Stone Soldiers 1: Mythical (13 page)

As Kenslir reached the shapeshifter, it had shed its human form for that of a giant. A six-fingered, six-toed, eight foot tall giant with a shaved head, and bulging, rope-like, inhuman muscles.

Colonel Kenslir wasn’t impressed. In his long career, he’d seen a lot. Turning into a giant just meant his enemy was a bigger, easier to hit target. He went to work with his batons.

Solid stainless steel, with ridged grips, weighing ten pounds each, the batons were far heavier than their wooden counterparts. A lesser man would have trouble using them for long. For Colonel Kenslir, they were some of his favorite weapons.

The giant reached its arms out, intending to grab the head of this new opponent and crush it. Unlike the previous stone soldiers, this new opponent looked to be of simple flesh and blood. Which meant it would have a heart the shapeshifter could consume.

“Come to me, little human,” the giant said- his mouth filled with a double row of teeth. What the shapeshifter didn’t count on was Kenslir’s speed.

Colonel Kenslir ducked under the arms and began to hammer the giant with dozens of blows, working the batons effortlessly, and rapidly, like drumsticks. Kenslir worked the batons with brutal force, each blow strong enough to shatter bricks. The staccato assault ranged across the giant’s chest, on his sides, down to his knee caps and back up to his throat.

The giant was staggered back by the blows. He felt his ribs, his thigh bones, even his internal organs breaking under the assault. This just made him want to consume the black haired attacker’s heart more than any other he had yet encountered in this strange land.

The giant slammed his head down, ramming his dense forehead directly into Kenslir’s face. The tactical targeting visor, made of dense polycarbonate plastic, tough enough to withstand gunfire, snapped in half. The blow flattened Kenslir’s nose and nearly knocked him off his feet. He thought he heard his neck vertebrae fracture.

Kenslir took several steps back. He threw his batons down on either side of him. They smashed into the asphalt, burying their ends three inches deep.

The giant held his ground. He once again shapechanged, but not into a human form- instead his chest bulged and twisted as he repaired his bones and internal organs to restore his giant form.

Kenslir reached up calmly and pulled the broken pieces of the tactical visor off his face and dropped them to the ground. “How many times do I have to kill you?” he asked the giant.

Before the giant could respond, Kenslir sprang forward, kicking off from the ground. His sudden leap carried him up in the air, ten feet over the giant’s head. He twisted in mid air, tucked, rolled and landed nimbly on his feet behind the giant, his hands gripping the handles of his twin Bowie knives.

The giant spun around, surprised.

Kenslir drew his knives and thrust them forward in one swift motion. His left-hand knife punctured deep into the giant’s side, cleaving a kidney. His right-hand knife punctured deep into the giant’s chest, spearing his heart. Or where his heart would have been if he were a human.

Kenslir released his grip on the knives and stepped back. “And that is game, set and —” he started to say.

It was the giant’s turn to attack. Despite the incredible pain in his kidney, he struck out, right hand held flat, knifelike. His six fingers struck Kenslir’s chest with blinding speed, tearing through fabric and flesh just under Kenslir’s sternum.

Kenslir grunted from the impact. He looked down at his chest and saw the giant’s arm in his torso, almost to the elbow.

The giant grinned. He had learned long ago to form his heart on the left side of his chest, to avoid the spears, swords, knives and other weapons that had so often been employed against him in this form. But the black haired man with the strange green-black eyes had normal human anatomy. His heart was exactly where it should be.

The giant wrapped his six fingers around the heart and jerked it out of Kenslir’s chest.

The giant stepped back, then raised the heart to his chest, opening his mouth. He wondered if he was actually salivating at the thought of all the power the heart held. He was just about to put it into his mouth when he noticed it had changed color. And gotten heavier.

The giant looked closer. The heart had turned gray. Blood no longer dripped out of it. The giant squeezed the heart. It had turned to unyielding stone.

“I’m going to be needing that back,” Colonel Kenslir said.

The giant looked up, more surprised that Kenslir was still alive than by the petrified heart in his hand. But there Kenslir was, with a gaping hole in his chest that wasn’t even bleeding. And with a large pistol in his hand, aimed right at the giant’s face.

Kenslir fired twice, his automag roaring like a miniature cannon. He normally carried the magnum in a shoulder holster, his last backup firearm. One that he was pinpoint accurate with, at distances up to a hundred feet.

Both the giant’s eyes exploded as the automag’s rounds bored into his skull, then through his brain, before erupting out the back of his head. This didn’t kill the giant, but it blinded him. And made him very angry.

The giant staggered back, turning away from Kenslir, who continued firing, aiming his shots at precise pressure points and nerve clusters. The pain was excruciating. It was time for this to finally end.

The shapeshifter’s body again began to bulge and distort as he changed form. His skin reddened then grew scales. His feet expanded into gigantic, four-toed paws, tipped with two inch talons. His arms bulged and lengthened, into matching appendages. His neck and head lengthened, while wings grew from his back. A tail emerged from the shapeshifter’s back, stretching out into a barbed tip.

In mere seconds, the giant had transformed into a red-scaled, four-legged, winged dragon with a body the size of a large horse, and a fifty foot wingspan. The shapeshifter turned his dragon head toward Kenslir, then swatted him away with his tail.

Without a heart, Kenslir knew he had only a few minutes before oxygen deprivation caused his brain to shut down. He really did need his heart back- and a lot of water. Maybe. He’d never had this happen before. Worse, without a heart, his body was already shutting down. His reaction time was drastically reduced. He couldn’t avoid the dragon tail.

The red-scaled tail swept into Kenslir like a falling tree. It cracked his ribs and lifted him off his feet. He felt himself flying through the air a considerable distance. Then he smashed into something.

Kenslir got back to his feet, glancing behind him for just a moment. He’d crashed into a long, sleek boat on a trailer. A trailer connected to a parked truck. Kenslir turned back to face the dragon, realizing he’d dropped his automag into the boat behind him.

The dragon reared back on its hind legs, shrinking down to the form of an elderly, white-haired black man. An elderly man who had been alone on a golf course one morning, playing a few holes before work. The shapeshifter had turned the beloved grandfather and husband into a heartless corpse.

Kenslir had one last firearm left. His right hand dropped down to the holster on his right leg and quick drew his submachine gun. It was an OA-93- a 5.56mm, banana clip-fed weapon based on the Army’s venerable M-16 and M-4 rifles. Kenslir carried it for use against hostile, human targets, its small, accurate rounds not being designed for much else. But it was all he had left.

Kenslir squeezed the trigger, sending out a full-auto stream of bullets. He noticed his hand was trembling as he did so. He might not have five minutes left after all.                           

The hastily aimed shot missed the shapeshifter, riddling the front of the motel many feet behind him. The shapeshifter ignored the gunfire and slowly walked over to Perses’ headless body.

Kenslir dropped his empty magazine and drew a fresh one from a pouch on his left leg. With shaking hands, his vision starting to blur, he quickly reloaded.

The shapeshifter reached down and pulled Perses’ grenade pistol from its holster. The shapeshifter hadn’t been a fan of firearms when he first encountered them, but he had to admit the pistols of these stone men were very impressive.

Kenslir again took aim and fired, this time sending a stream of full-auto fire into the shapeshifter’s back.

The shapeshifter ignored the bullets tearing into him and turned toward Kenslir and slowly aimed the double-barreled grenade pistol. Even as three bullets ripped through his left shoulder, the shapeshifter took careful aim with the pistol in his right hand.

“My turn,” the shapeshifter said.

As Kenslir was dropping another empty magazine from his machine pistol, the grenade pistol boomed again. Its armor-piercing round streaked across the parking lot- straight into the side of the boat beside Kenslir.

The round detonated, blowing a huge hole through both sides of the boat.

Kenslir glanced at the holes even as he continued reloading.

“Crap,” Kenslir said. He’d need a swimming pool of a water and a full moon to survive a hit like that.

Kenslir extended his arm, aiming as carefully as he could with his vision blurry, then fired. Simultaneously, the shapeshifter fired his last shot.

The bullets from Kenslir’s machine pistol traveled only slightly faster than the grenade round- a mere three thousand feet per second. The small 5.56mm bullets tore into the top of the shapeshifter’s skull, puncturing neatly through flesh and bone and removing the back of his head.

Nearly at the same time, the shapeshifter’s grenade round struck Kenslir in the forehead, above his left eyebrow.

Were they just large slugs, Kenslir could have survived the impact easily. His own bones were far harder than a normal man’s. But the grenade rounds contained an explosive core, similar to that of a Russian RPG rocket. Molten copper was liquefied in the micro explosion that tore a messy hole in Kenslir’s forehead. The molten copper followed the blast wave, into his skull and out the back of his head.

Nearly half of Kenslir’s skull was removed in the blast. The round designed to breach walls, stop tanks or bring down small aircraft had torn through brain and stone-hard bone with ridiculous ease.

As Kenslir was knocked backwards, into the boat, he marveled at how little he felt from the injury. He then realized he was laying on his back, looking up at the sky, his head burst open like a melon. It was a unique feeling.

“That's going to leave a mark...” Kenslir said, laughing deliriously. He was rapidly losing consciousness.

The shapeshifter stepped forward, again transforming into his dragon form. He spread his wings and flapped them once as he vaulted into the air. Beating his massive, leathery wings, the shapeshifter quickly gained altitude.

Across the street, Echo emerged from the diner. He had tried to radio for backup, but he wasn’t familiar with the transmitters the squad had been using. Now that the dragon had flown away, he was going out to check on the Colonel.

Laid out in the boat, half his skull gone, the Colonel lay still, breathing slowly, his eyes open and staring blankly upward. Echo noticed the large hole in the Colonel’s chest. He couldn’t believe he was still alive.

“Hang in there, Colonel,” Echo said. “I’ll take care of-”

A leathery flapping sound seemed to be coming from above. Echo turned and looked up. It was the dragon- flying a slow circle around the area, looking for more soldiers.

He knew the Colonel had told him not to try and make contact, but Echo had no choice. He had a diner full of innocent civilians, and there were no more soldiers. He reached out with his mind.

Something was there, but Echo couldn’t quite latch on to it. He squinted, concentrating harder. He pressed his fingers to his temples, mustering all his willpower. But still, a contact remained elusive.

Far above, the dragon noticed Echo on the ground. Dressed in shabby clothes, the telepath didn’t seem like much of a threat. But he was standing right next to the fallen soldier with the heart of stone. And he was staring intently at the shapeshifter as he circled.

The shapeshifter made up his mind- he needed more hearts. This one would do.

The shapeshifter tucked his wings in and dove toward the ground. He dropped like a stone through the air, directly toward the straining telepath. At the last possible second, the dragon unfurled its wings, catching the air and landing as lightly as a horse-sized, flying monster could.

Echo didn’t flinch, he was too intent on making the psychic connection. His eyes stared blankly while the veins in his forehead bulged. He wondered why he couldn’t seize control of the shapeshifter. Unlike the Colonel, the shapeshifter did give off psychic energy. But it was different, more animal-like.

Suddenly, it hit Echo. He could seize control of a human’s mind, but the shapeshifter had turned into an animal that while it was mythical, was still an animal, regardless.

The dragon saw the sudden panic in Echo’s eyes as the telepath stopped straining. He leaned in close, tasted the fear coming off the human, lingering in the air.

Echo stood defiantly, more scared then he had ever been in his life. He was too afraid to even move.

The dragon suddenly attacked. Its jaws gaped wide, then it chomped down on Echo’s head. With a jerk, the telepath was lifted off the ground, torso dangling from the dragon’s mouth. The shapeshifter shook the body, back and forth, like a dog with a toy, snapping Echo’s neck.