Sigurd walked up to the elevator landing and examined the broken door closely. He had noticed it earlier, hanging off the frame, anchored in place only by a single hinge. It was an antique door, constructed in a time in which longevity and quality were far more prized qualities than they were in the current era. As such it was made of a hard, heavy wood and reinforced with steel fronting; in short, the door could serve as an almost bulletproof barrier. A glass window in the top third of it was its weak point, but if he crouched, he would be able to shield most of his body behind the steel and wood.
It would do. He holstered his Desert Eagle and gripped the door firmly by its sturdy rail-type handle.
‘One, two, three!’
With his feet anchored firmly on the floor, in order to drive strength from his legs and hips through to his upper body, he abruptly fired savage power through his every muscle and sinew, and with a rapid twist of his upper body he ripped the door right off its hinges. He chuckled darkly as he heard the broken innards of the hinges tinkling on the floor, and then, gripping the heavy door in his left hand and holding it like a tower shield, he jogged back up the steps to the top floor. Once more he felt the presence of the other beastwalkers buzzing its current through his bones and across his skin, and he knew that they must, at that moment, have been experiencing the exact same sensation.
‘You are waiting for me, my friends, are you not? Well then, I will not keep you waiting any longer.’
He crouched down behind the shield, his muscles locked and ready to explode into action, and with his right hand he drew his pistol. Then he charged, keeping the door-shield in front of him as if it were a battering ram. With a roar he crashed into the twin doors, smashing the rotten wood to splinters with his momentum … but there was no explosion, no gunshot to greet him; only empty silence. He backed immediately up against the wall of the unoccupied room, shielding himself with the elevator door. With wary caution he glanced out from the side of the door and pointed his firearm out ahead.
They were there, standing in the middle of this ruined room with its peeling paint, its collapsed ceilings, and its flash-frozen storm of debris and strewn, yellowed papers spread across the floor. Just waiting, silent and unmoving, staring at him: Lightning Bird, standing, and Parvati, seated in her wheelchair.
Sigurd did not speak; he acted on pure instinct. As soon as he caught sight of Lightning Bird, he took aim in a split-second and fired at the tall beastwalker’s face. His aim was true, but instead of his enemy’s head exploding like a watermelon hit by a cannonball, nothing happened. Yet the bullet had fired, for a huge chunk of wall burst in a shower of masonry dust and brick fragments where the projectile hit. Lightning Bird, however, stood perfectly still, as if the bullet had merely passed around him instead of through him. Sigurd knew his aim had been true, but it seemed that, somehow, he had missed his target. He dropped his door-shield and it crashed to the floor with a loud bang that rattled the walls. Then he aimed his gun at Lightning Bird’s head again and fired. This time the bullet tore out a huge chunk of the wall, and daylight from outside flooded in, its dust-encased spotlight beam hurling a jagged pool of brilliance onto the messy floor.
And still Lightning Bird stood, unmoving and unharmed.
Sigurd lowered his weapon and began to laugh, softly at first, but then more vociferously as the seconds passed by. Keeping his gun in his hand, he walked up to the pair of beastwalkers. He locked his molten gaze into Lightning Bird’s eyes, and felt the shaman’s eyes staring back into his, and there was not a single drop of fear in them – only scorn and defiance.
As Sigurd got closer to them, he threw back his head and let out a booming cacophony of laughter – and then, with an expression of ferocious aggression contorting his features, he whipped his gun up and emptied the clip into the body of the shaman.
This time Lightning Bird smiled; a mocking grin of triumph as again the rounds seemed to pass through him without effect, blowing out more of the wall behind him. Sigurd dropped his pistol and with a roar he lunged forward, striking for the shaman’s throat with his open hand as if his fingers were the jaws of an adder claiming a shivering rodent.
His hand, however, passed through nothing but air.
Sigurd stood for a moment, frozen with confusion as his body straddled his enemy’s – and then, in a moment of sudden fright, static electricity raised every hair on his body with its charged energy. There was a blinding flash of light and a thunderous explosion, a sound that morphed in his ears from a sharp bang into a protracted roar, like a jumbo jet taking off in the room, as a vein of lightninghit the spot where he was standing.
Sigurd was hurled against the far wall, and a tremendous core of heat, as if a chemical inferno had been ignited inside his body, burned its skin-flaying pain out from his core to every extremity of his body. He roared in agony, spraying out spittle and blood through gritted teeth, but through the torture he summoned his own power, and its red-tinged shadow smoke swirled through his every cell, smothering and choking out the crackling blue light of the snaking tendrils of electricity invading his body, until their collective fire had been extinguished within him.
He lay on his back, his body smoking like a discarded cigarette butt, and crushing pain pulsed through his veins with every pump
