Geist Warriors 3: Chapter 6

It was cloudy out here. Rey would have checked the weather but he had a good idea that it was going to rain soon. A sixth sense that he’d had ever since he’d come back to life. He knew when it was going to rain, when dawn was coming, what phase the moon was going to be in and to a degree when someone was approaching.

The door of the café opened and a man entered. He didn’t pay him any mind though. At this time of evening this was when people came in for coffee, tea, or a smoothie as an after work pick me up. He’d seen dozens do that over the past few months. But they knew him here, he was a regular in this little café. He had a corner where he sat and read and a drink he always got. Strawberry smoothies were his favorite though the owner let him test her new drinks.

Since meeting his brother he thought about leaving but he couldn’t leave the state. Not being in the city was hard enough but this was home to him and he couldn’t imagine otherwise. Even though he wasn’t anything like he used to be.

Looking at the novel in his hands he was almost at the end, the climax coming up. But he couldn’t focus. His mind flashed to a few days ago. Gripping the book tightly he felt his stomach growl and he wanted to hit something. To break a window or shatter the cup in front of him.

He’d tried fasting. To not feed on regular people and just be a regular geist warrior. It didn’t work nearly as well as he had hoped. Sleeping became difficult and he got irritable. He knew he couldn’t do it when one day he simply blacked out in the middle of the day. When he came to he had slaughtered a person. Completely devoured them like some sort of animal. Like a proper wraith.

Since then he made sure to feed properly but he was very selective about it. tried eating wraiths but it never satisfied the hunger. Normally the person that he chose was someone attacking another or just being a crappy human being. The list shrunk more and more everyday. He did what he had to, to satisfy the beast but at the end of the day it wasn’t enough. The hunger pangs were infrequent at first but they’d been happening more and more recently and he could feel the black outs sneaking up on him now.

Then came last week. When he went too long without realizing it. He lost control of himself and blacked out when he thought he was fine. When he came to he was standing over a woman. She must have been a warrior because her partner came to her defense immediately. He defended himself and ended up hurting her. Badly. He ran as far away as he could from there and even now he didn’t know if he had killed that woman.

Shaking his head, he started coughing hard into his hand. Finishing the smoothie, he put a book mark in his book and then slid it into a small bag. Slinging it across his back he tipped the barista of the day and went outside. The air was cooler with the sun going down.

Walking down the street he kept his head down. He couldn’t get past the disgust that he had with himself. He was no better than the wraiths that he’d fought off. Shaking he broke off the main street and down an alleyway. Hopping over a gate he landed in a grassy backyard and something made him look toward the sky. The clouds were rolling in and he could feel the rain that was going to be coming. More than rain. A storm.

As he walked and felt the hunger nagging at him he once again came back to a simple thought. He was supposed to eat his brother and complete himself but he didn’t. He chose to save his brother and move on but he wondered if what the wraith had said were true. What if he was actually dying? That by sparing his brother he damned himself. He didn’t want to entertain that thought at all.

“Hey what’re you doing back here?”

The voice startled him but Rey didn’t look over his shoulder and just kept walking. He didn’t sense them coming which meant he was definitely too deep in his own head. Too distracted to be out. He needed to go home and stay home for the time being. He paused coughing harder and felt it painfully  in his chest.

“What’s going on with me? Am I already running out of time?”

He went a few more steps forward when he heard the ground creak behind him. Whoever this guy was serious about telling to him get off his lawn or whatever. He wasn’t in any kind of mood to deal with him though. He turned around to shout something when the air flashed.

He stepped aside and watched as an axe flew past his face. Eyes wide he turned to stare at the man that he assumed had thrown it. It was the same one that had walked in the café earlier. Narrowing his eyes, he watched the man manifest another axe into his hand as he held up his phone. “Yep. You’re the guy,” Sirius said and started running at him.

Rey conjured his whip quickly and the chain wrapped around the axe stopped it from taking him in the chest. He stared at Sirius and disengaged skidding backwards. The whip uncoiled and he snapped sending it straight at him. Sirius rolled aside and Rey yanked his arm back pulling on the whip letting it swing around and into his back.

It wrapped around him tightly and Rey pulled on it taught dragging him to the ground. Rey walked over to him slowly keeping his grip on the whip tight. “You really are like us,” Sirius said and struggled harder but glared. “Half wraith and half geist warrior. You going to devour me like you were going to do Janet?”

Him saying that shook Rey and he hesitated. His chain slackened and Sirius managed to open his palm and a second axe appeared. Lightning traveled along the length and then jumped shocking him in the chest. His eyes rolled back for a second as his jaw clenched the whip slackening entirely.

Moving to his feet Sirius created another and burying the head deep in his stomach. Rey grunted feeling the blade slice into him and it burned in a way no fire ever could. Despite being a hybrid, the wraith in him was just as vulnerable to a geist as any other. Coughing blood, he stared at the warrior and kicked his whip.

The end wrapped around Rey’s foot and he stomped it on the ground. An explosion of light followed and sent him flying backwards. He stumbled into a fence, pressing his hand into his wound. He left the back way behind trying to put as much distance between himself and the warrior as possible.

His breath was coming in huffs and as he took a step forward he groaned and leaned against the bricks feeling them dig into the nape of his neck. Staring down at his side he felt the blood seeping past his hand and spat at the ground.

“Great,” the sky rumbled and he looked up as the dark greyness of it all started to get more intense and a soft flash of lightning went up in the depths. Shaking his head, he took a breath and started walking.

Leaving the alley behind he looked over his shoulder and something bright started flying. He ducked low and the axe flew over his head fading before it could connect to the ground again. “He caught up to me. Even better.”

“You’re pretty good at running hybrid! I’ve had to put in actual effort to catch you!”

He looked over his shoulder and glared as Sirius came turning one of the axes in hand. He created another one and pointed at him.

“But I know you attacked Janet and she wasn’t a push over,” his grin turned immediately into a scowl. “And you almost devoured Lyra. So, you’re definitely too dangerous to be allowed to live.”

Striking the ground with the axe the ground beneath rumbled and he rolled to the side avoiding the pillar of lightning that exploded below his feet. Snapping his arm down he brought out his whip. Rotating his wrist, he sent it at him missing by a hair. But he squeezed the handle and the tip of the whip exploded against the air.

The force of that sent him reeling away and Rey stood hissing. The wound in his side burned angrily now and he was unsteady on his feet. What few cars were nearby swerved away from them and a scream of the people nearby meant that they were fleeing. It was just the two of them.

“I would defend myself but all I am is a wraith. A monster right?”

“Glad we can agree on that part,” he said clanging the two axes together and coming forward.

Rey ducked underneath the first and stepped back avoiding the second. On the swing the axes clanged together and a bolt of lightning smote him in the chest. Rolling backwards Rey coughed but had to bring up his whip blocking another swing of the axe. Twisting the weapon, he grasped the tip of the whip and flicked it forward.

It wrapped around the axe tightly and once the tip hit the shaft it exploded again and sent both warriors flying away from one another. Rolling across the ground the sky thundered and rain started coming down, pelting the them with fat drops of moisture. Stepping back, he grunted as his side screamed at him again.

Yanking the whip back to his side he grasped the chain and spun it slowly hearing it slice through the wind. Sirius was on his feet slightly singed but came forward spinning the axes again. “Looks like you can put up a fight too. Good. Hate for this to be easy.”

Rey needed to end this soon, either incapacitate him or worse. The thought of doing that and not screwing up and killing him made him hesitate but it was kill or be killed. Spinning the chain faster he watched as the warrior ran at him dragging one axe blade across the ground. Lightning crackled along the blade and he leaped swinging down over Rey’s head.

Things moved in slow motion as he watched the warrior approach. The lightning racing from the blade to smite him. Spinning the edge of the whip he just dropped it against the ground and raised his arm. The axe bit deep into his arm almost cutting it off in one go. The lightning struck next and he screamed his voice teetering back and forth between human and wraith.

Eyes wide, one glowing a bright orange he fought to keep the wraith in check as he yanked the whip backwards. The chain snapped off the ground and wrapped around the warrior tightly. The tip flew around and pressed against his neck. Rey hissed yanking his arm free of the axe and kicked Sirius’s knee dragging him to the ground again.

“Déjà vu,” Rey said grabbing his face breathing hard. He squinted, black spots on the side of his vision and he could hear the other half of him. It was telling him to eat him. To just devour him and heal and then escape. And he didn’t have the will power to argue with it right now.

He felt his jaw unhinge like a snake, elongating to nearly twice its size. Felt the heat in his throat like a tiny sun. Feeding was like smoking, taking a long pull from his carcinogen of choice. That choice just so happened to be a geist warrior, a flavor he’d never had before. And he paused really thinking of what he was about to do before starting.

Before he could contemplate it further he was knocked away dropping the whip. Hitting the ground hard he rolled back to his feet and held back his pain. His eyes widened though as he watched Samantha slide to a halt both her arms raised and covered in ice. Her eyes were narrowed so sharply that he felt the disgust.

“You were going to kill him. You were going to devour him,” she said in disbelief. “Dick trusted you and you lied to him! I was ready to defend you but. Just because you have his face doesn’t mean you’re anything like him. You’re just another wraith.”

Taking a step forward she stomped the ground and sent ice racing across it. It leaped forward and latched onto his feet and continued to move like a crystal encasing him from the chest down. He didn’t try to struggle against the cold grip of the ice and just stared at the ground. His whip faded away as he let it go and then turned his gaze up to stare at Samantha as she went to the other warrior.

Samantha crouched and extended a gauntleted hand. She pulled him up and he looked her up and down then laughed. “Finely showed up huh? Thought I was going to have to do this all by myself.”

“No one told you to run off half cocked to search. But with the mess you made it wasn’t hard to find you once you started,” Glancing at Rey she shook her head. “But we took care of the threat.”

“Yeah so let’s finish the job and be done here,” he said creating another axe.

“No,” She looked at Rey for a long moment and finally shook her. “Lin’s order was to bring him in alive.”

“What? Why? He tried to devour Jenny! Tried to fucking eat me! He’s a wraith! Since when do we capture wraiths?”

“What did I say about questioning your superiors?” she barked and glared at him. “Last I checked you were a warrior and I a captain. We take him back alive. Now call this in.”

Sirius grit his teeth together but the steady rain filled the silence between them. He finally stomped away whipping out his phone and dialed. Samantha stared at the sky feeling the rain running down her face. Turning to Rey she closed her hand and the ice fell away and formed around his wrist as restraints.

“I think I’m glad that it was you.”

Samantha stiffened and looked up at Rey. “What was that?”

“I’m glad it was you to stop me.”

“Why? So, I can be the one to tell Dick that his brother’s actually a monster?”

“Yes. He needs someone like you,” he said softly. “You were right not to trust me when we met.”

Thunder clapped behind her and she pointed at his chest. “Did you attack her? Did you attack warrior Jenny?”

“Is she dead?” he asked slowly.

“No but she’s been knocking on death’s door since then. Why do you care?”

Rey nodded slowly and then looked at her. “I blacked out when it happened. All I know is that I came to and there was a dying warrior in front of me. And can only assume that I was the one who did it.”

She stared at him confused, trying to process what he’d just said. Opening her mouth to speak she stopped as Sirius came forward. “A truck is on the way. Take him back to the facility and the commander will decide on what to do.”

She looked at him and nodded slowly, “That she will.”

“Yeah,” Sirius grabbed Rey by the shoulder and yanked him to his feet. “Hear that hybrid? You’re going to meet some real important people before we kill you.”