But Tweed had no idea I was at my limit. Like most people I’d fought, when he heard the name of a Spirit attack, he assumed he was about to get his head taken off.
He yelped, and the tentacles recoiled, dropping me.
I landed in a heap on the floor, hand bones still clutching the scythe. Pain shot out from the leg Tweed had been trying to tear off. I floundered onto my knees, but couldn’t stand up. The script tattoo had snapped my hip back into place, but hadn’t repaired the tissues there enough to hold my weight yet.
The fat shark hooligan saw his opening. He shot toward me, the broken remains of a barstool cocked back.
Hurry, Death cultivator, free Hungry Ghost so he can refill your Spirit sea!
Nice try. I gritted my teeth and threw up a shield-less arm to protect my head.
But the shark never made it. Warcry leapt into a massive spin kick, his prosthetic pinging off the shark’s cartilaginous skull. The headshot knocked the shark out cold and sent him skidding across the floor. He came to a stop in front of me.
Warcry landed with his broken arm hanging at his side, the other fist up in half a fighting stance.
Movement over his shoulder caught my eye.
“Behind you!”
Warcry ducked just in time to avoid a table to the head. The momentum from the miss swung the huge muscle-bound jackal around. Warcry slammed a side kick to the jackal’s spine, sending him sprawling.
“Your target is about to escape, Death cultivator,” Sanya-ketsu said, the hint of a grin in her voice.
Sure enough, Tweed was wading through the wreckage of smashed tables and stools and broken glass as he hoofed it toward the door.
“Death Grip!” I poured my recycled and converted Miasma into the floor.
Instead of a forest of ghostly hands, only half a dozen reached up from the floorboards, latching onto Tweed’s shoes and ankles, but they were enough to trip him up. He went down hard, cheek bouncing off the corner of a broken stool. Purple spines shot out of his ankles, stabbing at the clutching hands.
Just like his life-point protection, the spines pumped Spirit venom into the Miasma hands. I levered myself to my feet, leaning my weight on the scythe, and let Death Grip dissipate.
Tweed tried to crab crawl away, but got tangled up in the debris from the brawl. I threw my weight forward, swinging the scythe. Purple tentacles shot out to blast me back, but they were too slow. The gleaming black blade sliced through them, then a second later through Tweed’s neck.
His head and I hit the floor at the same time. It rolled. Tweed’s headless body slumped awkwardly over the broken barstool.
The traitor was dead.
Meet and Greet
THE SOUNDS OF A BARROOM brawl rushed in from all sides—wood splintering, metal pinging, fists thudding—filling in the brain space I’d been using to focus on killing Tweed.
Warcry was still holding off the hooligans, but now both his arms were hanging useless. He kept his elbows tucked against his side as he circled, keeping the rock alien in front of him. The shark was out cold, but the jackal had what looked like a broken piece of countertop in his huge mitts.
The jackal attacked. Warcry roared through his teeth as he ducked into the wooden bludgeon, taking the shot on his back, and barreled shoulder-first into the jackal’s exposed gut.
They crashed over Tweed’s lifeless body.
At some point during the fight, Last Light, Last Breath had evaporated. The realization that I’d just killed another person tried to swamp me, but I shoved it away. I couldn’t fall apart yet, I had to help Warcry. Without his arms, he was getting destroyed trying to grapple with that jackal, and the rock guy was sneaking up behind them, a crystalized hand out to hit Warcry with another one of those bone-breaking Spirit attacks.
I sucked down the Miasma rising from Tweed’s corpse.
The script tattoo had repaired enough of the damage to my leg that I was able to get to my feet. Keeping most of my weight on my left foot, I grabbed the rock guy’s life point.
He stopped where he was, grimacing at the crushing grip of the uncloaked Dead Man’s Hand.
“Back off and I’ll drop it,” I told him.
His face twisted into a scowl, little bits of crystal flaking off at the edges.
“Now.” I squeezed tighter, that silver-white flame guttering in Dead Man’s Hand.
“Okay!” He raised his hands and backed away from Warcry and the jackal. “I’m done, dammit, I’m done!”
I let his life point go.
Before I could switch to dealing with the jackal, though, Sanya-ketsu stepped into the middle of the floor, rubber-gloved hands in her pockets.
“That will be all.” She used the Shogun trick of making her voice boom through the saloon even though she wasn’t yelling. “In the name of the Emperor, you will cease.”
The dog-versus-ginger fight stuttered to a halt. Everybody in the bar turned their attention to Sanya.
She held up a Wait finger, then did something on her HUD.
My Winchester buzzed. My USL account was a thousand credits richer.
“Job well done, Death cultivator,” Sanya-ketsu said.
Standing over a headless corpse while staring down at the payment confirmation felt like skinny-dipping in a dumpster full of garbage juice. Hands shaking, I hurried up and cleared the notification.
“Smoky,” Sanya said in a warning voice.
The jackal shoved himself off Warcry.
With a red burst of Ki-enhancement, Warcry raised his legs, then did a kickup, broken arms tucked protectively to his stomach. He backed up until he was standing next to me, his shoulders heaving as he glared down the hooligans.
The rock alien and the jackal stood with their fists balled at their sides, but didn’t attack. Debris shifted and the shark groaned. He came back around, blinking up at Sanya like he couldn’t tell whether she was real or not.
She didn’t wait around for him to come to a decision.
“Set these chairs back up and gather round, gentlemen,” she ordered. “We have business
