Death's Mantle 3 Read online

  ~Book Three~

  Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2020 Boycott Books, LLC

  Edited by Adam Luopa

  Audiobook narrated by Andrea Parsneau and produced by Podium Audio

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  Death is before me today:

  like the recovery of a sick man,

  like going forth into a garden after sickness.

  Death is before me today:

  like the odor of myrrh,

  like sitting under a sail in a good wind.

  Death is before me today:

  like the course of a stream;

  like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.

  Death is before me today:

  like the home that a man longs to see,

  after years spent as a captive.

  --From “Dialogue of a Misanthrope with His Soul” written around 2000 BCE, also known as “Dispute Between a Man and His Ba,” taken from a papyrus of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: Beaches and Mental Institutes

  Chapter Two: Dark Side of the Moon

  Chapter Three: Sand in the Wind

  Chapter Four: Cats and Fallen Angels

  Chapter Five: Pleasant Surprise

  Chapter Six: Tomodachi

  Chapter Seven: Trailer Park Trash

  Chapter Eight: Enigma Kart

  Chapter Nine: Leaving

  Chapter Ten: Angel Dust

  Chapter Eleven: Blinded

  Chapter Twelve: Grim Vacuum

  Chapter Thirteen: Headhunting in Boston

  Chapter Fourteen: From Desert to Desert

  Chapter Fifteen: Trailer Fight

  Chapter Sixteen: Reluctant Bedfellows

  Chapter Seventeen: Pizza Confessional

  Chapter Eighteen: Moving On

  Chapter Nineteen: Legacy

  Chapter Twenty: Unlimited

  Chapter Twenty-One: Congress of Death

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The South Wind

  Chapter Twenty-Three: For the Hell of It

  Chapter Twenty-Four: In Motion

  Chapter Twenty-Five: A Day’s Rest

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Sentencing

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Chariots and Grim Reapers

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Turners Falls

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Breakthrough

  Epilogue

  Back of the Book Content

  Chapter One: Beaches and Mental Institutes

  It was the last place Lucian North should be.

  But after what he’d just experienced, it was the only location that made sense, a place he could blow off steam.

  He flourished his lava sword, Hugin and Munin spinning around him as injurecrows took shape, his two Grim Mechas already behind him, their eyes blazing purple, ready to engage.

  Lucian looked down at the building in question, daring the Progeny of Light to come after him.

  He even waited for the angels to arrive, his fists tensing, his dark cape swelling above him and resettling on his shoulders, feeding off Lucian’s sour mood.

  His bone armor, enhanced with a metallic sheen, began to grow out of this flesh, his skull mask forming.

  “Let’s go,” he said, spiraling into the psychiatric ward.

  There was no strategy aside from amplifying the inner mayhem he was experiencing, a desire to rage igniting a fire in Lucian’s heart as he twisted through the ward, parasites bursting out of doors, sending tendrils and fists and stingers after him.

  He reached the end of the hallway and turned just as his two Grim Mechas broke through the wall.

  They were followed by a series of explosions as his injurecrows met their marks, Hugin and Munin twisting past blistering plumes of fire, tearing through parasitic tendrils as they made their way to Lucian.

  He stepped up into the air and was suddenly standing on the ceiling, swinging his lava sword before him as a mangled fist with giant balls of pus popping off its forearm tried to swipe him back down.

  He drove his sword in, severing the parasite’s arm, the pustules popping, the stinging acid reaching Lucian’s mask.

  He could sense his mask sizzling away as he continued engaging the parasites, when a burst of light spiraled into him, his two replicants already making their first kill.

  Lucian dropped back down onto the ground and stood, flinging his sword at a pair of stingers scissoring in his direction.

  His MX-11 formed in his hands and he began firing concentrated energy blasts through the hallway, his shoulder-mounted cannon also taking shape.

  It whirred, twisting as it fired at a clawed tendril coming straight for Lucian as he focused on the parasitic monstrosity in the center of the hallway, a conjoined demon bug that was actively adding a new member to its orgy of the damned, slimy tentacles slapping together, slurping noises meeting his ears as it began adding a fourth parasite to its conglomerate.

  A grimace took shape on Lucian’s face as he charged the sickening monstrosity, and he blasted it again and again.

  Lucian dove straight into the parasite, his body tearing out the other end just as one of his Grim Mechas landed, protecting Lucian for a moment and giving him the chance to stand.

  His replicant cut at the enormous parasite with a bladed arm now rimmed with energy, injurecrows coiling over its shoulder and digging into the conjoined demon bug before triggering their blasts.

  His cape swelled off his shoulders, wrapping around a muscled parasitic tendril, dragging it to the ground. Lucian ducked to avoid a stinger, more light pouring into him as Menor’s cannibalistic ax formed, the weapon gnashing its teeth.

  Rather than throw the ax, he held onto it as he started swinging at tendrils and muscled arms, claws and bristly tentacles, Lucian able to escape to this moment, to be free of what he had witnessed at his brother’s home.

  But only for a moment.

  His entire family, the people he loved the most, were all scheduled to die on the same day, and all Lucian could do was grow stronger between now and then with the hopes of killing his brother’s parasite for good.

  And what a way to start his day, what a way to be brought back down to Earth after the fight on the beach.

  “Where are you!?” Lucian screamed as he sliced through more parasites.

  He wanted the Progeny of Light here now; he wanted Danira to show up.

  So he kept at it, hacking away at the monsters, his eyes closed as he did so; he felt absolutely nothing in the moment, not the strain of his movement, no increase in his heart rate that would indicate that he was alive.

  More energy poured into him, lighting up the inside of his eyelids, Lucian taking a deep breath as he finally opened his eyes.

  He slipped up onto the ceiling, and as he did, he swung his ax beneath him, guillotining a spiked fist coming straight at him.

  A burst of energy beneath him caught his attention, one of his replicants firing forward, stabbing yet another of Lucian’s assailants.

  “They have arrived,” he heard a voice say, Lucian turning to see Hugin hovering in the air to the left of him.

  “Good,” he said, and with that he dropped back down to the ground, yelling for his creations to wrap it up.

  More light spiraled into him, and after it did, Lucian checked his Soul Points:

  He hadn’t gained very much in going after the parasites, but that was to be expected.

  It served its purpose, getting him the attention he desired.

  Lucian glanced to the other end of the hallway to see Hashul the angel standing there, his golden spear i
n his hand, two angels joining him, both with long blades, all three clad in white armor, ready for business.

  “Let’s do this,” Lucian said, a smile forming beneath his skull mask.

  Lucian didn’t know how they had found him; he really didn’t care.

  Bolting forward, he knocked Hashul’s spear away, the two breaking through the ceiling as Lucian collided with him, making it clear to the floor above.

  Lucian heard his Grim Mechas addressing the other two angels beneath him as he got to his feet, a light fixture above them giving way, the fluorescent bulbs swinging down and nearly cracking Lucian in the face.

  His scythe now in his hands, Lucian surged forward, Hashul barely able to get out the way. The angel quickly moved from his prone position to the sidewall, which he used as a springboard to fly at Lucian.

  The two smashed through a window, rolling into another patient’s room, the parasite on the patient’s back screeching as it quadrupled in size.

  Clear tentacles twisted toward Lucian, latching onto his body, and quickly making their way to his neck.

  They did the same to Hashul, who struggled to break free, Lucian’s crows suddenly entering the space and cutting through the tendrils binding their creator.

  “Thanks!” he said as he brought his scythe back and repeatedly dug the tip of it into Hashul’s body, again and again, the parasite tightening its grip on the angel. Lucian finally drove it in deep enough that he was able to pull Hashul away from the parasite and drag him out of the room as even more tendrils came.

  Hashul’s spear took shape in his hand; he swept Lucian’s legs out from under him, Lucian stumbling forward.

  He was just getting back to his feet when the angel shot forward, slamming Lucian through first one and then another wall, the two of them now outside the complex, Lucian managing to free himself from the angel’s grip.

  “You never learn, do you?” Hashul asked, his wings growing, the gray clouds overhead making him look more intimidating than he really was.

  “What is there to learn?” Lucian asked as his carbine formed in his hands.

  His cape lifted off his body, and perhaps it would have tried to entangle the angel had it not been for an explosion below, both Lucian and Hashul glancing down to see that Lucian’s replicants were giving the other two angels one hell of a time.

  The pair of them were already on the ground, one of his Grim Mechas with his knee on the angel’s spine, pinning her down.

  A searing blast of purple energy was the next thing Lucian noticed as his second replicant fired at its opponent with its laser eyes.

  Hashul used Lucian’s momentary distraction to his advantage, stabbing his spear forward, its tip breaking against Lucian’s armor, yet still sending him flying backward.

  Lucian collided with the building, going straight through a glass window and into one of the medical offices. He was just pressing back to his feet when he noticed a sudden burst of energy outside the window.

  And, for a second, he thought it was Danira, that she had finally arrived, Lucian gearing up and ready to handle the angels so he could get some time alone with her.

  But Lucian soon learned it wasn’t the angel whom he’d continued to have a troubled relationship with.

  He lifted out of the office and into the air as a blackened blur moved quickly around Hashul, the angel’s arms and legs falling away, his head now held in a woman’s hand. She spun her double-bladed scythe and addressed the next angel, the one still engaging Grim Mecha.

  The woman kicked Lucian’s replicant aside and quickly took this angel’s head as well, cometing down to the final angel, her sudden appearance tossing Lucian’s second replicant to the side as she decapitated this angel as well.

  The female Death who went by the name Mastima met Lucian in the sky, still spinning her weapon, holding the three angels’ heads by their hair.

  “That’s... one way to do it,” Lucian said as he called his two mechas, both of them now hovering behind the female Death, ready to engage.

  “Let me go, you witch!” Hashul screamed, clearly still alive even though he only existed as a head at the moment.

  Mastima obliged, dropping the three heads to the pavement below as she focused her completely black eyes on Lucian.

  “All right,” he said, his carbine reappearing in his hands. “But we don’t have to.”

  His crows settled over his shoulders, Lucian just about to give the signal to his two replicants when Mastima stopped him. “I’m not here to fight you.”

  “Then what are you here for?”

  “To talk.”

  “About what?”

  “I think you know.”

  “It wasn’t my idea… what went on back at the beach,” he told her.

  “It’s not exactly about that. But we can talk about that too, if you’d like. Not here, though.”

  “I don’t want to go back to the Committee.”

  “And I won’t take you there. Somewhere else. Away from here. More angels will come soon, and I’m surprised that injuresouls haven’t already started arriving.”

  Her double-bladed scythe disappeared, Mastima offering Lucian her hand.

  He hesitated.

  “If I wanted to attack you, Lucian North, I would have already done so.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “We need to talk privately. I…”

  He waited for her to speak, and when she didn’t, he decided to give her hand. “You what?”

  Mastima looked away from him, as if she were ashamed of what she was about to say: “I need your help.”

  Chapter Two: Dark Side of the Moon

  Lucian still couldn’t believe where he was standing.

  The Earth was a glowing blue and green orb in the distance, surrounded by an endless darkness punctuated with glittery stars. The sun was visible as well, brighter than it seemed on Earth.

  “We all have places that we like to go to get away from it all,” Mastima began.

  “Clearly.”

  “This is one of those places; for me, anyway.”

  “The moon?” And as he had done before, Lucian took a look around at the powdery surface, craters in the distance, his limbs tingling slightly as he tried to make sense of his surroundings.

  Mastima nodded. “I suppose we should discuss why I’ve brought you here.”

  “Yeah,” Lucian said as his crows returned. He also conjured a few surveillance crows too, which he sent out with a wave of his hand. He hadn’t yet summoned his two Grim Mechas, but he was ready, still aware that this could be an ambush. “But before we do, I just want to say that I don’t want to be held responsible for what happened on the beach. I want to be clear about that.”

  “I’m not here as an acting member of the Committee on Luminaries. That’s not why I have reached out to you.”

  “Well, you saw what happened back there. That was my predecessor’s idea. It was the only way he would show up,” Lucian said, which was sort of a lie.

  Still, he went with it.

  “As I said, that’s not what I’m here to discuss. But since you keep bringing up, you do realize you have started a war, do you not?”

  “I didn’t start it. Like I said.”

  Mastima turned away from him for a moment. She stepped forward, her dark hood lowered, her hair letting off a slight sheen as energy spread down her arms.

  She shook her hands out.

  “What did you just do?”

  “It was power I’d saved up just in case.”

  “In case what?” Lucian asked, the woman still with her back to him.

  “In case drastic measures were needed.”

  Lucian came around so they were now face-to-face again.

  He found Mastima to be attractive, her appearance entirely thrown off by her lack of sclerae, her nacreous black eyes constantly sucking up light. She was thin, her robes loose around her body like that of a monk, her shoulders a bit bony.

  “Why am I here?”

 
“I need your help,” she said after a long pause.

  Lucian almost laughed. “My help? How many of our kind do you know? Why would you come to me?”

  “You are hoping to grow stronger, are you not?”

  Lucian took a step closer to her. “Have you been spying on me?”

  “Of course I have, but isn’t it all of our wishes to grow stronger? Couldn’t I have asked that question of anyone and received a positive answer?”

  “What do you know about me?”

  “I know about your brother,” she said solemnly.

  “You don’t know shit about him.”

  “There is no need to get angry at me.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Lucian said, just about to press his thumb and his pinky finger together.

  “You don’t want to hear why I have brought you here?”

  “Not really. Since meeting you and the rest of the Committee, my life has gone from bad to worse. Why would I want to spend any more time dealing with you? And why would you want my help?”

  “If you would let me finish…”

  “No, I want to finish. I’m not saying my life was perfect until you three, or five, whatever, came around, but you have certainly made it a lot more difficult. And while I may have played a part in starting this war, it wouldn’t have started in the first place if it hadn’t been for you all.”

  “Your predecessor had a point, and he still does.”

  “Wait…” Lucian looked at her curiously. “What did you just say?”

  “I agree that those at the top have been pitting us against the Progeny of Light for far too long, that we should be working together, and we could mutually grow stronger if we did.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Mastima tilted her head to the right, her eyes making it look like she was giving Lucian a creepy stare. “I am more like you than you know. I too am well aware of the other types of parasites, like the one that is afflicting your brother.”

  “Not just him…” Lucian said under his breath.

  “Oh?”

  “My whole family has the same death date now. My brother is going to kill them somehow. I’ve got a month to do something about it. So unless you have a solution for that...” Lucian shook his head. “It’s been real hard.”