CHAPTER ONE
The Horseman
It was often I found myself surrounded, but rarely by mortals. My reputation served to warn my enemies that a confrontation with any single opponent would be pointless. My tactical instincts were only matched by brutality, and both were easily surpassed by my ability with the power of the Tempest.
And yet, here I was, on the rooftop of a parking garage in the dead of night, with guns aimed at me.
The night was dark and crisp. A cool breeze swept through the air, rich, and saturated with the scent of putrid, rotting magic that clung to Devil Falls. It tugged at my hair and whispered, invisibly, as it moved past my ears.
“Well, then,” I called out. “It appears you have my attention.”
One of the men in the crowd took a tentative step forward, cocking the gun in his hand. They were all wearing dark clothes—jackets, jeans, gloves. Most of them wore tattoos on their necks, each of them identical to the other, and marking them as part of the same gang.
Bleeding Suns.
“Looks like we got more than that,” he said, “We got the drop.”
Though the headlights from the black van he’d jumped out of were shining against his back, I could still see his face. He was skinny, with sharp, beady eyes, sunken cheeks, and week-old stubble covering his face and chin. He wore the same tattoo his comrades wore, but he struck out to me as other—like he wasn’t quite mortal.
“I don’t believe we’re acquainted,” I said.
“Ain’t no need for names,” he said. He spoke softly, but his voice was hoarse and slightly forced, as if an old scar prevented him from speaking with ease.
“Very well. In that case, you’re forcing me to have to make a choice about how to exit the situation.”
“Oh yeah? Hit me with your choices.”
“I could always jump off the building. If you have taken the time to follow me, then you know who I am and what I can do, so you know that a fall like this won’t hurt me. The other, more likely choice, however, is that butcher all of these men and casually walk back exactly the way I came.”
A chorus of elevated heartrates began to rise all around me. I could hear them beating hard in the chests of the men who hid behind the guns they were holding. Their weapons made them feel safe for as long as they were chasing me, but a simple threat was all it had taken to shatter that confidence into a million pieces.
“I think you’re gonna have a little more trouble than that getting through us,” he said, “But you’re welcome to try.”
I shrugged. “On your head be it, then.”
“Light him up!”
Gunfire erupted from all around me, muzzle flashes igniting the darkness with bursts of light. I leapt and twisted, contorting my body to avoid the bullets as they whizzed toward me. To the men unloading their clips, I moved like a blur, like the wind, like smoke—but when I hit, I hit like a hammer.
I shoulder-charged the man nearest to me and sent him smashing into the side of a car. Its windows exploded, and its alarm began to blare off into the night. The scent of the man’s blood instantly filled the air, tickling my nostrils.
Two of the men around me were already shaken enough that they’d stopped firing. I glared at one of them, grabbed hold of him with my mind, and made a crushing gesture with my fist. The man’s bones crunched into themselves, eliciting a blood-curdling scream that joined the blaring alarm.
Before he’d been able to fall to the ground, I launched his body into the gangbanger standing nearest to him. Both men soared through the air like ragdolls, coming to a rolling stop about fifty feet from where they’d been standing.
The gunfire fell silent, replaced by the audible trembling of human confidence once it’s almost at the point of breaking entirely.
I turned to face the leader of the gang whose gun had not yet spoken. There were six of them still standing. Six out of ten, including him. And yet, he didn’t seem entirely fazed by what he’d seen take place right in front of his eyes.
“Would you like me to continue?” I asked, tugging on my buttoned-down shirt. “I don’t have any moral objections to killing every last one of you, but you might object to having your lives snuffed out like candles.”
“Are you done showing off?” asked the leader of the group.
“Showing off suggests I’m trying to prove to you I’m better than I am,” I said, rolling up the cuffs of my shirt to my elbows. “This is barely a warmup.”
“Let’s see if we can turn up the heat a little bit, then.”
He pulled his left hand out to the side and with a flick of his wrist, he made it glow with eerie orange light. His gun spat hot chunks of lead at me, only this time, I wasn’t as fast when I moved out of their paths. One of them zipped a little too close to my ear, and as I spun away from it, another bit into my shoulder.
I staggered back a few paces, gritting my teeth. That had hurt, and the bullet had lodged itself inside me. I could feel it burning against my insides, sapping just a little of my strength. That shouldn’t have been possible. I felt my own heartrate begin to rise, adrenaline surging through my bloodstream.
A slight grin manifested on the leader’s face. “Oh, snap. Did I slug you?”
I grit my teeth against the pain. There shouldn’t have been any pain. Bullets weren’t supposed to hurt me, I had made sure of that. I slowly turned my eyes up at him. “If you think a slug is going to stop me, think again.”
“One slug, nah. But we got a bunch.”
Gunfire erupted around me once again, only this time my movements were a little slower, a little more sluggish. I pulled my hand up, wrapped my magic around one of the men shooting at me, and sent him hurtling into the sky, and over the edge of the parking garage. His scream died off as he soared further, and further away.
Still, I was forced to take cover behind one of the cars in the lot if I wanted to avoid being hit again. Bullets sparked against metal, shattered glass, and punctured tires. Hiding from them didn’t only go against my instincts as a warrior, it was humiliating. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been forced to hide.
But the bullet wedged in my shoulder called for a more serious approach to the situation.
I tried flooding the wound with magic, to force the bullet out with the sheer power of my will, but the bullet resisted. My body would not reject it. Could not reject it. I took three deep breaths, and plunged my fingers into my shoulder, clenching my jaw shut to stop any kind of sound from escaping my lips.
I dug and searched, pain blooming through me as my fingers worked deeper into my own, bloody meat. Finally, I found it. The bullet was still hot, somehow, and it buzzed lightly as I touched it. With my fingertips I pinched the cap and pulled it out, exhaling my held breath.
My hand was dripping with blood, as was the bullet. It was a simple cap made of brass, but it had a marking on its tip that hadn’t been completely distorted when it pierced my flesh. The pyramid on the bullet’s tip was as clear as day. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes.
The gunfire around me ceased, the sound settling into a faint ringing in my ears. “What’s the matter?” I head the leader call out, his voice echoing. “You gonna hide from us all night?”
Shutting my eyes, I pushed magic into the wound in my shoulder. This time, the damaged flesh knitted and knotted, muscles quickly repairing themselves, the skin then regenerating over the damage the bullet had caused. I was whole again, but the bullet served as a warning not to underestimate them.