"Demon hunters?"
Nick stood motionless for a second processing what he had just heard, then let out a brief exhalation, a dry and short laugh that sounded more like incredulity than amusement.
"Please..." He ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head while looking at the ground, as if he were talking to a simple bug. "Seriously? That is what you think you are? You have to stop watching so many movies, kid. You are losing your grip on reality."
He looked up. His expression was no longer kind, but neither was it hysterical: it was the bored and dangerous look of someone tired of wasting time. "I admit you have certain talent. An impressive trick, stopping them like that..." he conceded, looking sideways at the frozen killers. "But, are you really that naive? Do you think a little cheap magic can break a contract that has kept this city standing for three centuries?"
He took a step forward. His voice lowered in volume, becoming more authoritative.
"You have no idea what you have gotten yourself into. This is not a game of heroes and villains. They..." he pointed at the killers with indifference, "...do not stop, they cannot die. They are the price we pay. They are the consequence of a deal that is much bigger than you and your tricks."
He sighed, putting his hands in the pockets of his uniform.
"You know, my plan was simple. Clean up the mess, blame Deena and move on. But you..." he looked at him with a coldness devoid of any emotion. "You are a loose end. And my family does not leave loose ends."
Buzz
A dark energy, heavier than mere threat, erupted from his body in an instant, spreading through the spacious hall like a tide.
Instantly the killers that Lief held captive with his mental control began to tremble violently.
Lief, however, maintained his unalterable expression, preserving his calm without increasing the pressure of his telekinesis.
"It seems like you are suffering"
!
Nick's face contracted slightly at this comment, but it was true, he was demanding extra strength from the pact, borrowing the demon's power at the cost of sacrificing some of his future.
But in this moment, he did not care about the price... the only thing that mattered was eliminating that boy once and for all!
"Move!"
A sonic boom coincided with the disintegration of Lief's telekinesis and suddenly, all the killers regained their freedom.
"Kill him!" ordered Nick, pointing at Lief with a hand trembling with rage.
Swish
The Camp Nightwing Killer, the closest one, was the first to react to the order. His attention fixed rigidly on Lief.
Upon stepping on the ground with force, the cement cracked instantly under the boot and his huge figure turned into a black blur that cut the distance.
He raised the axe and, with all his power, brought it down furiously toward Lief's head.
!
Deena, Sam and Josh closed their eyes instinctively, expecting to hear the nauseating sound of the massacre.
From their perspective, before such a brutal and unstoppable attack, the death of the stranger was a certainty.
However, instead of the heavy sound of the axe cutting a body, they only heard... a gunshot.
Bang
Just at the instant when the axe edge was millimeters from impacting Lief's head, a silver M1911 style pistol appeared from out of nowhere and he aimed coldly toward the scarecrow's skull.
The weapon detonated with a roar that resembled no conventional ammunition; it was a deafening explosion that made the eardrums of the three ache intensely.
Upon exiting the barrel, the bullet ignited a sphere of burning fire, carrying with it a power that suggested a sentence.
The projectile penetrated cleanly through the Killer's forehead.
Time seemed to freeze, with the gigantic body and his axe remaining static, trapped in the inertia of the attack.
Puff
Immediately after, a wet sound was heard.
The next second, the killer's head exploded.
Blood, brains, and bone turned into a macabre firework display that flew everywhere.
The headless body, propelled by the inertia of the failed blow, advanced a few more steps before collapsing onto its knees, finally crashing heavily against the ground.
A single shot.
The roar of the shot faded leaving behind a sharp ringing in everyone's ears, plunging the mall into a sepulchral silence.
"..."
Deena and the others, stunned, blinked trying to focus their sight through the smoke and when their eyes finally processed the image of the headless corpse slumped on the linoleum, terror gave way to absolute paralysis.
Nick's mask fractured into a thousand pieces, with his eyes oscillating frantically between the inert body of his executioner and the smoking weapon in the boy's hand, unable to reconcile what he saw with the reality he believed he controlled.
"No... that cannot be... none of this is supposed to be possible," he murmured, taking a step back while his mind struggled.
The immortality of his servants was the cornerstone...
Lief, however, had not the slightest intention of allowing him to process his existential crisis.
Swish
At the precise instant the Nightwing Killer's body touched the ground, the Pastor detached from the shadows lunging toward Lief with stiffened fingers ready to tear flesh.
"..."
But Lief did not even turn his head to face him and with a simple thought...
Like hitting a wall, the nauseating crunch of multiple fractures occurring in unison when the force of the impact stopped the Pastor's charge dead and catapulted him violently in the opposite direction.
Swish... Boom
Cyrus's body flew covering dozens of meters in an unstoppable trajectory until his flight was abruptly interrupted by a wall.
The Pastor fell to the ground like a rag doll with its strings cut, landing on his own limbs that were now twisted at anatomically impossible angles.
Almost in unison, the other two threats converged on Jennifer seeking to take advantage of her apparent numerical disadvantage.
Ruby Lane slid down the left flank with the straight razor seeking a vital artery in the neck, while Billy Barker charged head-on like a rabid animal, raising his baseball bat with the clear intention of shattering her skull.
"..."
However, Jennifer showed not the slightest trace of panic, instead, her lips curved into a grimace of confidence...
Just when the razor's edge was about to graze her skin, she flexed her knees dropping her center of gravity to dodge the cut and, taking advantage of that same movement, launched a low kick toward the boy's ankle in mid-run.
Billy's momentum betrayed him, making him trip violently forward, but before he could fall face down, Jennifer sprang up like a spring intercepting his fall.
She grabbed the boy by the back of his clothes and, using the very inertia of the charge against him, spun on her heels and projected him backward with brutal force, throwing him as if he were a sack of rubble directly against his partner.
Ruby had no time to process the change, she barely saw Billy's body mass coming before both bodies collided, collapsing in a disaster on the floor.
But before they could even try to untangle themselves, Jennifer was already on them.
She stamped the sole of her boot against Billy's chest, pinning him to the floor and knocking the air out of his lungs to annul any attempt to get up, while she leaned toward Ruby to snatch the straight razor from her fingers with a quick movement.
She weighed the razor a moment, turning it in her hand to find the right grip, and looked at the girl on the floor with a coldness lacking any unnecessary emotion.
"Wrong weapon, wrong hands"
Swish
Without hesitating for an instant, she slid the edge precisely across Ruby's ankles and wrists, severing the tendons to permanently motorically incapacitate her.
Once the threat was neutralized, she sent the bloody razor flying and finished the sequence with a frontal kick that sent Ruby's useless body sliding several meters.
Everything happened in a blink.
An unnatural silence fell over the mall lobby.
But Nick was not in a panic, his initial astonishment hardened into a look of hatred.
He looked at Lief and Jennifer, not as monsters, but as a mistake that needed to be corrected.
"Impressive... but do you really think that is all? Do you think this is about fighting and winning?"
He took a step forward, ignoring the shattered bodies.
"You do not understand how Shadyside works," he spat with contempt. "There is no 'ending' here. Not while the blood keeps flowing."
And closing his eyes for a second, he exhaled, connecting with that darkness that pulsed beneath the town's ground since 1666.
Then, it was heard.
First it was low, but it grew quickly. Zzzzzzz...
The buzzing of a thousand flies.
Black and fat clouds surged from the cracks in the floor, from the vents, from the air itself, swirling around the fallen bodies.
"The pact is not broken with simple cheap tricks," he murmured opening his eyes, which now reflected a lethal certainty. "Rise."
The headless body of the Nightwing Killer began to convulse.
Crack-Splat
The flesh and bone stretched and reformed, weaving itself back together amidst the deafening buzzing of the flies covering the wound.
The Pastor's body shook violently. The broken bones cracked, repositioning themselves with snaps, forcing the limbs to return to their original position with spasmodic movements.
The blood stopped gushing from Ruby and began to recede flowing back into her veins while the wound sealed.
Nick smiled, a joyless smile.
"Death is not a way out for them," he said coldly. "And it will not be for you either."
________
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