The noise level in the Every Comfort Palace faded out, and a red haze washed over my field of vision. When I could see again, the Lunar Scythe was just in my hands, and people were screaming. Chairs and tables crashed as patrons and kids scrambled for cover and escape. Enough pieces for at least three adult bodies littered the floor, arms and legs and torsos.
An alien in a cowboy hat, happi coat, and boots made a break for the door. I hit the Ki-speed and got there first. The gleaming black blade of the scythe sliced him in half.
Three rapid-fire shots popped from my right. One of the bullets smashed an exposed rib to splinters, but the other two whistled through empty torso and slammed into the doorframe and wall on my opposite side. The Dragon script tattoo burned in my upper arm bone, the bloodred ink consuming Miasma from my spiral to repair the splintered rib as I turned to face the shooter.
The space moth’s face blanched, and he started backing away. He raised his matched six-guns and emptied them at my skeleton form. I hacked off his hands.
The space moth bellowed in pain, and his wings fluttered, kicking up dust as he tried to fly away. I could let him go. As fast as the blood was gushing, he would bleed out in a matter of seconds. But I didn’t want him to have a single second of relief, of thinking he might make it out of here alive. I wanted him and every other sicko in this place to know they were finally getting everything they deserved.
Behind me, running feet sprinted toward the unguarded door. I sent a blast of Miasma rocketing into the floor in front of the exit. By the sound of the panicked shouts and thuds of people hitting the floor, I knew without looking that my eerie ghost hands had erupted from below, grabbing the fleeing patrons in Death Grip.
I would deal with them. But first, the space moth. The scythe sheared through his wings, and he crashed into an overturned table, getting hung up in the legs. Blood splashed, and his head thumped onto the floor.
An oversized cleaver buried itself in my shoulder blade. I spun around to find the bouncer trying to wrench his weapon out of my bone.
Fury exploded in my brain. How could he defend these people? How could he come here night after night, knowing what they were doing, and never put a stop to it?
I swung the scythe upward to cut him in half from hip to shoulder, but plate armor erupted across the bouncer’s skin. It caught the black blade with a crumpling, scraping sound like a pocketknife cutting through an aluminum can. I tried to wrench it free, but it wouldn’t come.
The bouncer levered his cleaver out of my shoulder blade, stumbling back a step like he hadn’t been ready for it to come loose so fast. He blinked, then let out a berserker scream and tried to plant the cleaver in my forehead.
I pulled my face back instinctively, letting the swipe whiff past, then snapped a kick into his gut. He doubled over, still swinging. I grabbed his life point. More plate metal surrounded that flickering flame.
The cleaver’s notched blade scraped down my shin and stuck in my ankle. I ate away at the bouncer’s life point armor with Moldering Bones, scouring through it in a heartbeat, and Dead Man’s Hand snuffed it out.
The bouncer dropped to the floor, armor plates clanking. I stepped on his back for leverage and wrenched the scythe’s blade out of his hip.
Death Grip was about to run out, so I dealt with the runners next. They hurled Spirit attacks and shot at me, but it wasn’t enough to matter. I cut them down anyway. Did they think they didn’t deserve to die? That they deserved to live one more minute after the evil they’d done here?
One guy tried to shield himself from me with a little yellow girl. While the kid wailed—probably terrified the grim reaper skeleton was about to cut her in half along with the guy who’d just rented her out for the night—I sent a fistful of Dead Man’s Hand into the patron’s body and ripped his life point out like he was some kind of feral. That was all he was, nothing more than a mindless animal who cared more about getting what he wanted than what was right or wrong. He even howled like an animal when he died. Apparently, for a living person, getting your life point ripped out of your body was a lot more painful than having it smothered.
As soon as the guy’s life point hit my Spirit sea, my senses and enhancements kicked into high gear. If absorbing a feral life point was like a shot of Coffee Drank, absorbing one from a living person was like steroids and adrenaline and cocaine all rolled into one. It charged through my Spirit sea and rivers and overloaded me with power.
Everything around me seemed to slow down to a crawl. I exterminated the last of the vermin in the lower level, then took the full flight of stairs in an easy jump. Solid wooden doors exploded off their hinges at my touch.
A surprised patron blasted me with a Wind construct from some kind of horsetail whisk. The gale blew through my bones, and the scraps of tattered cloth flapped as the gust tried to knock me off my feet. I dug the scythe blade into the bamboo floor and held my ground. With his free hand, the patron grabbed a wakizashi out of his clothes on the floor, then whipped the whisk at me again.
I hit him with Rigor Mortis, paralyzing his muscles.
The wind dropped off.
I straightened up and crossed the floor.
His paralyzed-open eyes streamed as I closed the distance, and his locked-up throat let
