telescoped away from the cliff face to search out the hellhawk’s hatch. They engaged and sealed.
Al Capone stomped along the tube into the reception lounge, a baseball bat gripped firmly in his right hand. His lieutenants were waiting for him, Silvano and Patricia grim-faced but obviously spoiling for a fight. Leroy at their side, anxious and desperate to prove his loyalty. A semicircle of over a dozen more behind them, equally committed, dressed in their best pinstripe suits, Thompson machine guns gleaming and ready.
Al nodded round, pleased with what he saw. He would have preferred old friends, but these would do. “Okay, we all know what Kiera wants. The dame’s running scared of the Navy and that Ruski admiral. Well, now we’ve seen what those bastards will do when their back’s to the wall, I say that makes it more important than ever to stay here and cover our asses. We’ve still got antimatter, and lots of it. That means we got clout where it hurts, we can make them the offer. Unless the Feds agree to stop dicking around with us, every planet they got’s gonna live in fear from now on. That’s the only way to be sure. I’ve lived with being wanted all my life, and I know how to deal with that kind of bullshit. You never, fucking ever, let your guard down. You gotta make like you’re the meanest SOB on the street to stop them messing with you. If they don’t respect you, they don’t fear you.” He slapped the top of the baseball bat against his left palm. “Kiera needs to be told that in person.”
“We’re with you, Al,” someone called.
The semicircle of gangsters parted, and Al strode forward. “Silvano, we know where she is?”
“I think she went to the hotel, Al. We can’t get them on the phone. Mickey’s gone back there to take a look. He’ll call if he finds her.”
“What about Jez?”
Silvano shot Leroy a glance. “We think she’s still there, Al. Couple of the guys are there with her. She’ll be fine.”
“Better be,” Al muttered. He looked ahead to see Avram Harwood III standing in the lounge’s doorway. The man was a total tow truck job. Breathing badly, his unhealed wounds leaking cheesy fluid down pale damp skin; he could barely stand.
“I am the mayor,” Avram wheezed. “I am entitled to respect. That’s your big thing, isn’t it, respect.” He giggled.
“Avvy, get the fuck out of my way,” Al snapped.
“Kiera showed me respect.” Avram raised his static bullet machine gun. “Now it’s your turn.” The weapon’s fire rate control was set at maximum. He pulled the trigger.
Al was already jumping out of the way. Silvano was raising his own Thompson. Leroy brought his arms up, yelling a frantic:
Electrically charged bullets tore across the lounge, a devastating line of throbbing blue-white light complementing the dragon’s roar. Al hit the floor just as the first possessed body ignited in its unique spectacular fashion. The searing glare wiped out everyone’s vision. A shockwave of heat washed over them, blistering exposed skin, singeing hair. Another body ignited.
Al screamed in raw fury, flinging a white firebolt as strong as the internecine furnace of flesh. Eight identical streamers of white fire smashed into Avram Harwood’s body, vaporizing his torso instantly amid a bloom of ash and blood steam. Arms that had been held outstretched dropped to the melting carpet next to his collapsing legs. Heat detonated every chemical bullet left in the machine gun’s magazine as it fell, sending out a lethal volley of shrapnel to slash walls and flesh.
When the light, heat, and noise shrank away, Al swayed to his feet. All he could see at first was a giant purple afterimage which his energistic power was incapable of banishing. His weird psychic sense couldn’t track down Avram Harwood’s thoughts anywhere. As he blinked the blotches away from his eyes, he realized how badly parts of him were hurting. His suit and hands were running with blood from half a dozen wounds where the shrapnel had sliced into him. One by one he made the slivers of hot metal slide up out of his body and closed the lips on each cut, bonding the skin back together. The pain dwindled away.
Leroy was lying on the floor at Al’s feet. Bullets had torn their way across him, the last one removing half of his throat. Dead eyes stared upwards. Al switched his gaze to the two piles of charcoal scattered over the molten composite floor tiling. “Who?” he demanded.
The gangsters were picking themselves up, healing and sealing their shrapnel wounds. A head count told Al that Silvano had been among the victims of the static bullets. Nobody dared say anything as Al stood over the small black pile of cooling ash that used to be his chief enforcer. His head was bowed as if in prayer. After a minute he walked over to the four battered limbs that remained of Avram Harwood. “Bastard!” Al screamed. He brought his baseball bat crashing down on an arm. “Motherfucking!” The bat slammed into the arm again. “Shit eating!” This time he hit a leg. “Psycho bastard!” The other leg. “I’ll kill your family. I’ll burn your house to the ground. I’ll dig up your mother’s coffin and shit on her. You wanted respect? That what you wanted? This is the kind of respect I got for a cornholing son of a bitch like you.” The bat pounded and pounded on the limbs, pulping them to roadkill smears.
Patricia stepped forward from the rank of badly alarmed gangsters. “Al. Al, that’s enough.”
The bat was brought up, ready to fly at her head. Al met her level gaze, stood for a moment with the bat poised. A long breath shuddered out of him. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go find Kiera.”
The floor under Emmet was melting, transmuting into a puddle of cold liquid rock. It would soon be deep enough to swallow him whole. Somebody was becoming very anxious to turn him into a fossil. He strove hard to turn the rock solid again as the air above him raged with white fire and profanities. The two factions were evenly matched, and both of them kept shouting at him to throw his strength in on their side.
He wanted to help Al’s guys. His own side. Really wanted to. Except the idea of going with New California into a place of safety was hugely appealing. No more of this shit, for a start.
A voracious spout of white fire hit the console he was crouched behind, and started chewing its way through the composite casing and tightly packed circuitry cubes inside. Kiera’s people obviously had decided he wasn’t joining them.
Retardant foam gushed downwards, only to be catalysed into boiling green treacle by the unnatural blaze. It poured off the top of the console and splattered over Emmet, stinging his exposed skin. He drew a deep breath, praying his bladder would hold out, and conjured up a spear of white fire. It flashed across the chamber towards Jull von Holger and his cohorts. The immediate result wasn’t quite what he expected.
A thunderous roar swamped the control centre. A possessed body ignited, forcing Emmet to clamp his hand over his eyes. The mental and vocal shriek of the vanquished soul grated down his skin like needles of ice. A second body erupted, then another. The air was clogged with stifling heat and a vomitous stench of incinerated meat as they belched out thick fumes.
After a long time the bodies burnt out, returning the light level to normal. The awful fetor remained. The roaring had stopped.
A loud metallic
“You’ve pissed yourself,” a voice told him.
Emmet twisted his head out of the foetal position. A gaunt man in a grubby one-piece suit was looking down at him, holding a peculiar machine gun, its warm barrel pointing directly at Emmet’s forehead. A canvas satchel was slung over his shoulder, packed full of magazines.
“I was scared,” Emmet said. “I’m not part of the Organization’s muscle.”
The man’s features vanished for a second, replaced by a woman’s. If anything, her expression was even more forbidding. Emmet could sense the energistic power circulating through the body. It rivalled Al’s strength.
Survivors from the Organization faction were peering nervously over the top of their trashed consoles.
“Who are you?” Emmet stammered.
“We are the Skibbows.”
“Uh, right. Are you on Kiera’s side?”
“No. But we’d really like to know where she is.” The machine gun’s safety catch was released. “Now, please.”
