an end to the problem that had plagued us for so long.
My father pushed off the shipping container, dropped a few feet, and transformed, taking flight and diving down, sweeping upwards as he neared the ground so he could bring his talons into play.
Ben snarled, lunged forward, and seized Breckenan’s throat in his jaws.
With a shrieked cry, my father drove the curved tips of his talons through the bones of our prey’s shoulders, pumping his wings. In a blatant refusal to lose, Ben brought all four paws into play, made use of his claws, and hung on for dear life.
I raised my hand, pinched the bridge of my nose, and sighed.
Men. I was surrounded by a pox of men.
Emerick shook his head and wandered off, likely to retrieve his clothing and make certain the Bible hadn’t gotten lost when he’d abandoned ship to chase after our prey. As I had no interest in snapping an ankle, I settled in to observe the feud between cat and bird.
I suspected if I tried to shift again, I’d end up passed out on the ground somewhere for the next few nights.
Emerick would not handle that well at all.
The weight of both kept my father from taking flight, and with a shriek, he dropped the pair. Ben released Breckenan’s body, landed on all four paws, and pounced on the corpse, growling and swatting at my father. My father landed, spread his wings, and hissed at Ben.
Knowing both, they’d squabble over the body until someone—me—stopped them.
Heaving a sigh, I turned and began the tedious process of climbing down from the stack of shipping containers without falling and breaking my neck.
Once on the relative safety of the ground, I retrieved my bowl, slapping its bottom against my leg.
I scowled at the corpse, which stared skyward with opened, unfocused eyes.
In time, the first signs of death would take hold, and the last thing I wanted was to endure through any of Breckenan’s post-mortem bodily dysfunctions.
While I had better tools for the job in my arsenal, I went for my favorite pocketknife, which I’d rescued from a dumpster, and went to work severing his head from his body.
For the first time in my second life, I had zero cares I permitted the blood to go to waste. Once I finished the gruesome task, I set the severed head aside, pulled out the favorite of my stakes, and jumped, using my body weight to drive the stake through his breastbone and his heart.
The corpse, save for the proof of his demise, exploded in a shower of golden flecks and flicks of flame, leaving my stake intact.
The carved wood glistened with a gentle preternatural glow.
I tucked it under my arm and dusted off my hands. “That’s much better. Ben, do you shift with your clothes?”
He nodded, and after a moment, he transformed.
“It’s one of the few things I do better than Emerick.
He can , but it costs him a great deal of energy compared to me.
You do so innately, which is excellent. I opted to take my clothes with me because we’re not on our regular turf.
Normally, we just head back to the estate.
And before you get upset over your ignorance, Emerick is planning on running you through standard training after the ball. ”
“You should secretly run me through training so when he goes to run me through training after the ball, I’m shockingly knowledgeable and he’s delightfully confused.”
Ben snickered. “I can help you with that if you help me teach him some more manners for damaging my car.”
Excellent. “We’ll buy him a new Civic, get her painted in purple to match mine, and remove the old one. We’ll return the old one in a cube that was formerly a vehicle after removing everything important.”
Ben raised a brow. “You realize the only reason that might work is because you’ll be giving him a new one, right? Under any other circumstances, he would have a meltdown of the likes never before seen.”
My father transformed into his human shape, and he snickered. “I will assist with this plan. It sounds like a most excellent way for my daughter to show her husband she is a force to be reckoned with. That silver Civic is getting long in the tooth anyway.”
“It really is.” Ben shrugged. “Once his precious first daughter is repaired, he won’t even notice the Civic is gone. He got the Civic because the Beetle couldn’t realistically be driven anymore.”
Poor Emerick. I nudged Breckenan’s head with my toe. “How many in the brood can change with their clothes?”
“With enough motivation, most of them can do it, but it’s a lot easier and a great deal less exhausting to just strip or leave the clothes behind,” Ben replied.
“Emerick left the clothes behind because he couldn’t afford the risk; he might have needed the strength to deal with that bastard.
And it’s not like our targets could touch our weaponry. ”
That I believed. I gave the decapitated head another nudge, contemplating giving it a solid punt across the dockyard. “Do I want to know how much this head is worth? Technically, you got the killing blow, so you get the bounty.”
Ben’s eyes widened. “Can you claim the kill? I don’t want the bounty. Or the attention. Or any of it.”
I sighed. “Ben, you deserve the money.”
“You did the hard work. If he hadn’t had that necromantic charm, you would have gotten the killing blow on him three times over.”
My father chuckled. “That part is true. You would have gotten the killing blow had he not cheated.”
Men. Why was I constantly surrounded with a pox of men?
“I will give you both assisting credit for the kill, but if you two are going to be wusses, I’ll take the bounty.
Fine.” I scowled, heaved yet another sigh, and bent over to grab the bastard’s hair.
“This is the first and last time you’re going to hear me say that I’m glad I did not have to experience what this one tastes like. ”
The blood on the ground flashed in a bright light, and when the illumination faded, the stains were gone, and the asphalt appeared as though freshly laid, glossy and black.
I made a thoughtful sound, and the effect spread.
When it reached the nearest shipping container, a golden luminescence washed over it, leaving it pristine and shining in its wake. “What the hell is going on, Dad?”
My father smiled, came over, and he kissed my cheek.
“The weapons we gave you are old and are the polar opposite of necromancy in many ways. The hunt is over, but the objects are riled. They purify what they can, and as he didn’t get to use any real power before we killed him, it purifies what is around us.
” My father gestured to the asphalt. “Renewal and decay are the opposite faces of the same coin. Think of the situation as two children pushing against each other and one falls over. The other’s momentum is still there.
Instead of also falling, the magic is pulsing.
It’ll settle soon enough, once there is no evidence of necromancy left. ”
In the distance, someone began to scream, but the noise died away. My father shrugged before adding, “And what it finds, right now, well, it’s dealing with harshly.”
One day, I might understand the world I lived in. “I would be very appreciative if the fancy shiny magic lacking direction visited my ship and made her hull sparkly and her paint fresh and everything okay. I will be distressed if anything happened to my ship.”
“She’ll be fine. She’s headed for dry docking after this, so you have nothing to worry about. Even if she got some dings and scrapes, she’ll be as good as new in a few months. Just don’t give anyone or anything any ideas. Ideas are dangerous things in the wrong hands.”
Right. My father had good reason to want magic to be something tamed and controlled.
Such powers had torn his family apart.
I regarded the head I held with a frown. “Where do we go from here, Dad?”