Carnage (Remastered) Read Free

greatest dance yet, he couldn't do it
without music. Silently, he thanked Kat for teaching him the trick
and used a small spark of Reigh to slave the audio-out to his own
eardrum.
    Jeans and a tee-shirt wouldn't do for this
kind of fight. And the black lion on his chest might give something
away he didn't want out there. The New York Comic Con wasn't for
another four months but the night felt like a good one to wear a
costume. Around him he wove something he'd been working on. A cloak
of living shadow that covered him from head to toe in slowly
swirling darkness but for a pair of glowing red eyes. Something to
scare the kids with.
    Below, the commander was trying to hail the
perimeter guards on her orator. One of her scouts had not re-turned
when she gave the order. The commander was beginning to realize
that they would not answer. She was getting ready to order her
people to pull out. Too late. The Knight had finished crunching the
numbers. He was ready.
    Thumbing the MP3 to shuffle, the Knight
leapt from the girder. Johnny Cash's weighty gravel spoke into his
ear.
    And I heard as it were a noise of
thunder.
    Fire bloomed all around the commander and
her group. Not hot enough to burn through their shields. Just
enough to mess with night vision and mark their position for the
other groups. Before any of them could react, he was there, among
them, close enough to smell the stink of sudden terror that rose
off their bodies. The light haired commander was his target. Take
her out and the rest would be slow to change tactics, too slow.
While she was still trying to draw her sword or fire a spell to
hold him off, the Knight put his hand on the small woman's chest. A
single cord of air broke past her shield and expanded in her heart.
The mass of muscle and blood exploded. He was moving before she
knew she was dead.
    There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
    Breaking right he slipped through the
remaining Hunters of the commander's group. They were still trying
to react to his attack. To his eyes the four soldiers moved as if
in slow motion. The other groups reacted faster. The Knight got out
of range a split second before they were torn apart by bolts of
lightning, balls of fire and bars of light. The music did not cover
the sound of their screams.
    The hairs on your arm will stand up.
    Ozone tickled the Knight's nose and sparks
of power began to crackle as the air grew heavy under the weight of
magic. Spells followed him as somebody tracked his movements. But
he wasn't the only thing they were chasing. He'd sent decoy shadow
cloaks flying to his left and to his six. Split their attention,
split their power.
    Will you disappear into the potter's
ground?
    The Knight hit the next group like a
bulldozer. The shield he wove ahead of him was strong enough to
block their fire for the seconds it took to get among them. Bars of
saffron light lanced from his palms and streaked as he swung them
like swords, cutting down the second group of five. Again, he was
gone before the last began to fall.
    When the man comes around.
    Forward this time, he ran, chased by the
strikes of lightning and the crashes of explosions. Two especially
loud explosions told him the surprises he had hidden in the decoys
had triggered. Spells of earth and fire that dug into the ground
and exploded, sending flaming shrapnel in every direction. Flying
land mines.
    Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.
    The third group saw him coming. The Knight
had to dance and dodge his way through a hail of destructive spells
to get to them. No time for anything smooth, the other groups were
starting to get a bead on him. He wasn't a good enough dancer to
dodge fire from so many directions at once. Not for long. He had to
take out the whole cluster in one shot. Fire, lightning, air and
earth compressed into a volatile ball. The knight threw it into the
center of the group like a grenade as he flew past. It exploded
into a ten foot orange sphere of chaotic heat and energy. The