Stone Soldiers: City of Bones (6 page)

A small
column of air spiraled up from the ground, the faintest of dirt devils, spinning in place like a miniature tornado. Wind howled, then formed words. "What are you?"

"That just kills
you, doesn't it?" Kenslir asked. "You bastards are so arrogant- you think that because you're a few thousand years old you know everything."

"What are you!" the wind demanded again, louder.

"I'm just a man. A human- just like your mother was."

The wind howled with rage and the whirlwind approached the Colonel.
He sidestepped and easily avoided it.

"Son of a Fallen and a whore," Kenslir taunted. "Half mortal
, aren’t you?"

"You cannot defeat me!" the
whirlwind declared- now taunting the Colonel.

"You sure about that?"

"You cannot touch the wind- you cannot hurt the air..."

"Maybe I don't have to,"
Kenslir said. He turned and walked up to the whirlwind, reaching for it. His fingertips trailed through the outer edges of the swirling dust and debris caught in the dust devil. Green light flashed and the whirlwind screamed and backed away quickly.

"You c
annot catch me, mortal!"

"Maybe. Maybe not."

The Colonel turned and started to walk away.

"Where are you going, human?! Do you not
wish to fight me?"

Kenslir
stopped in the street and turned back to the whirlwind. "I know what you are. And I know that you're bound to that big rock in there. I can walk away- you can't."

"No!" the whirlwind
raged. It swept toward Kenslir who stood still, watching it impassively.

"I will spread disease all
over this continent! I will send it to the four corners of the world!" the whirlwind raged, inches from Kenslir. "I will wipe man from the face of the Earth."

"Keep dreaming, blowhard," Kenslir said, turning and walking away once more. "Oh, and
maybe you ought to make peace with yourself. You're about to answer to a higher power."

With that, the Colonel turned and
ran away.

***

The
long column of bacteria-wrapped bones stretched out a half mile from the front gate of the boomtown. The stone soldiers had smashed into the stiffly marching skeletons like a furious storm. But not every skeleton broke the same. Some lost spines, some arms, some hip bones.

The trail of carnage left by this attack seethed and moved
on the ground- bones were discarded and others picked back up, formed into new skeletons by thick, tar-like bacteria. These composite skeletons then rose up and staggered along after the hundreds of others walking away from Gwasera. The stone soldiers were barely making a dent in the skeleton army.

"This ain't working!"
Cooper declared, smashing a skeleton to pieces with a punch.

"You got
a better idea?" Tim Lawrence asked, slashing through another with his Bowie knife.

>>>STAND DOWN<<<
scrolled across their TTVs and a flashing green arrow in the corner of their fields of view prompting the men to turn around.

The Colon
el was approaching on foot, slowing to a jog. He stomped through the debris of skeletons covering the road, the odd bit of black goo flashing green as his bare feet ground it into the dirt.

"Sir?" Daniel Smith asked, shaking bacterial film off his knuckle
s.

"You guys don't want to miss this," Kenslir said. He half-turned and pointed back to the town, then up.

The TTVs began flashing warning triangles in the sky above. At least a dozen of them- that rapidly became red streaks as they homed in on Gwasera.

A dozen missiles flashed down out of the sky, engines roaring as the rocketed to earth at well
over Mach 2. A bright flash erupted from beyond the town, where the warehouse had been- a series of explosions erupting in sequence almost as one.

A brilliant f
ireball bloomed into the sky- and a shockwave of heat radiated out from the town, moving Kenslir back a few inches and shattering most of the skeleton warriors on the road. In the aftermath of the town-flattening blast, a huge mushroom cloud rose up into the air.

"Holy shit," Robert Lee exclaimed.

"Thermobaric missiles," Kenslir said, turning to face the men. "Standard failsafe for missions like this. For all their bluster, most of these supernatural bastards can't take a little heat."

"Supernatural?" Smi
th said, puzzled. "The witch? I thought you killed her."

Kenslir smiled. "That witch was dead years ago.
She was being puppeteered by an air elemental- or something very similar. Animated her body to fool the locals."

"Air Elemental?" Cooper was a little s
urprised to hear that. Even with all he'd seen and read about since his petrification, that seemed a little far fetched.

"How does a bomb kill something made out of air?" Lawrence asked. He was looking around at all the collapsed tar-skeletons laying on t
he road. They were like puppets with their strings cut- the bacteria that had survived the blast wave no longer animated them.

"Thermobaric weapons burn hot- very hot," the Colonel answered. "Hot enough to burn the
air."

THANK YOU FOR READING!

Read more about the Stone Soldiers at www.StoneSoldiers.info!

The Stone Soldiers will return in July 2013 in
Stone Soldiers: Sea of Monsters

READ THE NOVEL THAT STARTED THE SERIES!

MYTHICAL

A resurrected super soldier and a group of teens must stop a
prehistoric, shape-shifting giant who eats the hearts of his victims to steal their identities.

Available now in print and digital format!

BROTHERS IN STONE

A second prehistoric shapeshifter is loose in the modern world, joining his resurrected brother i
n ripping out and consuming the hearts of victims to steal their power, their memories and their form. Colonel Mark Kenslir came back from the dead to defeat one shapeshifter. Can he hope to defeat two, or will he need help from an FBI psychic?

Available now in digital and print editions!

BLOOD AND STONE

Kukulcan has returned to Earth and demands sacrifices. But is this really the blood god of the Mayans, or something worse?

Available now in digital and print editions!

Shades of War

Colonel Mark Kenslir has defended America from the supernatural for over fifty years. In that time, he's killed many men. Now one of those vanquished enemies has come back from the grave- and is raising a spectral army from Civil war battlefields for revenge.

Kenslir m
ust find a way to stop an army that is already dead, before they reach Washington and plunge the country into chaos. Aided by his cryokinetic granddaughter, an amorous vampire M.D. and his stone soldiers, can the Colonel stop the forces of darkness or will Washington fall to the shades of gray?

Coming soon!

Orbiting the earth for millennia, a strange, black construct hangs silently in space, its purpose and creators unknown. Governments of the world have feared the implications
of the construct and have kept its existence a secret.

When the artificial satellite, code-named Black Knight comes crashing to down to Earth, the Stone Soldiers must spring into action to keep those responsible from unleashing the horrors it contains.