Firedrake Chapter 24

Drake knew that he was running out of options. The police were arriving, which soon would mean tactical teams, negotiators, and snipers—all of which would further endanger the lives of the people within the mall. The booster he was facing was well known for being all too willing to do whatever was required to escape. The dexterous woman with the sword that Sala was dealing with was an unknown element, but Drake was willing to bet that she had no desire to be captured either.

Sucking in a breath that stung when it passed across his broken teeth, he stood to his full height and glared at Retribution. The battered man grinned past his own bloodied teeth and drew back a fist.

“Time to go,” he said.

Sala looked at the shining blade that the woman held, then returned her gaze to the woman’s eyes. If there was going to be a move it would start there. She spoke calmly.

“Monster. Go help your brother.”

“He’s okay, Sala,” Monster replied, glancing over to where Drake stood face to face with Retribution. “I wanna stay here with you.”

“I’m not asking, Chris,” she said to him as she and the woman began to slowly move in the early stages of the wary circling that years of fighting had taught Sala was a bad thing. “I’m telling you. Go!”

“Awww. Let the pinhead stay, girly-girl,” taunted the woman. She wiggled the sword just a bit to emphasize her words. “When I finish with you, I’ll make me some idiot shish kebab.”

“Funny,” Sala said, though the look on her face belied her words. “I was thinking the same thing. Like, when I take away that sticker and shove it straight up your —”

Her verbal attack broke off as she saw the telltale shifting of muscles in the woman’s shoulder and the sudden dilation of her pupils. The sword was suddenly in motion, coming up and forward in a powerful thrust aimed at Sala’s midsection. Time seemed almost to slow as Sala saw the gleaming of the overhead lights on the length of the blade.

Drake saw the punch coming and stepped inside it, moving in close to Retribution and robbing the attack of its ferocity. He slammed his forehead down, smashing the man’s nose into a pulp, then followed up with a vicious uppercut into the ribs that knocked Retribution backward by a couple of feet. Driving his claws against the tiled floor, he leaped for the man.

Retribution met him with a sweeping kick, slamming a boot into Drake’s ribs with jackhammer force. The impact knocked Drake off line for his own assault, and his claws barely grazed the outside of Retribution’s left shoulder. He slammed an enormous foot into the floor, pivoting on it and slapping out with his tail. The barbed tip hit Retribution in the lower left leg, tripping him to the ground as his forward move continued. Jumping from the ground, Drake threw himself toward the prone man. Despite his outward appearance, the attack made him look like a cat pouncing on a mouse.

Retribution rolled onto his back as Drake took to the air. He winked, and a brilliant ray of violet energy lanced from his right eye to hammer into Drake’s pectorals.

Sala’s dived to the right, hearing as well as feeling the sword as it slashed into the upper part of her left shoulder. The hissing of her leather parting before the sharp blade was almost as easy to pick up as the grinding noise it made when it went past her flesh for a moment. Ignoring the injury, she dropped into a squat, turning to plant her right shoulder into the woman’s torso. Her left hand moved almost too quickly for the eye to follow. She rapped her knuckles against the hilt of the sword, deflecting it to the outside as she stepped back a half-pace. Her right hand snapped out in a furious punch that struck the inner edge of the woman’s biceps. The sword fell from nerveless fingers to ring on the tile of the mall floor. Sala kicked out with her foot, sending the blade skittering across the floor.

The woman jerked back her arm, reaching up to massage it as her face darkened. “Big mistake, slag-hag,” she growled through clenched teeth.

“Believe I established that the first part was taking it away from you?” Sala countered. A feral grin split her features and she slowly licked her lips. “Now comes the fun part.”

“I got your ’fun part’ right here, slitch,” snapped the woman. She drove her left hand into the top of her boot and emerged with a thin black box. She raised it to her lips. “Extract. Now,” she ordered, dropping it carelessly onto the floor a second later. She moved forward with sudden fluidity, her arms and legs lashing out in a series of lightning-fast strikes aimed at Sala.

Monster saw the glittering sword as it skidded across the floor and his eyes lit up. Gnawing thoughtfully at his lower lip, he dashed over to where it lay and picked it up. The blade was long and narrow, and felt light as a feather in his powerful hands. He held it out in front of him, waving the tip back and forth with little motions of his wrist. A giggle slipped from his lips.

“I’m a ninja!” he shouted. He turned to show his brother, eyes going suddenly wide as he saw the purple ray slam into Drake’s chest.

“Francis!” he screamed. He ran toward the battling pair, knocking a free-standing sign to the floor in his rush.

The blast was stunning, but not disabling, Drake noted, though it did indeed hurt. Still, it failed to penetrate, and he wondered if Retribution had some sort of inner energy supply that was finite. He landed atop the man as he had planned, albeit not with the initial ferocity of the attack intact. Still, he managed to get a good grip on the man’s shoulders as he landed. Using his own momentum, he rolled forward, bringing Retribution with him and then releasing the man at the top of the arc.

Disoriented by the sudden weight of the dragon slamming into him, Retribution was thrown about ten feet before his addled mind worked out that he was airborne. His own flight ability kicked in and he rose toward the ceiling in a fast climb, shaking his head to clear it as he escaped the immediate battle.

Drake rose to his feet in a smooth movement, muttering a curse as he saw the man take to the air. He looked around himself for a moment, trying to find something sufficiently heavy to throw, when his eyes caught the image of Monster running toward him. His jaw dropped open as he saw the yard of steel projecting from his brother’s fist.

“Monster! Stop!” he shouted. With a squeak of rubber on tile, the younger Drake did exactly that. He looked at Drake with a smile, pleased that his brother was out of danger.

“Drop that sword,” Drake told him, pointing to the weapon. Monster looked down at it in puzzlement, then shrugged and let it fall back to the floor.

“I’ve told you before,” Drake said, gripping a nearby bench and ripping it free of the bolts that held it to the floor. “You don’t run with knives.”

“Sorry, Francis,” Monster mumbled, looking down at his feet.

“It’s okay,” Drake said. He spun at the waist and threw the bench in a spiraling arc, feeling the fatigue in his muscles as he did so. He watched the bench tumble end over end as it flew, then silently cheered as it slammed into Retribution’s back. The man was blasted into the front of a second floor toy store, sliding through the contents of it. Plush animals and action figures flew free, as though they were trying to escape from the sudden invasion of their space.

Sala tried to keep up with the sudden burst of energy exhibited by her opponent to no avail. Several of the blows made it past her guard, and she was battered back and forth like a punching bag. Spots danced before her eyes and she gave ground a step at a time in the face of the furious onslaught.

“Put you down hard,” the woman snarled, slamming a trio of left jabs home. The first took Sala in the lower abdomen, the second atop her right breast, and the third into the outer edge of her right eye. The three strikes had come within the space of two seconds, and they had the force of a half-dozen normal humans driving them into her. The woman followed up with a string of similar attacks, each one getting a few more past Sala’s defensive blocks. The world around Sala became a blur of swirling images and she recognized that she was about to lose this fight in a very big way.

The staccato chatter of small-arms fire outside the mall echoed in the interior, and those who had been watching the fight suddenly erupted into panic. Though few would admit to feeling the healthy level of fear that a genebooster fight could generate, gunfire was another matter. Everyone knew what the sound could mean, and it was a sudden stark reminder of their own mortality. Screaming in fright, dozens of people began a stampede toward the other end of the mall, scarcely caring if they bumped into or knocked down anyone else, so long as they remained on their feet.

A moment later, the doors nearest the group of boosters blew inward on the leading edge of a blast wave. A fireball followed, licking in and up. Automated sprinklers came to life after a second of delay, showering the area with water gone stagnant by the time it had remained in wait for this moment.

Striding through the door came a tall, powerfully-built man with a shaved head. An ’X’-shaped harness of black leather crisscrossed his chest, leaving his incredible muscle definition exposed. He wore heavy gray trousers, the ends of which were frayed and ragged. Loose threads from them brushed against the black boots he wore. His hands were red and gnarled, looking for all the world as if they were boiled hams attached to the ends of his strong arms. His eyes, chocolate-brown pupils inside bloodshot orbs, were bulging from their sockets. Veins stood in stark relief across his exposed skin, and sweat ran from his brow.

“THRASH!” the man shouted. The cry echoed even in the wake of the nearly-deafening explosion that had presaged his entrance.

“Over here!” the swordswoman yelled in response. She disengaged from her vicious assault on Sala and took two jogging steps before launching into a full run.

Drake had jumped into the air, pained wings pumping as he gained altitude. He kept his eyes on the toy store Retribution had destroyed, hoping that the man would be too stunned from the improvised missile to get up before Drake could arrive. He entered the store and made his way through the wreckage. Ahead of him, he spotted the prone figure of Retribution, sprawled atop a devastated pile of board games. Before he could act, the entire mall shuddered as the exterior doors were blown inward.

“What the hell was that?” Drake asked aloud. He spun on his heel and sprinted from the store, peering over the railing in time to see the muscular man enter and shout. Water from the sprinklers was pattering down and Drake knew it would make his footing slick. He looked at the backs of the retreating people, still running from the gun battle that was being waged outside. Shaking his head, he sighed as he realized that he was going to have to engage yet another foe.

“Don’t you people have homes?” he muttered as he spread his wings and stepped onto the security railing surrounding the open center of the mall. He leaped from the rail, flaring his wings wide and aiming his descent, then bringing them in tighter to speed the process.

“Hi, Francis!” Monster called, waving. “Did you get the bad man?”

The brute, warned by the words, turned to see Drake approaching. He grinned maniacally, interlaced his fingers and met the reptilian booster with a mighty swing.

For Drake, it was like being hit by a truck. He was stopped immediately and sent flying backward with considerably more energy than his short flight would have generated. His back slammed into a stone pillar even as the first wave of pain from the horrendous blow announced itself. Rock shattered behind him and he careened off the pillar to smash into a display of televisions. Glass, plastic and circuitry scattered as his massive body destroyed everything in its path. For the briefest of seconds, he thought that this must have been what Retribution had felt, but he knew that there were no stacks of Elmo dolls to cushion him. Ignoring the sharp pain it caused, he flared his wings and arrested his motion, dropping to the floor. Glass crunched beneath his feet as he started running once more for the front of the store. Every step sent fresh shivers of pain through his body, but he knew he had to get back out there. If he left the people in the mall unprotected, there was no telling how much damage could be wrought by a man of the stature that had struck him.

Sala had gone down on one knee following the beating she had taken at the hands of the woman. She wanted to quit entirely, to simply fall and drop out of consciousness, but Monster was still on the floor and it was her duty to protect him. She struggled back to her feet and looked around, seeing the back of the woman called Thrash as she sprinted for the corner. Stepping around that corner was an enormous beast of a man, wearing some ridiculous S&M rig. Sala thought that she had never seen a man look quite so angry. As she staggered for her first couple of steps, she watched in horror and awe as the man swatted Drake from the sky as if he were no more than a mosquito.

As Drake crashed through the door of the electronics store, Thrash reached the muscle-man. She slapped him on the butt and winked. “Where ya been?” she asked with a chuckle. The man glanced down at her and saw the blood on her face. Though witnesses would have said it was impossible for them to go any further, the man’s eyes bugged out a little more at the sight.

“Who did that?” he demanded.

“Not important. We’re leaving,” Thrash replied. She tugged on the leather harness and the man turned with her. He used his bulk to shield her body from any attacks that might come from behind them. As a pair they fled the mall.

Drake emerged from the store, ignoring the anti-theft sensors that screamed as he exited with part of a CD player jammed into the gap between his left wing and his shoulder. He was in time to see the massive man and the swordswoman as they vanished through the doorway. A moment later, the shooting outside intensified. He cursed again and his gaze flickered back and forth from the shattered portal leading outside and the equally devastated toy store on floor number two. Sighing yet again, he turned back toward the upper deck. The two that had fled were now the problem of the police, but if Retribution got back to his feet, he could wreak unimaginable havoc in the mall.

“Looking for me?” Retribution shouted from above. He leaped off the railing in much the same way as had Drake only moments before. His bloody face was a mask of raw rage. Twin bolts of energy preceded him as he flew toward Drake. They struck the ground on either side of the reptilian booster, blasting gouts of shattered tile into the air. The blasts, though weaker than the ones he had used early in the fight, still did their job. Their proximity to Drake kept him from adequately dodging the aerial attack, and Retribution piled into him at full force. The pair of them went to the ground, sliding across the water-slicked floor with a squeaking sound until they slammed into the support pillar for the second floor. Drake yowled as new pain lit up his back and shoulders.

Monster hissed angrily through his teeth as he saw the big man leave with the woman who had threatened him and hurt Sala. He turned to look for the woman who had become more than just a caretaker to him. His heart sank as he saw her battered and bloody form stumbling toward him. His sneakers pounded the floor, slipping only once as he edged around a planter, and he wrapped his arms around Sala. The woman grinned up at him.

“Glad to see you,” she muttered. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she went limp in his arms. Tears began to run from Monster’s eyes as he slowly turned in circles, looking for his brother.

“Francis!” he cried, voice cracking. “Help!”

“Hey! Monster! Over here!” called a voice. Monster turned to see the man who had shared a table with them before this whole incident had begun. The programmer was hiding behind the heavy stone frame of a twenty-by-twenty concert floor. It was raised almost two feet from the ground level to allow for a decent view by mall patrons. Harry Callahan was one of several people in cover behind it. His bags of possessions were at his feet. Even with the danger that he faced, he was not willing to easily part with the autographed pajamas. “It’s me. Harry,” the man said.

“Sala’s hurt,” Monster said, his jaw trembling. He carried the woman over to where Harry was crouched. Placing her on the ground as gently as he could, Monster looked pleadingly into the eyes of the only other person he knew at the mall. “Can you help her?” he asked.

“Who’s calling 911?” Harry asked. Ten people behind the barrier raised their cell phones in unison. They had all placed the calls when the fighting began, and were still on line, keeping dispatchers updated on the situation as it unfolded.

“Tell ’em we’ve got an injured woman here,” Harry said. He peeled back the edge of her jacket with no little trepidation. Like the others, he had seen the sword pierce through the shoulder of the woman who now lay before him, and the thought of what he was about to see gave him pause. Gritting his teeth, he took in a breath, then raised his face to smile at Monster.

“She’s gonna be okay, but I need you to look over that way,” he said, pointing toward the end of the mall. “See if you can see Firedrake over there, okay?’

“Yeah, okay,” Monster agreed, nodding. He turned to watch for his brother.

Having diverted the booster, Harry opened the jacket fully to view the injured shoulder. A gasp of shock was ripped from his throat in response to what he had exposed.

Drake forced Retribution away from him, standing to his full height and squaring his shoulders as he glared at the man. Blood, sweat and water from the overhead sprinklers were combined to turn the man’s flesh an odd shade of pink, and the image sent an involuntary shudder down Drake’s spine.

“This ends now,” Retribution said flatly. He brought his hands together, cracking his knuckles loudly as he stared at Drake.

“Gonna talk me to death, slick?”

“Gonna finish what I started back in Seattle.”

“Yeah. That’ll happen. Look, just give up now and we can all go away happy. Well, I’ll be happy. You’ll just be going away.”

The joke was enough. Retribution launched himself at Drake, drawing back his powerful right hand even as his optic beams led the way. Drake accepted the hits from the beams, shaking off the now-underpowered attack as easily as if it had been a punch from a norm. The moving fist, however, had decent energy to it. He turned to his right, swaying his upper body backward to let the fist pass by without connecting. A massive emerald paw reached out and gripped the wrist of the man, holding it steady as he slashed a knife-hand blow onto the top of the forearm. His elbow crashed into Retribution’s mouth as a follow-up. As the man pulled back to escape, Drake turned with him and drove his left hand palm-first into the man’s chest with all the strength he could muster. The impact echoed from the nearest wall and Retribution dropped to the ground, huffing loudly as he desperately sought to get air back into his lungs.

Drake never gave him the chance to continue. Stepping back a pace, he brought his leg up in a blur, the massive instep of his foot crashing into the man’s chin and rocketing his head backward. Retribution’s eyes rolled back even before his body landed on the floor. Rolling him over, Drake quickly strapped a pair of durite cuffs onto the booster before stepping back and taking in a deep breath.

“Monster,” he whispered, shaking his head. He turned back into the mall proper, making his way toward the last place he had seen his brother.

“What the hell?” Harry Callahan whispered aloud. He had clearly seen the sword as it hit Sala in the shoulder and he expected the woman’s jacket to be fairly filled with blood. The miniscule amount he found did not immediately compute. It was not until he saw the exposed metal inside her jumpsuit that it began to make sense.

“Some kind of cyber…” he muttered to himself, quickly snapping the jacket closed. He looked around to see if anyone had observed the same thing he had, but no one had been too eager to get close to the injury. He slipped the covering garment back a bit once again, as if trying to confirm to himself what he had already seen.

“No free peeks,” Sala murmured, eyelids fluttering open though the orbs within them were glassy. “And if you cop a feel…”

“No, ma’am!” Harry said automatically, the words blurted out in a rush. His face reddened for a second before he saw the flicker of a smile that drifted across her features before she passed out yet again. He chuckled quietly.

“Hey, Monster,” he began, looking up. The big booster was gone, running toward the somewhat worse-for-wear form of his brother.

Drake was making his way slowly across the floor of the mall, but his pace quickened a bit when he saw the approaching figure of Monster. A smile spread his lips, exposing bloody, broken teeth. He spread his arms wide, wrapping them around the running hulk as he had done earlier that day outside the safehouse. The impact made him groan, but he held his ground.

“Where’s Sala?” he asked.

“She was hurt, Francis, and I took her to Harry and he’s trying to make her better but I’m scared ’cause she’s bleeding and that mean lady hurt her bad and she’s —”

“Easy, easy,” Drake soothed, placing a restraining hand on the heavy shoulder of the youth. “Let’s go take a look, okay?”

As they began a slow walk back toward the raised stage, a dozen pairs of booted feet came around the corner in a rush. Drake turned to look down the muzzles of a dozen automatic rifles held by men in black SWAT armor. They all had the word ’POLICE’ emblazoned across their chests in giant white letters, and each wore a heavy helmet.

“Police!” several of them shouted. “Everybody freeze!”

“Oh, yeah. Now you get here,” Drake quipped, keeping his hands in sight. He gestured with his chin toward the unconscious form of Retribution. “Sorry about the mess. Saw that guy trying to boost an iPod and I just had to stop him.”