The Tiger in the Bushes [OPEN]

Sachoff’s grill was a little hole with a big rep. Tucked between an import freight house and a law firm too expensive to even advertise, it might have been a stucco gap between brick facades but for the tall round topped window and the green trimmed screen door.

Warm fog crept down the streets and the cloudy night skies seemed too close, crowding down from the heavens to peer into the city. The rains of the past week made the air as thick as smoke and every streetlight had its own halo, modern angels gazing out over the pier, out into a bayou hidden in the night.

Rune Vigil caught the screen door as the blackened spring pulled it closed behind him but it was no good. Everet Granger - pronounced Grahn-zhay - popped around the corner by the register, his brown face lopsided with casual delight. He was wiping his hands on the white bar apron around his waist as he spoke.

“Well, look who it is. Long time no pay. What makes you think you can just slide up in here after the stuff you pulled?” His drawl slipped through the words like a fish in the weeds.

Rune stood for a moment clearly grasping for a response. The stained band aid crossing one brow rose with the effort. He patted his heavy brown suit coat pockets as if looking for a wallet, drifting toward an inside pocket or whatever else might be there.

“Ahh, yeah, well see… actually I came to umm…”

A moment of hard silence hung between them and then Everet’s face split in a wide grin and he shook his close cropped head.

“Man, I’m just messing wit ya. Git yourself in here.” He reached out for Rune’s shoulder and led him past the checkout area and into the grill.

The place was empty and dim with a quiet mood making the dusty card tables and kitchen chairs seem intimate, like a bit of someone’s home saved just for the diners, someone’s fond memory shared out. The knotted wood walls disappeared behind framed pictures of jazz musicians and athletes. College boys long dead and gone smiled out in black and white.

“What you been doin’ these days man?” He gestured to the narrow field of tables.

“I’ve been keeping busy E. Real busy. Things keep coming apart and someone elected me maid of the year.” Rune felt for the history between them and there it was in that pleasant nod and ready laugh. He hooked a thumb at the bar that curved around the corner by the register and Everet changed course like a pro making his way around the far side as Rune slid onto a creaky stool tossing a glace back to the screen door lit through with cool streetlight beams.

“How did you get that scratch Brothah? You been courtin’ those Bayou girls again?” The bottles passed from hand to hand faultlessly as the barkeep filled a silver tumbler, a tiny circus of ice and gin right there. Rune reached for the band-aid but only got as far as his already loose tie giving it a light tug, dragging his thumb down the back of the red and black fabric.

“I don’t have time for the ladies, E. Too many fires to stomp out. Too much of the world to super-glue back together.” Rune felt the very real sorrow lurking back in his own words. He hated how truth could hide like a tiger in the bushes. It made his hands feel grabby for that drink.

Everet started shaking the tumbler. “Yeaahh man, going straight down in a hand-basket ain’t it. Everyone voting, everyone loving one another, nut jobs running for president. You know, my mamma said I could be President when I was a baby boy. Lookin’ at the news now I think I really could have. See me as the Prez?” Rune could not help but cut eyes up to the dark flat screen angled among the dusty bottles, powerless and showing only their reflected movements. Everet reached down for a glass and in the dark screen he plonked it down and tipped the tumbler over it with a flourish.

“I don’t know E. I think you may have helped more people right here than you ever could have from some oval office.” Rune took up the short wide glass feeling the cold of the ice bleeding through the liquor. Everet dumped the tumbler out and started cleaning it automatically, dark hands on autopilot as he gazed into a distance over Rune’s shoulder with a pleased grin.

“I think you may be right my man. Yeah, I think you may be right.” Rune brought the drink to his lips and the first taste was a stinging blast of pine trees and mint followed by the sweet acid signature of alcohol. It was like another old friend joining the party and he followed it with another sip, eyes closed thinking that  it was about time something good happened today. Then he felt like the heel he certainly was.

Everet leaned on the bar, dish rag across one shoulder and took in Rune’s discomfort like an old hand.

“A’ight. Now that you settled. You wanna talk about it?”

A snore erupted from one of the tables in the distant corner.  A young man was dressed in an expensive looking gray suit.  He had his blazer off, draped over the back of his chair and his collar was open, making him look disheveled.  Currently, he was slumped forward, using his outstretched arm as a pillow.  A scotch glass rested nearby though it had only water in it now; the leftover ice had melted.

The truth was, though he had consumed five glasses of liquor, Jardin, using a fake ID that said his name was William Gardener, could not get drunk.  Which begged the question, why was he playing a drunk businessman in a dive in New Orleans?

Truthfully, the young man was not sure himself.  There were rumors of strange murders in the area and a vague feeling that drew him in.  But that was really it.  A feeling.  But considering the course is powers were going, his gut was becoming the most reliable of his senses... Well, not his gut, but you get the idea.

And speaking of his gut...Pretending his snoring woke himself, Jardin stood, grabbing his empty glass.  Putting on his best hammered mask, he stumbled, dragging one foot after the other as he made his slow, clumsy way to the bar.  "One mo'e f'r th'road, fri'nd?"

Rune started at the sound and cut a look at the newcomer that spelled out frustration and warning in turn before he wiped it clean and turned a blank gaze back to his glass speaking in a dull drawl dripping with a practiced coolness.

“Well look at that, I didn’t see you there stranger.”

Everet slid right in behind Rune’s statement as he snatched up a fresh glass and ran a rag around its gray rim. A figure moved past the doorway, someone ambling by, their bobbing shadow swinging opposite through the lamplight.

“Stranger? Naw man. This young man got here when I did this evening. Practically met me at the door. He ain’t no stranger. This is what ya call a valued customer.” And Everet’s words crawled across with just as much weight as he raised his brows and looked at Rune directly.

“And unlike some people in this here establishment, he pays for his drinks.” He softened the statement with a wide ivory smile. To the trained sense, the scent of aged gore drifted up from the shoreward and the sound of the water lapping at the posts of the piers sloshed and splashed like fish leaping and falling.

Everet tipped the amber bottle with a quick turn of his wrist and then sat the new drink down as the rumpled stranger arrived at the bar.

“Here ya go Mister.”

"Mersh...she-boo-coop," Jardin slurred. Sagging against a stool, he turned to the newer patron. "Wha's 'matter, pal? Cat go' yer tou-ngue?" From this possition, Jardin easily saw a suspicious shadow. Trying not to look aware, he piched forward, cackling to himself as though he had made a joke.

Eventually the fake businessman took his fresh glass and and stumbled passed the man who has shown a twinge of suspicion. Whatever the man had to say he was more interested in talking to the barkeep. "Don' min' me, dude," Jardin said, clapping the man on the shoulder before stumbling away from the bar.

The thief found his way to a table, this time sitting near the door. Whoever the mysterious shadow was, he could prove to be a threat. And since he lacked any ranged weapon at the moment, close range would prove an asset if a fight broke out.

So, the apparent drunk stumbled his way to the table, plopped into the chair heavily and began sipping his scotch, secretly listenning to every sound around him...

Through the door, the darkness beyond the streetlight’s sodium yellow cone was just a silhouette of the pier and beyond that the water and finally the black tumble of bayou. The marbled sky rolled past never admitting to the hidden moon. Far down the tourist’s pier a figure stood in the evening mist, female and slim; her dress hung like something wet, a silhouette all her own.

Everet clapped his hands with a chuckle. “Heh, don’t mind me he says. Hey mister did you know my friend here is a bona fide super hero?”

Rune grimaced into his glass. “Ev come on, don’t…”

“You hush up, your name ain’t on no lease.” The barkeep tossed to Rune and then looked back across the street-lit barroom to the businessman.

‘Gawds honest truth, he got magic powers and everything. Saved my life!” He settled his elbows down on the bar like a storyteller gearing up for his trade and Rune pinched the bridge of his nose as if none of this could have possibly gone less like he had wanted.

Out along the pier a second form joined the female, a dark cutout of a male, stoop shouldered with a loose shirt that dripped, diamond droplets that snatched tiny star glints of streetlight rushing from cuffs and shirt tails.

The nearly inaudible ruckus in the distant water kept a steady cadence, slosh, splosh, sploosh

"Oh yeah?" Jardin questioned. Some of his alcohol spilled as he brought his glass down. Thankfully, it did not crack, the force was only just less than enough to harm the crystalline structure.

Incredulous, the thief could not help but want to be sarcastic. "An' Ah'm azh shober azh...azh a...tur'le." Truthfully, Jardin could not think of an animal that made sense in that context, Wow, maybe he was tipsy. It added to the disguise, though, so it seemed to work out. To add to his buffoonery, he tried to take a slurp of his drink and quickly snorted into it. He was still careful not to get anything on himself. His suit was expensive enough.

"W'll the' mag- *hic* man. Le's see so'e mag- *hic*." He eased back into his seat letting himself look as though he had passed out as he mutter somthing incoherent. All the while, he listened to the sounds outside, preparing for trouble he knew was coming...

Everet chuckled again and cut knowing eyes over to Rune where he sat about to open his mouth but Ev got there first.

“Better watch what you wish for bruthah. I was running a place up in Ouchita. Nice place with kitchen staff and clientele and everything. Got some wacky requests sometimes but hey who doesn't like their meat way over on the rare side?”

Out on the pier the figures had multiplied into a small crowd, a dark mass of bodies milling around the jetty and the boatramp, more wandering down the tourist's boardwalk in from the water.

“Ev, we need to...” Rune tried to horn in but the barkeep silenced him with a finger-point.

“Then this fellow comes busting up in the joint late one evenin'. You remember what you said kicking open that door?”

Rune chewed on it for a moment caught between the story and whatever he needed to say, then: “I... I don't remember E.”

“Well I do. He kicked that door open and said 'Closin time varmints, last call' and I was thinking who was this fool shoutin' up my place like some crazy man.” The dark skinned man pointed back into the seating area like a conductor leading the orchestra of the story.

“And no sooner did he do that than the customers all jumped up and just shook their skin off like it was a costume, a summer coat of man and woman tossed to one side and under it all they was wolves.” His eyes were wide and round and he swept a slow hand through the air. Rune grimaced again and fumbled for his sweating drink.

“Wolves with hands like a man and big enough to pull the tires off a truck. They growled like chainsaws made o' thunder. And just when I thought I had reached the end of everything new, my man here yanked out that piece of his and it whistled like a bomb let loose and never hittin' the ground. A real mean sound like it was hungry or something and then all hell really flipped over.”

Out in the darkness the collected beings in their disparate knots started to slowly turn, small movements of their heads and then their shoulders rotating; an achingly slow radar dish each one of them locking onto the grill and its lone screen-door where the barman continued his story.

“The gun comes up and BOOM!” Everet kicks his hands up in the exact gesture.

“Like a mountain coming down it blasted the nearest one with a ball of fire catching it like kindling. That dog-man got to running but he weren't dyin', no sir! He was ripping around the place catchin' everything else like Smokey's worst nightmare. And the rest of them things jumped on Rune here beating him like he was paying for it. All the while that gun was goin off like dynamite, spitting out lightning and lasers and all manner of wildness.“

The crowds far out in the dark stood still, deathly quiet. Even the water had hushed making the night a great big held breath.

“You remember what I said Rune? I said 'you got to use silver bullets ya idjit' while I was tryin' to share space with the carpet. And you said 'I do what I want'.” Everet laughed and slapped the bar. Rune pulled his nose out of the empty glass.

“I said it does what it wants, the gun. It does what it wants.”

Everet snapped and pointed in that single motion of familiar recollection. “yeah, yeah and I guess it heard me then 'cause it went CRACK...” Another hand motion with the gun fingers

“And one of them beasts ripped open like it had been empty the whole time. Damnedest thing, all those monsters trying to feed Rune here his own chin started trying to beat feet like it was going out of style but ya boy here was between them and the only door that wasn't on fire.”

The dark crowd shifted. Even trained eyes might only barely detect the slight shuffling, the testing with toes and shoes. A new parent might spot the fist halting steps taken with real purpose, careful, tentative but pointed in a definite direction. The groups of people from the bayou waters began to drift toward the grill, dark in the dark, silent in the silence, not a breath among them.

“He turned every one of those things into a bad haircut and then got me out of the place. Lawd didn't you look like a mile of bad road though.” he clipped fingers at Rune who grunted an echo into his glass with a twitch of his band-aided brow as if to say “like always”.

“And he been looking after me ever since. Keepin' me alright. Which is why he will never pay for a drink in any place where I am. Ain't that right? Yes sir.” he said with a punctuating nod. Rune set the glass down softly shaking his head, his voice quiet in the warm air

“Damn it Ev... damn it”

Though he listened to the barman's tale, Jardin was growing disinterested. The feeling of encroaching malice had begun to creep up his spine and the thief found himself glancing to the door. The drunkard's mask he had been wearing slipped away as it became less helpful.

Downing the last of his drink in a single gulp, Jardin stood, heading for the bar. His gait was steady now. He shrugged off the burn as it flowed down his throat. He flipped his empty glass over on the bar.

The thief allowed his gaze to drift from the alleged magus to the talkative barkeep and back. "Ev, right?" he asked, finally letting his steady eyes rest on the man behind the counter. "Ev, I think Mister Magician here as something to say." Turning to the lightly bandaged patron and further to focus on the door, he added, "Oherwise it'll hit the fan before he gets to warn us about the dangers right outside your door." Jardin began to rub his thumb against the knuckles of his index finger, one of his many nervous habits...

Rune took in the change in the young man with a narrowing of his eyes making the band aid dip. Everet didn’t seem to notice at all but kept his eyes on Rune. A moment of quiet hung between them and Rune turned his eyes to the open screen door and the darkness beyond.

“What is…” he started moving away from the bar but Everet slammed his hand down on the polished wooden top making the glasses and coasters dance.

“The boy is right Rune, you came here to tell me something yeah? Well get it off ya chest man. Go on an’ say it.” His eyes were round on the verge of mania and a seething rage sparked into life there. Rune’s head snapped back around.

Behind the barman rose shelves packed with bottles, blues and greens, clears with labels and glass as dark as tar. And behind those something long and mottled moved with a slow sinuous motion. The sensitive eye might spot its arm-thick presence or sense the menace of the markings warning the caveman brain, danger. Danger.

“Ev, I heard about Cassie. I’m…”

“You sorry? For my loss, you sorry?”

Rune let suspicion harden into a mask on his face while Everet leaned forward snapping his fingers like tiny gunshots.

“Where were you man?” Pop. “When she was dyin, where were you?” Pop. “Huh?” Pop.

Rune didn’t respond but the muscles at his jaw jumped and his solid chin dipped like a boxer ready to get hit.

“You telling yourself weren’t nothing you could do. But you know that’s a lie don’t you. Weren’t nothing I could do. Weren’t nothing this young man could do but you…” the snap turned into a pointed finger as if by magic summoning an accusation right at Rune.

“You got them powers. You know people with powers. But you couldn’t be bothered could you? You was supposed to be there for me. Ain’t you supposed to save people?”

The dark crowd wandered into the streetlight, their heads and shoulders lit with a thin radiance, a razor of light cutting them from the darkness behind and around them. They were everywhere, a wall of careful steps and brilliantly white eye-whites where there were eyes.

Rune focused on the raging barkeep and shifted his stance slightly, on foot back a touch, one shoulder down just a hair. He set himself at a casual angle to the pair of Everet and the young man and let his hard gaze flicker over the other patron like a question in a bottle tossed across the gulf between them before focusing on Everet again.

“Tell me about the swamp witch Ev. Tell me about the hoodoo man or the fortune teller up on Claibourne. “

Through this exchange, Jardin remained focused on the screen door. The lights from outside seemed to dim as a mass of people moved in, blocking some of the glow from the street lamps.

However, the young meta did have the presence of mind to spare some attention towards Everet and the magician known as Rune. A curious name that evoked images of an old man, hanging by his ankle from the limbs of the world tree...damn it, Norse mythology. Why do you have to come up at a time like this?

From what Jardin could gather, Everet's wife had died, likely from something natural if Rune the Mage elected not to get involved. Yet now he blamed his old friend for not simply 'magicing' away the problem. Suddenly, Jardin's respect for the barkeep declined: he hated when people blamed others for all the world's ills. He found himself rolling his eyes.

Wait...Did Rune just ask about a swamp witch? Quickly running the logic in his head, Jardin made a leap: Some sort of Black Shaman ("Black" refering to black magic), had made a deal with Everet. The most obvious deal would be the man's wife for Rune. "Oh self, What mess have we gotten ourselves into tonight?" He spoke in a hushed tone, backing up. He also undid his cuffs. It would be convenient later.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, Jardin saw movement behind the bar. Turning his head slightly, he focused on the...whatever-it-was. Silently, the thief prayed it was just a big snake...though honestly, he doubted he would be so lucky.

Rune saw the young man take a step back. Was he not with Ev? Was this not the stitch-up it looked like? The barkeep was on the crumbling edge of rage but the bar patron looked focused, intent, ready but not scared. Everet gave a laugh and raised his hands in a mockery of surrender.

“Ooooh you got me. You figured it out.” his laugh rasped with something else hidden in its depths, something like the rumble of a hunting cat.

“But you can't help them either Mr. Rune Vigil, no sir you cannot.”

The shadowy crowd pressed closer, in full view now, the light from the grill painting them in a warm glow. Half a hundred bodies and more, young men with smooth skin, old men with weathered lines, women with curves and the sharp planes of shallow bones, bodies given to the mud and water too long, bloated and sagging or dried and stiff as paper.

Where they had eyes, even cloudy orbs, they were questing, searching almost desperate even as their bodies were cautious and careful. Fingers stretched out to touch the glass of the tall french window leaving tracks of slime and mud there. Figures crowded at the door hesitating at the screen. Pale palms pressed at it, each one a question.

“I done 'em in. I killt them but not before getting their marks. I got their curses Rune, and then I ate 'em up so all that power is mine now.” Everet spread his arms like dark cross before a pillar of spirits. More images swam behind those bottles, scales, mottled skin, like ghosts of serpents come back to haunt the bar.

The words slapped him and Rune blinked stunned. “What... Everet, What have you done?”

“I done for myself. And with your power I'mma take apart heaven and dig up hell.” the growling sound rose in the barman's words like a creature breaching the ocean waves and as it burst forth so burst the bottles behind him sending glass, caps and their chemical contents outward like a bomb.

Great snakes looped out from the ruin of the shelves, their muscular bodies transparent like glowing sea creatures, a sickly green like alcohol flame radiating along their length.

Rune barely got his face turned as the glass sliced past opening up lines across his cheek and chin, unstitching patches of his suit coat and flaying his tie. He stumbled back into the window sending chairs spinning. The panes cracked as he struck.

Hands pressed the screen door and it began to open even as the glass shredded the light metal screening and lanced into the unfeeling horde beyond its fragile frame.

At the explosion of glass, Jardin instinctively raised one arm, shielding his eyes from the wicked shards. His other arm came up as well, protecting his body, keeping the glass from having a chance of killing him. The youth grimaced as his forearms absorbed the brunt of the damage; his shirt did not fare well either.

Blood was already soaking into his sleeves as Jardin lowered his arms; he bore two deep gashes in his cheek now, red lines that indicated where his defenses had neglected. Now that the murderous storm had ended, the meta-thief took stock of the situation: Everet was suddenly power mad. Dabbling in necromancy could do that he had heard.

Meanwhile, the madman's victims had become his undead thralls...and were trying to come in. That could not be good.

Jardin spared a brief glance toward Rune and he shrugged. Then, the theif was moving. He sprinted toward the door, mantling tables and chairs with practiced ease and precision. As he neared the screen barrier and the revenants beyond, Jardin did not release the last chair he grabbed. Instead, he came down, planting his feet and pivoted. Suddenly the chair was a bludgeon, swung violenty at the first corpse.

Hopefully the force would send it back into the mob, buying him time to turn the nearby table into a barricade. Hopefully that would keep the situation manageable.

Blinking off the pain and shock blazing across his cheek and limbs, Rune caught young man’s disaffected shrug. “You little punk” he thought in the second it took him to realize the bar patron was hurdling the tables like a low flying bird.

Rune shook his head and then had to grit his teeth at that bad decision as the young man turned a chair into a martial arts weapon levering it into the nearest creature with enough force to change a man’s religion. The group was caught in the light wooden cross section of the door and the blow sent that one shuddering back into their number like a drop back into the ocean. The chair came back a tangle of bent aluminum legs and splintered seat backing. Streaked hands reached out slowly for the chair, for the kid, and the door cracked along its peeled-paint center.

He flung an arm out toward the doorway. “Don’t kill any of ‘em Kid.” It sounded ridiculous even to him. If this were a movie he might have time for explanation, a little get to know ya, maybe some posturing. But in the world of real crap and real fans, blurted absurdity just had to do. “Get the door!”

Everet stood taller now, maybe he was bigger. Rune couldn’t tell while his cheek was shouting at him in pulses of glass-cut pain. The barkeep was remade into a shadowy figure while a sick green light poured out from behind him like spoiled milk into water. And through that chunky haze serpentine forms wound and knotted flinging their bodies around, thudding and slapping against each other. They never tell you about that in rituals 101.

He reached into his jacket shaking diamond dust from the lapel and shoulder. “I’m sorry Ev.” Rune whispered as his hand returned holding a thick handled heavy pistol. Its body was blackened steel and thick as well making a heavy oval of complications all along its weighty length.

As it hit the air it made a sound like some great titan drawing a drowning breath and the black of its barrel rippled upwards into silver until it shone like a hungry blade. The gasp became a collection of deep inhuman voices like a thousand giant maniacs possessed of a single horrible thought, sounds overlaid and stitched across one another making a tapestry of that one desire. Kill.

Everet was laughing too, his voice barely weeding though the gun’s abominable cacophony.

“Whatchoo got Rune? What you think you gonna do boy!”

Rune’s lips moved in a silent chant and the fingers of his other hand traced a gleaming trail of silver that looked as mystical as anything might in this chaos. The gun hung slightly down and for all the world there was the sense that it was thinking, deciding. Rune might have been holding the thin leash of a lion or the single reign on a war horse ready to pull him right off his feet.

Then it cranked its barrel up on target with the glowing barman and the world seemed to suck inward at the barrel as if the gun creature took a bite out of it. What it spat out was the sound of a bomb underwater. Force and fury swept outward tossing tables and chairs aside. Sparkling dust and shards leapt from Rune’s form like an after image and the window behind him burst into a hail of bits falling out into the dark crowd there.

Rune immediately started a new series of spells, tracing sigils furiously, fighting the gun which clearly wanted another go. It waved toward the young man as if it were sniffing, testing what it might taste like to reap him. Symbols in the grip blazed as he forced it down.

The barman hung in his awful radiance, the remains of his head kicked back, only his smooth throat showing to the pair. Then that ruined head tipped forward and they could both see the missing right side knitting itself anew, pale fresh skin like frost crawling back over the ragged loss. And from inside that half-image of body horror Everet’s voice fell out, spattering across them.

“Gonna have you… gonna have you both.”

Rune was busy with the spell subduing the growling gun which still pushed against being returned to its holster, but he cut angry eyes up at the reforming figure, the sentiment “Crap!” clearly written there. The world smelled of death, decay, and whiskey

And it was then that the press of dirty hands grabbed him.

Jardin flinched at the explosive force of the mage's gun. His shirt and pants fluttered and pulled at his body as concusive waves tore at them. Then he saw the weapon move of its own accord, pulling at Rune's grip like an attack dog, ready to come off the chain. "'It does what it wants,'" Jardin repeated from before.

Wait...The windows! Just as the thought came, Jardin saw the clinging hands of Ev's victims surge in, grasping at the spell weaver as he reclaimed control of his weapon. Sparing a glance towards Ev the Necromancer, the thief bolted for the windows, table allowed to fall from where he had propped it up.

Launching out the window, slashing his palms open on the ruined glass, Jardin found his feet driving into one of the zombies gripping Rune. The youth further launch into an intricate series of acrobatic kicks that were meant to open up room. The space meant Rune would have a chance to find his feet once more. Still, Jardin was careful not to plant any lethal blows. There were many reasons Rune might have decided these poor creatures did not have to die; Rune would be able to explain after the shitstorm.

Speaking of... "Hey, old man. Think we should try a tactical retreat, yeah?" Jardin quickly made a hole in the mob, giving them both a way out of the huddle.

Rune felt the fingers grip him from behind, questing and strong, gathering his coat into dead palms, snatching at his belt, plucking at his hair. The world promised to go totally pear-shaped as he fought the feral weapon back into its holster and skidded backward through glass dust and gin slurry.

Then the young man flashed past him like a mongoose alight. He hear the telltale sounds of fists and elbows, knees and the swinging instep, blows falling dull into the marching meat of the crowd and like a reprieve from the fickle gods of luck and fortune those finger shook loose.

He stumbled a step before turning to see the bar patron standing among scattered and teetering bodies. And that was when the idea came to him, the kind of idea that didn’t come to good people.

“Retreat…” He repeated as the bodies slowly started to right themselves, started to understand what was happening, started to get a little faster.

“Not a chance kid. We have to stop him and you are the one that can do it!” Rune had to yell to get above the laughter rumbling out from behind him. Ev hung in the air how, lifted from the bourbon soaked floor as the snake choked green aura slowly seeped outward.

“He has a mark on him somewhere, that’s where his power comes from. It’s not on his head!” He shouted as the fallen field around Jardin started to stand straighter, their hands coming back up slowly but with the purpose of shutting down the lightning fast fighter. Rune stepped back up to the low windowsill shaking his hands like a piano man in for the arpeggio of a lifetime.

“Get in there and take him out Junior, mess up that mark and leave this bunch to me.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder and left room for the young man to get past him on the left.

A clap and the air shimmered with sudden magical energy around Rune’s hands like silver threads weaving upwards and outwards.