3. It Continues

The stranger blew a hole in Carlyle's skull, and yet the devils cackle from his remains. Is he alive? Or is he something more sinister, like the undead...

Screams tore through the night as the witnesses saw what came next. It is one thing to know that your leader is a sorcerer, maybe a demon or immortal.  It is another thing altogether to witness the power of the devil firsthand. Very few of the club members were alive the last time a scene like this played out.  Spec, and a few of the elders had.  But not many.

Suddenly bright flashes of pistol fire erupted from the tumble of flesh that should have been the bossman’s back. The light was so bright, it caused the spectators to shield their eyes.  

The stranger sidestepped, fast as blinking, dodging the iron that whizzed by.  Explosions erupted from behind him as the bossman’s magic projectiles struck the building and ruptured lanterns and ill-placed boxes of dynamite.  Many of the buildings caught fire.  And a great many of the club’s members scattered, terrified of their leader’s black magic.

The shooting ceased.  The smoking heap of the bossman’s body levitated quickly into the air and caught fire.  First a terrible black flame.  Then a deep red.  In the center of the fountain there was a sculpture of an angel with broken wings standing upon something charred and blackened.  The preternatural flames cast weird shadows all around and it seemed that there were demons dancing on the dirt floor and walls.  

Soon, the deep red flame puffed out in a cloud of smoke.  And from the smoke stepped the bossman, good as new, clean shaven and wearing a fresh batch of black clothes.  His hair was neatly greased and combed backward.  He looked fresh and unscathed, and more ready for a ball than a battle.  He held his wide brimmed hat in his hands and that wild shark’s grin.  He was still laughing the hundred demon laugh.

The stranger, throughout the entire display never fazed. He was, himself, unscathed. When the bossman stepped out of the smoke, he simply spat unto the ground and prepared himself. He ejected the expended magazine cartridge, dug into his dusty pocket for another, and reloaded his weapon.  He pulled the lever and readied the next round into chamber of the big gun.  He tapped his trigger finger on the chrome of the weapon and smiled grimly.

“Well, brother,” said the bossman.  That was fun for a first round" don’t you think?  No?”  

The bossman scowled. He turned to look around him.  He took in the sight of the burning buildings that scared off the darkness and lit the square.  He took in the sight of the remaining onlookers. Those that remained were the elders.  There were less than half of the club.

“I want you to cheer, maggots!” The bossman shouted.  “Cheer for your master.”

There was an uneasy noise from the onlookers.   It did not sound like a cheer.  Rather, it sounded like a hopeless, almost ineffable exclamation from the damned.

“Impressive,” said the stranger softly.  “It must be hard to find good help these days.  Ey, Carlyle?”

The bossman turned to the stranger. “F**k them.  Maybe these cats don’t have a spine. But what does that matter?  They’ll kill and f**k just about anything and anyone I tell them.  So you see?  That’s power. None of the “to wield magick in the service of man and protect him from darkness” bullshit the old man used to preach us. In the end what did all that malarkey get him or you? The old man is dead and you walked away from the Eternal for a stupid woman.  You should have kept her for a side squeeze. But you had to up and marry the b***h.  You should have kept the truth from that stupid shaman. But you couldn’t could you? You just couldn’t.”

“Master had plenty of complaints about you, Carlyle,” the stranger said shaking his head solemnly, “and I always defended you.  Right until the end, when the devil in you reared its ugly head and you got yourself banished. Master knew from the start that you were greedy, selfish, and cruel.  But you know, he never complained about your intelligence.  I think he was wrong about that.  I think you’re a moron.” 

The flames from the surrounding buildings danced; the shadows pooled in the grooves of the bossman’s face, revealing a livid scowl, pregnant with hate.

The two men began pacing around each other in a wide circle.  As sharks circle a boat that chums the water with blood.  And here, the blood between them was the boiling of deep seeded loathing.

“Was it worth it, Bruce?”  The bossman said in a low growl.  “You’re calling me a moron, but you’re the one that took that b***h for a wife and lost your chance at the Eternal. You could have come with me and lived forever.”

The stranger smiled a dark smile, “It was worth it, Carlyle.  It’s something you will never understand.” 

“This is a waste of time.  You can’t kill me.  I can’t die.”

“Oh, is that so?”

The bossman and the stranger quit their spinning dance and stood facing one another.  The bossman combed an arm through the half of his coat, exposing the gun on his hip, and tucked the black cloth behind his belt. The gun was silver and glinted in the splashes of firelight.

The bossman’s frame was thin, like a clean, black dagger jutting from the earthen ground.  The stranger, a stout tree, weathered by storms.  A face made haggard by scars, beard-stubble and sweat.

There was another blur in the dark.  Then flashes and bangs. And more claps and thunder of gunfire.

This time, the bossman drew his weapon.  He drew like a snake uncoils and bites; so quickly, the eye is incapable of registering the movement. And yet it was still not faster than the stranger’s rifle.  

Even as he fired, the bossman received a gut load of hot iron.

The bossman still fired. Hand over fist, cocking the hammer and firing like a cowboy from an old-west spaghetti western movie.  He emptied his gun.  

The stranger moved like the whip-crack of a cat of nine tails. Impossibly, inhumanly fast.  Dodging bullets.

When the shooting stopped, sweat poured down the stranger’s face. He was fast, but not a god.  Two bullets had found their mark near his hip. Blood pooled at his side and streamed down his pant leg, soaking it and making the cloth stick tight to the muscles there.

The bossman was not as pretty a sight.  He lay in two halves of the whole, his guts a pile of steaming jelly between the halves.  He still  laughed his demon’s laugh, between fits of coughing blood.

Again, the bossman burst into flame and the pattern repeated.  First black flame, then red, then green smoke.  A refreshed bossman stepped out of the smoke.