Chapter Five
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JAZMINE WENT ON THE move as soon as she heard Alpha Team being ordered to search for the gold comet that had just landed somewhere nearby.
Donning dark clothes, she waited for her sire to appear.
Lachial showed up on her radar a few seconds later.
He paused long enough to ascertain that she was home before taking off with his guards in tow.
“I’ve probably got at least an hour or so before he’ll be back,” she figured craftily, then locked her door behind her when she left.
Using the same alleys as usual to avoid being seen, the shadow wielder made her way to Queens.
It was getting harder to find targets to kill now, but just getting out in the fresh air was enough to lift her spirits.
Scouring the streets, Jazmine began to feel frustrated when she didn’t sense anyone at all.
No one was cowering inside their homes and the mercenaries were nowhere to be seen.
Every home and store had been cleared of supplies in this area.
She came across a mall that humans had broken into.
It had happened months ago from the looks of the broken metal shutter.
It was deserted when she scanned it, but there were signs a battle had recently taken place.
“The militants rounded them up and shipped them out of the city,” she figured.
One of her walky-talkies crackled, then Rahab spoke. “Report in, Phul.”
“He sounds crankier than usual,” Jazmine said with a smirk, then listened to their short exchange.
Her amusement turned to alarm when one of Rahab’s guards informed Phul that their commander had left the building he used as his unofficial office.
He’d ordered them to stay behind, which meant he was going on another killing spree.
From former chatter she’d overheard on both walky-talkies, Rahab had slaughtered survivors and militants in several boroughs by now.
Glad she’d stolen a second device, Jazmine kept her senses alert. Now she could listen to the channel Rahab used to contact the Alpha Team as well as the Beta Team’s chatter. It had been a pain in the butt to have to switch over constantly so she didn’t miss anything.
Sensing someone approaching far too rapidly to be a human, Jazmine instinctively fled.
She knew it was Rahab because he was alone.
All of the Soldiers of Chaos moved in groups of four or five.
They didn’t want to get cornered by the knights, who would surely kill them.
Even Creel Lawson’s preppers would try to wipe them out if they had the chance, or that was the impression she had anyway.
Curiosity drove Jazmine to follow Rahab.
The commander headed through Queens to the suburbs of Long Island that hadn’t been searched fully yet.
Her senses were stronger than the aliens’, so she cautiously moved closer when she sensed he’d stopped.
The shadow wielder climbed the fire escape of a tall apartment building and peered at a distant cluster of stores.
Rahab was shirtless and just wore suit trousers.
He was in the parking lot, tearing into ten mercs who’d just arrived.
Screams of horror and pain echoed through the darkness.
Someone fired a shot and Rahab roared in rage.
He’d just been shot in the back, but it didn’t even slow him down.
His arm whipped towards the human, ripping his head from his neck.
“And they call me crazy,” Jazmine murmured with a smirk.
She’d caused just as much havoc each time she went in search of prey, so she wasn’t horrified by the scene.
Watching the commander mindlessly shred the militants in something like professional curiosity, she wished she had Rahab’s physical strength.
The cambion wasn’t sure if she could tear limbs off with her bare hands like that.
Using her shadows was far easier. “Not to mention tidier,” she joked.
Rahab was so absorbed by his task that he was completely unaware of her presence. Jazmine wondered if she would be able to take him down while he was distracted. Several hundred yards separated them, but she wouldn’t know her limits until she’d tested them.
Gathering her magic, Jazmine lifted both arms, then made a throwing motion.
Ropes of shadow burst into being and zoomed towards Rahab.
She could feel them weakening rapidly at the halfway mark and scowled in disappointment.
Her target stiffened and whirled around, but she was too fast for him.
Her shadows evaporated and she ducked down out of sight a moment before he could see her.
“I’m out of here,” she said, then fled back down to the ground. Racing away, she couldn’t detect Rahab following her. It seemed she’d escaped just in the nick of time.
Doubling back, Jazmine had sensed another group of humans and went to investigate them.
Rahab roared again in the distance. He was too far away for the militants to hear him.
Nine preppers wearing white armbands were searching houses.
The tenth man guarded the pickup truck they were using to pile the supplies into.
A few roads and one lane of each of the bridges and tunnels had been cleared by now.
Governor Giamano’s people could get to and from Manhattan and the other boroughs far quicker.
A grin of delight lifted Jazmine’s lips as she ghosted towards the unaware humans.
With Rahab on the rampage, she was free to practice her skills.
He’d just left a mess similar to the ones she’d made in the past. “I won’t need to use their own guns against them this time,” she said, then snickered with glee.
Jazmine knew men found her attractive. Far too many staff members of the institutes she’d been imprisoned in had tried to accost her. She wanted to watch these black-souled creatures suffer up close, so she dropped the shadows that hid her and sauntered closer.
“Stop right there!” the prepper standing guard said when he spotted her. His rifle came up and he pointed the barrel at her face. “What’s your name, girl?” he demanded.
“Jazmine Sedaka,” she replied, holding her hands up and hiding her amusement at his bluster.
“She’s not GG,” he muttered to himself, then grinned. “That means I can have some fun with her.” His grin vanished and he tried to make himself look menacing. “Lie down on your stomach and put your hands on your head!”
“I don’t think so,” Jazmine said with a smirk. “I know what you want to do to me. No man will ever force himself on me.”
The shadows began to boil behind the prepper as he took a threatening step closer. “Lie down on the ground, or I’ll blow your pretty face off!” he snarled.
Jazmine turned her hands so her palms were facing herself, then made a beckoning gesture.
The idiot thought she was gesturing to him, but it was the shadows she was directing.
Five coils burst into motion, seizing him by the arms, legs and throat.
Dropping his gun, he tried to scream, but the tendril around his neck tightened.
“I wonder if I can cut your face off with my pet shadows?” she mused, then another shadow appeared.
This one wasn’t a long, thin rope. Instead, it was in the shape of a sword.
Moving the shadow-crafted weapon closer to her victim, she smiled with real pleasure when he tried to beg for his life.
“Please,” he whimpered in a pained croak.
“I have a wife and children.” Tears rolled down his face as he uselessly tried to squirm free of the bindings that were holding him in the air.
“If your kids weren’t raptured, then they’re just as evil as you are,” she said, knowing he was lying.
The shadow wrought sword sliced through the air silently.
A gasp of agony came from the human, then his face slid from his head and landed on the road.
“Ew,” she said, then snickered. People looked downright disgusting beneath their skin.
Two of the preppers left the house they’d been searching and headed towards the truck. Jazmine shrouded herself in shadows and snapped the barely alive victim’s neck with the coil around his neck. The body fell with a thud, drawing his colleagues’ attention.
“What was that?” one of them asked in alarm.
“I don’t know,” his friend replied uneasily. “Let’s check it out.”
Leaving the boxes of supplies they’d scavenged, they readied their guns and rushed towards the noise. Neither of them saw the razor-thin shadow made blades hanging in the air. Their heads were sliced off when they ran directly into them.
“This is fun!” Jazmine said, glad she’d thought of a new way to use her skills.
She hunted down the remaining mercs, then realized how suspicious their injuries would look.
“Phul will figure out Rahab didn’t kill them,” she said.
Lachial already suspected that she was breaking out to murder people.
He’d lock her back in the prison cell if he caught her, so she needed to cover her tracks.
Once again, Jazmine used shadows to rip the bodies apart, making them look as messy as the corpses Rahab had left behind on his rampage. When she was done, she raced back to her apartment. Lachial wasn’t there when she arrived and she let out a relieved sigh.
Unlike Rahab, she wasn’t covered in blood and guts.
She didn’t have a speck of blood on her, but she washed her clothes anyway.
She’d acquired a phobia of wearing dirty clothes after Merv the perv had captured her.
She’d worn the same outfit for weeks after her captor’s death, since he’d kept her clothing somewhere upstairs.
Killing him had saved her from being molested, but she would have starved to death if Lachial hadn’t found her.
“I’ll be sure to thank my father right before I eventually kill him,” she said, sitting down on her couch to stare at the painting of the boy dressed in blue.