Chapter 24 #2
‘We still have working cameras on board this ship, y’know. My node alerted me the second a shield went up, cutting off my link to you and signaling that we had guests. Did you invite them to the party? Because I fokkin’ didn’t and now need them gone.’
He raised a pulse gun, its core whining.
Soleil’s heart galloped.
She shoved Santi to her rear.
‘Don’t -,’ he began, his voice taut with confusion and fury.
But she had no time.
Her spectral form tore through her skin in a blaze of ghostly potency, bones fracturing and reforming with brutal grace.
Her mouth opened in a silent scream as her fur shimmered like blood fire. She coalesced into a glowing ethereal wolf, marked with sigils that pulsed with legacy and rage.
The Red Skull capos froze for a heartbeat at the sight of her, then surged.
She leapt.
Claws flashed, rending armor and flesh.
Her fangs closed around a pirate’s shoulder, and she slammed him into the wall. Two more came at her, swinging plasma axes.
She ducked and flared outward, phantasmal flame bursting from her coat in a cherry nova that seared their weapons and sent them reeling.
Behind her, Santi roared and shifted.
His spectral wolf form rose like a god of war, with violet and gold threads pulsing through his massive limbs, and his glowing eyes wild with fury.
His teeth tore into pirate after pirate, hurling them down the corridor, bodies cracking beneath his claws.
Still, she fought, bled for him, protected him.
Mid-battle, their gazes locked.
He gave her a chin lift. Was it approval? Or perhaps the respect and trust she deserved from him?
They kept fighting off the Red Skull soldiers in tandem, handing out strikes and clawing at eyes, throats, and hearts in equal measure.
Kaal crashed into the melee like a freight storm, howling as he tore a pirate apart with a single slash. ‘I’ve got the flank!’ he barked through the neural channel.
‘Fokk yeah,’ Santi growled back just as Vern lunged, raising his gun.
Santi turned, eyes narrowing, but it was Soleil who intercepted.
She rushed at the man with a scream, then reached into her coat and removed a powerful laser weapon.
She turned to her uncle, blasting Vern with pulse after pulse of laser fire.
One strike smashed through his teeth, and his cranium imploded..
The old bastard smashed into the wall with a scream and crumpled into a broken doll stance, dead.
Fokk, finally.
Soleil scarcely had time to breathe when the shadows shifted again.
Varnok emerged from within them like a nightmare, shifting mid-step.
His bones cracked with a wet sound that echoed off the charred metal walls. His skin stretched, split, and reformed in jagged pulses of unnatural growth.
Glowing veins of red-hot plasma coursed along his limbs as his spine hunched, stretching to accommodate the new mass.
His jaw broke apart and reknit itself into a snout lined with blackened fangs, some cracked, others fused to bits of old tech soldered into his dermis.
One eye burned molten yellow. The other was obsidian, pulsing with malicious code.
Scarlet fur, patchy and scorched, burst from his skin like flame, riddled with burn scars and twisted branding marks from the Red Skull rites.
His tail was barbed. One shoulder bore a jagged spike of exposed alloy bone. And from his chest, deep welts pulsed like corrupted runes, radiating sick energy.
He was no spectral wolf.
He was a debased titan.
A cursed monstrosity of flesh, metal, and fury, charging through the fray.
Varnok grabbed Soleil mid-lunge, slamming her against the wall.
‘You had me imprisoned, now you’ve killed the brother who had just freed me. You’re dead to me, daughter.’
‘So were you to me years ago. Do as you will,’ she taunted, raising her throat so he’d tear it apart.
‘Nada!’ Santi roared, bounding forward.
Varnok bared his set of calciferous fangs to her temple. ‘Come one step closer, Alvarro, and I scatter her brains across the deck.’
Santi froze, trembling, his fangs bared.
Soleil writhed, but Varnok’s strength was too much to resist, yet still she fought her father and the madness in his eyes.
SANTIAGO
Varnok’s transformation was grotesque.
Santi stared at his twisted, gnarled wolf form, an abomination of scarlet fur laced with black scars and plasma-threaded burns.
Now he understood why Varnok held the title of The Mad Wolf King.
He appeared almost rabid as he snarled, dragging his daughter away.
Soleil contorted in his grip as she half-shifted in protest, otherworldly energy flaring red as she attempted to escape.
Still, Varnok only tightened his grasp, using her like a living aegis.
He began to back away down the corridor.
‘Don’t take any step closer!’ he growled, voice distorted through his contorted throat. ‘I’ll rip her in two before you touch me.’
Santi snarled, bounding forward, spectral fur igniting into a violet-gold blaze.
Until a massive shoulder slammed into him from the side.
‘Stand down!’ Kaal snapped, blocking him with a wide-set stance. ‘You’ll tear her apart trying to save her. He’ll use her, Santi. You know he will.’
Santi’s teeth gnashed, his muscles quivering with withheld fury, but Kaal didn’t flinch. ‘You want her alive, hermano? Then don’t chase him like a rabid hound right this minute. Let them get on board their ship, and we’ll regroup and hunt them down that way.’
‘Let me go,’ Santi rasped.
‘Not yet.’
In the distance, Varnok turned.
The corridors of the Crimson Shrike shook with his heavy footfalls as he stalked into the dark, dragging Soleil, still struggling, toward the docking bay.
Her red spectral form flickered against his body like a star trying to escape the gravity of a collapsing world.
Tracking after her from a safe distance, Santi spotted a small dark item fall from her frame as she writhed, attempting to get free.
He got to it.
It was a flat, slim box. Picking it, he thrust it into his spectral suit and kept moving.
In and among the chaos, their eyes locked.
He jolted at the abject misery, the freakin’ haunting expression on her face, one of hurt and defiance wrapped in heartbreak.
His breath came in brutal gusts, each one flaming with helpless rage as the man who ruined her life vanished with her again.
Into the waiting maw of a grotesque ship.
The Vermilion Claw.
A vessel that appeared more like a bleeding beast than a machine.
Its mast bristled with makeshift antennas and tattered crimson sails, remnants of its former glory now warped by obsession.
The Claw’s bay doors closed with a final, thunderous clang.
Soleil was gone, again.