I slam the briefcase shut. Damian killed Marcus here? Under Raphael’s nose? How? The rat can be an idiot, but he’s run a security firm, he had to had ways to know what was going on in his hotel. Men follow Damian into the room, each in Gray church body armor. How the fuck did Damian sneak them in?
Then the one carrying the case steps into the room and I feel the power emanating from it. My gaze snaps to Raphael. He doesn’t look surprised, he’s not even looking at the intrusion. He looks smug.
“Why?” I asked. “how could you ally yourself with him, he nearly wiped out your family.”
“That’s in the past,” Raphael replied. “Turns out we have a common goal that’s worth setting our difference for. Getting rid of you.”
I don’t have to glance in Damian’s direction to know he’s smirking. “You really think that’s what he wants? He had plenty of chances to do it, balls, he worked with me for a while, helped me rescue my son. Why didn’t he do it then?”
“He wasn’t powerful enough,” Raphael answers. “And unlike you, he isn’t going to traumatize children.”
“No, of course not, he just wants to murder me, according to you, and leave my son an orphan. You really do see that as traumatic?”
The briefcase flew out of my hand hard enough my wrist broke. Reflexively I accessed Frank’s power and it healed. Damian turned it over in his hands, trying to open it. “How does it open?” he asked Raphael.
“It doesn’t,” I replied in his place, “not for you anyway, or him either,” I added when Damian looked at the rat.
“That’s the Rasia briefcase?” Raphael asked. “You used that?” he was starting to panic.
“What’s so special about it?” Damian tried to rip it in two.
“No one but me can open it, for starter”
“It’s reputed to be indestructible,” Raphael said. “It survived the Trinity project.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The first atomic test,” Damian answered, looking at Raphael dubiously. “This thing survived an atomic bomb?”
“It was the reason for the test, the Luthers had pissed off his family and there was supposed to be compromising information stored in it.”
The Luthers were in Albuquerque. The name stuck because of the Superman movies. They’d been coldly polity when I handed them their secrets, and hadn’t shown up to the meeting, or sent anyone to work at Steel Link. This would explain why. Still, the thing had survived a nuclear bomb; that was kind of cool.
Damian sighed. “So let me guess, there’s only a few ways it’ll recognize him at its proper owner.”
I grinned. “It’s going to be a cold day in hell before someone in this room manages to make me cum.”
The tiger smiled sadly. “Denton, why do you always have to be so obtuse? Only cum, really?” He flicked his hand at me and me head snapped back, heat spreading down my cheek. I watched a line of blood fly in the air toward Damian. Before I could think to switch to telekinesis, it landed on the briefcase.
Damian opened it and beamed as lustful energy filled the room. The eight men lining the walls shifted uncomfortably. Damian reached for the content, then hesitated. He glanced at me suspiciously.
I prepared to snatch it out of his hands, but he turned the briefcase to the man holding his own case.
“Put the last piece in.”
I paused. Was he really going to do this here? In my presence? Didn’t know what I— no, he didn’t. No one in the Gray Church who’d seen me use multiple abilities had been in a position to report to him, and from what I could tell, Raphael didn’t buy it, if he’d even heard about it. This could be my one chance.
The man opened his case without hesitation and there was a minimal increase in the power level in the room. They’d shielded the case too. Not enough to keep me from sensing it, but it explained why they weren’t busy fucking each other.
The man took the piece out and reached for the briefcase. Before he touched it, the piece jumped out of his hand and disappeared from my view in the briefcase. I felt the pulse of energy as the artifact became complete. It was significant enough even Damian staggered back.
I snatch the briefcase, its content and telekinetically yanked on it hard. The man came with it until he hit the table and crumbled half on it. Damian reacted fast. He swiped in the briefcase’s direction and it tumbled perpendicular to its previous trajectory, the artifact tumbling out of it.
I acted first and it flew to my hand, hitting it with a painful slap and a surge of power that almost made me drop it.
I saw. I saw the magic in the room, through the phrases shielding it. The marks covering the adjacent room that had kept me from seeing Damian and his men. I saw the blinding magic in Damian, the marks on his men. And I saw a blood-red silhouette of a being standing behind the tiger. I fought the urge to look behind me as I sensed who stood there.
No wonder the hyena hadn’t wanted to let this thing go. It wasn’t just access to infinity power. It was a look into an whole other world.
I felt a tug on the artifact and I grinned at Damian. “I don’t think so.” While I held it, no force short of my god could take it from me. It was mine. No, it was me. We were connected.
Damian was so fucking screwed.
I tucked it at my back, under the shirt so it was in direct contact with me. I understood that was important. “If you want it. You’re going to have to come and get it.”
Damian’s men took a step forward, but he stopped them. “No, I’ll deal with this.” He unbuttons his jacket and aid it in the table. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this moment Denton. You have been an annoyance in my side for decades.” He took off his shirt, revealing he had no fur left on his chest and arm. They were all the blood-red of marks. “None of this would have been necessary if you’d just died in that fire.” He flexed and I saw the power roll through the marks.
“Well, I haven’t wanted it for decades, but killing Marcus guaranteed I’d want to hand you your balls. So shut up and let’s do this already.” Damian ran at me and I accessed Chimbo’s burst of speed.
The world slowed to a crawl and I understood how his power worked. Chimbo didn’t run fast. He slowed the world, but our minds couldn’t cope with that for more than a couple of seconds. Well, normally. Damian moved at a crawl and I punched him, then kicked his side. I kicked him again, but this time he caught me foot and flung me away. I righted myself in the air telekinetically and landed on my feet.
He grinned, still in slow motion, but faster than before. I ran at him, but even faster than he was, he blocked and dodged my strikes. Then I was flying back again the broken ribs healing before I landed. Speed wasn’t going to help me.
I grabbed the table and smashed it on him. He dropped to a knee, as it shattered. The magic coursing through his marks had faded during the super-speed fight, and he seemed to be stunned so I swung with the rest. His head snapped up and he grinned. His marks flashed brighter and the part of the table I held stopped in place. Wouldn’t move no matter how much of Colby strength I poured into it.
With a flick of the hand, he had me flying again. I hit the wall hard enough I felt the artifact break my spine, but it was knitted together before I landed on the floor.
“I have to admit,” Damian said, panting slightly, “that I did not expect you to be quite this challenging.”
I smiled and stretched lazily. “I expected you to be more of one. With your claims of Orr superiority and all that.”
Damian returned my smile. “Maybe if you weren’t cheating, this fight would be more interesting.”
I tilted an ear. “You accuse me of cheating? That’s rich.”
“Come on Denton, don’t you want to know you can actually take me on? champion to champion? I means the powers are clearly yours, congratulation on that by the way. I wish we had the time for you to explain how you managed it, since even the people on the other side of the door are out of your reach. But the energy? That’s the God Killer. Come on, just set it aside and let’s pit our own powers against one another. Or are you afraid you don’t measure up without a crutch? That your god chose poorly?”
I stared at him. “First off. You taught me not to listen to anything you say. Second, God Killer? You claim to be so smart and that’s what you come up with?”
“It’s what it does. What do you call it?”
“The artifact, but unlike you, I’ve never made claims of being smart.”
“Stop selling yourself short Denton, it’s unbecoming a champion.”
“No, it’s who I am. I’m who He picked. No genius like you or others, but the guy who finally figure out he’s got a job to do and war aren’t won by playing fair. So let’s see how you deal with an unfair game this time.” I stepped forward and there were nine of me. Turned out self multiplication wasn’t a rare power. The Lewiston who could do it wasn’t even all that strong.
I hadn’t used this power after testing it because nine inputs were just too many for me to handle, but I figured that with the artifact, I wasn’t calling that thing a God Killer, I’d be about to process everything.
Only that wasn’t what happened. I wasn’t one person controlling nine bodies. I was nine individual linked mentally. We grinned and ganged up on Damian. Each of us could access our powers independently. Super-strength, super-speed, telekinesis, sunbursts. We didn’t give him time to breathe.
His magic dimmed, and we grinned, we were going to win—
We flew back as a pulse of force erupted from Damian. Two of us hit the wall hard at bad angles and disappeared as they died. Damian stood, angry, his body glowing with power again.
“You think you are so powerful? You think you’re the only one with reserves? I can do this all day. You—”
We tuned him out. Something was odd. Three of Damian’s men were on the floor, dead. The fight had never gotten close to them, some of the debris had, but they didn’t show injuries. One of us noticed Raphael was gone, but we sensed his power, so the coward was just invisible. One of us paid attention to Raphael’s power, while the rest tried to understand how the men had died.
He realized that with the artifact we could reach for the power and turn it off. We filed that away in case Raphael tried to take an active part in this fight and added him back to the question of the dead.
Before we reached a conclusion, Damian fished his rant and looked at one of us expectantly.
“Sorry,” we said, “did you say something?”
“Seven of you,” he replied bewildered, “and you couldn’t pare one to pay attention?”
We shrugged. “What can I say, you’re boring.” Of everything we could have said, that set him off. Damian had confidence issues under that controlled facade.
We lost another one to a beam of power, then we were pummeling him, but we kept one of us back, watching. Damian’s glow faded and he staggered under the assault. The silhouette didn’t react. It was like it didn’t care if Damian lost or won. Damian had said he was its slave, forced to do its bidding, and for the first time I thought that might have been true.
We noticed the wisp of red energy pass through the wall. When it touched Damian it vanished and is energy brightened. He sped up, caught one of us by the arm and smashed him on the floor until he disappeared.
His reserve was somewhere outside the room. Could we alert anyone to go looking for it? One of us accessed Max’s power and listened. We could hear the men in the room, Raphael cowering in the corner, we knew we could dig deeper, if we wanted to, but there was no point. Damian we couldn’t read. There was a wall around his thoughts, but we couldn’t hear anything outside the room.
So it was up to us to exhaust Damian. Fortunately, we actually had a limitless power source.
The six of us attacked at the same time, ripping the tiger’s skin and pants. The skin healed, the clothing didn’t. We lost another one when he got to close to stab the tiger with a splinter of the table.
This time, the wisp of energy didn’t through one of the walls. It came from one of the men as he crumbled to the floor, not breathing. The surprise cost us two as Damian became a flurry of bone claws.
Why were we even surprise? Damian had killed for power before. That he could not do it without even touching someone was the scary part. We regrouped.
Why were we still alive? No, he couldn’t affect us while we had the artifact. The question was why was Raphael still alive. We thought about multiplying again. There was an element of curiosity. If each of us were independent, could we each summon eight more us? Would they then be about to? What was the maximum?
Weren’t we a little too busy one of us asked, before dying, the distraction having let Damian get close.
“Lost in thoughts?” the tiger asked. “Too many to handle? Or are you now understanding the futility of fighting me? Give me want I want,” Damian growled. “And I’ll stop killing you.”
“That’s one lie I’m never going to believe,” we said, moving away.
Damian sighed in exasperation, but he didn’t glance at one of us, he glanced at the silhouette, before fixing us. “Fine, I gave you a chance Denton. It didn’t have to end this way. All you had to do was—”
We unleashed telekinetic blows after blows, trying to bring him down before he could recharge, but there was a flash if marks on one of the men before the wisp left him and he crumpled. Damian glared at us, now holding our attacks at bay.
Only people he’d marked were susceptible, that meant no innocents. We breathed easier.
That glance, did it mean what I thought it did? Damian was obsessed with being the one in control, with doing the manipulating. What would his reaction be to being forced to do another’s bidding? How many of the Gray Church had he marked? This was Damian, so all of it.
Were we right? If we were wrong, could we survive it?
We were down to two.
Could we afford not to try it?
We looked at one another and nodded. This called for a change in strategy.
There were eighteen of us, and as one we rushed Damian, who welcomed us with a roll of the eyes.g
