Joely Sue Burkhart

I’ll do one more section of Beautiful Death.  This section continues the mini-cliffhanger from last week.

The energy blast slammed into the other woman, and Isabella thought her own heart would explode with agony. Pain arced across her chest and she sagged to her knees, unable to draw a deep breath.

A furious roar rebounded in the skyway and a blur of shadowed leather, fur and wings shot over her. Instinctively, she rolled to the side to avoid the slashing talons. She leaped to her feet and dialed up the stunner to full blast.

Here was something she would enjoy killing. “Come at me again, you son of a bitch.”

Wheeling about, the monster towered over her, shredding the cushioned floor of the skyway with six-inch razor talons. Enormous pitch black wings flapped the air, filling the skyway with feathers. Ebon scales plated the shapeshifter’s head and barbed spines lined its sinuous neck. Jagged teeth snapped in a pointed reptilian snout, splattering poisonous saliva on the floor.

With another roar, it hurtled toward her, shaking the skyway floor beneath her feet.

Isabella fired and struck a direct hit with maximum power. “Go back to the Underworld where you belong.”

The monster jerked, but its furious charge continued unchecked.

Twisting away, she felt claws slash deep furrows down her left arm. Pain bloomed, blazing with immediate fever. She ducked the slapping wings, but the serpentine tail slammed into her. Grunting from the impact, she flew through the air, crashed into the polished marble wall, and slid to the floor in a heap.

Face darkening and hot with fury, Isabella flipped to her feet, inwardly cursing. She hadn’t let a shifter wound her in at least a year. Unsheathing her sword, she re-evaluated the monster. With a high silver content, the deceptively slim and elegant swords were standard issue for Marshals. The aliens and the monsters they spawned with their virus all reacted badly to Earth’s metals. This one would be no different. Even Hades, with all his fearsome power and seduction, would shriek when her sword bit into his perfect skin.

Leaping at the beast so fast her coat flapped like wings about her, she feinted at those baleful red eyes. She evaded a vicious snap from the poisonous mouth and dodged beneath the gaping jaws. With a quick stab into the unarmored underbelly, she vaulted backward from a swipe of talons that would have gutted her.

The shapeshifter reared to its full height and clawed at its abdomen. Smoke rose from the wound and blood spurted in a scarlet fountain. A shriek pierced the air, shattering the glass windows of the antiquities shop. Still screeching, the beast fell on its back, tail and legs lashing the air in agony.

Isabella circled the howling shapeshifter and raised the sword over her head with both hands. Nothing indicated this contaminated, grotesque body had once been human. It would kill and feed with absolutely no respect for human life. This, she could terminate with a perfectly clear conscience.

She brought the sword down with all her strength and severed the head from the scaly neck. Sidestepping the splatter of gore, she pulled out a cloth to clean her sword. The blade would etch and corrode if she didn’t get the venomous blood off.

Isabella dropped the disintegrating cloth on top of the dead shapeshifter and tapped her earpiece to make her report. “I need a decontamination unit to Acropolis Book Antiquities.”

Oracle responded immediately. “Thank you, First Marshal Thanatos, for your faithful service to our Citizens. Please confirm the status of Sybil of Delphi.”

Isabella turned away from the already decomposing monster and froze. The bag lay discarded on the floor, and the woman was gone. A flash of ugly brown at the entrance of Dionysus Theatre caught her gaze. “Sybil, stop!”

Citizens surged from the Theatre exit, talking and laughing over the performance. Not even riots would keep them away from a good show. Isabella pushed forward, trying not to injure any of the people. “Oracle, the human criminal somehow survived a direct charge from my weapon. She’s heading into Dionysus Theatre. Hercules, guard the other exits!”

The crowd made way for her, cheering when they saw the dead monster in the skyway. Even the weapon in her hand didn’t frighten them. Charging into the opulent entrance of the most famous Theatre in New Olympia, Isabella searched for possible hiding places.

The criminal would need to find a way Outside. She had to know Oracle monitored all Gates. She had no hope of escaping.

But how did she survive the blast in the first place?

“Marshal, do you have a visual on the criminal?” Oracle asked in her ear.

“Negative. Could she have entered a private area free of monitoring?”

“There are maintenance areas below the floor where you stand, as well as access panels on each side of the Theatre. These areas are not currently monitored. I will note this deficiency for the next Pantheon meeting.”

Sagging, Isabella sheathed the weapon, her fingers cramping. Her heart still pumped fast and furious, adrenaline burning in her veins, but relief overrode the buzz. She wasn’t guilty of killing a human after all. “What are my orders?”

“You are injured, First Marshal. Take a full interval for your care.”

Oh, yeah. Now her arm hurt like a bitch, blazing with fever and cramping as poison seeped into her bloodstream. She needed to wash the saliva off and stop the bleeding immediately.

“Hercules, take command of the squad. I’ll check back in before you go off shift.”

“Understood, Thanatos.”

She tapped her earpiece once more, sending it into standby. Outside the Theatre, a decontamination crew already worked on the remains. Off to the side, the tattered bag still lay on the floor.

“Any reason I can’t take this for evidence?” She asked the supervisor.

He shoved the ghastly head into a containment box marked for MedCorp research labs. “You can have anything you want, Marshal.”

Isabella swallowed hard and looked away. She certainly didn’t want to know what they did with the bodies she supplied.

She picked up the discarded bag and opened it. The simple backpack was filled with ancient books. What could be so terribly important in these moldering old tomes that would drive an exiled Delphian to attempt to smuggle them out of the City? How had the woman survived a full human-rated blast?

Even more troubling, she feared the monster deliberately interfered with the criminal’s termination. Perhaps Delphi and Argos truly were united in some treason against the Pantheon. Why else would a shapeshifter risk termination to assist a human?

She didn’t know, but she intended to find out.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 10:26 pm and is filed under Writing, Friday Snippets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.