The Man Who Crossed Worlds (A Miles Franco Urban Fantasy) Page 24

  One of them turned his five unmatching eyes toward me. My heart vibrated like a hummingbird. His jaw fell open, exposing a black abyss inside him. The vortex spun, his festering chest expanded, and he let out a primal alarm call.

  The monsters snapped toward me. They knew me. I couldn’t hide. I couldn’t run. There was only one way I could survive.

  Something tingled at the edge of my consciousness, an awareness that’d been tickling at me my whole life. An awareness of possibility, an unbelievable sense of control. I rolled my eyes backward into my head and let improbability reign. I saw everything that could be, everything that might have been. I saw the earth shifting, becoming rivers and mountains and volcanoes. I saw buildings collapsing and rebuilding. I saw entire species evolving and dying.

  And I saw what I needed. I fixed the monsters in my vision, grasped a plane of reality, and punched a hole in it.

  And then I set the air on fire.

  An inferno roared from my fingertips, a giant cone of fire so powerful the heat of it blistered my face. The iron gates burst open in an explosion of force, one of them coming off the hinges entirely.

  My legs carried me forward, the fire gushing in front of me. One of the monsters let out a rage-filled scream before the fire engulfed him. Another pair of monsters bounded toward me on insect legs, sparks flaring in front of them.

  Some strange voice—a voice that was me and yet not me—shouted for me to stop. It didn’t want me to kill them.

  It was trying to trick me. The monsters wanted to kill me. I had to kill them first. I turned the cone of flame toward the monsters, leaving a trail of burning grass. I was screaming, I think. I could smell rancid burning flesh.

  Pure fear, thick as honey, pounded through me, even as I destroyed my enemies. Every time I killed one, I made them more angry. I didn’t understand. Why did they want to kill me?

  “Leave me alone!” I screamed, engulfing another monster in fire. The words didn’t come out right. Some creature was in my throat, playing my vocal cords like his own guitar. I gave a gurgling cough to get it out, but it clung on, and then I couldn’t remember what I was doing.

  A burst of lightning came from the window of the castle in front of me, and grass and dirt flew up into the air around me. Pain exploded in my forearm, the sting of a million angry wasps.

  My concentration dropped as the pain struck me, and my cone of fire slipped back out of existence, leaving nothing but a bitter smell behind.

  I hurled myself to the side as another crackle of lightning flew from the window. The monster’s sorcery seemed familiar, but my mind was thick with rainbow fog.

  No, not sorcery. A machine. A machine that spat thunder and lead. I grinned. A shadowy memory of a failing thunder machine formed, and I grasped it before it could slip away. I twisted the chaos in my mind, punched a hole in reality. The monster’s machine clicked once more, then exploded. A scream and a splash of alien blood flew from the window.

  I was unstoppable. I would destroy anything that tried to hurt me.

  A tiny flicker of anguish sobbed inside me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I don’t know how many of the monsters’ bodies I left behind by the time I reached the center of the castle. They kept trying to kill me, and I kept killing them back. Everything was a swirl of anger and fire and lightning and blood and fear. So much fear. I was swimming in it.

  I punched another hole in reality and brought a set of double doors to the ground, shredded like paper. The interior of the castle wasn’t stone like I expected, it was white walls and grotesque paintings and ancient artifacts stacked around the grand rooms. The ceilings were high, with chandeliers hanging from them.

  The nature of the castle confused and concerned me. It tugged at bits of my mind, memories from another life. The voice inside my head was growing louder, more insistent. “Stop!” it said. “Jesus Christ, why can’t I stop?”

  I pushed the voice aside and tore open another hole to drop a chandelier onto a monster. The glass tore through its body and thick red blood spewed across the wooden floor and soaked into an animal skin rug. The creature groaned once as the last of its air escaped its throat. I crept closer, heedless of the blood under my feet. The monster was wearing a blue suit. How odd.

  Somehow, now that it was dead, it didn’t look so monstrous. In fact, its face was pale, with oversized eyes and a wide mouth. It seemed so familiar. The voice in my head screamed and begged for me to stop, but I knew I couldn’t. Not until I’d found the King.

  I strode through the shredded door, fire singeing the air around me. Calling it a room would be an insult. The place was so huge you’d need to shout to be heard on the other side of the room. Couches and artifacts littered the room, coated with a thin coat of debris from my destructive influence on the place. In the far corner was a huge black table with a long stool in front of it. No, it wasn’t a table. It made sounds…music. A piano, that’s what it was called.

  My head was clearing, the fog slowly diminishing. I could remember some things, little fragments of a broken past. I hadn’t been born just minutes ago, like I’d thought. I’d done something to make myself this way, something that flickered on the edge of memory. But that didn’t matter. I remembered now why I’d come here, why the monsters wanted to kill me.

  “John!” I roared. “I’ve come for you, John!”

  I heard wailing screams—no, sirens—in the distance, but the room remained silent apart from the clatter of falling masonry. I strode into the room, fear burned away by rage. I blinked and I was surrounded by monsters, then I blinked again and they were gone. A thin wave of nausea rolled in my stomach, and I became aware of how tired I was.

  “John,” I yelled again. “You treacherous bastard, you did this to yourself.”

  No response. I was getting ready to quit the room and blast down another wall out of sheer rage when something collided with my back.

  It took me down hard, knocking the wind clean out of my lungs, and followed up with a raking pain across my shoulders.

  I hit the ground face-first, the weight still on my back. It yelled a stream of undecipherable profanities in my ear and my back exploded in more slicing agony. I tried to roll, got halfway there, then found the shoulder of my jacket pinned to the fine mahogany floor.

  The shock of the pain and the blow seemed to have knocked some more of the spiders from my mind. The room came into sharper focus, and I realized I wasn’t in a castle at all. What the hell had given me that idea?

  I didn’t have much time to ponder that before I caught sight of what had knocked me down. Compared to this monster, the others looked like teddy bears. Its snout protruded from its wide, pale face, bristling with teeth that could tear a car in half. The tips of the canines were streaked with blood—my blood, I realized with a dully-registered shock.

  The rest of him didn’t do much more to inspire confidence. His arms were covered in bulging muscle, ending in claws that wouldn’t look out of place on a saber-toothed tiger. They were poised above my head, ready to crush, shred or destroy me as appropriate. Inexplicably, the rest of the monster was dressed in a tuxedo, the white fabric spoiled by splashes of red blood.

  His grossly misshapen body seemed much more solid than the other monsters I’d been fighting, the ones firing their lightning machines at me. The voice inside me was yelling again, trying to tell me something. I got the feeling it was more scared by this one than it had been by the others. It was more real, somehow.

  I shook my head to rid it of the dizziness and flicked my wrist, intending to treat the monster to a fresh blast of fire. He was quicker than me. He raked his claws across my chest, sending a new fire burning through my skin, then followed up with an elbow to my cheek. My head snapped to the side and my ears rang like someone had blown a gas line right next to me.

  “You?” the monster said. His snout snapped open and shut in a way that shouldn’t be able to produce a voice. Dazed as I was, it took me a second to notice
it wasn’t English he spoke, but I could understand him anyway. “You dare come to my home?”

  I opened my mouth to speak and got another set of claws across my cheek.

  “You destroy my property,” he snarled, “you murder my people.” He snapped his teeth at me. “You talk to my wife!”

  Sweat poured from my forehead, stinging skin that I must have scalded during my fire show. Streams of memories were flowing back to me quicker now, converging and making the world around me more real. But at the same time, I could feel the twisting threads of reality slipping away, my connection to Heaven slipping from my grasp.

  I recognized the monster atop me now, despite his grotesque changes. “John Andrews,” I said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  He went for my throat this time, but I twisted aside just in time and he tore into the floor a few inches from my neck. I was rolling before he could strike again. My jacket ripped free of his grasp and I kicked out at one of his legs. I missed and Andrews snapped at my retreating arm, but I got away with only a graze.

  My head was swimming—drowning, more accurately—but whether from the blows or blood loss, I had no idea. Or maybe it was the Chroma. I remembered taking it now, remembered the sick feeling as it tracked up my veins.

  Oh God, what had I done? I’d killed all those gangsters. Burned them alive. Oh Jesus. My stomach turned and everything went blurry.

  Andrews spread his legs wide and leaped at me while I was still trying to get the world back in focus. Not very sportsman-like. I got my nightstick out and in front of me just as he tackled me again, and I dropped unceremoniously to the floor.

  Luckily for me, my fall overbalanced him and he stumbled forward, one foot crashing into my chest as he went. Fighting down my instinct to collapse and gasp for breath, I flung my arm wide and my nightstick connected with his ribs, throwing him off me completely.

  I was fighting my desire to run, and it was wiping the floor with me. Though my sanity was trickling back in, I still couldn’t shake the ice that flowed through my veins, the paranoia.

  What’s the saying? It’s not paranoia if they’re really after you? Well, John Andrews was after me, and if he had his way it wouldn’t be long before there wasn’t a “me” left.

  An image of Vivian flashed into my head, alone in that room with Todd. I’d completely lost track of the time. I could’ve been rampaging through Andrews’ mansion for hours by now, and I wouldn’t have a clue. She could be a corpse already for all I knew. If I didn’t get Todd his Chroma, I’d have another funeral to attend.

  Andrews skittered round on all fours like a super-powered wolf and growled at me through his snout. Whatever remnants of bodily control he retained from Heaven were stronger than anything I believed possible. Such radical changes were barely possible even in Heaven, let alone on Earth. I had to end this.

  I couldn’t afford to kill Andrews—even if I could ignore the blood that already coated my hands and the frantic Lady Macbeth impersonation my conscience was doing—but now wasn’t the time for subtlety either.

  When he came at me again, I was ready for him. I gathered my dwindling Chroma-powered strength and punched two Pin Holes simultaneously, easily splitting my concentration in ways that would’ve turned my brain to mush a few hours ago.

  The first Pin Hole I crafted for me personally. I took inspiration from Andrews and turned the it on myself, letting the chaos wash over me. My body rippled, a cold shiver running through me, and there was a sensation of difference. My ears popped, and suddenly I looked like I’d been breathing steroids instead of air. There were several tearing sounds as my clothes gave way to my bulk in a Mr. Hyde-style makeover. My muscles bulged, and I felt strong enough to rip a bus in two.

  The second Pin Hole was simpler, as dealing with inanimate objects usually is. Andrews launched himself at me again, claws outstretched, and I swung my nightstick with both muscled arms. Only, it wasn’t a nightstick anymore.

  It was a goddamn war hammer.

  The palm-sized iron head of the hammer crashed into Andrew’s chest, and something cracked—a rib or two, maybe. My arms barely slowed their swing as the force of the blow threw him backward. He slammed into the grand piano, his head catching on the corner, and he rolled to the ground, blood leaking from his forehead and his chest.

  I advanced on him as he lay face-down, coughing and wheezing. My strength was intoxicating. I was a modern day Conan the Barbarian in a suit and tie. Chroma-fear mixed with rage, producing a darkness inside me. I refused to look at it too closely. I was afraid it would turn me blind.

  Andrews rolled onto his back and tried and failed to sit up. The knock I gave him might’ve made an accordion out of a normal person, but whatever changes he’d made to himself seemed to be keeping his chest from crushing his heart. Still, it’d done him some serious damage.He was shrinking back into his normal scarred form, his snout retreating into a wide Vei mouth with scattered missing teeth.

  “Nice trick, John,” I said, flexing my arms and earning my jacket another few tears. “I’ll have to remember this one.”

  Andrews coughed violently and wiped the blood from his eyes to get a better look at me. His eyes weren’t quite focused—they kept rolling around like he was on a merry-go-round—but they still had enough anger in them to add another twinge to my fear despite the war hammer in my hands.

  “You fucking gaiiran,” he said, before lapsing into another coughing fit. “I should have killed you the first time I saw you.”

  “Yeah, probably.” I swung the hammer in an experimental arc, and took a little savage pleasure from the way he flinched. “Then again, I did try to warn you away from the Chroma.”

  He snarled and clawed at the ground, pushing himself up to lean against the leg of the piano. “I should get my people to kill you for only talking to Caterina. I should kill her for listening.”

  I brought the hammer down on the piano. The wood shattered and for a moment the sound of tortured music filled the air. “Your people are all fucking dead, John. I killed them, and the ones I didn’t kill are too scared to come back. You made me kill them, you son of a bitch!”

  I lifted the hammer again and brought it back, preparing to swing and knock Andrews’ head right off his shoulders. I could already feel my crazed energy giving way to fatigue, and I knew I couldn’t hold these Pin Holes open much longer. I should end him now, while I still could, for everything he’d made me do. “I just wanted to be left alone!”

  Andrews stared up at me, eyes blazing. If anyone deserved to die, he did. I’d killed so many people already, thanks to him, thanks to Todd’s Chroma, what difference would it make if I killed him too?

  Vivian. That’s the difference it would make. I didn’t have time to find the Chroma myself. If I killed Andrews, I killed any chance of saving Vivian. I’d told myself I wouldn’t let her die too. She was good people. I’d had all those noble thoughts of sacrificing myself to save her. But what was dying compared to vengeance?

  What was dying compared to losing everything I thought I believed in?

  Fuck. I lowered the hammer, released the Pin Holes. They snapped closed and stability took hold again. My hammer was a nightstick, looking pitiful despite the bloodstains that coated it. Another shiver passed through me, and I was me again, a slightly scrawny, unshaven guy with clothes that were now so stretched and ripped I’d have no chance of repairing them.

  As I let my connection to Heaven slip away, I knew I wouldn’t be able to punch open another Pin Hole like that, not without my usual Kemia and circle. The last of the Chroma drained slowly from me, and I slumped over, feeling like I was wearing a suit of lead. My forearm stung like all hell; I think a bullet had grazed me. I wanted to sleep, but I couldn’t. Not yet.

  “The Chroma, John. I’m taking it. All of it. You’re going to give me everything you have on your distributors and the suppliers you poached from Todd.”

  Andrews spat blood onto the floor. “What the fuck you do you think you are talki
ng about, Tunneler? Who is Todd?”

  “Don’t screw with me, John. I’m not in the mood.” I leaned against the piano for support. My body felt too heavy. “Detective Todd. The asshole who’s been running the Chroma racket.”

  “Ah,” Andrews said, nodding slowly, his eyes half-closed. “I remember the detective. I should have known he would be behind this. He was always difficult.”

  I frowned. Had the blow I’d given him knocked the sense clean out of his head? “Caterina told you about Todd. You sent your goons to clean him out and get your hands on his drug network.”

  “There, you are mistaken.” Another coughing fit shook him, and I waited with clenched fists for it to subside. Finally, he could speak again. “If I knew about your Todd, I would have sliced him into strips and fed him to my dogs. Perhaps you have me confused with someone else.”

  He threw back his head and laughed, clutching at his chest like every movement caused him agony.

  The son of a bitch was bluffing. He had to be. Todd was an asshole, but I couldn’t see him sending me off on this suicide mission and killing Vivian if he didn’t stand to gain. He was too deliberate, even when he was crazy as a cuckoo clock.

  I couldn’t afford to sit here puzzling this out. The only reason I’d got this far was because most of Andrews’ men and Tunnelers were out fighting around the city. If they came back…

  “You’re lying,” I said, doing my best to hide my uncertainty. “You’ve got it stashed somewhere, and you’re trying to stall me until your people get here. You’re going to tell me…” I grabbed him by the labels and jerked him forward. “…or I’m going to start playing xylophone with your ribs.”

  He grinned at me in a way that made me want to set fire to him right there. “I have no wish to die. I would tell you if I knew. This Chroma is a curse on the city. How can I manage my trade in a pile of ruins, hmmm?”