Carnage (Remastered) by Vladimir Duran Page A

contact with the Knight, and then use those spells to hold him
off while retreating. As soon as his unit saw him lighting the
place up, they would swarm the Knight and take him out.
    Or her, the last one had been a girl. Little
redheaded slip of a thing ripped out poor Jori's guts with her bare
hands. She laughed while the man spilled his guts at her feet. She
laughed while raking them with more spell fire than half his unit
combined could have put out. She didn't stop laughing until they
separated her head from her body. Dangerous job, but it paid very
well. There were only three active tracking and elimination units
in the hunters. The rest were on standby and defensive duty. Ilom
had a little one on the way, he needed the money if he was going to
give his little girl the life she deserved.
    The fight was over before he knew what
happened. A shadow he had cleared exploded into life. Then there
was a hand on his throat, releasing something into him. His foot
gave a single twitch and went still.
    Warm blood trickled down Vlad's face. He
held himself and his victim as they were for a count of ten, quick
movements would attract attention. Cords of earth and water flowing
from his palm had torn the Hunter's throat so badly that blood kept
gushing onto his killer. Too much power; hadn't meant to do that.
Fading blue light crackled feebly around his right hand where it
pressed against the dead man's breastplate. Passive shields might
as well be tissue paper at this range. More cords of earth and
water ran from that hand into the man's body. The dead Hunter would
have bled out from the wound in his neck, but that had only been
intended to keep him quiet. The Knight's right had been the real
death dealer. The spell had crushed the Hunter's organs into so
much paste within his own body.
    When he was sure he had not been noticed,
Vlad lowered the body to the ground behind a girder.
    He was back to being Vlad, and that was a
problem. Sweat beaded his oval face, trickling into brown eyes and
matting finger combed hair. His wiry body trembled. He'd never
killed before, nothing that wasn't already dead anyway. Once or
twice he'd come close, moments when his rage had nearly overwhelmed
him. Stopping had been a matter of coming up with a smarter, often
a more cruel, plan.
    The shock had broken his focus. With it went
his other identity, the Knight. Thinking of himself as the Knight
gave him access to the reality warping powers of the warrior born.
If he was going to survive the night he would need them. He needed
to bring his trembling inner world back into balance. Balance was
everything.
    Unbidden, his eyes went to the body. Vlad
allowed his mind to run where it would. Some problem solving
methods were not linear.
    Once upon a time, a Knight could have gone
his entire life without shedding a drop of blood. The Twisted* did
not bleed, only fell to dust and ash. Knights, serving in the
Harrowers, were once the blade that cut into the armies of the
Horde and the Host.* But he was only fourteen and he already had
blood on his hands.
    Wizards grew at a different rate than
humans. After first gaining access to their full power, they
rapidly grew to physical prime and stayed that way until the last
year of their lives. In human terms he appeared to be about
twenty-five. But he didn't feel twenty-five, he felt fourteen.
Which was wrong. He never felt his age. For as long as he could
remember, he'd been an old man. Old men did not become teenagers,
it didn't happen. Not to him. He was supposed to be better than
this.
    Things didn't have to be this way. He'd
spotted them first, he could have run. Might have been smarter if
he had. Instead, he'd left a trail of magic for them to follow.
This was his choice of battlegrounds. Out of the way, quiet and as
deserted as you were going to get in Manhattan.
    Even without his help the Hunters would have
found traces of him sooner or later. They were all over the city.
Wizard and demon magic clashing left