"What the hell?" Garrison whispered. He looked about the library. "I thought we were alone here."
"We are," Borys replied. He walked over to where the book had fallen and picked it up, staring at its leather-bound cover. Stamped on the front were the words Chaldean Magic. "This is one of the forbidden books… What is it doing here, in the open?"
"Perhaps your God wanted us to find it." Garrison’s voice, though full of sarcasm, also held a note of concern. Borys realized that he felt it too — the sense that something momentous was occurring.
Borys felt along the edge of the book, finding one page that seemed to have been marked somehow with a tiny notch in the top of the vellum. With trembling hands, he opened the tome and began to read….
"Well?" Garrison prompted.
"It's here," Borys whispered, in a voice full of holy reverence. "God has shown us the way." He held the page up for Garrison to read.
There on the page, amongst various occult diagrams, was a spell entitled The Bonding of Man and Demon. Beneath the spell was a drawing of a demon rising out of the abyss… and the demon’s skull was aflame.
The image shook Garrison to his core and in a moment of supernatural clarity he realized that in these words lay the power he’d always wanted. He’d built his body into something strong and deadly but he’d needed more, which had led him to follow Borys on this wild goose chase.
"Give me the book," Garrison whispered. He reached for it and tried to wrest it free from his mentor’s grasp but Borys held it tight. There was a look of fear in the older man’s eyes.
"No. I don’t like the way your expression changed when you read that page. It’s not healthy for you. Let me keep it."
Garrison snarled like a caged tiger and before he’d even realized what he was doing, he’d drawn back a fist and then slammed it hard into his friend’s face. He repeated the attack several more times until Borys lay quietly on the floor, drops of his blood splattered on the pages of the book.
Garrison had stood there panting for a long minute before grabbing hold of the text and shoving it into his jacket. He had turned to flee, leaving the priest to slowly bleed out. In the book lay power… power that would be his and his alone.
Mr. Skull knew that the reservoir was off-limits now but there had to be some way he could bring death to the citizens of Sovereign. He had finally decided to drop Bone Dust right over downtown. The wind would carry the dust far and wide, spreading it so thin that it might not kill all it touched.
But it would burn and it would scar.
After bonding with the demon that now resided inside him, Garrison had realized what a curse he’d accepted. He was terrifying to behold, which both pleased and repulsed him. He was also driven half-mad by the creature’s voice in his head: it gave him great power and a long leash but it craved death and destruction, both of which Garrison found himself giving it in spades. That was the secret of it alclass="underline" though he masqueraded as a mobster, Mr. Skull was as much a true killer as he was a criminal. Money was secondary in the end, a distant concern compared to the opportunity to sow terror amongst the innocent.
His plane banked to the west and down below lay the gambling ship known as The Heart of Fortune. It was a little over three miles off the Sovereign coast and the ship’s lights showed that a large crowd of revelers were enjoying themselves. Mr. Skull thought about dropping the Bone Dust here, just a few handfuls, to see what effect it would have on the gamblers. He held off, however, preferring to save it all for the more heavily populated areas. He spurred his plane to greater speeds and within moments land was once more beneath him. He saw the courthouse and city hall up ahead, recognizing them by their distinctive shapes.
To his great surprise, however, something rose up from below, rocketing toward him with tremendous speed. It took him a moment to realize that it was a small rocket fired from a bazooka — Mr. Skull had read up on the devices and knew that they’d first appeared on the scene back in the Great War. Originally known as Rocket-Powered Recoilless Weapons, they were quite deadly — sometimes as much so for the one firing it as the one on the receiving end.
Mr. Skull tried to avoid the missile but it came at him too quickly, shearing off the plane’s left wing and sending him hurtling toward the ground with smoke and fire trailing after him.
Skull unbuckled his seat restraint and began to crawl from his seat even as his plane hurtled to its destruction. He was going to come down on a large hill overlooking downtown, part of a district that mixed various small businesses with homes. Whether by divine providence or simple luck, the plane was on a direct course with a large playground and park that was currently empty.
Skull threw himself away from the plane, landing in a roll that carried him in the opposite direction from the crash. He felt the impact through the ground and felt the rush of heat as the gas tank exploded, but he was unharmed, aside from a few rips in his clothing. He patted his pockets and found that the vials of Bone Dust had not been shattered.
Standing up, he quickly looked around for the source of the attack. He didn’t have to look far. The members of Assistance Unlimited were less than a hundred feet away and the man known as Lazarus Gray was dropping a bazooka to the ground. Morgan and Samantha both had handguns drawn, while Eun was standing relaxed but obviously ready for combat.
"Garrison Montreux," Lazarus said. "Surrender now or I cannot promise that your life will be spared."
Mr. Skull gestured around at the houses and businesses. "You’re really going to do this here? What about all the people who might get hurt?"
"All evacuated." Gray’s mismatched eyes glittered with cold humor. "Once Miss Grace had surmised who you really were and informed us of your plans to commit mass murder, I began to look into your business holdings. It didn’t take much digging to find out that you owned two planes, housed at a private airfield."
"And you just happened to have a weapon like that?" Skull laughed hoarsely. "Gray, you’re a real piece of work."
"Can’t I shoot him, Chief?" Morgan grinned like a wolf. "He’s not going to surrender, you can tell."
Mr. Skull’s head was now fully ablaze and it was so bright that it nearly equaled that of the burning plane. "Bullets won’t hurt me. The girl knows that." He cracked his knuckles and began moving toward them. "I’m going to enjoy this."
Eun rushed forward, moving with the speed of a panther. He caught Mr. Skull in the midsection with a flurry of punches, followed by a hard kick to the villain’s knee. In an ordinary man, such an attack would have left him writhing in agony. But Mr. Skull was not like other men. He struck back quickly, backhanding Eun so hard that the young Korean was lifted off his feet. Eun cried out as he landed right atop Samantha, knocking them both on their backs.
Morgan knelt quickly at their sides, checking to make sure they weren’t badly wounded. Eun was groggy and suffering from a mild concussion but Samantha looked merely stunned.
Gray had taken in all of that with a mere glance. He turned away from them, focusing all of his attention on Mr. Skull. The villain was laughing again, an eerie sound that combined with the horrific nature of his appearance, making the entire scene appear quite surreal.
Skull threw a powerful left-handed punch but Gray caught it, knocking it aside with the back of his hand. Before Skull could attack again, Gray had pushed both hands under the man’s armpits and pushed, momentarily knocking the fiery killer off-balance. Gray danced around his foe, wrapping his powerful arms around Mr. Skull’s midsection. He held on with all his strength as Skull began trying to free himself.