The Blood Ballet...Covenant Series, book six....
He feints in and ducks to the left swinging the ax up and over in an exaggerated arc, it connects with the bicycle chains wrapped around the tree trunk Seishan calls a wrist but only somewhat.
The big animal grunts and takes a step back as the ax comes away bloody.
Seishan tries a feint of his own and lunges, coming in like a clumsy school house bully. The lunge is easy to miss, a follow up comes in the form of turning the ax in his hand and dodging to the right and driving the point right into the big man’s shoulder blade.
He hears a satisfying grunt over the white noise right before a massive arm swings wide and connects with his left hip. The swing is wild but lacking the devastating power that could have come along with it. He has to drop to one knee and skid into the reception desk but he isn’t thrown wild, most of all, the blow didn’t damage those light emitting panels.
The ax though…
As weapons go, he largely became a one trick pony. The .45 is still in his room, he didn’t bring it along and hadn’t considered it for anything beyond its intended use at the end of the night.
Time to get mean.
Seishan comes around slow and sloppy, he tries to punch the air where his senses tell him a target should be and all he catches is a handful of drywall.
He stands up over by the desk and comes around behind the big animal and grabs at the handle of the ax still sticking out of Seishan’s back. He gets just enough purchase on the ax handle to make sure he won’t let go of it and he leaps, putting all his weight on the ax and his arms.
The sound that follows is loud enough to drown out the white noise. The ax pulls down and through pounds of meat, muscle, and sinew as it scraps along the back of rib bones like a xylophone. Seishan doesn’t grunt, he howls, he screams like a wild cat on fire and throws damn near five hundred pounds of force behind the last blind swing he’ll be making from his right side.
The swing connects with his legs, catching him up and sending him and the ax flying into the waiting area wall adjacent to the receptionist desk and the break room beyond.
There is a moment of lost consciousness, a second or two of winded moments trying to remember where the fuck he landed and just as important, where did the ax go?
He looks around through the suit’s goggles and notices the lack of crazy strobing lights, the lack of all-consuming white noise. He stands up and flicks his wrist and nothing happens, he reaches up and touches the spot over his collar bone and the room fills up once again with that white noise. He looks around for the ax and finds nothing until he notices most of one of the guards lying on the ground nearby. The guy had been torn nearly in half but he had a hatchet in a carry case on his hip, not the dime store gimmick most Triad carry to show they are true hatchet men, fuck no, a nice little chunk of heat forged steal.
He only barely manages to get a hold of it before Seishan is back up and suddenly grinning.
“No more lights for you, huh?”
The asshole’s English isn’t half bad, not nearly as bad as his video game, fighter get up.
There is still the girl, the Raveness to consider, he doesn’t turn the device up any further but he lets the suit amplify his words. “No more right arm, huh?”
Seishan winces and growls as he charges head long for the reception desk. No more lights to confuse that wired brain, only the damage to his right side to work with. He feints and lets the sharpness of the hatchet blade do the work for him as he draws it along the lets the bit catch in the big animal’s left thigh and around and down to the bicycle chain along his ankle.
Its massive damage, just like the gouge along Seishan’s back from the ax, but people augmented and trained for military service don’t die quick or easy. He’s careful to let the bit dig in and cut but also just as quick to pull it free as he tries to get behind the big animal for a more meaningful follow through.
None doing. No wide animalistic swings this time. Without the lights to confuse him, Seishan’s wetwires are able to do more of the thinking for him. The big animal falters and lands hard on his left knee but his left hand comes around and grabs nimbly at an exposed leg.
Suddenly the tables are turned and he’s off his feet, splayed out on his back with a sweaty, bloody animal turning around and dropping down on top of him.
The cheap carpeting sounds like someone stepping on a sopping wet bath matt. Someone needs to come along and clean the abattoir floor. He can feel a hot flood of the stuff spill over his legs as the big animal starts to straddle him. A giant fist rises up and comes into view before the goggles of the suit get splayed out on either side of his face. He nose is most certainly broken and he can taste blood, there’s no doubt that his front teeth won’t survive a second punch.
The hatchet. Its still locked in his hand.
He waits for the next punch, the death blow to come down and he drives the hatchet upward and lets the tip of the bit catch above Seishan’s collar bone. The big animal was already bearing down to drive his fist home but those wet wires do their job. The bit sinks into tender flesh but the big animal lurches up and brings his remaining good hand into play, curling fingers around the sharp blade and nearly losing two of them in order to yank the thing free from his stubborn grasp.
He sees that the bicycle chain, the one he brought his ax into play against on that first swing is loose on the wrist of the wet hand busily cutting itself to ribbons to force the hatchet out of his hand. He lets go of one prize in order to gain another as he brings his other hand into play.
No amount of wiring overcomes the reptilian senses. Nothing will keep you in the fire. Nothing will hold you still when someone is trying to turn your testicles into pudding either. He pushes his off hand down to his waste and into the nearly air tight gap between him and the animal above. He doesn’t get squeamish when he locks his hand around his target and he gives no quarter when he squeezes as though his life depends on it.
Seishan makes a noise rather unlike anything uttered before, neither howl or scream, not quite yelp or mere call for assistance. The big animal, having just managed to pull a hatchet, blade first, away from his prey thing finds himself in immediate need of evacuating the area and he attempts to do so.
The big animal in that need to flee forgets the blade in his grasp as he pulls up and away from the fresh agony in his loins. Seishan’s left leg is slow to respond and he’s only half as capable as usual of responding to the need to stand. Worse yet he draws his one remaining good hand away from the nasty, red suited menace and finds that two of the fingers on that hand are cut open and unresponsive.
Seishan is like a massive, torpedoed battle ship, fire crews are reporting damage faster than the helm can respond and everyone onboard knows this is the last voyage.
He watches Seishan growing sluggish and sees him spilling out in hot splashes all over the place. He keeps the hatchet in his grasp and tries to bring it up to use it again only to have the big animal bat it out of his grasp like a cat growing tired of its toy.
Instead of retreating the big animal lifts up and lands down again, pinning that noisome hand between his mass and his prey and he brings that now freely bleeding good hand into play one last time. Seishan wraps his hand around the suited menaces throat and squeezes.
There isn’t much sense in it, but there isn’t much sense in anything anymore. He unwraps the bicycle chain from around Seishan’s wrist as the big animal’s fingers reach around and dig into his throat. He even manages to untangle the chain and gets it free as he begins to see stars.
He pushes and pulls as he feels the air leaving his lungs for the last time. He knows he has unfinished business. Pak Wei is still alive, this can’t be how he ends, not yet. He flicks the wrist now being crushed between them and the suit thankfully erupts once again in that wild, distracting pattern of light.
The big animal still straddling him grunts in disgust and pushes even harder until a hot shower of blood rushes over his left shoulder followed by a pained grunt.
He sees the handle of the hatchet sticking out of the back of Sheishan’s skull. The girl, the Raveness, managed to get on her feet and she must have noticed the hatchet. She should have found the ax, even then, there’s no telling when the big animal will finally wind down and let the damage catch up.
Seishan tries to turn and stand but slips in his own blood threatening to land back down on top of him. The big animal only barely manages to stay upright and pulls up groaning at the wound running along his leg.
He takes that moment to push away from Seishan and starts looking around for his ax when he sees the big animal reach around and pull the hatchet from the back of his skull. The girl, the Raveness, she’s on the other side of all that bloody meat and whether she knows it or not, she’s well within striking range.
He comes up as fast as he can and not a moment too soon, Seishan is already raising the hatchet. He takes the bike chain that was wrapped around Seishan’s wrist and throws it over his head. He has to jump to get the chain over Seishan’s head and he barely gets a good grasp on both sides of the chain before the big animal is already dropping the hatchet and reaching with his good hand to pull him off.
He kicks at the big animal’s wounded leg, hitting the back of the knee twice before finally kicking into the open wound running along the lower thigh. Seishan isn’t distracted but he does land on his knees, leveling the playing field and giving him more purchase. Purchase that becomes meaningless as Seishan gets ahold of his left arm and twists.
The agony is immediate, he lets go of the chain with that hand and doesn’t try to fight as the animal yanks. The arm isn’t broken but he can feel his shoulder as it gets yanked out of socket.
The Raveness comes in with a chair from the waiting room and catches Seishan clean in the face. Another low grunt and his arm is let go before it becomes more than just disjointed.
She pulls back to take a second swing but the chair is already broken apart and is little more than a padded seat with a few twisted pieces of metal around it.
Seishan takes a moment to laugh, his bottom lip is split open and his left eye is stuck shut but he laughs at the Raveness. “Is that all you got?”
She throws the remains of the chair and howls, “Why don’t you just die already?”
The big animal shrugs and starts to speak, no doubt he has some insult at the ready, fuck that, and fuck him. He still has one good arm and his trusty ax was resting against the reception desk the whole time just waiting for him. He has to bring his swing back from somewhere in the eighth grade but he brings it forward and drives it home.
The fireman’s ax makes a perfect and much deeper vertical cut to match the hatchet’s earlier horizontal work. Still the big animal has time to register the blow, to let it well…sink in.
There is a fireman’s ax buried bit deep in his thick head and Seishan still finds one last ugly leer to wear. He spits blood and looks at the Raveness instead of worrying about the suited freak who managed to deliver that final blow. “Took two of you…freaks, playing dirty to kill me. I…still killed that fucking bird.”
The Raveness’ eyes grow wide and her mouth opens in an ugly howl. She punches the nearly dead animal right in his good eye, then again when her first punch doesn’t shut him up completely. The third punch sounds like someone tenderizing a steak, the fourth, fifth and sixth sound like someone punching a bucket of wet cement.
He doesn’t try to say anything until punch eight and nine. Seishan is still resting on his knees, he’s good and truly dead, finally, but those wetwires aren’t going to just let him fall down, not on their watch.