Chapter 27: Break Stuff

My head didn’t explode into tiny morsels.

But everything went cold, unanchored.

I could no longer feel my breath as I watched the mystical discharge pass through me.

The spent energy left an enormous crater in the ground.

What is happening?

I glanced down—my legs straddled black fur, locked in a riding position.

Hellie.

She had phased underneath me and pulled me into her incorporeal frequency.

Surging up and into Gluttony, the world snapped solid.

The coarse action forced me to choke on my breath and grip her long mane as she swung her massive paws.

The furious swipes smacked Gluttony’s Auracroft shotgun from his hand, shredding his right arm into peels of ligament and flesh, and catapulted his body yards and yards into the field.

After landing in a slide, she carried me to the edge of Tiny Jem’s home and lowered herself.

I jumped onto the grass, barely registering the glass crackling under my sneakers.

My attention fixed on Hellie.

Happy that we were both alive, I reached out and joyously petted her lush fur.

“Come on, bitch. Come get me!”

The globby tones of Gluttony’s bellicose words cut my joy short.

Without hesitation, Hellie shook off my affections and made an explosive dart toward Gluttony.

From where I stood, the distance between us was too great.

Rolling billows of smoke obscured him, making his large, sulking shape difficult to track.

To follow the action, I shifted into Hellie’s vision—watching through her eyes as if they were my own.

She galloped hard, splitting the ground beneath her, racing along a diagonal path from the house to her prey.

We locked onto Gluttony. His twisted, pissed expression peeked through the smoke. He clenched and released his hands, throwing them in and out, baiting her to move closer.

Curiously enough, he didn’t have his Boomstick.

I quickly spotted it within her peripheral vision. It had a strange glow, multiplying in intensity—orange, like burning phosphorus.

My stomach dropped.

He was flooding it with power.

Hellie, pull back! He’s banking on your aggression.

But seemingly reverting to her untamed behavior, she didn’t stop.

I dropped my head, frustrated and disappointed with my lack of control.

Looking down, I realized where Hellie had left me.

The glass—I could use it to make my hailstorm.

She wasn’t being reckless. I was out of touch.

It took a second, but I’d stumbled into Hellie’s plan.

She was the one baiting Gluttony, making it focus on her, not me.

I walked into the heart of the wreckage—

Concentrating, holding my hands out, I let the energy swell.

An immense mass of shards lifted a few inches off the ground, rattling and vibrating.

I had in mind to conjure the largest push spell I’d ever cast, much bigger than the one that carved a ravine in the woods.

The blood-curdling pressure of the spell racked me with pain.

But I pushed through.

I’d lived it the whole night.

Hellie was almost on Gluttony. She probed for my command.

I had to get the timing right.

It meant everything.

So I held on a bit longer, building more, anticipating the exact moment Gluttony would summon his shotgun.

“That’s it, you stupid hellhound. Come on! I don’t know how you survived my first attack, but you won’t survive this.”

The end of his sentence was the signal.

Gluttony materialized his shotgun in his hand and released a thunderous, single discharge.

It unleashed a massive, glowing trail from the tip of the shotgun to the obstruction in its path—

Tiny Jem’s home.

Hellie, phase now.

As soon as she vanished, the concussive blast collapsed the roof and sent me reeling, but not before I had released the violent hailstorm of glass.

“No, my f#@king hou…” burbled out of the smoke plumes.

The glass shards perforated every part of his body.

I pulled myself off the ground and possessed Hellie’s eyes.

She was looming over Gluttony, circling his mutilated, gashed body.

All around him, I saw the residual damage of the onslaught—ruts, long carved streaks in the dirt, and splinters of destroyed trees scattered everywhere.

Hellie drew close and opened her mouth to consume him. Smoke flooded out of his husk, catching us both off guard, forming a vast ground fog.

Sniffing for the body, a jelly-like substance leapt from the obscured covering.

Hellie’s eyesight went black.

I dropped her vision and darted toward them.

As I got closer, I could see Hellie’s head encased by the gunk.

She fought back wildly, batting and bucking against the icky substance, trying to bind and blanket her entire body.

With my hands, I oscillated between a push and pull spell to detach the glob from Hellie.

Lumps and chunks gave way under the force of my power, only to replenish all the same.

Nearing the edge of the smoke, I stopped.

It was looking bad for Hellie.

Her movement had become more restrained, and she was slowing.

Words about the hellhounds from Rules of the Black Arts for Advanced Users flashed in my mind like a schematic: strengths, weaknesses, and powers.

Sifting through my selective memories, I swiftly made a choice.

The bad part: I had no clue if what I’d remembered would have any effect on the dark, bubbling blob.

The crap part: Hellie had to draw energy from me. Odds were it was going to hurt like hell.

She was at a point of no return.

It was worth a shot, so I passed the idea into Hellie’s head.

Light up, girl.

As soon as my mind uttered the command, my body boiled.

Hellie and I both erupted into an inferno of hellfire that swelled over our bodies.

The fire burned bright and fast.

The dark jelly substance recoiled and Hellie tore free.

When the fire dissipated, I literally felt a grueling and taxing amount of energy sucked from my body.

It felt like I lost my soul.

I collapsed to the ground and yelled out to Hellie, “Get out of here now. Run away.”

I saw her pause, confused, but she followed my command and ran off.

At the same time, I felt the slime of the goop rushing over my body.

“You’re dumber than I thought. Sending away your only means of destroying me? You all but guaranteed your death. I’m going to enjoy rotting you until you’re a husk.”

Gluttony’s words seeped into my thoughts as the warm blob oozed up to my neck, paralyzing me.

Before my mouth was covered, I shot back, “I got you by the throat.”

Pushing through curds flowing into my mouth, I finished my threat, saying, “If I die, your collection dies with me!”

The slime, putrid and sickly-sweet, flooded into me.

My gag reflex fought hard to repel death, but I knew I was only moments away.

The maddening thrust eased—curiosity must have held him at bay.

“What?” Tiny Jem’s voice echoed in my thoughts.

I hurled, spitting, puckering my lips tightly—ugly as it was—to push the gunk out of my mouth.

“You helped me prove Hellie and I have a protected mental link. I didn’t send her away. I sent her to destroy your museum and take her sweet time doing it. I’ll stop her if you release me.”

The slime tightened under my chin, wafting and trembling.

There seemed to be a strong tension building, but just as I imagined it entombing me, it receded, as did the smoke.

Before me, I watched Gluttony and Tiny Jem’s forms shift rapidly between them.

In the end, Tiny Jem took control.

“It’s still my body, mother#@ker. You need me. I don’t need you,” Tiny Jem cried out as the smoke dissipated.

Unfortunately, with the smoke gone, Tiny Jem lifted off the ground and stood in front of me, completely naked.

He had his good hand covering the nasty wound on his abdomen—left by the sword. His other arm flailed. Both wounds were unhealed, leaking blood.

I considered it a spiteful parting gift from Gluttony.

“Call your bitch off. F#@k! I have originals. They’re non-replaceable.”

From his confused actions, it was safe to say that his human form was baked as ever.

“Hellie’s already in there. Can’t you hear?”

“I surrendered. Tell her to stop. We can work together. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

I didn’t say a word.

After Tiny Jem ran off, I picked up the Boomstick.

During his wobbling journey to the house, I saw him pause for a moment—realizing, in a flash of regret, what he’d stupidly done—as he doubled over in pain.

“Heal me, you mother#@ker. If I die, we both die, you prick.”

Despite their shared body, Tiny Jem and Gluttony were clearly conflicted.

I understood in that moment, when I heard Tiny Jem pleading for help, that their relationship was fractured.

I also picked up on Tiny Jem’s overzealousness when I broke some of his precious darlings, and he angrily wrestled control from Gula before ejecting me from his home.

In the end, Tiny Jem had done what all gluttons do: sold himself out for the stuff they consume.

I took my sweet time walking back to his house for three reasons.

First, the hollowness gripping my brain made me swear my life force had been depleted. Second, I was in indescribable, freaking pain. And third, I wanted to give Tiny Jem time to watch his prized possessions being ripped apart.

Walking up the deck, I followed Tiny Jem’s blood trail inside the house and down to the lower floor that contained the museum.

From the looks of the splatters on the marble floors, he’d lost more and more blood as he got closer to his destination.

When I entered the grand room packed with several generations’ worth of memorabilia, I immediately spotted Hellie.

She was serene, lying in a pile of rubble, chewing on an authentically clothed mannequin.

I didn’t even try to deduce its movie origin.

The faint sounds of sniffling and moaning drew me to Tiny Jem. He was on the other side of the area, sifting through the junk pile at his feet.

Everything in this once-glorious collection—one-of-a-kind movie props, posters, toys, original edition comics, and signed memorabilia—had been shredded by either her razor-sharp teeth or claws.

My heart ached. I was a fanboy, too. Unfortunately, none of it was salvageable.

But I quickly changed my tune after I heard Tiny Jem and Gluttony’s voices overlapping and babbling.

“People were willing to sell their souls for these. They’re magnificent conduits of esoteric origins and messages. All overflowing with the delicious energy I loved to feast on.”

Tiny Jem continued to hobble through the museum, picking up anything he could salvage.

He had a mass of garbage in his arms that continued to shed each time he added something new.

Finally, he stopped.

After picking up a broken action figure, he sank onto the floor and into his own pool of blood. Then he turned his attention to me.

“I remember enjoying slitting the throat of the man who tried to hardball me over this. Screw you, Malvic, you liar! It’s okay. I’m happy knowing you’ll be the first to fail.”

He then started laughing and covered himself in the junk nearest to him, almost as if he were trying to siphon the last bits of residual dark energy that remained.

“My brothers and sisters will resurrect me when they become the new gods.”

“Hellie, I’m sick of hearing his voice. Eat this, son of a bitch.”

Hellie raised her head from gnawing on her movie prop chew toy and instantly pounced on Tiny Jem.

As much as I loathed the bastard, it was excruciatingly hard to watch him being torn limb from limb and to see the scattering of his flesh, bone, and blood.

Hellie’s chewing made his body bob back and forth, and after a short while it became surreal, like a rocking and broken human prop from a movie.

But above all, it was the sound that resonated with me the most. Hearing the snapping, grinding against Hellie’s teeth, and the guzzling of his bits down her throat almost made me vomit and close my eyes.

But I didn’t turn away.

I had six more, just like him, to go.