Lifting his sword, the ninja charged. He opened his mouth and let out a battle cry. Most Fades never got to Heinrich’s level of control. The ninja would need to be solid well before he could hit Lance with that sword.
It was a race.
Lance got the shells into the chambers and snapped it shut. The stubby double-barrel came up as the Fade swung.
Lance won the race.
The ninja got splattered across the hall. He hit the ground with a gaping hole in his ribs.
The Imperium bastard was still moving, so Lance tried to give him the other barrel. Lance grunted as he tried to manipulate the shotgun, but it wouldn’t go. He looked down. His right hand wasn’t responding because it was lying on the ground, along with most of the rest of his arm, and then the unbelievable pain hit. “Aw shit.”
He hadn’t won after all. It had been a tie.
Lance went to his knees. His right arm had been removed just above the elbow. Blood was pumping out. He’d better do something about that. There were still Imperium in need of killing.
With unnerving calm, he pulled off Chen’s belt, looped it around the stump, and pulled it tight. Lance screamed. Now that hurt. He bit down on the leather with his teeth to keep tension on it until he could get his pocket knife out to poke a new belt hole.
It was a strange feeling, pulling his own severed hand off of the shotgun, but he did it anyway. There was movement in the smoke as a ninja ducked across the hall. He fired the last round of buckshot through the wall but couldn’t tell if he’d gotten anything.
There was shooting ahead. The surviving Grimnoir had engaged the Imperium. He grabbed the nearest available weapon—the short sword that had cut his arm off—and used it like a crutch to get to his feet. Lance staggered toward the sound of gunfire, the tip of the sword dragging along the dirty ground behind him. Lance knew he was a goner, no denying that, but he was going to take as many Imperium assholes with him as possible.
The next room was a red haze. He hacked a Shadow Guard in the back, cutting him clear to the spine, and then he shouted for more. The other bastards saw him coming and ran. Lance went after them.
And then he got shot. He knew that feeling well.
Lance lost the little sword. He hadn’t even seen that sneaky Shadow Guard who had appeared behind him and shot him in the back. Lance turned around and started limping toward the ninja, who then shot Lance again. It was a funny-looking little pistol with a big sound muffler on the end. Lance barely even heard that one, but he sure felt the impact. The ninja got him with one more round before Lance got ahold of his wrist and pushed the gun aside. Lance tugged him in and headbutted the ninja in the face. It took them both down. That’s what they get for using those pussy little 8mm rounds instead of a real gun. Lance wrestled the weird little Nambu up, stuck it under the ninja’s chin, forced his finger into the trigger guard, and put a bullet hole through the assassin’s brain.
He got back up and fired the pistol at the fleeing Shadow Guard. “I’m Lance Talon, you sons a bitches!” He wasn’t nearly as good a shot with his left hand, but he still hit at least one of them. “You’d better run!”
And then he was down.
His ears were ringing. He couldn’t hardly see. The bastards had shot him in the back again. He started getting up, but they shot him again, and again. He slowly sank to the ground. Lance grimaced and tried to force himself back up, but his legs wouldn’t respond. He tried to lift the gun, but a split-toe shoe appeared in his vision and kicked the Nambu away.
Had he bought the others some time? Had they got away? If so, then it was all worth it.
The remaining Shadow Guard gathered around him in a circle, seemingly in awe at the berserker fury of the American. They were warriors. They could appreciate a good death.
He was nearly dead, but Lance wasn’t done yet.
There were always stories about Beasties so incredibly powerful that they weren’t limited to just controlling animals, ones who could actually take over humans. As far as he knew, those were just stories, but he did think it was possible, just that it required more magic than he’d ever been able to use at once without fear of killing himself in the process. Lance had never been able to pull it off, and even poking around with it had told him that for him to draw that much Power at once would mean certain death.
He reached for his Power. There was absolutely nothing left to lose.
His vision faded. The world was a flat, grey, quickly shrinking circle. The Imperium ninjas were half-a-dozen glowing blobs of life, with minds far greater than any animal. He picked one in particular. The son of a bitch who had finally brought him down was carrying a big Type 70 light machine gun, so at least Lance had been killed by a real gun.
The Imperium men drew closer. A ninja lifted his sword to take Lance’s head.
He gathered up all his Power, all his life, and then reached for more. He concentrated on the man with machine gun and treated him just like he’d treat a rat or a dog or horse. This mind was complicated in comparison, but it didn’t matter, Lance just forced his way in and slammed that spirit right out of the way.
Now he was seeing through different eyes. Human eyes. There was his executioner, and there was his body. Lance was wearing socks. He’d died with his boots off, and that struck him as so damn funny he started laughing.
The Shadow Guard with the sword paused, confused, and looked to his laughing compatriot.
“Burn in hell, you Imperium fucks,” Lance said in English, with his own voice, through the mouth of the mind-controlled ninja, which surely came as a surprise, and then he opened fire. He worked the machinegun back and forth across the five of them, shredding the ninjas with heavy bullets. He massacred them all.
The real ninja was fighting, struggling, panicking, futilely trying to reclaim his body.
“You want it back?” Lance asked as he dropped the empty, smoking machine gun to the floor. He then forced the ninja to reach down and draw his sword. How was it the Imperium did it with their fancy ritual suicides? Right across the stomach to spill the guts? Bet that hurt. The sword arm trembled as the ninja struggled for control, but Lance wasn’t done yet. The sword pierced the ninja’s belly and Lance forced the ninja to push hard. It was so sharp there was hardly any resistance at all. Lance felt it. Felt it just like it had been his own body, and he relished in the fact that it hurt worse than he’d even imagined. The blade popped out the other side, and the ninja’s entrails tumbled out.
“It’s all yours.”
The Shadow Guard collapsed in a heap.
Lance let go of the hijacked mind and let his consciousness snap back.
His own body felt cold and empty in comparison. His magic was gone. Burned out forever in one final push.
Deep in the burning building, surrounded by a pile of dead Shadow Guard, Lance Talon closed his eyes and drifted off, dreaming about his family that he hadn’t seen in a very long time.
The sleek Imperium patrol boat roared toward the small Chinese craft. A teenage boy stood at the rear of the boat, his hands raised in a position of surrender. Surely blinded by the brilliant spotlights, he knew better than to try anything. The first boat had already pulled alongside. The men were preparing to board and search it.
Major Matsuoka spoke into the bullhorn. “You are under arrest. Do not resist or you will be shot.” The boy kept his head down, afraid. Matsuoka could not confirm this boat had come from beneath the target building, but it was possible. The boy would be taken in for torture and questioning. Just because he was young did not mean he was not a member of the terrorist resistance, and if he was merely an innocent bystander, then it didn’t really matter anyway, because he was only Chinese, and none of those could ever truly be innocent.