Page 66 of Brawler
The UAV lay in shattered ruin, fuselage blackened, pieces scattered in a wide debris field. Jagged wreckage jutted out like broken teeth, the scent of scorched metal heavy in the air.
Just beyond it squatted the Marine chopper, torn open, smoke-stained. The rotors were snapped, the tail sheared off. In the cockpit, two pilots sat slumped forward, motionless, helmets cracked and visors spider-webbed, uniforms dark with blood. Dead in their seats.
Low murmurs of anger ran down the line.
Flash’s hackles went up. Too quiet. Too still.
“Heads on a swivel,” Tex murmured over comms. “This isn’t right.”
But Flash’s gaze wasn’t on the wreckage. It was everywhere else, shadows in the trees, glimmering in the air, whispers in incomprehensible languages. His tattoos burned so hot it felt like his skin was peeling away, wings itching, cross searing. He pressed a hand to his temple, staggered once.
Then the jungle erupted.
Gunfire tore from the brush. Many rifles opened up at once, muzzle flashes strobing through the green. The team dropped to cover, returning fire in vicious bursts. Hot lead sparked off metal, chewed bark, ripped leaves to confetti.
Flash stood there frozen, like a sleepwalker caught between nightmare and reality. Bullets screamed past, thenthroughhim, the sound warped and hollow, as if he were already a ghost.
The tangos blurred. Red eyes glowed back at him. Demons. Monsters, grotesque and twisted, jaws gnashing, closing in.
He whipped his gaze to her, Emily, and in the next blink, it wasn’t Emily. It was Lechuza. Her eyes gleamed with a light not made for this world, too bright, too knowing, and fixed on him as if she could see every fracture in his soul. His chest convulsed. They were using him to get to her. If she fell, they triumphed. Somehow, he knew it.
He lunged, grabbed her arm, jerked her up. She cried out, confusion spilling from her lips, but the words were nonsense in his ears. Panic twisted his gut into a knot of instinct. He had to save her. He dragged her with him, ignoring the demon dog’s snarl, ignoring her resistance. Running for his life, his sanity.
He pelted through the jungle at such a rapid speed, she could barely keep up. Vines clawed at her arms, branches whipped across her face, roots reached for her boots like the earth itself wanted to drag her down. He snagged her around the waist, practically carrying her as he drove forward, momentum building like a man fleeing fire. The air grew thicker, charged,every breath tasting of copper and smoke, heat clawing the moisture from his throat.
The jungle wasn’t just alive. It was chasing them. Leaves shivered without wind. Shadows bent the wrong way, stretching long across the ground as if cast by some unseen fire. The ground itself seemed to pulse under his boots. Whispers slithered through the undergrowth, too sharp, too urgent to be anything human.
Lechuza stumbled with him. For a moment, he was inside her head, her lungs burning, her heart pounding with more than exertion. The invasion twisted his gut with horror, his body moving with a frantic, otherworldly momentum that ripped her farther and farther from the rest of the team. The world had split, dragging them sideways into some hidden place where reality itself frayed.
She cried out for him to slow, to stop, but Flash couldn’t. Her thoughts bled into him.What is wrong with him? His eyes seem to be locked on something only he can see.
Then pain snapped him out of her mind, stinging and sharp. Blood streaked her arm, bright, real. Mortal. She was mortal.
His sick sense of being gone twisted through him, wondering if he was even here anymore. His hands felt insubstantial, his breath hollow in his chest, as if he were nothing but a haunting echo tearing through the jungle.
His breath caught. Out of the corner of his eye, the jungle bent, light warping until it rose before him, a massive wall of pale green, glinting like liquid glass. A wave, but alive, vast and deliberate. Shadows writhed inside it, threads of power curling and snapping like a storm contained, and then it fixed on him. Sentient. A heat-seeking missile with only one target.
It roared without sound, a vibration that rattled his bones and filled his chest until he thought his ribs would crack. The air itself buckled, heavy with energy and intent.
Flash changed direction and ran, clutching Lechuza, no,Emily, against him, and for one wild, impossible heartbeat wings burst from his back. He imagined flight, imagined beating the air with powerful strokes, carrying her out of reach. But even in that dream, the wall loomed. The Veil let him rise only to swat him down.
Then the visions came.
They slammed into him, too many, too dense, pressed in like a flood bursting through a narrow crack. Faces blurred and stretched, eyes staring, mouths open in soundless screams.
Cities burning. Sirens wailing as firestorms consumed whole blocks, London, Dresden, Nagasaki.YOU.
Trenches filled with gas, men clawing at masks, skin blistering, the air itself turned against them.ARE.
Red-coated soldiers breaking ranks in smoke and gunpowder, muskets flashing, bodies falling in ragged lines across frozen fields.OUR.
Wooden ships shattered by cannon fire on a gray, heaving sea.HOPE.
Muskets cracking in endless forest, smoke curling through towering pines, savage warriors painted for battle striking from the shadows.YOU.
Blue and gray uniforms locked in tragic combat, brother against brother, the air thick with blood and smoke.ARE.
Helicopters strafing a jungle canopy, men screaming as napalm rolled like liquid fire.OUR.
