Arrest, Search and Séance : Book 1 of the Fringe Society R.D. Hunter (pride and prejudice read .TXT) 📖

way towards the far wall. There was the heavy sound of it colliding with his mutated body, followed closely by the sound of shards scattering across the concrete floor. Hawkins bellowed in pain and fury as the vehicle took him for an unexpected ride. The noise was music to my ears. I watched as he tried desperately to disentangle himself from the possessed machine, but he couldn’t get free in time to avoid the crushing impact of being slammed against the reinforced wall and pinned in place. The forklift’s tires spun in place for a few seconds before finally coming to a stop. Hawkins struggled for a few terrifying moments, before finally bowing his head as death finally claimed it’s prize.

It was over. I’d won. I wanted to cheer, to dance, to do something to celebrate my victory and the continuation of my life, but I just didn’t have it in me. My body was a wreck, my magic was slowly being drained by the pain amulet, which was rapidly weakening, and more people had lost their lives at the hands of this monster, despite my best efforts. No, celebrating wasn’t the thing to do here.

I plopped down on the cold floor, trying to catch my breath. I knew I should be moving, going to check on Lacey and make sure Jack was all right, but I needed a minute to come down. Coming through a life-or-death struggle required a moment to process. After a few moments, though, I heard what sounded like a low, guttural mumbling coming from the direction of Hawkins’ corpse.

I turned and looked, and was horrified to see that the crystalized man wasn’t dead yet. He was praying. His head was still bowed, his eyes closed, and his hands clasped in front of him as he sent pleas to whatever Almighty presence he believed in.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I said, struggling to my feet. “You’ve spent the last two days on a murder spree, all because of a massive inferiority complex, and now you want to ask God for forgiveness? Seems a by hypocritical, don’t ya think?” I hesitantly took a few steps closer. “I mean, I’m all for deathbed confessions, trying to make your soul right before passing on and everything, but come on. You’re not sorry for what you’ve done. You’re just sorry you lost.”

I felt something. The hairs on my arm stood up as an invisible charge manifested in the air. It was magic; a butt-load of magic, and it was coming from Hawkins. He wasn’t praying. He was casting. And with that much juice, there’s only one thing he could be doing.

“Oh, shi…” I didn’t have time to finish, as a familiar, high-pitched laugh resonated through the warehouse, and incredibly strong fingers latched on to the back of my neck and dug in like iron spikes.

“Hello again, little mortal,” the Smiling Man said in my ear. “Now, where were we?”

Through all the terror and pain, I was actually a little impressed. Summonings usually require a whole ritual to make happen. You have to find the entity you want to bring over, open a way for them, and provide enough energy for them to exist in our reality without their own physical bodies. Ideally, it takes two or three fully-trained witches to make this happen over a period of several hours. Hawkins had done it in minutes.

Before I could reflect too much on this grudging admiration, I was flying through the air, tossed like an empty beer can by the Smiling Man’s otherworldly strength, barely missed one of the cement columns that reached up to the ceiling, and crashed into a pallet of goods. I went with the momentum as best I could, tucking my head and trusting in my training to keep me in one piece.

It worked, more or less. I didn’t split my skull on any hard corners and my arms and legs stayed intact. It hurt like hell, though. I was pretty sure I could hear my broken ribs grinding against one another and I was finding it harder and harder to move my left side. But I was still alive and in the game.

A steel barrel filled with God-knows-what, shot through the air like a cannonball, straight towards me. I managed to roll out of the way just in time, only to do it again a second later as a metal pipe, hurled by the Smiling Man, almost impaled me.

I couldn’t keep this up. Sooner or later, I’d run out of room, move the wrong way, or fail to move at all. Then, if I was lucky, I’d be killed by the next missile he sent my way. If I wasn’t, I’d be hurt just enough so as to be unable to defend myself while he took his time finishing me off. I had to attack; do something to stop his momentum, but I didn’t have a lot of options.

Magic was out. Every last trace I had now was flowing into my amulet, trying to dull the pain enough so that I wouldn’t be completely helpless. A physical fight was no good either. All the Krav Maga in the world wouldn’t do much to put down a preternatural killer with the strength of a German tank. Which left me with only one choice. I pulled my gun.

To be fair, I didn’t expect it to do much. I wasn’t exactly sure which nightmarish hellscape the Smiling Man hailed from, but from everything I’d seen, I didn’t think he was fragile enough to be taken out by a few bullets from my little sidearm. A machine gun might do the trick, especially if it had an extended magazine filled with armor piercing rounds, but I was fresh out of those.

The Smiling Man must have come to the same conclusion, because the ever-present grin on his face widened as I took aim.

But then something happened.