Dead Kings
Bishop kept his shoulder to the damp brick of the abandoned concession stand. He fixed his eyes on the hundred and fifty feet of dead grass, packed dirt, and open dark between his men and the people waiting inside that wall of flesh.
He glanced at Quantum crouched a few feet away, gold stare barely visible in the dark, one hand braced against the brick as he commanded his twenty-four around the containment ring to the northern shoulders.
His number Twenty-Five stayed near, a naked humanoid blade in reach, folded low against the concession wall.
Bishop felt their army behind him, breath locked down, feet planted for the run, blades and bare hands ready to judge.
Quantum twitched, and the north side of the world flashed white.
His number twenty-five shot out.
Booms echoed, screams split the air and Bishop held his men back with a fist in the air, waiting for the bio-intel.
Quantum’s right hand closed into a fist and bodies at the north went flying, as his soldiers tore apart the ring with their bare hands.
His cyborg battalion joined as one on the northwest line.
“It’s buckling,” Bishop breathed, eyes on the south edge.
“Bio-intel open,” Quantum hurried. “Human signature. Strength output exceeds anatomy.”
The south line broke and Bishop caught sight of the mass of refugees.
“Chosen accord,” Quantum shot out. “The humans have formed contracts with the demons. Guilty.”
Bishop dropped his fist like a war hammer.
They shot out and the soldier inside his new architecture snapped awake.
His upgraded eye shifted to battlefield sight and his lungs calibrated to combat rhythm.
As he ran, the governors in his legs holding him to human speeds shut off.
Tendons tightened, joints aligned and locked, and his spine took every impact then gave it back as forward motion.
Twenty yards from the enemy, the south line wobbled again. Then tightened.
“They know!” Quantum yelled as the gap closed.
Bishop saw their formation—human compression three bodies deep. “We need a door!” he yelled.
The Triplets shot out ahead of them.
Fetch launched into the air first and punched the ground at the enemy line, a seismic boom buckling the earth beneath them. Fathom came in airborne, fists of sizzling light hammering the bodies on the front line, dropping a dozen.
Fin entered the half-carved doorway and slammed his hands together. Blood punched out of noses, eyes, and mouths, before the cluster hit the ground.
“Widen the gap!” Bishop yelled, aiming for the jagged opening.
Verthur blades slammed the right edge, ripping through flesh, and Bacon’s militia hacked bone on the left as Bishop sailed cleanly across the bloody opening into the interior ring.
He gripped his eighteen-inch blade in combat-lock, his body cinching around the weapon for close-up war. His vision locked in for hyper-kill and his knife found every point of weakness—throat lines, spinal seams, hip joints, femoral arteries.
A yell broke through the mayhem. “They’re killing them!”
Bishop’s vision snapped with the sudden change in his architecture. He spun and found a human-demon on a woman, teeth buried in her face. Bishop leapt across the slain and caught it by the back of the skull and ripped it off her.
Flesh came with it.
The screams tore through his battle sequence, flipping from kill to protect. His vision now mapped the refugees.
Too many to protect.
The Triplets closed around him.
“Bite him!” Fetch ordered, shoving a human-demon at him.
Bishop grabbed it and sank his fangs into its shoulder. Blood hit his tongue and he tore free, spitting flesh.
Fetch shoved his arm in front of him. “Show us!”
Bishop held it tight and bit.
Fathom and Fin grabbed hold of Bishop, their powers closing a circuit.
His architecture rapidly adapted for maximum impact as electrical charge built under their skin, dragging the enemy signature out of Bishop’s blood.
The Triplets detonated their power, and Bishop hit the ground with his face—teeth cracking together, sound shattering into jagged waves then rushing back in.
Handy hauled him upright and his architecture rebooted, the battlefield snapping back in with signatures. Refugees alive. Enemy army down. His men standing—bodies heaving, blades covered in blood.
Bishop’s gaze moved over the slain. Each one had a baseball sized hole punched clear through the chests from the electrical blast.
Something rumbled under his boots.
“A second wave!” Quantum yelled.
Panic hit his blood and his vision sliced through the dark.
“Coming from the north!”
Bishop saw it.
Holy fuck.
“Move them!” Bishop roared. “Move the refugees!”
Every man on the field hauled up refugees, ordering them to run.
Bishop watched a cluster of them get a few feet then stop. Looking lost, like the ground fucking disappeared at their feet.
“What’s wrong with them!” Bullets yelled, pulling another man up and shoving him. “Go! Run!”
He staggered a few feet and stopped.
Another rumbling came from the school.
Bishop spun.
He made out their convoy of school buses hauling ass toward them.
God fucking bless you, Anvil.
Bishop looked north again, then around. “Hurricane!” he called. “Load ‘em and go!” He faced the rest of their army. “We drive them back!”
The remaining extraction teams ran to meet the incoming flood. His vision spotted the same golden thread that had been in that human. The demonic authority.
Twenty yards out, Bishop slowed. “Stop!” he yelled, throwing up his fist.
The pounding feet behind him gradually slowed to a halt.
He turned to them, lungs burning. “My men—go get our rides and bring them!”
His men tore out.
Bishop pointed to the incoming. “These are under the same authority as the last group. We hit them with everything we’ve got.
Zodak, Kaphas, Quantum, and the Triplets—put these fucking soldiers six feet under.
That’ll leave the leaders. Handy—you’re with me.
We’re getting a piece of one.” He regarded the rest of them.
“Anybody that wasn’t named, you’re on our six however the fuck you can be. ”
Kaphas went past Bishop, his backlash crawling over him like wet tar.
The second wave of human demons came at a dead run.
His first step with power changed the field.
Dirt jumped under Bishop’s boots. Grass flattened toward Kaphas, then snapped back as the pressure around him thickened. The air pulled tight against Bishop’s ribs and teeth, squeezing until his upgraded eye pulsed.
The charging soldiers crossed the edge of Kaphas’ field and fed it.
Every pounding foot gave him more. Every body driving forward loaded the pressure tighter. The black tar over Kaphas rippled, drinking it in until the space in front of him bent under it.
His hand lifted.
The front ranks hit the pressure wall.
Kaphas shoved his palm into the air.
The power-field snapped back and blew the first line off its feet. They crashed into the second, folding bodies backward.
Kaphas stepped into the collapse and shoved again.
Bone cracked across the dark as speed and force multiplied back through the bodies that brought it.
The golden thread in the center brightened.
Bishop’s gaze snapped to a crowned figure standing among the fallen.
He opened his arms, and the dead at his feet seized.
Their backs bowed. Their mouths stretched wide.
Gold light ripped through their veins, then tore out of them in thin streams and snapped into his hands, his chest, his open mouth.
Bishop’s stomach went cold.
The first counterstrike shot across the field in a black-gold blur aimed right at Bishop.
Handy stepped in front of him.
The blast slammed into Handy. Blood burst from his mouth as he crashed back into Bishop, arms still up, body locked between Bishop and the power trying to reach him.
A second strike came harder.
It broke through and ripped them off their feet.
Bishop hit the ground under him, air gone. He shoved up as Handy rolled off, limp beside him.
“Handy!” Bishop grabbed his face. “Handy!”
His eyes dragged open, full of pain and fury. “Still got bones,” he rasped.
Another strike cracked across the field, hitting Zodak. Red-white electricity buried in black rot forced itself into Zodak’s haptic arm.
Quantum reached him first, latching onto his wrist with both hands, fracturing the flow.
Trucks skidded in behind them as Bishop ran to help free Zodak.
“Get Handy!” Bishop yelled to Hurricane and Shank.
Fin forged a sword of light and drove it into the current. It bucked hard and dropped him to one knee. Fetch and Fathom caught him from both sides, absorbing what got loose.
Bishop stopped at the river of power and shoved his hand into it. Pain blasted up his arm and lit behind his eye.
Zodak’s haptic arm snapped into his vision, metal locked, flesh tearing where the demon buried its hook. Bishop caught it.
The demon hit him through the line and his knees slammed into the dirt. Blood ran hot from his nose as he curled his fingers in the current. Bishop jerked and Zodak roared.
Come on you fucker!
He jerked again and darkness burst out around it—the evil buried in the stolen power.
Bishop reached for it, watching it slide through his hand like smoke.
It reared back with a growling screech, then plunged for Zodak’s chest.
Seer stepped in front of it.
The darkness slammed into his chest and vanished.
Zodak fell like a tower. Samuel stood frozen.
Bishop ran for him, his architecture misfiring.
“No, no, nooooo!” Bishop roared as Seer slowly toppled backward.
The Triplets caught him as Bishop hit his knees next to him, grabbing hold of his throat. His scans flickered and jumped through too many readings. He pressed his ear to his chest, gasping. “I can’t hear anything,” he strained, a sob forcing its way out.
Fin pressed a hand on Seer’s chest, jolting him while Fathom held his fingers on his temple and at the back of his neck.
“I have his pulse,” Fin hurried.