Firedrake Chapter 23

The afterimages of the purple flash were still rebounding from the walls as Drake dropped his pretzel onto the coated metal mesh of the table and stood. His wings flared a bit and then he tucked them in against his back once more. Shaking his head sadly, he turned in the direction from which the light had come. The vibrant purple color had not been a mark of a photographic strobe or anything similar, and the only thing Drake could surmise as that it was the ability of a booster.

“Sala, stay with the kid,” he said.

“What’s going on?” Harry asked. He was leaning in his chair and craning his neck in an attempt to peer past the frame of the reptilian booster.

“My vacation’s going straight down the crapper, that’s what,” Drake groused as he marched away from the tables. Ahead of him, he could hear the sounds of breaking glass and clanging metal, and he picked up his pace somewhat. Whatever was going on, it was not going to be good.

A pair of mall security officers sprinted past him, both en route to the disturbance, and neither one paid him any attention whatsoever. Their radios were crackling with calls for assistance. Around him Drake noticed several stores sliding closed the metal grates that sealed off their shops. Many still had customers inside, and he nodded as he noticed employees shuttling them to the rear of each store.

He continued on, ignoring the rumbling of his stomach as he passed by Schnitzel-on-a-stick and the scent of the cooking meat tantalized his nostrils. His pace quickened as he began to hear shouted commands - most likely from the security officers, he mused - and a series of curses snarled in response. He broke into a full run as yet another purple flash lit the mall. It was from a section around the nearest corridor, and rather than deal with skidding to a stop, Drake simply launched himself into the air and unfurled his leathery wings. They snapped out and bit into the air as he banked sharply and turned the corner.

The mall corridor was a shambles. A wooden bench, fitted with cast iron supports that bolted it to the floor, had been ripped free of its moorings and lay shattered on the imitation marble tiles beside the unconscious body of an elderly woman Drake had seen ‘power-walking’ past his group as they entered. A vending machine lay on one side, spewing its contents across the floor in sporadic belches of twelve ounce cans. A rack of clothing had been torn from its store, and fashionable blouses lay scattered across the floor in bright patterns. The bent frame of a mall directory sagged on its supports, flapping back and forth slowly.

In the middle of it all stood a man in a classic boxers’ ready-stance, his fists cocked and held before him as he stared into the depths of the clothing store. His faded Levi’s jeans were stretched tightly over heavy leg muscles and a lightweight leather jacket covered his torso. The two security officers were still shouting orders for the man to surrender, but he seemed to pay them no heed. Drake settled to the ground, resuming his walk toward the group as he studied the man. His eyes widened in sudden recognition.

“Retribution!” Drake shouted. The man’s attention changed from the clothing store to the immense wall of emerald muscle that was moving toward him.

“Ah, shit,” cursed the man. He waved a dismissing hand toward Drake before turning back to the store. “Not you. Not now,” he added. It sounded like a plea as much as a demand.

“Yes, now, slick,” Drake said. He reached behind him with his left hand, angling for his cuff pouch.

“Piss off, lizard. This one’s mine,” announced a voice from within the store. It was a woman’s voice, but seemed to hold as much femininity as Drake himself. His gaze turned to regard her as she stepped from within the store. She wore black leather pants and matching knee-length boots with sharp, gleaming spurs. A sleeveless tunic of silvery chain mail covered her torso atop a grey blouse that looked to be heavy silk. At her left hip was sheathed a longsword with a wide crosspiece. The hilt was not adorned, but the sheath had a row of what looked to be rubies running the length of it. Glittering blue eyes glared at Drake from within a face sharp as the edge of a hatchet, their ferocity matched by the severity of her razor-cut flattop hairstyle.

“Bounty hunter?” Drake guessed, knowing that many boosters had taken to the field. Their abilities made it pitifully easy to retrieve normal bail-jumpers, but none save a booster had much chance to track and apprehend another of their kind.

“As if,” the woman scoffed. She raised her left hand, concealed within the folds of a studded black leather gauntlet, and pointed at Drake. “You stay back, Barney, else me and you gonna have words,” she declared in frosty tones.

Drake began to snap back with a witticism of his own, but a new voice cut him off and his expression fell.

“He’s not Barney! He’s my brother!” shouted Monster. He stepped up to a position beside Drake, standing with his hands on his hips and glaring defiantly at the armor-clad woman.

“What are you doing?” Drake asked Monster, laying a hand on his brother’s shoulder.

“I came to help you,” Monster said proudly.

“Tried to stop him,” Sala reported. She was standing behind the younger Drake, slowly shaking her head.

“Yeah. Like you could,” Drake said with a knowing nod. When Monster decided to do something, very little could stop him, and certainly not someone who did not want to harm him in the process. “Just stay there, little bro, and keep quiet,” he urged.

“You best tell your brother stop stickin’ his green nose where it don‘t belong,” the woman said, lips peeling back in a feral grin. “Less he wants my foot in his ass.”

“You’re a potty mouth,” Monster taunted, sticking out his tongue.

“And you’re -” the woman began, but let the phrase trail off as she snapped her gaze back to Retribution. The big booster was slowly backing away from the scene, and had already put an additional twenty feet between himself and the woman.

“Had your chance,” she grunted. She lunged forward, leaping from the ground as she closed and feinted a left jab. As Retribution raised a hand to block, her left leg snapped forward and connected just below the man’s chin. The solid smacking sound echoed from the walls. Retribution was lifted from the floor by the force, sailing backward until he crashed into the wall behind him. Concrete cracked and dust puffed from the impact site. The two security officers dived aside as the woman walked calmly across the floor toward the downed booster.

“Federal Agent,” Drake announced, stepping forward. He held one hand behind him, applying pressure against Monster’s chest to keep the youth in place. “You’re under arrest.”

At his side, Monster cheered and waved his arms over his head. Drake sighed, knowing it was never as easy as the television made his brother believe it to be. As expected, the woman turned her attention to him. She stood in a low crouch, facing the floor but with her head tilted up so that when she looked at him, the expression was one of pure malice.

“You still look stupid, cop,” she said, peering up at him. She flicked a finger out, indicating Sala. “This your girlfriend? Bitch forget her armor today?”

Drake stopped, puzzled. “I know you from somewhere?” he asked. The woman snorted.

“Smart one, ain’t ya? Try Texas. You and the Tin Woman there, grubbin’ around in the dirt like rats? Lookin’ for your Hell-spawned toys? Sound familiar?”

Drake remembered the images, blurred though they were, of the man with the charismatic voice that had tried to talk to Soundstage alongside the road in Austin. There had been two others with him, and one was about the right height for this woman.

“Who are you?” he asked, trying to forestall her slow, measured approach long enough to put his own bulk between her and his two companions.

“Not your problem,” the woman said, smashing a fist straight down into the floor. The tile before her shattered into a half-dozen pieces, each nearly a foot wide and easily two inches thick. She hefted one in her gauntleted left hand and grinned, then spun on one heel and launched it in a whistling arc. The stone slammed into the chest of Retribution as the man began to rise from the floor. His grunt of pain was lost in the explosive rush of air being forced from his lungs.

“I’m here for this ass-wipe, pig,” the woman said. She did not even look at Drake as she headed once more toward Retribution. “Done told you, stay out, less you wanna get bloody.”

“I’ve been bloody before,” Drake said. “And that dumbass is a Federal fugitive. I can’t let you have him.”

“Your call,” The woman said as she turned. Her head quirked to the side and her features split around another fearsome grin. Without another word, she launched into a sprint toward Drake. Her sheathed sword seemed to be no impediment to her progress, staying in its position as though it was glued to her. She leaped free of the ground, jumping toward Drake in a straightforward flying kick.

Enormous green hands slapped shut on either side of her outstretched left leg, yellowed claws leaving gouges in the immaculately-polished leather of the boots. Drake twisted at the waist, using the woman’s own momentum to throw her past him. She cannoned into a cart of fake silver jewelry, sending glittering trinkets flying as she blasted through the flimsy walls of the cart and hit the ground, skidding across the floor with a shriek of tortured leather.

“Yay, Francis!” Monster cheered again. He pointed one meaty finger at the scaled figure. “That’s my brother!” he yelled, looking at the people who were watching from within the safety of their closed shops. Sala placed a gently restraining hand on his shoulder to calm him.

The armored woman stood, licking her lips as she grinned again. “Oh, yeah. This is gonna be fun,” she said with a quiet laugh. She clenched her hands together, cracking all her knuckles in a barrage of sound. Her boots squeaked once as she powered into a run once more. “Gonna tear you a new one!”

“I’m kinda used to the old one,” Drake replied. He lowered himself slightly, watching her approach. He stretched out his arms, bracing himself for the impact to come.

“Then this is gonna hurt,” the woman promised. She dropped to the floor as Drake swept his arms together to catch her, passing under the immense scaled hands with room to spare, and snapped a solid right fist into the side of his left knee.

Drake howled as the leg buckled beneath him and he dropped to the floor. The woman leaped to her feet behind him and drew back her fist to strike the back of his head.

“Leave my brother alone!” Monster shouted, taking a step forward and grabbing the raised arm. He pulled the woman off her feet and held her off the ground as he looked into her eyes. Something there sent a visible shiver down his spine.

“Put me down, asshole!” the woman cried. She could not free her hand from his powerful grasp. Her other hand whipped out and landed with a solid thunk of sound across the tip of his nose. Blood spurted and Monster yelped in pain, dropping the woman as both hands involuntarily went to his injured face. She landed easily on her feet and pistoned a kick into the heavy torso of the younger Drake brother. Off-balance, he was sent backward, to crash into the lowered gate of a bookstore. The metal groaned and squealed in protest as his bulk forced it against its supports. Monster was crying, and when he raised his eyes to look at her, the woman was laughing at him.

“Ain’t every day I get to beat on a retard,” she taunted. She made a beckoning gesture with her gloved hand. “Come get some, dummy.”

A heavy hand slapped down on her shoulder, nearly bringing her to her knees with ferocious strength. Sharp talons bit into the links of her mail vest and pulled away, shredding the material as though it were no more than paper. A second hand landed on top of her head, fingers splayed wide to lay the brutal claws across her face. They pressed with just enough force to let the woman know they could do to her what they had done to the mail.

“Nobody calls my brother a dummy,” Drake growled from behind her. He turned his left hand and pulled downward against the woman’s skull, forcing her to move with it or suffer a broken neck. As she dropped to the floor, Drake moved with her, planting her face on the tile. He leaned down to whisper into her ear.

“This is you and me. Touch him again and all bets are off,” he said, releasing his grasp.

“You can kiss my ass, Dino!” the woman spat, wriggling backward and out of Drake’s reach. She rolled quickly to her feet and dropped into a fighting stance once more. Gone was the grin that had presaged her comments about the fight being fun. She moved now with a fluid, predatory manner that left little doubt that she had not pushed herself to pull off the feats she had already accomplished. Without taking her eyes off Drake, she swiveled one arm to point at Monster.

“Ain’t through with you neither, ‘tard,” she said.

“What about him? You through with him?” Sala asked suddenly, pointing a finger of her own. The battered figure of Retribution was on his feet now, and glaring balefully at the entire group. His eyes were lit with a violet radiance as he stalked toward them.

“Son of a bitch,” the woman snarled, spinning in place to face him. Laughing past bloody lips, Retribution blinked.

The area was lit with a flash as the purple energy bolts slammed into the woman, both striking her in the ribcage. She was flung backward by the blast and Drake half-turned to see where she ended up. The move saved him, as the next bolt whizzed past where his head had been only a second before. Impacting with a smoky roar, it blew a chunk of stone away from the front of a Chinese restaurant. Drake ducked instinctively. Fragments of stone began to patter down with a series of clattering sounds.

Silently cursing himself for letting down his guard, Drake threw himself to his left in a shoulder roll. Another of the purple bolts ripped the floor apart in his wake. He remembered the one that had hit his leg in the hotel room in Seattle and had no desire to be the recipient of another. He rolled into a position of cover behind the stone walls of an enormous planter, and shook his head, gritting his teeth at the situation. Innocent lives were at risk every second that the geneboosters flexed their muscles in the mall, and somehow he doubted that either of the other two would be willing to just walk away from the scene. Still, he owed it to the people hiding nearby to try. He had found the man before and he could do it again.

A clanging noise caught his ears, followed by a muffled curse. He risked poking his head up from behind the planter to see Retribution on his knees, shaking his head. A severely dented trash can was slowly rolling away from the man. Drake glanced up to see a group of civilians on the second deck exchanging high-fives. They had obviously thrown the object.

“You people move!” he ordered, scrambling out from behind the planter. Retribution was already swiveling his own gaze toward the ceiling, and his eyes were glowing.

A trio of gunshots, so close together that they sounded almost like a single blast, rang out and Retribution spun with the force of the impacts. His power bolt went off, sizzling through the air and exploding a skylight instead of its intended target. He clutched at his shoulder, where smoking holes in his jacket indicated the locations of the shots.

“Next one goes in your head,” Sala declared. The woman stood between Retribution and Monster, pistol held tightly in her unwavering grasp.

“Sala! Get Monster and get out,” Drake called, leaping over the planter. He hit hard and his left leg swayed. A grimace of pain crossed his features. The bodyguard looked at him with an expression of concern. In the second that her attention was diverted, Retribution blinked again, and a hissing blast struck Sala in the chest, lifting her off her feet and smashing her into Monster, who was still kneeling on the floor and pressing his fingers to his bloodied nose.

Cursing, Drake angled toward the fallen Sala, drawing a pistol as he went. He knew from its position that this one was loaded with explosive rounds. It filled his hand and he raised it to cover Retribution. The purple glow vanished suddenly as the man’s eyes snapped wide open. Before Drake even had time to wonder about that, he was hit hard from behind. A booted foot crashed into his spine, just above his tail, and three lightning-quick fists hit him at the juncture of his wings and back. The pistol hit the floor and skittered away.

“Didn’t think I was through with you, did you?” the mail-clad woman asked as she grabbed the leading edge of one of his wings. She pulled it out a bit from his back and smashed a hammer-blow into the bony substructure supporting the wing. Drake roared in sudden pain, the volume of his bellow enough to rattle nearby windows, and spun, trying to reach behind himself and grab the woman. She was quick, though, and maintained her position long enough to strike the same place twice more. Each one was more agonizing than the one before it, and Drake’s teeth snapped shut with a clashing sound as he tried to force back the torment. The woman jumped onto him, wrapping her arms around his muscular frame, and put her knees to work battering his ribs.

“You hurt Sala!” Monster cried, standing from his position. His bloody nose forgotten, he marched toward Retribution. “You’re a bad man.”

“You’re damned skippy,” Retribution snapped back, turning to regard this newest threat. His eyes were glowing once again, but the glow faded as he looked on the rounded features of Monster’s face. “So what’s the deal with you, kid? You some kinda hero groupie or something?”

“I’m a ninja,” Monster replied, tapping with the forefinger of his left hand at the curious headband he wore. Retribution began to laugh at the image.

The uppercut took him below the chin, in almost exactly the same place that the woman had landed her kick earlier. The level of force exerted by Monster, however, was markedly different. Retribution went airborne, arcing backward in a none-too-graceful spiral. He crashed through the safety railing of the upper deck, steel bars simply tearing away as his body was blasted through them. They disturbed his flight path and he continued through the front glass of a music store, exploding in a cloud of blue and red escaping gas the neon sign that had proclaimed it to be DC’s CD’s. Racks of compact discs scattered as he tumbled through the main portion of the store.

“Great. He ruined my jacket,” Sala gasped, fighting to take a breath as she lay on the floor. The blast of energy had ravaged the front of her coat, exposing the grey tones of Kevlar plating inside the leather. She staggered to her feet to see Monster dancing happily in place, obviously elated with his victory. Not far away, Drake shook off the clinging form of the woman in chain mail, and then sagged to the floor, reaching behind himself to clutch at his left wing. The woman rolled easily to her feet, wiping a hand across her lips as she caught sight of the younger Drake brother. Her hand drifted to the hilt of her sword.

“Not today,” Sala said, stepping between the two. “You want him, you go through me.”

“Easy meat, sweetheart,” the woman said. She slapped out with her left hand, and Sala batted it away. The right leg was in motion as well, rising from the floor in a rapid snap-kick aimed at Sala’s abdomen. Sala never looked directly at the leg as she slammed her left hand down and blocked it. Her knuckles cracked across the shin of the woman, and the sound echoed. The woman retracted the leg, reaching down to massage it as Sala shook out her hand.

“Nice block,” said the woman as her eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Nice kick,” Sala responded, flexing her hand.

The two women looked at each other with a newfound respect. They slowly circled counter-clockwise, each watching for any sign that the other was about to move.

A bolt of violet energy smashed the floor beside Drake, showering him with particles of stone. He glanced up to see Retribution in a power dive, fists outstretched and eyes glowing yet again. There was an ugly bruise forming beneath his chin and blood had begun to stream from it down onto his chest.

“Yeah, that’s gonna hurt in the morning,” Drake said. He jumped from the ground, flaring his wings. The move brought a pain from the tortured wing so intense that Drake felt nauseated. He gritted his teeth and pushed past the searing agony, intent on ending the battle quickly. He drew back his left hand, spreading the claws wide in an obvious show. He was aware of distant cheers from the onlookers, and more than one photo-flash went off as the two fighters closed in such a dramatic fashion.

On the ground, the woman took a sudden half-step forward, lashing out with her right hand in a vicious cross-body chop. Sala threw her upper body forward, allowing the hand to pass harmlessly beneath her breasts, then leaped forward, bringing the top of her head up to crash into the woman’s face. She felt the nose give and as she followed through with the powerful strike, she saw a fine mist of blood erupt from the woman’s face.

“That’s for Monster,” Sala said, rocking back on her feet. “Now you’re even.”

“I don’t get even, norm. I get worse,” the woman replied. Her mouth and chin were covered in blood but she made no move to clear them. She braced and fired off a fast left jab. Her eyes widened as Sala reached out and intercepted the attack with an open hand.

“Who said I was a norm?” the bodyguard asked, chuckling quietly. She released the fist and dropped back to a receptive pose, content to simply wait for the next attack.

Drake and Retribution met in midair in a flurry of fists and claws, each hammering the other relentlessly even as they battled to stay aloft. It was in this kind of close combat that Drake had the advantage, even though his opponent might be stronger. His armored hide could ward off many of the blows that would leave others down and writhing in pain, while his clawed hands and feet could shred the defenses of his foe.

“You piss me off, slick, you know that?” Drake grunted as Retribution landed a solid blow to his left flank. He countered with a wicked head butt that further punished the already damaged chin of the man. Scales ripped at the flesh there. Enraged, Retribution threw his will into the effort of flight, powering the pair directly into the floor with a resounding crash. Drake yelped as he was driven hard into the tiles.

“Feeling’s mutual,” Retribution snapped, bringing his right elbow around in a strike that broke two of Drake’s teeth and shredded his lower lip.

“The police are on their way!” yelled one of the security officers. He and his partner had retreated to a position of relative safety, huddled behind one of the enormous pillars that supported the second floor. On the ground at their feet was the unconscious mall-walker, the pair having risked themselves to drag her clear of the war that raged around them. His words had no effect on the fighters themselves, but seemed to make the spectators relax a bit.

Monster witnessed his brother slammed into the ground and his breath left him in a gasp of sudden shock. A dark look came over him and he ran toward the pair of fighters, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. As he passed the pair of Sala and the woman she fought, the slender woman in mail jumped up, driving a powerful side kick into his left side and sending him tumbling. He fell to the floor and slid on the scattered jewelry from earlier.

“My turn,” Sala declared as she drove her left fist into the woman’s midriff. Metal links folded around her hand but were not enough protection to prevent the blow from doubling the woman over in shock. Snarling, the woman grabbed at Sala’s wrist and flexed it outward and down, then brought her own forearm down on the exposed elbow to break the joint. As she did so, Sala dropped to the ground and rolled, freeing the trapped arm and pushing forward to take the blow on her upper arm.

“Wish you had that fancy armor now, huh, bitch?” the woman asked, backing away a step. Her left arm was wrapped protectively across her abdomen. Sala was rubbing at her own arm.

“You got the wrong gal, chica,” Sala replied. “Heard the story. You’re talking about Soundstage. That ain’t me.”

“Yeah? So who are you?”

“Why? You writing a book?” Sala taunted, stepping in close and launching into a rapid series of punches. The woman blocked some and evaded others with weaving, twisting movements. One grazed off her ribs, rattling the mail but doing little damage.

“I like to know who I’m killing,” said the woman, moving in with attacks of her own. They came in a flurry so quick that Sala was forced to backpedal as she parried them away with her hands and arms. A trio of side snap kicks battered at the upper left arm. Sala made no attempts to stop them, merely grunting as each strike landed.

“Dialogue like that, you’re killing everybody,” she said, whipping her hand up as the third kick landed. She gripped the ankle of the heavy boot and powered her fist upward, striking at the nerves inside the thigh just above the knee joint. The woman jumped free of the ground, bringing the leg she had been standing on around in an arc to crash into the side of Sala’s head, sending the bodyguard to the floor in a heap.

Retribution slammed his elbow into Drake’s mouth again, managing to break off another of the gleaming teeth. Drake saw the attack coming and let his neck go limp to roll with the hit and then quickly snapped his mouth open and shut, trapping the limb within the steely grip of his jaws. As he had in the hotel room where he had first encountered Retribution, Drake found himself savagely jerking his head back and forth as he bit down. The arm popped and cracked at the shoulder joint.

Bringing a knee up as hard as he could into Drake’s groin, Retribution felt the impact drive the reptilian booster deeper into the floor. Drake winked in response, never releasing the arm he held in his mouth but easily letting the man know the attack had not accomplished its purpose. The criminal’s eyes lit up with the telltale violet glow of his energy weapon and Drake hammered a right cross into his jaw, knocking the man off him and sending the power bolt careening down the mall corridor to punch a hole through the steel mesh covering the doorway of a storefront. The inventory of It’s Only a Buck! was blasted into the air, much of it erupting into flame as the ravening energy consumed the cheaply-made trinkets.

“Great. The one place I can afford to shop…” Drake quipped, struggling back to his feet. He was aching all over again, and a part of him wondered whether or not there was ever any time in his life when he was not in some kind of pain. Certainly those periods were few and far between.

Monster rose from the rubble of the jewelry cart, clutching a foot-long piece of the collapsible metal frame in one large hand. He drew back his arm and brought it forward in a sidelong sweep. The tubular bar, open at both ends, made a sharp whistling sound as Monster threw it full-force at the exposed back of the woman standing over Sala’s crumpled form. It landed side-on in the center of her spine, the tube flattening against the metal links of her mail. The force of the throw knocked the woman forward, sending her stumbling across the tiles as one hand went automatically up to her back. She ended up by slamming face-first into the same metal grate of the bookstore where her previous kick had landed Monster.

“Sala!” he cried, feet thundering as he sprinted back to her side. He reached down to touch her and her eyelids fluttered open. She grinned to let him know it was not as bad as it seemed.

“Girl hits hard,” she observed, shaking her head and instantly wishing she had not.

“Gonna hit harder now,” declared the woman, pulling herself free of the crippled metal curtain. There was a sharp ringing sound as she drew the lengthy blade from her hip. Fluorescent shop lighting gleamed off the three feet of naked steel as the woman drew it up and into an en-garde position before her face. “Harder and deeper, skag.”

Sala’s hand dipped automatically for her hip in a gesture brought on by years of practice drawing the heavy automatic, but the weapon was not there.

Retribution climbed slowly to his feet and glared at Drake. Blood ran in thin streams from his mangled arm to patter softly on the floor. “I’m getting out of here, pal, even if I‘ve gotta take you and everybody else with me,” he said.

“Trust me, slick. Mood I’m in, you don’t wanna take me anywhere,” Drake replied. He lifted a hand and used the tip of a claw to probe at his mouth, noting that one of the broken teeth was one that had only recently regrown following the battle with Onslaught.

From outside the mall came the sounds of approaching sirens. Considering that they were audible above the cheering of the citizens, the screams of the terrified and the cries of the wounded, Drake estimated that they were close indeed. He tried to put on an air of smugness, but inside he knew that their arrival actually did little more than increase the number of potential victims.